BECAUSE OF THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL NATURE OF THIS STUDY, I have sought and received help in the form of information, discussion, and, eventually, critical reading of different parts of the book from many friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. This particularly long gestation period of a decade and a half has, therefore, placed me in their debt, a debt that I am delighted to acknowledge. First, I extend special thanks to Frank Korom, William (Bo) Sax, and Lindsey Harlan for reading early drafts of the chapters on theory and ethnography. Thankfully, Frank, Bo, and Lindsey think very differently about both anthropology and religion and offered correspondingly different critiques, all of which helped me immensely. I am also heavily indebted to Chris Minkowski for comments on the Mahābhārata chapter, to George Thompson and Steven Lindquist for comments and moral support on the chapter on possession in the Vedas, to Alexis Sanderson for time-consuming and selfless assistance on the second of the two Tantra chapters, and to Claudia Welch for insight and extensive comments on the Āyurveda chapter. I am grateful for the University of Iowa International Programs office for grants that allowed me to travel to Kerala for fieldwork on Āyurvedic mental health care in 2002 and 2004. I can confidently say that I could not have accomplished any of my work in Kerala were it not for the ready kindness of N. V. Ramachandran of Palakkad, to whom I remain heavily indebted. His ethnographic skills as well as knowledge of local medical traditions and, conveniently, all the back roads of Kerala were decisive in that work.
I deeply thank my colleagues at the University of Iowa: Philip Lutgendorf, Susan Lutgendorf, and Janine Sawada, for their many insights and comments on various incarnations of this work. Any work touched by Philip Lutgendorf emerges better for his contact. Indeed, one of the great boons of my life has been his presence in the next office, not to speak of his enormous generosity in countless areas of life, for a substantial number of years. Susan Lutgendorf, professor of psychology at Iowa, guided me in readings on psychology and constantly challenged me in thinking about the inner dimensions of possession. Her engagement with the topic has vastly advanced this work, especially Chapter 2. Wendi Adamek has been an indefatigable supporter of this project throughout. Like Philip Lutgendorf, she is a brilliant and exacting reader and a luminous thinker, whose advice on matters of theory, consistency, and style is always to be heeded. Many other friends and colleagues have offered productive comments and substantive help along the way, including, most formidably, Rich Freeman, Robert Svoboda, Antti Pakaslahti, Laurie Patton, Jeffrey Kripal, John Dunne, David Gray, Kathleen Taylor, Stephanie Jamison, David White, David Knipe, Anne Feldhaus, and E. Muralidhara Rao. I also express my appreciation to the exceptional staff of Columbia University Press—Wendy Lochner, Christine Mortlock, Leslie Kriesel, and Debra Soled. Their kindness and enthusiasm helped enormously to validate the years of time and effort I put into this project. All errors are, of course, my own responsibility, and in a work of this size and omniformity I am sure there will be more than a few, for which I beg the reader’s indulgence.