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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Hinduism
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Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets - Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,108
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Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets - Medicine and Martial Arts in South India (Hardcover)
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Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of
varmakkalai, or "the art of the vital spots," a South Indian
esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts.
Although siddha medicine is officially part of the Indian
Government's medically pluralistic health-care system, very little
of a reliable nature has been written about it. Drawing on a
diverse array of materials, including Tamil manuscripts, interviews
with practitioners, and his own personal experience as an
apprentice, Sieler traces the practices of varmakkalai both in
different religious traditions-such as Yoga and Ayurveda-and within
various combat practices. His argument is based on in-depth
ethnographic research in the southernmost region of India, where
hereditary medico-martial practitioners learn their occupation from
relatives or skilled gurus through an esoteric, spiritual education
system. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are
among the important focal points of Sieler's study. Practitioners
protect their esoteric knowledge, but they also engage in a kind of
"lure and withdrawal"--a performance of secrecy--because secrecy
functions as what might be called "symbolic capital." Sieler argues
that varmakkalai is, above all, a matter of texts in practice;
knowledge transmission between teacher and student conveys tacit,
non-verbal knowledge, and constitutes a "moral economy." It is not
merely plain facts that are communicated, but also moral
obligations, ethical conduct and tacit, bodily knowledge. Lethal
Spots, Vital Secrets will be of interest to students of religion,
medical anthropologists, historians of medicine, indologists, and
martial arts and performance studies.
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