Religion, Devotion and Medicine in North India

This volume examines notions of health and illness in North Indian devotional culture, with particular attention paid to the worship of the goddess Sitala, the Cold Lady. Consistently portrayed in colonial and postcolonial literature as the ambiguous ''smallpox goddess'', Sitala is here discussed as a protector of children and women, a portrayal that emerges from textual sources as well as materia...