title: Spirit possession and spirit mediumship from the perspective of Tulu oral traditions.
abstract: The phenomenon of spirit possession is looked at in relationship to the broad cultural context in which it is found to exist in a region of southern India. The author critically reviews various attempts to explain spirit possession as solely a psychological or sociological event. Instead, he turns to the region's spirit possession and mediumship cults, oral traditions and social ideology for an ethnographically relevant interpretation of spirit possession.
mesh_terms: D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003469:Culture; D005006:Ethnicity; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D013140:Spiritualism