The author calls attention to the importance of the Vedic domestic ritual codes in the creation of what has come to be known as "classical Hinduism."

Jesus tells his followers to feed the hungry, heal the sick, raise the dead, but often we’ve tamed this calling. Sara Miles, a passionate, funny, undomesticated Christian, tells what happened when she decided to follow Jesus into the messy diversity of human life and do exactly what he asked.

Imagine if J.D. Salinger had a sense of humour ... this intelligent, off-beat novel is fast-paced, wicked, dark and extremely funny. My publishers are trying to convince me that books are like albums and sell better when they are released posthumously. Seeing the point, I ask if I can at least fake my own death, but it seems that is fundamentally dishonest and they flatly refuse to be involved in any such fraud. So just in case I've croaked by the time you read this (and everyone but me is filthy rich), here is my story: one day I'm trying to get into the pants of the most beautiful girl in the world, Nina Pennington, and the next day I'm in the back of a limo on the road to rock'n'roll superstardom opening up for Bowie. But we hit a bump or two -- a few dead Mafia hitmen here, a nyphomaniac next door there, not to mention a few dying Latin teachers, narcoleptic nuns, inept policemen, unscupulous laywers, buffoon reporters, huckster televangelists and greedy relatives -- and now for some unknown reason a lot of people don't want to talk to me anymore. When sixteen-year-old Ric Thibault's story opens with his mother's attempted suicide note: While I'm dead... feed the dog and h

Feeding the Dead outlines the early history of ancestor worship in South Asia, from the earliest sources available, the Vedas, up to the descriptions found in the Dharmshastra tradition. Most prior works on ancestor worship have done little to address the question of how shraddha, the paradigmatic ritual of ancestor worship up to the present day, came to be. Matthew R. Sayers argues that the development of shraddha is central to understanding the shift from Vedic to Classical Hindu modes of religious behavior. Central to this transition is the discursive construction of the role of the religious expert in mediating between the divine and the human actor. Both Hindu and Buddhist traditions draw upon popular religious practices to construct a new tradition. Sayers argues that the definition of a religious expert that informs religiosity in the Common Era is grounded in the redefinition of ancestral rites in the Grhyasutras. Beyond making more clear the much misunderstood history of ancestor worship in India, this book addressing the serious question about how and why religion in India changed so radically in the last half of the first millennium BCE. The redefinition of the role of religious expert is hugely significant for understanding that change. This book ties together the oldest ritual texts with the customs of ancestor worship that underlie and inform medieval and contemporary practice.

These stories of vampire legends and gruesome nineteenth-century practices is “a major contribution to the study of New England folk beliefs” (The Boston Globe). For nineteenth-century New Englanders, “vampires” lurked behind tuberculosis. To try to rid their houses and communities from the scourge of the wasting disease, families sometimes relied on folk practices, including exhuming and consuming the bodies of the deceased. Folklorist Michael E. Bell spent twenty years pursuing stories of the vampire in New England. While writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Henry David Thoreau, and Amy Lowell drew on portions of these stories in their writings, Bell brings the actual practices to light for the first time. He shows that the belief in vampires was widespread, and, for some families, lasted well into the twentieth century. With humor, insight, and sympathy, he uncovers story upon story of dying men, women, and children who believed they were food for the dead. “A marvelous book.” —Providence Journal Includes an updated preface covering newly discovered cases.

Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies. By examining these seemingly inhuman acts, Eaters of the Dead reveals that those who consume corpses can teach us a great deal about human nature—and our deepest human fears.