Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asia by Frederick M. Smith, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2009 (originally The Self Possessed, Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 701 + xxvii

This study of a neglected field in Indology raises many questions while providing some clear insight. In four unequal parts Smith surveys the field of study of possession in South Asian understandings.

Part one on “Orthodoxies, Madness and Method” is a single chapter of less than 30 pages entitled “Academic and Brahmanical Orthodoxies.” Ethnographical studies show the massive importance of spirit possession in South Asia, but

if our knowledge of the subject were limited to the accounts of classical Indologists and others who have privileged the “high” intellectual and religious traditions while eschewing the history of actual religious practice, we would scarcely know of the existence of this phenomenon, much less its pervasiveness. (3)

One of the problems here is with an inherent bias in Sanskrit texts.

Sanskrit texts are almost always oriented uncompromisingly toward concepts, prescriptions, and mythology – what their authors understood to be “true” – but rarely toward “human” concern (except insofar as theorizing is a human concern) – what we (and probably they) deemed to be “real.” (5)

But another problem is the type of Sanskrit texts that were of interest to Indological scholars. Tantric, bhakti and astrology texts were not a focus for study despite the fact that they constitute a significant percentage of most indigenous text collections (6).

Related to these problems, Smith gives a clear statement of his purpose in this study.

One of the primary goals of this study is to examine the notion, generally recognized by anthropologists, though not by religious orthodoxies, that possession is not just one thing and apply this insight to the evidence from Sanskrit and other classical Indian texts. What I hope to show is that the category of possession as it has been commonly understood in religious studies and Indology, where it has been addressed at all, does not work well in the context of the classical Indian view of the self. As I demonstrate, it is a self with permeable layers and boundaries, both of which shift and mutate, and this can be known in part through a study of possession…. (10)

The fundamental definition of terms is vital to the study, but Smith suggests that “it is difficult to recommend a single definition of possession, or indeed a single word for it” (13). Avesha, entrance into, is one key term that is used as samavesha and pravesha. Avesha usually refers to a self-motivated, benign possession, while pravesha usually indicates an outside entity taking possession (14). In this context C. J. Fuller is approvingly quoted: “In all Indian languages, a distinction can be made between involuntary, ‘bad’ possession by a malevolent being and voluntary, ‘good’ possession by a deity” (14, from Fuller, The Camphor Flame, Princeton University Press, 1992, pg. 231). Graha, to grasp or seize, is another term of fundamental significance, mostly referring to possession which “occurs independent of or even contrary to the intention of the one possessed” (14). But highlighting these terms potentially provides a false sense of clarity; “the Sanskrit (and other Indic) terms, as well as the English term ‘possession,’ are polysemous and multivocal, thus presenting an array of unenviable problems in cross-cultural understanding” (15).

The orthodox supposition that the human atman is unchanging and divine simply does not fit very well with cultural dynamics that are replete with possessions by gods and demons. And those who think in English are not spared the problem. What is a self and what is a person? What is consciousness? Trying to understand Sanskritic terms into the confusion of modern English worldviews is exceedingly complex; Smith suggests that there are more than thirty Sanskrit terms just in the Bhagavata Purana which get translated as “consciousness” (15).

The second part of this study looks at “Ethnography, Modernity and the Languages of Possession” in three chapters. Chapter two looks at paradigms for the study of possession and Smith sees five options.

(1) as demonic, opposed to God and good; (2) as a medically defined psychological state; (3) as a psychological condition engineered for the purpose of gaining social or even political control; (4) as an aspect of shamanism; (5) as an existential reality. (39)

Where one stands theoretically is very much based on one’s presuppositions, and Smith highlights the Western presupposition of “an inviolable and unitary self” (42) as the reason possession is not discussed in psychoanalytical studies. Smith seeks freedom from captivity to any one paradigm, while confessing that he is a Sanskrit scholar whose bias will be to a text-critical approach (78).

Chapters three and four look at ethnographic perspectives on possession. Chapter three has a focus on modern Western New Age channeling and how this differs from traditional South Asian possession. Chapter four traces studies in the major linguistic areas of South Asia. A summary of ethnographic findings starting on pg. 153 shows that the feminine is central in possession; mostly women are possessed by female entities. Possession is ritualized and especially in its ritual forms comes into the Brahmanical realm. There is often violence related to possession, which might be sacrificial, might be self-induced pain, and often is psychological terror. But there is also joyful empowerment related to possession, and possession is also healing.

Part three is entitled “Classical Literature,” where in five chapters and nearly two hundred pages the textual data on possession is outlined. Chapter five presents a detailed and fascinating presentation of possession in the Vedic corpus. Chapter six, entitled “Friendly Acquisitions, Hostile Takeovers,” looks at the epics and particularly the Mahabharata. Chapter seven considers possession in the light of Indian philosophy. Chapter eight is entitled “Vampires, Prostitutes and Poets” and considers possession in Sanskrit fiction. Chapter nine considers “Devotion as Possession.”

The summary of possession data from scripture is of great interest, but too detailed to even attempt a review here. It is intriguing that “possession was barely a blip on the philosophical screen in India” (308) and “possession…finds almost no place in any formal sastra or epistemologically circumscribed field of knowledge” (331). Yet possession is constantly in evidence, and among Brahmans as much as lower castes. Smith posits “an epistemology that flows from folk to classical and back again, producing new and unique Indian forms of knowing” (339). There is a positive type of possession and a negative, and “a clear lack of distinction between spirit or deity possession, intense absorption in emotion, and acting” (353).

Part four is the largest and most complex, four chapters covering nearly 250 pages. Chapters ten and eleven focus on tantra, with chapter 12 considering tantra and Ayurveda. Chapter thirteen, “Identity Among the Possessed and Dispossessed,” gives conclusions. This material needs to be carefully studied and the few points highlighted here will hopefully lead to such examination.

Smith begins his discussion of tantra with a statement on the wide range of meaning of the term.

Tantra is a category increasingly subject to debate. It is now regarded by many of the most informed scholars as a category with vague characterization and definition, an amorphous medley of practices, rites, and doctrines that became tantric by attrition; they simply do not fit elsewhere. (367)

The ritualization of possession phenomena is presented, pointing out that much of this became “perfunctory” (385); this amounted to both a Brahmanical “domestication of certain tantric (or vedic) initiation processes or even of those of popular religious possession” (385), yet it also amounted to “legitimizing it as a viable form of religious expression” (385). What becomes clear from all the analysis is that at the functional level the viewpoint is of “a complex and permeable self” (399).

Since this review is already too long, Smith’s analysis of tantric material must be passed over in favor of some discussion of his analysis of Ayurvedic texts “in which deity possession is medicalized in the same way as spirit possession” (475). One of the major lessons from this study is the diversity of viewpoints and diagnoses just in the Ayurvedic texts.

Among the areas of disagreement were the nature of bhutas, their ontological reality, their number and identity, their cultural origins, and what constitutes the discipline of bhutavidya, including not knowing just the names and descriptions of bhutas but the diagnostics, pharmacology, and ritual treatment for possession by bhutas. (479)

One Sanskrit text lists 8 types of possessing beings (488); another refers to 18 types (491); a Buddhist account suggests 84,000 “obstructing entities” (503), whereas in Tibetan thought “what possesses an individual is the effect or negative force of each of these [gDon], not the entity itself” (505) (although Smith glosses this with the comment that it is “formally, if perhaps not in practice”). Five major demonological accounts are outlined in pp. 509ff. One defines “twenty-one types of seizure (grahato) caused by various ethereal beings” (509). Another has 31 different grahas, “all the result of ill-begotten past karma, most – if not all – of it accumulated in the present birth” (514).

The complexity of this topic is further illustrated by the complex inter-relationship of emotional states and possession. Smith suggests that heightened emotional states “emerge in a unified sensory manner as possession when they achieve a certain critical mass that is specifically defined yet remains elusive and is impossible to quantify” (506). A modern Ayurveda practitioner, Dr. Raghavan Thirumulpad, suggests that “An intelligent physician is free to design a clinical approach to each problem, irrespective of texts, but a slow-witted one strictly adheres to the letter of the texts.” Smith comments on this that “this has apparently been the practical approach of Ayurveda for millennia” (576). [Smith sees Ayurveda as radically different from Veda, as in this approving quote from Dominik Wujastyk: “such medical material as is recoverable from the Vedic literature is remarkable more for its differences from classical Ayurveda than for its similarities….Of course, there are some points of contact, but the overall sense is that, culturally speaking, Ayurveda comes from somewhere else” (559, from The Roots of Ayurveda: Selections from Sanskrit Medical Writings, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998, pg. 17).]

As noted earlier, the folk and classical traditions are in vital interaction.

The juxtaposition of and exchange between classical and folk is, in fact, nowhere more evident than in the area of bhutavidya. It appears from the material presented copiously in the preceding pages that the banishment of the subaltern from much of classical discourse is a thin and tenuous construction or, perhaps more generously, an artifact of orthodox conditioning within the minds of both classical Indian and modern Western-trained scholars. (555)

Smith further suggests that there has been a great deal of exchange of elements across the porous boundaries of tantra, Ayurveda and astrology over the past 500 years (556-7). This intermixing of ideas and their ongoing interaction with popular culture lead Smith to conclude that modern education, allopathic medicine and an increasingly textualized approach to Hindu traditions will still not interfere with the strength of possession as an existential reality in modern India (Kerala being his specific focus for this point, 557).

I will highlight three points from Smith’s conclusions before some concluding reflections of my own. Nothing is more central than the concept of the self. Smith describes the Indic position as positing a “porous” self as opposed to the Western construct of an “autonomous” self (584). He goes on to speak of “the fragility of personal identity, its instability, elusiveness and permeability” (585), this in the context of the various bodies that make up a person in classical thought. Finally the self must be recognized as an “other.”

Perhaps the central insight of possession is the recognition and acceptance of self as other, an insight that also casts doubt on the psychoanalytic project of reclaiming submerged parts of the self as an exercise in regaining wholeness….it can be successful only after dispersion and alienness are recognized as facts of life. (602)

Second, the relation of folk and Brahmanic elements in Indic civilization will remain a conundrum. But Smith shows the power of the folk tradition, suggesting that “very few Indians, save a few hopeful Brahmans, accepted the ‘discursive domination of Sanskrit culture’ in matters religious when deeply emotional and richly transformative possession was available” (593). In fact, he suggests that “the local traditions, often derided by the educated elite in both India and the West for their nonvedic practices, are very possibly the most ‘vedic’ of all Indian traditions” (595).

Finally, a lesson applicable to pretty much every field of Indic and Hindu studies, “it is highly inadvisable to essentialize the phenomenon of possession” (597).

There is much to reflect on from a study of this breadth and depth. Undoubtedly one reason for the massive appeal of Sanskrit literature and thought is the remarkable explorations of diverse topics that appears therein. Insightful questions are asked, even when answers are lacking or are contradictory in their multiplicity. Christian traditions also have possession concepts, but no discussion of this depth that I am aware of. Most fundamental is the central concept that the Holy Spirit of God indwells human beings. Can this be conceptualized as a type of possession? What exactly is indwelt, and how? Maybe the lack of discussion of this topic is due to its incomprehensibility.

Christian traditions also posit demonic possessions. Exorcisms exist in highly-ritualized forms in classical traditions and in folk forms in popular religiosity. But how this is possible, how it happens, just what it implies for the understanding of imago dei (image of God, a central biblical teaching that humans are made in God’s image) is not a topic of examination and discussion.

If one comes away from Smith with less certainty than was present on beginning, it is also with gratitude for a fascinating exploration of complex data that both stimulates and humbles the reader, who is left to grapple not just with esoteric data from Indic traditions, but also with his or her own porous and alienated self.