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Kartik Puja - ten womens experience of Kartik Puja on Assi Ghat
2001 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor)Student thesis
Abstract [en]

This C-paper is about the female led ritual called Kartik Puja. Kartik Puja is a female led water visarjan ritual. It takes place on Assi Ghat and on Panchaganga Ghat in Varanasi, India, in the month of Karttika (Oct./Nov). It is a water visarjan because the river Ganges is central in this ritual. The purpose is to answer the following questions: - Why is Kartik Puja celebrated? - What meaning does Kartik Puja have for the people in Varanasi? - What role has Varanasi and what part does the river Ganges play in the celebration? The C-paper is divided into two parts. One part is based on fieldwork, where we have chosen to interview ten women who have regularly participated in the Kartik Puja. The other part is the literary one, which concerns the subject of festivals, ritual, the family, the river Ganges and the concept of God. To make it easier for the reader to understand we have given some basic information about the Kartik month, the Hindu calendar in the second chapter. We have continued by talking about Varanasi and Assi Ghat and the concept of God according to the Hindu perception in chapter three. In chapter four we have written about the river Ganges and its importance for the Hindus and its great symbolic function in the Hindu rituals and festivals. In the next chapter festivals and myths is the theme. It describes how time is divided into holy and profane time and what meaning the festivals have for the people in Varanasi. Chapter six deals with the observations made at Assi Ghat and at Panchaganga Ghat. The women come to the riverbank, first to take baths and then to do the puja. They make figures in the holy clay taken from the river. The figures represent different gods. The women make a microcosmos in clay and they do this every morning during the Kartik month. They also make syrias in clay, the syrias are a part of the microcosmos and they represent the women's sons and husbands. Even though the men are not a participating in the ritual they still have a place in the ceremony. The observations have been given account for in the C-paper and we have compared these with written sources. We have chosen a small selection of books written by famous scientists on the subject of religion and festivals. In the following chapter we have added the mythical Kartik Puja stories the women told during the ritual and also the stories that describes who started this ritual from the beginning. We were given an article about the Kartik Puja and in chapter eight we include that article and put in comparison with our observations at Panchaganga Ghat. Chapter nine is about the interviews we made with ten women during this Kartik month and we have made analyses of the observations, the interviews and the stories. Chapter ten is our conclusion about our research and a discussion about the conclusions we made concerning the whole C-paper.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2001. , p. 59
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-52919Local ID: REL C-12OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-52919DiVA, id: diva2:1101455
Subject / course
Comparative Religion
Available from: 2017-05-29 Created: 2017-05-29 Last updated: 2020-10-26

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
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  • apa.csl
  • Other style
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Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
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Output format
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