By Frederick J. Simoons
Pythagoras, the traditional Greek mathematician, didn't himself consume fava beans in any shape; in truth, he banned his fans from consuming them. Cultural geographer Frederick Simoons disputes the rivalry that Pythagoras verified that ban simply because he well-known the chance of favism, a affliction that afflicts genetically-predisposed people who eat fava beans. Contradicting extra deterministic reasons of historical past, Simoons argues that ritual concerns ended in the Pythagorean ban. In his attention-grabbing and thorough new examine, Simoons examines crops linked to ritual purity, fertility, prosperity, and lifestyles, at the one hand, or with ritual impurity, ailment, sick destiny, and dying, at the different. vegetation of existence, vegetation of loss of life bargains a wealth of element from not just background, ethnography, non secular reviews, classics, and folklore, but additionally from ethnobotany and medication. Simoons surveys an enormous countryside extending from Europe in the course of the close to East to India and China. He tells the tale of India's tremendous sacred fig timber, the pipal and the banyan, and their altering function in ritual, faith, and as items of pilgrimage from antiquity to the current day; the historical past of mandrake and ginseng, “man roots” whose makes use of from Europe to China were formed by way of the notion that they're human in shape; and the tale of garlic and onions as impure meals of undesirable smell in that very same vast area. Simoons additionally identifies and discusses actual features of vegetation that experience contributed to their contrasting ritual roles, and he emphasizes the purpose that the ritual roles of crops also are formed by way of uncomplicated human concerns—desire for solid overall healthiness and prosperity, hopes for fertility and offspring, worry of violence, evil and death—that have been as very important in antiquity as they're this day. “It dazzles as a section of scholarship.”—Daniel W. Gade, college of Vermont
Read Online or Download Plants Of Life, Plants Of Death PDF
Similar plants books
Chemical Grouting and Soil Stabilization (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Following moving developments from remedial to preventive makes use of of grouting practices, this 3rd variation covers all points of chemical grouting equipment and purposes. This reference highlights new floor development suggestions in addition to contemporary thoughts in soil amendment and stabilization systems.
Medicinal and Aromatic Plants IV
This quantity comprises 28 chapters on biotechnology of medicinal and fragrant vegetation, and offers with the distribution, financial significance, traditional propagation, micropropagation, overview of tissue tradition paintings, and the in vitro creation of pharmaceutical compounds in a number of species of Ammi, Bergenia, Canavalia, Capsicum, Cassia, Cephaelis, Cornus, Cucurbita, Elettaria, Eupatorium, Genipa, Gentiana, Gypsophila, Hygrophila, Leontopodium, Nerium, Picrasma, Polygonum, Ptelea, Rheum, Scopolia, Silene, Solanum, Strophanthus, Tagetes, Thymus, and Uncaria.
Post-Transcriptional Control of Gene Expression in Plants
A up to date quantity of this sequence (Signals and sign TransductionPathways in vegetation (K. Palme, ed. ) Plant Molecular Biology26, 1237-1679) defined the relay races in which signs are transported in crops from the websites of stimuli to the gene expression equipment of the cellphone. a part of this equipment, the transcription equipment, has been good studied within the final 20 years, and lots of very important mechanisms controlling gene expression on the transcriptional point were elucidated.
Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands
Written by way of the major experts at the plant variety and ecology of the Pacific islands, this booklet is a magisterial synthesis of the plants and landscapes of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. it truly is prepared through island staff, and comprises details on geography, geology, phytogeographic relationships, and human impacts on crops.
- Pharming: Promises and risks of Biopharmaceuticals derived from genetically modified plants and animals (Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment)
- Vascular plants of Ukraine. Nomenclatural checklist.
- Plant Life: A Brief History
- Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti
Additional resources for Plants Of Life, Plants Of Death
Sample text
Title : Plants of Life, Plants of Death author : Simoons, Frederick J. publisher : University of Wisconsin Press isbn10 | asin : 0299159000 print isbn13 : 9780299159009 ebook isbn13 : 9780585176208 language : English subject Plants--Folklore, Medicinal plants--Folklore, Plants--Mythology, Human-plant relationships. 368 subject : Plants--Folklore, Medicinal plants--Folklore, Plants--Mythology, Human-plant relationships. Page iii Plants of Life, Plants of Death Frederick J. Simoons THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS Page iv Disclaimer: This book contains characters with diacritics.
190 When a Hindu is ill, a Brahmin may be called to offer, one by one, leaves of tulsi sprinkled with red powder (for driving out demons and curing illness) to a salAgrama stone while reciting incantationsan affair sometimes involving as many as 100,000 leaves.
A similar arrangement is described in general Page 22 terms for Hindus. It entails suspending an earthen vessel full of water above a tulsi plant for that entire month and allowing the water to drip from a small hole in the vessel. 136 Another time of special note is summer, when daily worship of tulsi becomes indispensible. 142 Karttika is noted as the month when the marriage ceremony between the tulsi plant and Vishnu takes place (it is also the beginning of the Hindu marriage season). 144 The celebration may also be an expensive and impressive public affair.