On an Auspicious Day, at Dawn -

Book excerpt: The book consists of a collection of essays on aspects of Tulu oral literature and its cultural and religious context. Taking sung poetic ritual texts from the west coast of South India (coastal Karnataka) as her starting point, the author addresses the relationship between text structure and the social and geographical distribution of particular local and subregional cults; questions of gender and genre, of the correlation between narrative and ritual dramatization especially with respect to death, and of success and failure of rituals in the local perception. One essay studies features of South Indian popular cults in a wider perspective. Two of the nine essays discuss historical material relating to Basel Mission activities in the area and compare texts collected in the 19th century with versions collected by the author in the 1980s. The last paper provides a short synopsis of the author's 1995 German monograph on the topic.