Periphery & Centre: Studies in Orissan History, Religion & Anthropology

This second Orissa Research Project presents the eastern province as a multi-centred cultural complex. In an interdisciplinary effort this historical study covers the so-called iron-age in western Orissa and questions the established foundation date of one of the major coastal temples. Conditions of early colonialism are exemplified by a report on a typical road construction, just as popular protest movements of that phase, as well as the ambivalent position of their leaders and the issue of conversions to Christianity are examined. The critical Orissan politico-religious controversies over independence are presented by the visions of the Maharaja of Parlakimedi. Indological contributions indicate that the contemporary debate on 'animal sacrifice' has a long history. Just as the popular religious movements against Brahmanism, introduced here by two accounts of rather different peasant and tribal versions of the Orissan Mahima Dharma religion, are a contemporary manifestation of similar dissent in the past. The empirical anthropological studies reflect the rather unique concepts of illness among the Rona, the category of the person, as created by the application of sacrificial food among the Gadaba, and the AghriA ideas on death. These three articles may lead to the first comprehensive monographs on these important communities of the tribal zone. The issue of a tribal status is ambiguous, since the principals themselves, as well as external observers, tend to join questions of administrative advantages with status ascription in acephalous political systems and the implications of plough cultivation. Postcolonial 'modernisation', as described in another article on a new power plant in the tribal area, looks at how it has completely excluded the indigenous people. Finally questions of anthropological method are raised in articles on Kondh social structure, on the Goddess in southern Orissa, and on the question of values in different social contexts.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Survey in Western Orissa: Preliminary Report; Genealogies & Centres: Communities of the Caitanya Tradition in Orissa; In search of Goddess Viraja; Contested Authorities, Disputed Centres, & Rejected Norms: Situating Mahima Dharma in its Regional Diversity; 'Negative Ecstasy or the Singers of the Divine': Voices from the Periphery of Mahima Dharma; Tribal or Tantric? Reflections on the Classification of Goddesses in Southern Orissa; Context & Values: A Discussion of Concepts; 'Given by God' & 'Come by Itself': Concepts of Illness Among the Rona; Sacrificial Food, the Person & the Ritual System of the Gadaba; Death Among the Aghria: Death & the Continuity of Life in a Peripheral Mixed Tribal & Caste Society; Bailey's Kondh Structure on the Tribal Frontier; The Close & the Distant: A Long-term Perspective; 'Captain Kittoe's Road': Early Colonialism & the Politics of Road Construction in Peripheral Orissa; Chatamput: An Industrial 'Camp' in the Tribal Zone; The King's Two Kingdoms or How the Maharaja of Parlakimedi Finally Became the Ruler of Orissa; Rebels, Rajas & the British Raj: The World According to Fakirmohan; Marginal Texts, Marginal Men: The Social Mobility Movement of the Kudmi-Mahantas of Orissa; Identity, Hegemony, Resistance: Conversions in Orissa 1800-2000; When the Buffalo Becomes a Pumpkin: Animal Sacrifice Contested; Index.

About the Author :
Georg Pfeffer is Professor of Socio-Cultural Anthropology (Ethnologie) at the Free University of Berlin.