The Economics of Ecstasy —— Tantra, Secrecy and Power in Colonial Bengal

----- 狂喜的经济学：孟加拉殖民地的密宗，保密和权力

ISBN: 9780195139020 出版年：2003 页码：305 Urban, Hugh B Doniger, Wendy Oxford University Press

This is a study of the Bengali Kartabhaja sect and its place in the broader movement of Tantrism, an Indian religious movement employing purposely shocking sexual language and rituals. Urban looks closely at the relationship between the rise of the Kartabhajas, who flourished at the turn of the 19th century, and the changing economic context of colonial Bengal. Made up of the poor lower classes laboring in the marketplaces and factories of Calcutta, the Kartabhajas represent "the underworld of the imperial city." Urban shows that their esoteric poetry and songs are in fact saturated with the language of the marketplace and the bazaar, which becomes for them the key metaphor used to communicate secret knowledge and mystical teachings.