The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. JUNE McDANIEL

Divine trauma: Schizophrenia and unresolved realities in South India

“…The Bhagavad Gita , translated to “The Song of God,” is poetic scripture from the Hindu tradition, a tradition that Dhruv himself draws upon in his religious practices. The Bhagavad Gita is not often employed in the contemplation of madness and ecstasy because it is considered an “intellectual” text, emphasizing obedience over passion and devotion (Kinsley, 1974; McDaniel, 1989). However, this makes it an even richer text to draw upon, for even those traditions that propagate intellectual and disciplining paths to divinity still illuminate maddening experiences.…”

“…At the end of the canto, Arjuna tells Krishna he is afraid and requests him to return to a form that is more manageable for him to process. While one might be able to “develop” certain inner muscles through meditation, prayer, and ritual to withstand divine encounters (McDaniel, 1989), the Bhagavad Gita suggests there are encounters with the divine in which one can never fully be prepared for. Individuals like Dhruv might not always know how to respond to the divine or understand the parameters of such an encounter; however, Dhruv was still able to gather self‐knowledge through his encounters, much like Arjuna's vision.…”

“…My fieldwork sites in Chennai were diverse, including in‐patient clinics, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation homes, beaches, religious healing sites, art therapy sessions, cafes, and home spaces. Moving through these different sites was integral to understanding how distinctions between various categories of experience—medicalized, pathologized, artistic, religious—are often slippery in India (McDaniel, 1989; Ram, 2013; Smith, 2006). Scholars have explored how the illness experience in India does not sit systematically on biomedical, Ayurvedic, and localized diagnostic grids (Luhrmann & Marrow, 2016; Lang, 2018; Pinto, 2014; Ram, 2013); McDaniel (1989) has argued that those experiencing different religious states do not always map neatly onto ritual or theological grids, offering a model of subjectivity that evades standardized, functional logics.…”

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“…Showalter 1985) to find hegemonic cultural links between conceptions of madness and of women, or to Bengali cultural themes. Despite the fact that madness maintains a religious respectability for some in greater Bengal, cults of ecstasy are clearly "countercultural" even there (McDaniel 1989). The association of even this "respectable" madness -let alone the stigmatizing "secular" forms of madness -with counterdiscourses on gender and the social order, folk associations between rationality and male speech indicate that in Bengal (at least in this postcolonial era) as well as the West "madness" is tinged with the feminine.…”

Sonic matters: Singing as method and the epistemology of singing across Bengali esoteric lineages

“…Matua performers explained that, through singing, the flow of bhāb swells, which is why listeners may cry. Like a river, bhāb may overflow and produce tears in the current of liquid emotions that characterizes the emotional body (Hayes 2006, 43; McDaniel 1989, 75), made of prāṇ (vital breath). By listening to the current of soundwaves, the audience is said to be washed like “at the holy junction of the three rivers [ tribeṇī ] at the time of the high tide.” 27 This refers to the cleansing ritual bath ( snān ) that Hindus perform at auspicious times of the ritual calendar.…”