Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India

From the Dust Jacket: A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet-then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dalrymple, William 1965- (Author)
Format: Print Book
Language:English
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WorldCat: WorldCat
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: London Berlin [u.a.] Bloomsbury 2009
In:Year: 2009
Edition:1. publ.
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B India / Hindus / Religious practice / History 2000-2100
B India / Hinduism / Religious life / History 2000-2100
B Hinduism / Religious life
Further subjects:B India Religious life and customs
B Experience account
B India Religious life and customs
B India Social conditions
B India Social conditions
Description
Summary:From the Dust Jacket: A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet-then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to find unexpected love and fulfillment living as a Tantric skull feeder in a remote cremation ground. A prison warden from Kerala becomes, for two months of the year, a temple dancer and is worshipped as an incarnate deity; then, at the end of February each year, he returns to prison. An illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 4,000-line sacred epic that he, virtually alone, still knows by heart. A devadasi-or temple prostitute-initially resists her own initiation into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she now regards as a sacred calling. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. Exquisite and mesmerizing, and told with an almost biblical simplicity, William Dalrymple's first travel book in over a decade explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the vortex of the region's rapid change. A distillation of twenty-five years of exploring India and writing about its religious traditions, Nine Lives is a modern Indian Canterbury Tales
ISBN:1408800616