Plants of life, plants of death
This study examines plants associated with ritual purity, fertility, prosperity and life, and plants associated with ritual impurity, sickness, ill fate and death. It provides detail from history, ethnography, religious studies, classics, folklore, ethnobotany and medicine.
Print Book, English, ©1998
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis., ©1998
Folklore
xv, 568 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm
9780299159009, 9780299159047, 0299159000, 0299159043
38311412
Introduction
Tulsi, holy basil of the Hindus : with notes on sweet basil in the Mediterranean world
Sacred fig-trees of India
Mandrake, a root human in form : with notes on ginseng
A question of odor? : garlic and its relatives as impure foods in the area from Europe to China
Ritual use and avoidance of the urd bean (Vigna mungo) in India : with comparative data on certain related foods, flavorings and beverages
The color black in the Pythagorean ban of the fava bean (Vicia faba)
Favism and the origin of the Pythagorean ban on fava beans
Pythagoras lives : parallels and survivals of his views of beans in modern and premodern times
Further notes, elaborations, and conclusions