The Navarātri festival in Madurai

1985 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Fuller ◽  
Penny Logan
Keyword(s):  
Full Moon ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian City ◽  
New Moon

Navarātri (Tam. Navarāttiri) is one of the most popular and important annual festivals in the south Indian city of Madurai. The same is true elsewhere in the state and, in somewhat different forms, the festival is also popular in many other regions of India, notably Bengal (where it is known as Durgā Pūjā) and Karnataka (where it is called Dasarā). Navarātri means ‘nine nights’ and throughout India the festival is celebrated on the first nine lunar days (tithi) of the bright fortnight (i.e. the fortnight ending on full moon) of the lunar month of āśvina. In the Tamil calendar, however, the year is divided into twelve solar months and Navarātri is said to occupy the nine lunar days beginning with the day after new moon in the solar month of puraṭṭāci (September-October). Very occasionally, the Tamil formula may supply the wrong date. In many years, the festival only lasts eight weekdays, as two lunar days may fall within one weekday. (In some parts of India, a Navarātri festival is celebrated in the spring, but that is not discussed here.)

Photographic art and technology in contemporary India

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Aileen Blaney
Keyword(s):  
Entry Point ◽  
Road User ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
The South ◽  
Urban Streets ◽  
Art And Technology ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Indian City

Abstract The algorithmic turn in photography raises the question of whether an algorithmically generated image is even a photograph at all. This paradox is abundant on India's urban streets, where the pedestrian or road user is met with giant photo saturated flex hoardings printed with political and community messages and photo-shopped portraits of gods, chief ministers and party workers. In this article, attention to photo-based political posters alongside art practices sharing common elements of digital capture and postproduction contextualizes a reading of technologically produced visual landscapes in the South Indian city of Bangalore. Informed by Vilèm Flusser, the techno-materiality of hoardings are interpreted as visual practices whose reliance on Microsoft and Adobe softwares reveal more than the semiotic information that is ostensibly transmitted; in so doing the extent to which photography is a useful entry point for assessing the visuality in which we're currently living and how this gets locally inflected in the case of India is explored.

Petition Town

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aparna Balachandran
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
The State ◽  
Port City ◽  
The South ◽  
South Indian

Legal historians have described early modern empires as characterized by legal pluralism and, indeed, the ubiquitous invocation of custom in these petitions appears to reiterate that this was the case in the south Indian colonial port city of Madras. However, the investment in the rhetoric of custom by the state and its subjects was increasingly linked to a regime of paper and property where written evidence and the precedent were prioritized not merely in the colonial courts but also in indigenous forums of arbitration. Thus the permeation of these evidentiary norms in both colonial and “traditional” legal arenas was a phenomenon that can help interrogate the idea of pluralism as an appropriate scholarly lens in defining the legal terrain in places like Madras.

“Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara

1996 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 851-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip B. Wagoner
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
South India ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Natural Result

When Robert Sewell inaugurated the modern study of the South Indian state of Vijayanagara with his classic A Forgotten Empire (1900), he characterized the state as “a Hindu bulwark against Muhammadan conquests” (Sewell [1900] 1962, 1), thereby formulating one of the enduring axioms of Vijayanagara historiography. From their capital on the banks of the Tungabhadra river, the kings of Vijayanagara ruled over a territory of more than 140,000 square miles, and their state survived three changes of dynasty to endure for a period of nearly three hundred years, from the mid-fourteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries (Stein 1989, 1–2). According to Sewell, this achievement was to be understood as “the natural result of the persistent efforts made by the Muhammadans to conquer all India” ([1900] 1962, 1). Hindu kingdoms had exercised hegemony over South India for most of the previous millennium, but were divided among themselves when the Muslim forces of Muhammad bin Tughluq swept over the South in the early decades of the fourteenth century: “When these dreaded invaders reached the Krishna River the Hindus to their south, stricken with terror, combined, and gathered in haste to the new standard [of Vijayanagara] which alone seemed to offer some hope of protection. The decayed old states crumbled away into nothingness, and the fighting kings of Vijayanagar became the saviours of the south for two and a half centuries” (Sewell [1900] 1962, 1).

scholarly journals Lunar Images in the Cultural Traditions in the South of Western Siberia in the Second Half of the 3rd – the Beginning of the 2nd Millennium BC

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-68
Author(s):  
Igor V. Kovtun
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Western Siberia ◽  
Full Moon ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
New Moon

The article highlights a series of multicultural images of the developed Bronze Age of the south of Western Siberia, which are connected by a common semantic meaning. The author substantiates lunar semantics of Okunev, Krokhalevka and Samus anthropomorphic characters conveying the idea of significant moon cycles, mainly the new moon, the first quarter and the full moon. The worldviews of the population of these cultures are reconstructed, the probable sources of the lunar cult and the peculiarities of similar views in each community are investigated. Specific iconographic methods of transmitting similar ideological stereotypes by various visual means inherent in the cultural groups of the Upper Ob Region, the Lower Tom Region and the Middle Yenisei in the second half of the 3rd – the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC are revealed

The renovation ritual in a south Indian temple: the 1995 kumbha¯bhiseka in the Mi¯na¯ksi¯ Temple, Madurai

2004 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. FULLER
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
The South ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian City

This article is a description and analysis of the twelve-day renovation ritual or kumbha¯bhiseka (‘water-pot bathing ritual’) celebrated in the Mi¯na¯ksi¯ Temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 1995. After briefly discussing the historical background, the article describes the priests' division of labour at the kumbha¯bhiseka, the preliminary rituals—including the transfer of the deities' power from their images into water-pots—and the most crucial rituals: the series of ya¯gapu¯ja¯ (‘sacrifice-worship’) rituals, which mainly consisted of fire-sacrifices to enhance the power in the water-pots, and the culmination of the entire event, when the pots were emptied over the Temple's towers and images, so that the power flowed back in. The article concludes that despite its extreme elaborateness, the kumbha¯bhiseka's symbolic logic and purpose, especially as displayed in the spectacular destruction of the fire-sacrifices and then the final water-pouring, are unusually transparent compared to many other temple rituals.

scholarly journals The construction of incompetency: moving beyond embedded paternalism toward the practice of respect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supriya Subramani
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Ethical Framework ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
The South ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Indian City ◽  
Normative Justification ◽  
Depth Interviews

This paper illustrates the less-acknowledged social construction of the concept of “incompetency” and draws attention to the moral concerns it raises in healthcare encounters in the south Indian city of Chennai. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 surgeons, drawn from qualitative research, this study reveals that surgeons subjectively construct the idea of incompetency through their understanding of the perceived circumstantial characteristics of the patients and family members. The findings largely suggest that surgeons dismiss their capacity based on constructed assessments, which leads to paternalistic practice. The findings illustrate how these assessments structure the surgeons’ practices and provide the moral and practical justifications for their actions. The constructed knowledge becomes a source for drawing normative justification for surgeons’ actions and, in conjunction with socially enforced relationships, leads patients and family members to be on the receiving end of disrespectful attitudes. By employing the ethical framework, this paper argues for physicians to pursue “respect for persons,” beyond the framework of “capacity/autonomy,” and to practice respect in hospital settings.

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