Given that the term avatar has long been used to describe the role taken in multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft (WoW), this book is significant for examining rather deeply how the term originated in the Hindu religious tradition of India, conceptualized as spirit possession or spiritual therapeutics. The text chiefly reports on highly focused ethnographic research Jeffrey Snodgrass performed on a particular community in the Rajasthan state of northern India, analyzing deeply and in its cultural context the spirit possession of a woman the author names Bedami, in conflict with her husband, given the name Ramu. A secondary element, however, examines computer games played in India. Depending on the reader’s goal, this book will seem either informative, inspirational, or incomplete.

Snodgrass analyzes the case of Bedami and Ramu in several ways, for example in terms of their very personal disagreements and within the context of tension between their...

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