Sieler, Roman (Author)
Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or "the art of the vital spots," a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts. Although siddha medicine is officially part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care system, very little of a reliable nature has been written about it. Drawing on a diverse array of materials, including Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his own personal experience as an apprentice, Sieler traces the practices of varmakkalai both in different religious traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and within various combat practices. His argument is based on in-depth ethnographic research in the southernmost region of India, where hereditary medico-martial practitioners learn their occupation from relatives or skilled gurus through an esoteric, spiritual education system. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are among the important focal points of Sieler's study. Practitioners protect their esoteric knowledge, but they also engage in a kind of "lure and withdrawal"---a performance of secrecy---because secrecy functions as what might be called "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, above all, a matter of texts in practice; knowledge transmission between teacher and student conveys tacit, non-verbal knowledge, and constitutes a "moral economy." It is not merely plain facts that are communicated, but also moral obligations, ethical conduct and tacit, bodily knowledge.Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets is an insightful analysis of practices rarely discussed in scholarly circles. It will be a valuable resource to students of religion, medical anthropologists, historians of medicine, Indologists, and martial arts and performance studies.
...MoreReview Nathan McGovern (2016) Review of "Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets: Medicine and Martial Arts in South India". Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity (pp. 280-281).
Book
Richard S. Weiss;
(2009)
Recipes for Immortality: Healing, Religion, and Community in South India
(/isis/citation/CBB900717445/)
Book
Anthony Cerulli;
(2022)
The Practice of Texts Education and Healing in South India
(/isis/citation/CBB033046572/)
Book
Eva Jansen;
(2016)
Naturopathy in South India: Clinics Between Professionalization and Empowerment
(/isis/citation/CBB462493404/)
Article
Margaret Pelling;
(2019)
Managing Uncertainty and Privatising Apprenticeship: Status and Relationships in English Medicine, 1500–1900
(/isis/citation/CBB202979157/)
Article
Bartolini, Donatella;
(2015)
On the Borders: Surgeons and their Activities in the Venetian State (1540--1640)
(/isis/citation/CBB001422194/)
Thesis
Grafe, Melissa J.;
(2009)
Making “Medical Hall”: Dr. John Archer, Medical Practice, and Apprenticeship in Early America, 1769--1820
(/isis/citation/CBB001561106/)
Book
Ian Harper;
(2014)
Development and Public Health in the Himalaya: Reflections on Healing in Contemporary Nepal
(/isis/citation/CBB945609044/)
Book
Diana, Esther;
(2012)
Santa Maria Nuova ospedale dei fiorentini. Architettura e assistenza nella Firenze tra Settecento e Novecento
(/isis/citation/CBB368232048/)
Chapter
Kevin Alexander Echeverry B.;
(2021)
Public baths in Japan. Art and tradition
(/isis/citation/CBB228962952/)
Book
Irina Metzler;
(2018)
Fools and idiots?: Intellectual disability in the Middle Ages
(/isis/citation/CBB181731431/)
Chapter
Chess, Simone;
(2013)
Performing Blindness: Representing Disability in Early Modern Popular Performance and Print
(/isis/citation/CBB001201698/)
Article
Melania Borgo;
(2017)
The Heart Burial and the History of an Emblematic Organ
(/isis/citation/CBB133288512/)
Article
Ludmilla Jordanova;
(2021)
Medicine and the Senses: Towards Integrative Practices
(/isis/citation/CBB637432584/)
Article
Leslie de Vries;
(2015)
The Dangers of ‘Warming and Replenishing’ (wenbu 溫補) during the Ming to Qing Epistemic Transition
(/isis/citation/CBB984611462/)
Chapter
Maria Conforti;
(2010)
I bagni di Ischia e Pozzuoli tra Cinquecento e Seicento. Dall’ozio privato alla pubblica utilità
(/isis/citation/CBB584476568/)
Article
Stephan Kloos;
(2017)
The Politics of Preservation and Loss: Tibetan Medical Knowledge in Exile
(/isis/citation/CBB454138073/)
Book
Slater, John;
López Terrada, María Luz;
Pardo Tomás, José;
(2014)
Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire
(/isis/citation/CBB001510114/)
Book
Baker, Patricia Anne;
Nijdam, Han;
Land, Karine van 't;
(2012)
Medicine and Space: Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(/isis/citation/CBB001200811/)
Article
Heather Wolffram;
Andreas-Holger Maehle;
(2017)
History of Hypnotism in Europe and the Significance of Place
(/isis/citation/CBB960405193/)
Book
Katherine Mason;
(2016)
Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB907982802/)
Be the first to comment!