Seeking Bauls of Bengal

Jeanne Openshaw is lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

• Part I. Background: Literature on 'Bauls' and 'Baul-songs': 1. 'What's in a name?' The advent of 'the Baul'; 2. The making of 'the Bauls': histories, themes, 'Baul-songs; Part II. In Search of 'Bauls': 3. Fieldwork in Rarh; 4. Fieldwork in Bagri; Part III. Received Classifications: 5. Two shores, two refuges: householder and renouncer; 6. Evading the two shores: the guru; Part IV. Reworking the Classifications: 7. Affect: love and women; 8. Theory: images the 'I' and bartaman; Part V. Practice and Talking about Practice: 9. Practice (sadhana); 10. Four moons practice and talking about practice (hari-katha); Conclusion.

'Openshaw's excellent ethnographic and linguistic skills have enabled her to capture culture in the making. Her awareness of diverse bodies of literature makes her alert to nuances of meaning … this superb ethnography has implications for debates in many other fields and it is to be hoped that it will become known beyond the self-contained world of south Asian studies. It adds to the growing literature undermining 'the world religions' model of human religio-cultural activity. It is relevant to debates on cultural ideas about the body, and on the nature of the 'self'. And as for Orientalist and Indian nationality ideas about the 'spiritual east' here is have a classic example of indigenous Indian sceptical materialism.' Contemporary South Asia