The Study, Beautifully Illustrated, Focuses On The Masks Of Gods, Goddesses And Demons Worn By The Newars Of Kath-Mandu Valley. It Deals With Contexts In Which The Dancers Wear The Masks And With Legends Concerning The Dances.

The Newars who live in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal are well known for their urban civilisation as well as for the social organisation of their territory, which they have conserved for centuries. The author shows that for the Newars there exists a complex relationship between gods and men and also that their notion of territory is inextricably linked with the sanctuaries and temples, where gods have precise sites. Even though political power has always been in the hands of the Hindus, the co-existence of Hinduism and Buddhism since the fifth century and the influence of Tantrism later on has given rise to a complex pantheon. The sanctuaries and temples are not merely decorative, they are functional as well. Each festival takes place around a temple and these mark out the territory the Newars inhabit. The Newar town not only has a religious centre but a political centre as well. For instance, at Bhaktapur the royal goddess Taleju is the political figure head and the goddess Tripurasundari the religious figure head. The royal goddess Taleju being the sovereign deity of the town, it is obvious that the political centre has primacy over the religious centre. The seats of the deities within a territory are situated in concentric circles. Published in association with Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi.

In South Asia goddesses are conceptualized and worshipped in a fascinating range of forms — from cosmic beings to bacterial manifestations, from human-like appearances to creatures with animal and insect semblances. This book maps the diverse identities of goddesses through metaphors of grace, rage and knowledge, and offers an in-depth insight into femininity, sexual politics, ritual worships, religion, ecology and gender. Grace manifests as motherly sublimity, warring protectors, and varying personifications of sexuality. Rage encapsulates the fearful aspects of goddesses and independent identities of women. Knowledge evokes associations with order, reason and intellect in conflating gendered binaries of body/mind and nature/culture. The volume explores how these deity attributes are expressed and embedded through anthropomorphic as well as inorganic forms of nature, beautiful women, multi-legged and many-armed animals, epistemic selves, demonic beings, glamorous personifications as also grotesque sub-humans. A methodological combination of critical theory, mythological and philosophical concepts, along with popular ethnographic narratives and lived experiences, this monograph will greatly interest scholars and researchers of religious studies, cultural studies, folklore, art, literature, sociology and gender studies, especially those interested in Nepal and Hinduism.

Description of the Kathmandu valley.

"..the finest examples of Nepalese art from the Rubin Museum of Art's permanent collection , highlighting the variety of forms, subjects, techniques, and media that emerged from the valley's creative matrix" --Introd.