Background: Traditional and indigenous communities in India are of the religious belief that medicinal groves and plants are sacred in nature. Sacred groves (SGs) are patches of trees on forest land that are protected communally with religious zeal and connotations. These forest areas have been protected since ages by traditional societies and indigenous communities with their socio-cultural an...

Religious rituals are associated with health benefits, potentially produced via social bonding. It is unknown whether secular similarly increase We conducted a field study individuals who celebrate at Sunday Assemblies and compared them participants attending Christian rituals. assessed levels of bonding affect before after the Results showed in taking place comparable to religious also found t...

Suicide terrorism has become an increasingly popular tactic used predominantly by religiously motivated sub-state groups. This suggests that such organizations are particularly successful in using suicide terrorism while maintaining (and perhaps increasing) their popular support. This success could be a product of devotion to specific religious creeds (Hypothesis 1) or of devotion to the collec...

This essay presents a history of articulations between the state apparatus and the realm of the “customary” in northern Mozambique, throughout periods of colonial rule, Socialism, civil war, and postcolonial democratic regimes. The analysis pivots around the ethnographic study of magico-religious rituals combined with postsocialist political rallies. In Mozambique, current recognition of chieft...

This special panel session provides an opportunity to discuss how entertainment computing designers create interactive media/ contents on Buddhism and also other religious practices. In this year, we have launched an exciting project designing interactive contents to be used in Todaiji temple, one of the world heritages located in Nara, Japan. In this project, we are actually collaborating with...

The expression "blends" is often used to refer to a type of data where, very visibly, two or more inputs are partially mapped onto each other and selectively projected to a new mental space in which novel structure can emerge (Fauconnier and Turner 1994, 1998, 2002). Famous examples of such blends are The Buddhist Monk, Regatta, Nixon in France, Complex Numbers, The Image Club. As it turns out,...

In the absence of immortality, the human species has over the millennia developed rites and rituals to help in the passing of life to honor the person who is dying or has died or in some way demonstrate their "courage" and perseverance as well as duty even in the face of almost certain death. The centuries-old traditions of the gathering of loved ones, the chanting of prayers, the ritual religi...

Plantain Or edible banana (Musa X paradisiacal var. Sapientum), an important commercial fruit item of the tropics, is known in India since time immemorial. Apart from its use as a valuable food item, banana fruits and the different part of plant find diverse uses in various folk practices, customs, religious rituals and medicine among the villagers and tribal communities of the country which ar...