William S. Sax was born in a small town in eastern Washington State, studied in Seattle, Wisconsin, and India, and earned his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1987. He has taught at Harvard University, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (where he lived for eleven years), and Germany, where he has been Professor of Anthropology at Heidelberg University's South Asia Institute since 2000. Altogether he has spent about fifteen years in India, and produced three monographs, seven volumes of collected essays, and dozens of articles on theater, healing, ritual, mental health, spirit possession, and psychiatry in South Asia.

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Divine Kingdoms in South and Southeast Asia


• 3: The King's Three Bodies


• 4: The Realm: Land and People


• 5: The Ballad of Jariyan


• 6: The Minister and the Army


• 7: A Treaty of Honor: Folklore and Practical Reason in Western Himalayan Pastoralism


• 8: The Ally


• 9: The Enemy


• Appendices

In Western Himalaya, local gods are seen to rule as kings, communicating with their subjects through their human oracles. They remain central in modern society, and In the Valley of the Kauravas explores how the power of the local gods and oracles remains by examining the myths, legends, rituals, and folklore of the region.