The DOI matches its Crossref record; its reference list is not available.
The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization
Abstract
The Self Possessed is a multifaceted, diachronic study reconsidering the very nature of religion in South Asia, the culmination of years of intensive research. Frederick M. Smith proposes that positive oracular or ecstatic possession is the most common form of spiritual expression in India, and that it has been linguistically distinguished from negative, disease-producing possession for thousands of years. In South Asia possession has always been broader and more diverse than in the West, where it has been almost entirely characterized as "demonic." At best, spirit possession has been regarded as a medically treatable psychological ailment and at worst, as a condition that requires exorcism or punishment. In South (and East) Asia, ecstatic or oracular possession has been widely practiced throughout history, occupying a position of respect in early and recent Hinduism and in certain forms of Buddhism. Smith analyzes Indic literature from all ages-the earliest Vedic texts; the Mahabharata; Buddhist, Jain, Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Tantric texts; Hindu devotional literature; Sanskrit drama and narrative literature; and more than a hundred ethnographies. He identifies several forms of possession, including festival, initiatory, oracular, and devotional, and demonstrates their multivocality within a wide range of sects and religious identities. Possession is common among both men and women and is practiced by members of all social and caste strata. Smith theorizes on notions of embodi…
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Perhaps no other work has been more successful at pushing back against this problem and advocating for the central importance of bh¯ utavidy¯ a and the broader phenomenon of demonic possession in South Asian literature than Frederick Smith's work in The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization .”
From Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas (2019) · cites this paper as Smith 2006
In the citing paper
“Smith also notes a pattern in the expansion of ¯ Ayurvedic demonology from the Su´ srutasam . hit¯ a to the As . t . ¯ a ˙ ngahr . dayasa ˙ mhit¯ a 27 that locates the period of increased ¯ Ayurvedic development of its demonology in the first half of the first millennium CE-during precisely the same period that the codification of an even more expansive Buddhist demonology was taking shape in the”
From Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas (2019) · cites this paper as Smith 2006
In the citing paper
“This dismissal can be contrasted with the ¯ Ayurvedic literature, in which karma and demonic possession are seen as correlated pathologies that require similar therapeutic methods.”
From Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas (2019) · cites this paper as Smith 2006
In the citing paper
“Much as Decaroli has done in the context of Buddhist demonology, Smith takes an affirmative approach to the centrality of spirit possession throughout South Asian literature, crafting a genealogy of the language and mechanics of possession from the Vedas to the emergence of the devotional and tantric religious movements that have dominated South Asian religion from the mid-first millennium CE to”
From Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas (2019) · cites this paper as Smith 2006
In the citing paper
“As Smith has shown, the South Asian literature on demonic possession consistently explains spirit possession in moral terms.”
From Buddhist Medical Demonology in The Sūtra of the Seven Buddhas (2019) · cites this paper as Smith 2006
Citations
No citation lists for this paper
No citation lists for this paper yet — checked again daily.
Cited by 131
Metadata
- Authors
- Smith, F. M.
- Corresponding author
- Smith, Frederick M.
- Venue
- Columbia University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Columbia University Press
- Published
- 2006-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W4229592969
- Cited by
- 131
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 8.53
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Columbia University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › General Arts and Humanities › Cultural and Mythological Studies
- Keywords
- spirit possession, South Asian religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Tantric texts, Vedic texts, Mahabharata, Hindu devotional literature, Sanskrit drama, embodiment, selfhood, personal identity, caste, exorcism, demonology, comparative religion
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.7312/smit13748
- The paper
- Smith, F. M. (2006). The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization. Columbia University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.7312/smit13748
