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21 pages, 270 KB

Open AccessArticle

Shakti in Village India: Priestesses, Sadhikas, Bhar Ladies, Ayes, Bhaktas, Witches, and Bonga Girls

by June McDaniel

Religions 2023, 14(6), 789; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060789 - 14 Jun 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4588

In this paper, we shall examine some major religious roles for women in West Bengal, India, and the challenges they must face. Among the Santals, an Adivasi group, religious women must avoid being called witches, for women’s power is seen as dangerous and religious social roles are traditionally forbidden to them. Some women have been called by deities to become trance mediums, colloquially known as ‘bhar ladies’, and this role is generally not accepted by family members. Girls have had to undergo exorcisms by male healers to get them to renounce the gods that have called them to this role, while married women must deal with husbands who do not want their wives going into public trances. Many such women have learned tantric practices to control the trance possession. In rural areas, the combination of ascetic practices and stories known as bratas (vratas) are taught to young girls by female leaders called ayes. However, in more urban areas, this role has been taken over by male brahmin priests. We also see women in the bhakti tradition, who run ashrams and lead worship and who must deal with male devotees who question a woman’s leadership abilities. All of these involve challenges, and many of these women have developed strategies to deal with the difficulties of being a religious influencer in their societies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gurus, Priestesses, Saints, Mediums and Yoginis: Holy Women as Influencers in Hindu Culture)

20 pages, 250 KB

Open AccessArticle

Mysticism among the Pedandas of Bali

by June McDaniel

Religions 2020, 11(11), 585; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110585 - 5 Nov 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5403

Abstract

On the island of Bali in Indonesia, the traditional Hindu religious leaders are the pedandas, or brahmin high priests. Their religious status is largely based on their mystical states, during which they create the highest and most valuable form of holy water, which is needed for all religious rituals on the island. It is one of the rare examples in world religions where mysticism is not only integrated into the daily life of the community but is vital to it. These are the religious authorities who maintain the ancient forms of Indonesian Hinduism, standing against the encroachment of Westernization, Islamization and modernization. Little ethnographic research has been done on them—there are no books about their lives and experiences in any Western languages, and only a few biographies in Indonesian. In this paper, we examine the lives of some Shiva pedandas, discussing their mystical experiences, and the ways that their states fit in with other sorts of mystical experiences in Bali. These other sorts of experiences include those of Buddhist priests, local healers or balians, and the debatably mystical experiences of possession trance. Full article

12 pages, 217 KB

Open AccessArticle

New Roles for Indigenous Women in an Indian Eco-Religious Movement

by Radhika Borde

Religions 2019, 10(10), 554; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10100554 - 26 Sep 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4381

Abstract

This article aims to study how a movement aimed at the assertion of indigenous religiosity in India has resulted in the empowerment of the women who participate in it. As part of the movement, devotees of the indigenous Earth Goddess, who are mostly indigenous women, experience possession trances in sacred natural sites which they have started visiting regularly. The movement aims to assert indigenous religiosity in India and to emphasize how it is different from Hinduism—as a result the ecological articulations of indigenous religiosity have intensified. The movement has a strong political character and it explicitly demands that indigenous Indian religiosity should be officially recognized by the inclusion of a new category for it in the Indian census. By way of their participation in this movement, indigenous Indian women are becoming figures of religious authority, overturning cultural taboos pertaining to their societal and religious roles, and are also becoming empowered to initiate ecological conservation and restoration efforts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Environmental Activism in Asia: Case Studies in Spiritual Ecology)

16 pages, 1400 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Fulcrum of Experience in Indian Yoga and Possession Trance

by Frederick M. Smith

Religions 2019, 10(5), 332; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10050332 - 17 May 2019

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5795

Abstract

The “inner organ” (antaḥkaraṇa) in the Indian philosophical school called Sāṃkhya is applied in two different experiential contexts: in the act of transcendence according to the path of yoga explored in the Yogasūtras of Patañjali (ca. 350 CE) and in the process of identity shift that occurs in possession by a deity in a broader range of Indian cultural practices. The act of transcendence will be better understood if we look at the antaḥkaraṇa through an emic lens, which is to say as an actual organ that is activated by experiential shifts, rather than as a concept or explanation that is indicative of a collocation of characteristics of the individuating consciousness or merely by reducing it to nonepistemic objective or subjective factors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religious Experience in the Hindu Tradition)

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