Food, Community, and the Spirit World: An Indian Village Study

This is a detailed ethnographic study of food beliefs and practices in a rural community of Hassan District, 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 ...