ABSTRACT

Frits Staal's interest in India, as in the planet earth in general, is extraordinarily wide. Best known, perhaps, for his studies of such abstract and logical subjects as philosophy, language, and ritual, he has also always maintained a lively interest in earthier matters, such as martial arts, and it is here that his expertise and mine most often overlap. It is to this Frits Staal, the scholar not of the mind but of the body, that this essay is dedicated, in loving friendship.