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Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
Of Faith and Fortune: Perpetual Trusts and the Muktad Ceremonies
Dr. Leilah Vevaina
(Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Date/Time: February 23, 2021 11:00 am – 12:00 nn (HK time)
Venue: Conducted via Zoom
Enquiry: ihss@hku.hk
Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
Of Faith and Fortune: Perpetual Trusts and the Muktad Ceremonies
Dr. Leilah Vevaina
(Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Date/Time: February 23, 2021 11:00 am – 12:00 nn (HK time)
Venue: Conducted via Zoom
Enquiry: ihss@hku.hk
Title:
Of Faith and Fortune: Perpetual Trusts and the Muktad Ceremonies
Speaker:
Dr. Leilah Vevaina (Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Date/Time:
February 23, 2021, 11:00 am – 12:00 nn (HK time)
Language:
English
Enquiry:
Title:
Of Faith and Fortune: Perpetual Trusts and the Muktad Ceremonies
Speaker:
Dr. Leilah Vevaina (Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Date/Time:
February 23, 2021, 11:00 am – 12:00 nn (HK time)
Language:
English
Enquiry:
Charitable giving is one of the pillars of Zoroastrianism, where the acquisition of wealth is righteous if earned honestly and shared liberally. Conducting charity is practiced at all class levels of the Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) community in Mumbai, and is incorporated into several ritual practices such as annual muktad remembrances for the dead. It is at these rituals wherein the souls of deceased kin (fravašis) are called down by name for feasting and convening with their living families on earth, that future charitable intentions are often announced. While the muktad rituals reconvene the living and the dead annually, the charitable trust is the formal legal mechanism, which mirrors this cosmological cycle of giving in the realm of the worldly, perpetually. Not simply analysing the trust as an econo-legal mechanism, this paper will investigate the trust as part of ritual practice.
Leilah Vevaina is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her PhD in Anthropology from The New School for Social Research and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck for Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her research on the Parsi trusts and property is forthcoming in her book manuscript, Trust Matters: Religious Endowments and the Horoscope of the City, with Duke University Press.
POSTER
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