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Medicine and religion in South Asia

Interactions between scholarly traditions and local practices - 20th May 2008

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Objectives

The relationship between folk and scholarly medical knowledge is often conceived in terms of an opposition between magic and religious ideas on one side, and rational and empirical ideas on the other. This conference aims at questioning this dichotomous opposition by showing how literary, scholarly theories interact and overlap with local, folk knowledge and practices. The participants will examine the shifting boundaries between religious ideas and diagnostic methods, worship and healing, rituals specialists and medical practitioners that mark scholarly traditions as well as folk practices.

By focusing both on textual and ethnographical material, the conference will investigate medical traditions - Ayurvedic and Tibetan - as well as other systems of knowledge used for therapeutic purposes in South Asia, such as demonology, Hindu astrology and Muslim onirology. The papers presented are included in the collective volume Divine Remedies. Medicine and Religion in South Asia (Purushartha collection, EHESS editions, forthcoming). The discussion will be followed by the projection of a documentary on possession cults in Puliyampatti (Tamil Nadu).

Programme

Morning
9h30
Welcome speech :
Yves Duroux, Directeur de l’Institut d’Etudes Avancées
Ines G. Zupanov, CNRS/CEIAS
10h00 – 12h30 Chair : Gilles Tarabout (CEIAS, Paris)
10h00 David Gordon White (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA), Amulettes et lambeaux divins : « Superstition », vraie « religion » et « science » pure à la lumière de la démonologie hindoue.
10h30 Caterina Guenzi (IFP, Pondicherry / CEIAS, Paris), Planètes, remèdes et cosmologies. La thérapeutique astrologique à Bénarès.
11h00 Martha Ann Selby (University of Austin, Texas, USA), Between Medicine and Religion : Discursive Shifts in Early Ayurvedic Narratives of Conception and Gestation.
11h30 Discussion.
13h00 – 14h30 Lunch
Afternoon
14h30 – 17h30
Chair : Marc Gaborieau
14h30 Laurent Pordié (IFP, Pondicherry / CReCSS, Aix-en-Provence), Islam et médecine tibétaine. Ethnographie d’un praticien hétérodoxe.
15h00 Fabrizio Speziale (Mondes iranien et indien, Paris/Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome), Le médecin des rêves. Culte des saints et guérison onirique dans les sanctuaires musulmans du Deccan.
15h30 Discussion.
16h30 Projection of a documentary film « Les rondes de saint Antoine. Culte, affliction et possession à Puliyampatti », directed by Brigitte Sébastia (LISST/IFP) and Christian Sébastia.
17h30 Concluding remarks.

Organizers

  • Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS),
  • French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)
  • Institut d’Études Avancées, Paris (IEA)

Funding

  • Institut d’Études Avancées, Paris (IEA)
  • Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS),
  • French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Coordinators

Caterina Guenzi (IFP/CEIAS) et Ines G. Zupanov (CEIAS)

Participants

  • Marc Gaborieau (CEIAS, paris)
  • David Gordon White (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
  • Caterina Guenzi (IFP, Pondicherry / CEIAS, Paris)
  • Laurent Pordié (IFP, Pondicherry / CReCSS, Aix-en-Provence)
  • Martha Ann Selby (University of Austin, Texas, USA)
  • Fabrizio Speziale (Mondes iranien et indien, Paris / Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome)
  • Brigitte Sébastia (IFP, Pondicherry/LISST, Toulouse)
  • Gilles Tarabout (CEIAS, Paris)

Venue

Maison Suger, 16-18, rue Suger, 75006 Paris

Dernier ajout : 24 avril 2008.