Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in by Roman Sieler

By Roman Sieler

Lethal Spots, important Secrets presents an ethnographic learn of varmakkalai, or "the paintings of the very important spots," a South Indian esoteric culture that mixes scientific perform and martial arts. even supposing siddha medication is formally a part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care process, little or no of a competent nature has been written approximately it.

Drawing on a various array of fabrics, together with Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his personal own event as an apprentice, Sieler lines the practices of varmakkalai either in numerous spiritual traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and inside of quite a few strive against practices. His argument relies on in-depth ethnographic examine within the southernmost area of India, the place hereditary medico-martial practitioners examine their profession from family members or expert experts via an esoteric, religious schooling approach. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are one of the vital focal issues of Sieler's examine. Practitioners safeguard their esoteric wisdom, yet additionally they interact in a type of "lure and withdrawal"---a functionality of secrecy---because secrecy features as what should be known as "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, chiefly, an issue of texts in perform; wisdom transmission among instructor and scholar conveys tacit, non-verbal wisdom, and constitutes a "moral economy." it isn't only simple evidence which are communicated, but in addition ethical duties, moral behavior and tacit, physically knowledge.

Lethal Spots, important Secrets is an insightful research of practices not often mentioned in scholarly circles. it will likely be a necessary source to scholars of faith, scientific anthropologists, historians of drugs, Indologists, and martial arts and function studies.

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