Nine Lives (48 page)

Authors: William Dalrymple

Tags: #Hewer Text UK Ltd

BOOK: Nine Lives

10.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Tablighi Jamaat	A missionary group of the Islamic reform movement, with theological beliefs similar to the Deobandis and Wahhabis, and with a particular emphasis on textual and ritual rectitude and orthodoxy.
Talib	A student – hence Taliban, the student army that emerged from the madrasas.
Thakur	A gentleman landowner or squire.
Tamasha	A spectacle.
Tanti	An amulet of knotted chord (in Rajasthan).
Tantra	An esoteric form of Hinduism and Buddhism aiming at gaining access to the energy of the Godhead, then concentrating and internalising that power in the body of the devotee. In Hindu Tantra Shakti is usually the main deity worshipped, and the universe is regarded as result of the divine play of Shakti and Shiva . Tantrics defy convention and reverse most of the strictures and taboos of orthodox religiosity.
Tapasya	Ascetic penance, self-testing and deprivation; voluntary austerity.
Ta’wiz	A Sufi charm or amulet, usually containing verses from the Koran.
Thangka	A Buddhist painted or embroidered prayer banner, usually hung in a monastery or a family altar, and occasionally carried by monks in ceremonial processions.
Thali	A tray or large plate.
Thevaram	Lit. ‘Garland of God’ – a multi-volume collection of Tamil devotional Shaivite hymns and poetry.
Theyyam	The possession dance of northern Kerala. A theyyam performer is called a theyyamkkaran.
Thottam	Ritualistic songs appropriate for the theyyam dance of northern Kerala.
Thukpa	Tibetan noodle soup.
Tilak	The sacred mark on the centre of a Hindu forehead.
Tirthankara	Literally ‘Ford-maker’. The Jains believe these heroic ascetic figures, also known as Jinas or ‘liberators’, have shown the way to Nirvana, making a spiritual ford through the rivers of suffering, and across the wild oceans of existence and rebirth, so as to create a crossing place between samsara – the illusory physical world – and liberation.
Tirtha	A crossing place or ford; hence a sacred place, a place where you can cross from the world of men to the world of the gods.
Toddy	Keralan and Goan firewater, brewed from fermented coconut juice.
Tulsi	Indian basil, holy to many Hindus.
Upanishads	The collection of Hindu scriptures, dating from 1000 BC to the medieval period, which form the core teachings of Vedanta.
’Urs	Annual festival held in Sufi shrines to commemorate the death of a saint.
Vaishnavite	A follower of the Hindu god Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally Rama or Krishna.
Vajra	A short metal weapon symbolising a thunderbolt and representing spiritual power in Buddhist art .
Vedanta	A group of ancient Hindu philosophical traditions concerned with the self-realisation by which one can understand the ultimate nature of reality.
Vibhuti	The white ash powder smeared on the body of Shiva; and hence also his devotees among the sadhus .
Vimana	The pyramid-shaped tower of Tamil temples.
Wahhabi	The reformed and puritanical form of Islam, first propagated by Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in Medina in the eighteenth century, which aimed to strip Islam of all non-Muslim accretions, most notably idolatry and the cult of saints. Wahhabism is now the state religion in Saudi Arabia. Saudi oil wealth has been used to propagate its missionary activity, through which Wahhabism has developed considerable influence in the Islamic world through the funding of newspapers, television stations, printing presses, madrasas and mosques .
Yakshi	Female Hindu fertility nymphs, often associated with sacred trees and pools. In Kerala they are believed to be malevolent and to have the appetites and proclivities associated with vampires in Europe.
Yantra	A symbol or geometric figure, in paint or coloured sand. They are used in various mystical traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism to balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts. Tantrics believe that the act of wearing, depicting, enacting or concentrating on a yantra is held to have spiritual or astrological or magical benefits.
Yatra	A pilgrim.
Yatri	Traveller or pilgrim.
Zamindar	Landholder.

Bibliography

1. The Nun’s Tale

Colette Caillat and Ravi Kumar,
The Jain Cosmology
, New York, 1981

Michael Carrithers and Caroline Humphrey,
The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society
, Cambridge, 1991

Ananda Coomaraswamy,
Jaina Art
,
New Delhi, 1994

John E. Cort,
The Rite of Veneration of Jina Images
, in Donald S. Lopez, Jr (ed.),
Religions of India in Practice
,
Princeton, 1995

John E. Cort,
Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India
, Oxford, 2001

John E. Cort,
Singing the Glory of Asceticism: Devotion of Asceticism in Jainism
,
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
, December 2002, Vol. 70, No. 4

Paul Dundas,
The Jains
, London, 1992

Phyllis Granoff,
The Clever Adultress and Other Stories: A Treasury of Jain Literature
, Ontario, 1990

Phyllis Granoff,
The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories
, New Delhi, 1998

Hemacandra (trans. R.C.C. Fynes),
The Lives of the Jain Elders
,
New Delhi, 1998

Padmanabh S. Jaini,
The Jaina Path of Purification
, Berkeley, 1979

Padmanabh S. Jaini,
Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women
,
New Delhi, 1991

Jina Ratna (trans. R.C.C. Fynes),
The Epitome of Queen Lilavati
,
New York, 2005

James Laidlaw,
Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy and Society Among the Jains
, Oxford 1995

Pratapaditya Pal,
The Peaceful Liberators: Jain Art from India
,
Los Angeles, 1994

Aidan Rankin,
The Jain Path
, Winchester, 2006

U.P. Shah and M.A. Dhaky,
Aspects of Jaina Art and Architecture
,
Ahmedabad, 1975

2. The Dancer of Kannur

T.V. Chandran,
Ritual as Ideology: Text and Context in Theyyam
, New Delhi, 2006

J.R. Freeman,
Purity and Violence: Sacred Power in the Theyyam Worship of Malabar
, unpublished PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1991

Mayuri Koga,
The Politics of Ritual and Art in Kerala: Controversies Concerning the Staging of Theyyam
,
Journal of the Japanese Association of South Asian Studies
, 15, 2003

K.K.N. Kurup,
The Cult of Theyyam and Hero Worship in Kerala
, Calicut, 2000

Dilip M. Menon,
The Moral Community of the Teyyattam: Popular Culture in Late Colonial Malabar
,
Studies in History
1993; 9; 187

Frederick M. Smith,
The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilisation
, New York, 2006

3. The Daughters of Yellamma

Daud Ali,
War, Servitude and the Imperial Household: A Study of Palace Women in the Chola Period
,
in Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton,
Slavery and South Asian History
, Indiana, 2006

Daud Ali,
Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India
,
Cambridge, 2004

Kali Prasad Goswami,
Devadasi
, New Delhi, 2000

R.K. Gupta,
Changing Status of Devadasis in India
,
New Delhi, 2007

Kay K. Jordan,
From Sacred Servant to Profane Prostitute: A History of the Changing Legal Status of the Devadasis
,
New Delhi, 2003

Saskia C. Kersenboom,
Nityasumangali: Devadasi Tradition in South India
,
New Delhi, 1987

John O’Neil, Treena Orchard, R.C. Swarankar, James F. Blanchard, Kaveri Gurav and Stephen Moses,
Dhanda, Dharma and Disease: Traditional Sex Work and HIV/AIDS in Rural India,
in
Social Science and Medicine
, 59, 2004

John O’Neil, Treena Orchard, R.C. Swarankar, James F. Blanchard, Kaveri Gurav and Stephen Moses,
Understanding the Social and Cultural Contexts of Female Sex Workers in Karnataka, India: Implications for the Prevention of HIV infection
,
in
The Journal of Infectious Diseases
,
2005; 191 (suppl. 1): S.139–46

Leslie C. Orr,
Donors, Devotees, and Daughters
,
New York, 2000

Shashi Panjrath and O.P. Ralhan,
Devadasi System in India
,
Faridabad, 2000

A.K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman,
When God is a Customer: Telegu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others
,
California, 1994

Treena Rae Orchard,
Girl, Woman, Lover, Mother: Towards a new understanding of child prostitution among young devadasis in rural Karnataka, India
, in
Social Science and Medicine
64, 2007

4. The Singer of Epics

Rustom Bharucha,
Rajasthan: An Oral History – Conversations with Komal Kothari
, New Delhi, 2003

Vidya Dehejia,
India’s Visual Narratives: The Dominance of Space Over Time
,
in Giles Tillotson (ed.),
Paradigms of Indian Architecture: Space and Time in Representation and Design
, London, 1998

Graham Dwyer,
The Divine and the Demonic: Supernatural Affliction and its Treatment in North India
, London, 2003

Alf Hiltebeitel,
Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics
,
Chicago, 1999

O.P. Joshi,
Painted Folklore & Folklore Painters of India
, New Delhi, 1976

Sudhir Kakar,
Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions
,
Oxford, 1982

Albert B. Lord,
The Singer of Tales
, Harvard, 2000

Victor H. Mair,
Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and its Indian Genesis
, Hawaii, 1988