Resumen de Omens and Superstitions of Southern India

Para quién es

You will love this book if you enjoy folklore, anthropology, colonial-era travel writing, or the odd corners of religion and daily custom.

De qué trata este libro

What does a villager in southern India do when a cat crosses his path on the way to arrange a marriage? He gives up the match. That small act sits at the center of Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, where Edgar Thurston records the signs, charms and fears that steered daily life.

Thurston was a government ethnographer. He covers the Madras Presidency with the princely states of Travancore and Cochin. You will learn what people watched for at dawn, on the road and at a wedding, and you hear Thurston himself, curious, dry and sometimes appalled.

Questions about Omens and Superstitions of Southern India

What is Omens and Superstitions of Southern India about?

It collects beliefs and customs from the Madras Presidency, Travancore and Cochin: omens, animal lore, the evil eye, snake worship, vows, charms, sorcery, divination and farming and rain rites, with cases drawn from many castes and tribes.

Who was Edgar Thurston?

Thurston was a British surgeon and ethnographer who served the Madras government and its museum. He wrote on the peoples of southern India, and this book draws on his travels and on reports from officials, missionaries and local helpers.

What is a kani in the Vishu festival?

A kani is a carefully arranged first sight for New Year morning in Malabar. A bell-metal vessel holds a palm-leaf book, gold, cloth, yellow flowers and rice, between two lamps, and the household sees it first on waking.

Is it easy to read in short sections?

The chapters are built from short, self-contained accounts of a caste, a place or a case, so you can read a page or two at a time and follow each custom without needing the whole.