| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Continuing further on the path laid out by Michael Allen's pioneering work on rituals that centre on Newar Buddhist girl children in Nepal, this study analyses liturgies pertaining to a religious practice called 'b?rh? pik?yagu' that ends a period of seclusion undergone by Newar girls before menarche. The article looks at three ritual manuals currently used by Buddhist priests in Lalitpur, Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, respectively. In its aim to supply a textual background to Allen's ethnography of this ritual, the study tries to place these manuals at the conjunction of other ritual textual genres, such as prescriptions for domestic rituals for women that include cosmological, demonological and pregnancy-related aspects, and attempts to explore their composition, their intention and their place within the larger ritual literature of Buddhism among the Newars.
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