Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 2 Number 2, August 2007

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Smith, Frederick, The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization, New York, Columbia University Press, 2006.  701pp.  ISBN: 0-231-13748-6, $60 (hardback)

Reviewed by

Marcia K. Farrell

Wilkes University

 

            Frederick Smith’s critical study of deity and spirit possession in South Asian literature offers a comprehensive examination of the textual discourse of possession from classical South Asian literature to the present.  Divided into four parts, Smith’s general study is “a meditation on embodiment and incarnation, gain and loss, transformation and transition, and tradition and imagination” in primary sources ranging from the Vedas and Upanisads to Tantra and Āveśa practices (xiv).  The four parts include I. Orthodoxies, Madness, and Method, II.  Ethnography, Modernity, and the Languages of Possession, III.  Classical Literature, and IV. Worldly and Otherworldly Ruptures: Possession as a Healing Modality.  Additionally, Smith provides a preface noting a web component to the text—www.possession-southasia.org—that serves as “a clearinghouse for the topic of possession” (xvii).  Throughout the study Smith argues that possession in South Asian literature is particularly unique in its treatment of the self and identity.  That is, the possessed individual’s selfhood commingles with the possessing entity, thereby forging a new identity that blurs what the West often sees as a stable image of self.  To underscore his point, Smith compares the recent films The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Paheli, offering an interpretation of the films that suggests that “Emily Rose was founded on the assumption of a naturalized, identifiable, and unitary self that was breached by demonic possession” (xvi).  In Paheli, on the other hand, the possessing spirit “is drawn into [the possessed’s] own self-construction” (xvi).  For Smith, then, while possession in South Asian literature also contains the potential for malevolence, the invading entity is not always easily distinguishable from the individual being possessed.

 

            After providing a fairly lengthy prefatory apology for any possible accidental omissions in his study, Smith’s first major section examines the South Asian textual origins of Sanskrit.  Within the first chapter, “Sanskritic Culture and the Culture of Possession,” Smith claims that current anthropological and ethnographical studies of possession are incomplete for their lack of attention to the multiple terms and root words for possession by deities, spirits, entities, and even other people.  In this section, he provides an extensive overview of these words, their roots, and extensions.

 

            From this opening section on language and linguistic characteristics of possession terminology, Smith’s second section contains three chapters that offer definitions of possession, including the DSM-IV’s explanation of possessed behaviors.  Furthermore, here he attempts to provide clearer distinctions between possession and trance channeling, arguing that the terms ought not to be conflated because doing so fails to acknowledge the problematic nature of selfhood that occurs due to possession.  He completes this section by listing the distinct characteristics of possession in the Sanskrit-based textual languages that he examines—from the prevalence of possession in Hindi and Marathi and the court exorcisms of Urdu to the folk psychiatry of Bengali, the oracular possession of Tulu, Irula, and Himilayan discourse, the emotional focus of Tamil and Simhala, the disturbances of Yaka and Sri Lanka, and festival possession rituals of Assam. 

 

            The third section of Smith’s book deals with classical South Asian literature, particularly the Vedas, Upanisads, Mahābhārata, Rāmāyana, Patanjali’s Yogasūtras, Bhagavad-Gita, and the Brahamasūtras.  This wide-ranging section consisting of five chapters comprises the largest and most detailed section of the text.  Providing both general interpretations of the types of possession explained within the classical texts he examines and close readings of a number of selected passages to unpack their use of possession, Smith offers a look at the variety of spiritual encounters available to the South Asian classical imagination.  For example, by investigating the story of Vipula and Vidura in the Mahābhārata, he explains that while “one of the most prominent varieties of possession in Indian literature is demonic, disease-producing possession” (272), in the tale “Vipula Bhārgava protects Ruci, the wife of his guru, Devaśarman, against the sexual advances of the lecherous Indra by using his yogic power to enter Ruci’s body” (255).  Thus, possession can be life-affirming as well as destructive, as when the goddess Kali entered King Nala, precipitating his defeat by his brother (251).

 

            The fourth and final section of the text examines the often misunderstood areas of Tantra and Āyurveda.  He argues that Tantra is a “divinization of the body” (368) in which the term samāvesa “indicate[s] both the practice of immersion into a deity and the state of liberation that results from this practice” (398).  Although the question of why Tantric possession is often induced in children remains largely unanswered as Smith suggests that the practice may be related to childhood openness and innocence, the section as a whole not only offers potentially positive associations of possession but also provides a summary of Smith’s argument—“Possession, regardless of the term used for it, was often understood in Sanskrit (and other Indic) texts as a modification of personality, rather than as a psychological aberration for which the individual must necessarily be held accountable” (584).  Smith then concludes his text with a nearly sixty-page bibliography of his primary and secondary sources.   

 

            For students and teachers of South Asian literature, Smith’s texts serves as a valuable resource, as he includes a list of “canonical” and “non-canonical” South Asian literature that mentions possession, information about mainstream interpretations of possession in these texts, and avenues for further research.  Furthermore, his critical model of providing both a theoretical construct for his argument augmented by a close reading of a wide variety of passages from a number of texts presents a sound rhetorical structure, even if at times he is too apologetic about the possible limitations of his study.  In a study as broad as his is, one is inclined to be impressed by his range rather than critical any missed sources.