New Distributed Titles Fall 2009 - Oxbow Books

Visnu’s Children
Prenatal life-cycle rituals in South India
by Ute Hüsken
Since the 14th century CE, the discussion in the relevant Sanskrit texts centers around
the question of whether Vaikhanāsas priests must undergo an initiation or whether their
particular prenatal life-cycle ritual, visnubali, makes them eligible to perform temple
ritual; this is also the focus of this monograph. In addition to the textual perspective,
three instances of local conflicts are analyzed in their contexts, and three examples of
performances of the crucial visnubali ritual are presented and interpreted. Included is a
DVD with video-coverage of the three visnubali performances.
340p, DVD, hardback, 9783447058544, $78.00(s), Harrassowitz Verlag, October 2009,
Ethno-Indology 9.
Mazu
Chinesische Göttin
der Seefahrt
edited by Claudius Müller
and Roderich Ptak
Every year, the coastal cities of
Taiwan and Southern China witness
colorful parades and processions
in honor of the sea goddess
Mazu. On occasion of the 1000th
anniversary of her cult in 1987,
the Taiwanese artist Lin Chih-Hsin created a series of wood cuts 136 m long,
which shows the parade route in 68 individual panels. German text.
144p, 45 col pls, 46 col & 4 b/w figs, 1 map, paperback, 9783777480756,
$53.00(s), Hirmer Verlag, June 2009.
Zarathustra entre l’Inde et l’Iran
Études indo-iraniennes et indo-européenes
offertes à Jean Kellens à loccasion de son 65e anniversaire
edited by Xavier Tremblay and Eric Pirart
Twenty-seven articles by prominent Indo-Europeanists, Indologists and
Iranists have been selected to commemorate the most innovative and consequential
exegete of Avesta (the missal of the pre-islamic Paniranian religion,
Mazdaeism or Parsism) of our times, Jean Kellens, and present debates around
the oldest language and religious history of the common ancestors of Indians
and Iranians. The themes Jean Kellens has put into fresh light – intertextuality,
stylistics, ideology, textual history and reuse – are especially represented, but
always under the light of the mother discipline: grammar. English, French and
German text.
390p, 1 b/w illus, 8 tbls, hardback, 9783895006517, $187.00(s), Reichert Verlag,
May 2009, Beiträge zur Iranistik.
asian studies
La Conversion de l’Orient
Une pérégrination didactique
de Bodhidharma dans un roman chinois
du XVIIe siècle
by Vincent Durand-Dastès
The figure of Bodhidharma, the mystic founder of
Chan (Zen) Buddhism, has been invented and reinvented
throughout eastern Asia, from medieval
times to the present day. Starting in China at the
end of the Ming period, this volume evokes the
first hagiographies of religious figures written in
the common language and then proceeds to analyze a novel published in Suzhou in
1635 entitled The Conversion of the Orient. This travel story depicts a Bodhidharma who
champions the most conservative Confucian values. In the progression of the text, the
holy bonze becomes the center around which lost humans, demonic tempters, animal
spirits, religious masters, and seekers of perfection gravitate. French text.
437p, paperback, 9782960007619, $99.00, Peeters Publishers, December 2008,
Mélanges Chinois et Bouddhiques 29.
Chrestomathie Tokharienne
Textes et Grammaire
by Georges-Jean Pinault
Tokharian A and B are the languages found on 5th–
10th-century manuscripts discovered in the northern
part of the Taklamakan desert, Xinjiang, China.
This volume provides a representative selection of
texts, both religious and secular, as well as a synchronic
and diachronic description of the phonology
and morphology of Tokharian A and B. French text.
692p, paperback, 9789042921689, $109.00, Peeters
Publishers, October 2009, Collection linguistique de la Société de linguistique de Paris 95.
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