Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion

by Lucinda Ramberg

Book Overview

Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822357240
• ISBN13: 9780822357247
• Release Date: September 2014
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.9"