ABSTRACT
Chapter 14 provides a conclusion to the entire book. For people living in rural South Kanara, the būta ritual has been what mediates as well as embodies the vital relationship between humans and the realm of the wild. At the same time, rural societies in South Kanara have experienced various changes that can generically be called ‘modernisation’. People have experienced these transformations as a crisis that has unsettled the existing social relations and modes of being. However, they have also perceived these changes as opportunities, allowing renegotiations and conjunctions of customary systems and social relations. Under multiple forces that have directed, as well as restricted, their acts and practices, people have mediated their relationships with various others and re-formed their ways of life. Simultaneously, they have strived to maintain and recreate their vital relationship with the deities and the realm of the wild. Through their practices, which contain the potential for transformation while remaining under multiple limitations, people’s relationships with the realm of the wild have directed their modes of life. This is the relationship from which the life-form of each being can emerge, and it is the relationship which enables the continuance of the lebenskreis, or circle of life, beyond individuals.
