This book provides a holistic description of Hinduism, showing how different types of Hinduism form a 'total' or systematic cosmology and repeat crucial values through different symbols. Looking at Tamil religious practices, Isabelle Nabokov reveals that Tamil religion is primarily concerned with transformations of identity and subjectivity, both in this world and in the hereafter.

This study, based on the author's fieldwork among rural Tamil villagers in South India, focuses on the ways in which people in this society interact with the supernatural beings who play such a large role in their personal and corporate lives. Isabelle Navokov looks at a spectrum of ritualized contexts in which the boundaries between the natural and spiritual worls are penetrated and communication takes place. Throughout, Nabokov's meticulous analysis sheds new light on this hiterto almost unkown domain - and entire range of fascinating phenomena basic to South Indian religion as it is really lived.

This innovative book explores esoteric practices in Tamil ritual - sorcery, countersorcery, initiatic dreams and visions, sacrifice, and most importantly, possession, usually of deceased relatives - in relation to their social linkages.