Images of the Body in India

This intriguing book engages with the concept of the body in its cultural context by acknowledging and demonstrating that the human body is understood differently in Western and Indian cultures. The contributors go on to show that any attempt to put forward a single concept of the body within Indian culture would be misleading.

Divided into three parts, the book examines the considerable and often conflicting variations in body images and body concepts. In Part One the contributors focus on the representation of the body in religious and philosophical texts; representations that emerged from reading, translating and interpreting classical writings from diverse historical and anthropological approaches. Through predominantly ethnographic studies, Part Two explores the role of the body in narratives and ritual performance, from dance to ritualistic ceremonies. Visualisation processes of the body are examined in Part Three, focusing on developments in modern and contemporary periods: from visual practices at the Mughal court, to the multiple bodies of the bride, and the influence of new media.

This volume is a fascinating collection of articles for those in the fields of sociology and anthropology, history, religion, cultural studies and South Asian studies.

Axel Michaels is Professor of Classical Indology at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg. In 2001 he was elected Spokesman of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 619 "Ritual Dynamics", and since November 2007 he has been one of the Directors of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context --- Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows". His current fields of interest are social history and the history of Hinduism, theory of rituals, life-cycle rites of passage in Nepal as well as the cultural and legal history of South India. His previous publications include Hinduism: Past and Present (2004) and Siva in Trouble: Rituals and Festivals at the Pasupatinatha Temple of Deopatan, Nepal (2008).
Christoph Wulf is Professor of Anthropology and Philosophy of Education, Interdisciplinary Centre for Historical Anthropology, Collaborative Research Centre "Cultures of Performance", Cluster of Excellence "Languages of Emotion" at Freie Universitat Berlin. His research focuses on historical and educational anthropology, mimesis, aesthetics, and rituals and emotions. His previous publications include Mimesis: Culture, Art, Society (co-authored with Gunter Gebauer, 1995); Logik und Leidenschaft (co-edited with Dietmar Kamper, 2002); Zur Genese des Sozialen (2005); Anthropologie kultureller Vielfalt (2006); Anthropologie: Geschichte, Kultur, Philosophie (2009); Dynamics and Performativity of Imagination: The Image between the Visible and the Invisible (co-edited with Bernd Huppauf, Routledge, 2009); and Der Mensch und seine Kultur (2010).