Sanctified madness: the God-intoxicated saints of Bengal.
Social science & medicine (1982) 1985 A Morinis
The saintly madman is a familiar character in South Asia. To outer appearances he is no different from a lunatic, but the mad saint comes to be revered because his idiocy is popularly believed to arise from a different cause than ordinary madness. The common psychopath neglects social conventions because his consciousness is dimmed by incapacity; the saintly madman also breaches convention, but...