This volume of fourteen essays, the tenth volume in the Ethno-Indology: Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals series, brings together a wide variety of scholars, each of whose contribution assists in the construction of this detailed study of initiatory rites in South Asia. The title of the volume makes explicit the religious and geographic diversity covered therein, but one of the volume's greatest strengths is its methodological diversity. The essays range from strictly Indological (Einoo's essay on the use of āñjana, or eye-salve, in Vedic ritual texts) to strictly ethnographic (Hüsken's essay on the 2006 intervention of the Tamil Nadu state government in Vaiṣṇava priestly training programs). The majority of the essays, however, bridge this gap by reading Vedic (C. Zotter), Tantric (Isaacson), and Newar Buddhist (Michaels, von Rospatt) texts in the context of contemporary performances.
This methodological diversity allows for a nuanced approach to South Asian initiations, rituals that...
