Style, Format, and Interview Transcriptions
Each case study in this book—Teyyāṭṭam, Kerala, and Navadurgā, Bhaktapur, Nepal—is grounded in a differing locale and is based on distinct languages. For Teyyāṭṭam these are Malayalam and Sanskrit, while for Navadurgā, its languages are Nepali, a Bhaktapurian dialect of Newari, and Sanskrit. All words and phrases transliterated from these languages will be italicized in the text and noted using standard diacritical marks (jātrā, kalaripayāṭṭụ etc.).
Names of specific informants (‘Ujesh’, ‘Krishna’, ‘Akaś’ etc.) are pseudonyms. Any public political figures mentioned in Chapter 6 are their actual names elicited from readings and newspaper articles.
Certain quoted information and interview sections have been abridged to condense this material for the reader; in these instances, abridged material will be noted with a ‘[…]’. Extracts from interview material will adhere to the following format:
[MM:] …[Inf.] …