Nityasumangali : Devadasi Tradition in South India

The phenomenon of the devadasi has suffered greatly from faulty, culture-bound evaluations. The present monograph does not aim at judging these earlier evaluations, nor does it claim to give a \'truly objective\' description of what the devadasi tradition was; it rather tries to follow the inherent mode of thought, namely, what the devadasi tradition meant within the frame of Hinduism, and its transformation into a living cultural phenomenon functioning significantly in the context of the Hindu...