1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910784383403321

Autore

Scott David <1958->

Titolo

Formations of ritual [[electronic resource] ] : colonial and anthropological discourses on the Sinhala yaktovil / / David Scott

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, : University of Minnesota Press, c1994

ISBN

0-8166-8508-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (334 p.)

Disciplina

306.6/943438/095493

Soggetti

Sinhalese (Sri Lankan people) - Rites and ceremonies

Sinhalese (Sri Lankan people) - Religion

Medicine, Ayurvedic - Sri Lanka - Devinuvara - Religious aspects

Exorcism - Sri Lanka - Devinuvara

Devinuvara (Sri Lanka) Religious life and customs

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Acknowledgments; On Transliteration and Usage; Introduction; Part I. Ethnographic Topoi; Part II. Colonial Discourses; Part III. Reconstructing Anthropological Objects; Conclusion; Appendix; Notes; Glossary; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Yaktovil is an elaborate healing ceremony employed by Sinhalas in Sri Lanka to dispel the effects of the eyesight of a pantheon of malevolent supernatural figures known as yakku. Scott's investigation of yaktovil and yakku within the Sinhala cosmology is also an inquiry into the ways in which anthropology, by ignoring the discursive history of the rituals, religions, and relationships it seeks to describe, tends to reproduce ideological-often, specifically colonial-objects.