The Coronavirus Came with the (One of the) World

April 2019. In an indigenous community in the Nepalese Himalayas, a ritual is performed for Sansari, “the One of the World,” to ward off coronavirus. Why respond to an epidemic with a ritual? On what basis do we associate a virus with a spiritual entity? How do we articulate anchoring in tradition a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSouth Asia multidisciplinary academic journal
Main Author Schlemmer, Grégoire
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Association pour la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud (ARAS) 2022
Subjects
disease
ritual
popular Hinduism
Nepal
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Summary:April 2019. In an indigenous community in the Nepalese Himalayas, a ritual is performed for Sansari, “the One of the World,” to ward off coronavirus. Why respond to an epidemic with a ritual? On what basis do we associate a virus with a spiritual entity? How do we articulate anchoring in tradition and innovation? What does all this tell us about the relationship of this population to the world? In addition to a film on this ritual, this article proposes avenues of analysis and reflection on procedures of interpretation, of integration of the new and the foreign into a local system of knowledge and defense.
ISSN:1960-6060