Spirit possession and spirit mediumship from the perspective of Tulu oral traditions

Abstract

The phenomenon of spirit possession is looked at in relationship to the broad cultural context in which it is found to exist in a region of southern India. The author critically reviews various attempts to explain spirit possession as solely a psychological or sociological event. Instead, he turns to the region's spirit possession and mediumship cults, oral traditions and social ideology for an ethnographically relevant interpretation of spirit possession.