The Economics of Ecstasy: Tantra, Secrecy and Power in Colonial Bengal - Hardcover

Urban, Hugh B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019513902X ISBN 13: 9780195139020

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

This is a study of the Bengali Kartabhaja sect and its place in the broader movement of Tantrism, an Indian religious movement employing purposely shocking sexual language and rituals. Urban looks closely at the relationship between the rise of the Kartabhajas, who flourished at the turn of the 19th century, and the changing economic context of colonial Bengal. Made up of the poor lower classes laboring in the marketplaces and factories of Calcutta, the Kartabhajas represent "the underworld of the imperial city." Urban shows that their esoteric poetry and songs are in fact saturated with the language of the marketplace and the bazaar, which becomes for them the key metaphor used to communicate secret knowledge and mystical teachings.

About this title

About the Author:

Hugh B. Urban is at Ohio State University. Wendy Doniger is at University of Chicago.

Review:

"Urban's two volumes offer a magisterial overview and theoretically sophisticated interpretation of a group that is notoriously difficult to approach, either linguistically or in terms of context." --Journal of the American Oriental Society

"A refreshing blend of archival and field research, history of religions, postmodernism, and postcolonial studies."-- The Journal of Religion

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 019513902X
• ISBN 13: 9780195139020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304