Recipes for Immortality
Recipes for Immortality

Author: Richard S Weiss

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-02-19

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0199715009

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Despite the global spread of Western medical practice, traditional doctors still thrive in the modern world. In Recipes for Immortality, Richard Weiss illuminates their continued success by examining the ways in which siddha medical practitioners in Tamil South India win the trust and patronage of patients. While biomedicine might alleviate a patient's physical distress, siddha doctors offer their clientele much more: affiliation to a timeless and pure community, the fantasy of a Tamil utopia, and even the prospect of immortality. They speak of a golden age of Tamil civilization and of traditional medicine, drawing on broader revivalist formulations of a pure and ancient Tamil community. Weiss analyzes the success of siddha doctors, focusing on how they have successfully garnered authority and credibility. While shedding light on their lives, vocations, and aspirations, Weiss also documents the challenges that siddha doctors face in the modern world, both from a biomedical system that claims universal efficacy, and also from the rival traditional medicine, ayurveda, which is promoted as the national medicine of an autonomous Indian state. Drawing on ethnographic data; premodern Tamil texts on medicine, alchemy, and yoga; government archival resources; college textbooks; and popular literature on siddha medicine and on the siddhar yogis, he presents an in-depth study of this traditional system of knowledge, which serves the medical needs of millions of Indians. Weiss concludes with a look at traditional medicine at large, and demonstrates that siddha doctors, despite resent trends toward globalization and biomedicine, reflect the wider political and religious dimensions of medical discourse in our modern world. Recipes for Immortality proves that medical authority is based not only on physical effectiveness, but also on imaginative processes that relate to personal and social identities, conceptions of history, secrecy, loss, and utopian promise.

Indian Civilization and Culture
Indian Civilization and Culture

Author: Suhas Chatterjee

Publisher: M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd.

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 9788175330832

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The book encompasses in its broad parameter all aspects of Indian Civilization and Culture for which we feel proud. The work supplies the readers with necessary, useful and up-to-date information on the subject. Treatment on the topic like economy, trade and commerce, medicine, law, philosophy, education, art, architecture and science prevailing in ancient India have been knuckled down in detail to suit the needs of the advanced students and scholars.

INDEPENDENCE TO FREEDOM
INDEPENDENCE TO FREEDOM

Author: Samanga Amarasinghe

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2011-08-24

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 110501908X

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The current research signifies that the resolutions for a solid post war development in Sri Lanka are hidden within its own history. Through a close study of the Sri Lankan history from 6th century BC to 2009 AD using various research methods one can uncover this. Moreover, utilizing a range of diverse resources which include documents compiled byColonial governors, addition to parliamentary debates of Sri Lanka and Britain, archeological research conducted by the department of archeology, eyewitness accounts, and other historical documents pertaining to the selected time frames, has be strictly studied and compared in proving the weight of this theory.

The Lord of Vengadam
The Lord of Vengadam

Author: S R RAMANUJAN

Publisher: Partridge Publishing

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1482834634

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The temple for the Lord of Vengadam in Tirumala (Andhra Pradesh, India) is one of the richest places of worship in the entire world with ever-increasing popularity, the footfall of devotees on the Seven Hills touching a whopping figure of seventy thousand on weekdays and one hundred thousand during the weekends. The Temples annual budget hovers around 25 billion rupees. This world record to fame and riches is not without its flip side. The temple has become the focal point for a variety of controversiessome created by the political class, some by historians with an axe to grind, and some more by Hindus with a sectarian outlook. The never-ending dispute is over the identity of the idol as a result of the age-old conflict between the worshippers of Siva and Vishnu, the two most important deities of the Hindu pantheon. Taking their cue from this, Neo-Buddhists joined the fray with the claim that the temple was a Buddhist shrine and that it was converted into Vishnu temple by wily Brahmins. The book aims to unravel the mystery over the history of the temple, providing a historical perspective to the issue and thus establishing the real identity of the Lord, which is indisputably that of the Vishnu.