Kerstin Schier

Schier, Kerstin. 2018. The Goddess’s Embrace: Multifaceted Relations at the Ekāmranātha Temple Festival in Kanchipuram. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Schier, Kerstin. 2013. “Paṅkuṉi Uttiram and the Transmission of Cultural Memory”, In South Asian Festivals on the Move, 59–82. Hüsken, Ute, and Axel Michaels (eds). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 

Schier, Kerstin. 2008. “Kulturgeschichte”, In Indien, 8–57. National Geographic. Hamburg.

• Schier, Kerstin (2013). The Goddess's Embrace: Multifaceted relations at the Ekãmranãtha temple festival, Kanchipuram. Show summary

  Numerous gods and goddesses are worshipped in India. Many of them, like humans, are married, and this is a reason to celebrate! Based on textual studies and anthropological fieldwork, this dissertation examines the annual re-enactment of the deities' marriage at the Ekåmranåtha temple festival in Kanchipuram, in the South Indian state, Tamil Nadu. It provides a detailed description and analysis of the contemporary ritual practice, its associated myth, and sets the rituals and events in a wider historical and socio-cultural context. I argue that the divine marriage festival embraces various ritual activities that reach far beyond the `mere' re-enactment of the deities' marriage and its associated myth. Interweaved are ritual elements of the folk tradition, oral narratives, and life-cycle rituals such as (human) marriages. Only the combination of these various ritual and narrative elements, and the interplay of various actors, such as priests, donors, musicians, participants, and so on, make the actual performance of the divine marriage. Central to the re-enactment of the deities' marriage is the coexistence of different views, claims, myths and narratives. Hence, a pool of data and opinions about the divine marriage is available, out of which individuals and various interest groups make selections according to their specific purposes. The study shows how participating groups uphold their divergent interpretations, without interfering in the domains of others, since the focus is on one's own ritual contribution directed towards the center, where the gods are situated. Studying these cultural dynamics provides an opportunity to better understand how a tradition that exists and lives both through the remote past and the repeated reenactment of this past, adapts to changing circumstances while maintaining continuity with the past, and thus to interrogate what are the very conditions of survival for a tradition existing within the rapid globalization, modernization and economic development of South Asia.

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