For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically powerful organization. Based on extensive fieldwork, this lucidly written book explores the dynamics of pollution, death, and healing in Aghor medicine. Ron Barrett examines a range of Aghor therapies from ritual bathing to modified Ayurveda and biomedicines and clarifies many misconceptions about this little-studied group and its highly unorthodox, powerful ideas about illness and healing.

"Aghor Medicine moves seamlessly between an ethnography of religion and medical anthropology. The stories of suffering and renunciation, of collective experience that turn Indian hierarchy and discrimination upside down are quite marvelous. The writing is clear and direct and the interpretations balanced and scrupulously documented. Barrett has written one of the best accounts on local traditions "modernizing" in ways that combine indigenous significance with globally crucial changes that react against health and social inequalities."—Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University "Ronald Barrett's fine account of aghor medicine reveals essential characteristics of India's popular culture, and, since an ashram in California has an important role in the story, of American popular culture as well."—Charles Leslie, author of Death Row Letters (forthcoming)

For centuries, the Aghori have been known as the most radical ascetics in India: living naked on the cremation grounds, meditating on corpses, engaging in cannibalism and coprophagy, and consuming intoxicants out of human skulls. In recent years, however, they have shifted their practices from the embrace of ritually polluted substances to the healing of stigmatized diseases. In the process, they have become a large, socially mainstream, and politically powerful organization. Based on extensive fieldwork, this lucidly written book explores the dynamics of pollution, death, and healing in Aghor medicine. Ron Barrett examines a range of Aghor therapies from ritual bathing to modified Ayurveda and biomedicines and clarifies many misconceptions about this little-studied group and its highly unorthodox, powerful ideas about illness and healing.

This collection of 49 readings with extensive background description exposes students to the breadth of theoretical perspectives and issues in the field of medical anthropology. The text provides specific examples and case studies of research as it is applied to a range of health settings: from cross-cultural clinical encounters to cultural analysis of new biomedical technologies to the implementation of programs in global health settings.

Exploring the Hindu concepts of good and bad deaths, this rich ethnography follows pilgrims who choose to travel to the holy city of Kashi to die.

The followers of the Aghora path try to cultivate a state of mindand social practice totally non-discriminatory. Seeing the Divine ineverything and everybody, they transcend all category distinctions,all prescriptions and proscriptions of the normal social structuresuch as high and low, purity and pollution, pure and impure, or maleand female.In the 20th century, Aghoreshwar Mahaprabhu Baba Bhagwan Ram(1937-1992) was the greatest avadhut in the Aghora tradition. Heattained enlightenment at the age of fourteen or fifteen. People feltthat Baba truly loved everyone who went to him. Hundreds ofthousands of devotees, simple villagers, spiritual seekers and highdignitaries would flock around him.Baba s teachings were imparted more through everyday conversationsrather than through sermons. On his advice, his wordswere compiled into a book. Thus was written Aghor Vachan Shastrain Hindi and this book, its English translation.