Scholars of Vedic religion have long recognized the centrality of ritual categories to Indian thought. There have been few successful attempts, however, to brin

Rites of the God-King offers a critical revision of mainstream Hinduism from the perspective of the life of a single ritual from medieval India. Drawing theoret

Focusing on the tension between the purity and impurity of the "devadasis"--a handful of female devotees of the Hindu temple and cult of Jagannatha at Puri--thi

This celebrated study of witchcraft in Europe traces the worship of the pre-Christian and prehistoric Horned God from paleolithic times to the medieval period.

Descriptions of animal sacrifice in Homer offer detailed accounts of this attempt at communication between man and gods. Hitch explores the structural and thema