This is an ethnographic study of Hindu food beliefs, language, and practices in a rural community of Karnataka State (formerly Mysore), India. The author is an anthropological linguist who resided in the locality for almost two years in 1966-67. He provides the reader with an unusually detailed view of the intersections of language, food, and social relationships. Food is viewed as an important structuring aspect of the Hindu world view, a way that people symbolically represent and reprodu...

This is a close examination of the ways in which plant life and human life are symbolically intertwined in two rural villages of Hassan District, Karnataka State, India. After presenting a general overview of South Asian cultural traditions related to symbolic uses of plants, the author shares results of an in-depth study of the ways that plants have been used in rites of passage by multiple castes. The author, her partner, and a local team conducted detailed interviews and observations on...