Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in Northern India

by Ronald L. Barrett

Book Overview

For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520252195
• ISBN13: 9780520252196
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"