This is a volume about the life and power of ritual objects in their religious ritual settings. In this Special Issue, we see a wide range of contributions on material culture and ritual practices ...across religions. By focusing on the dynamic interrelations between objects, ritual, and belief, it explores how religion happens through symbolic materiality.
The ritual objects presented in this volume include: masks worn in the Dogon dance; antique ecclesiastical silver objects carried around in festive processions and shown in shrines in the southern Andes; funerary photographs and films functioning as mnemonic objects for grieving children; a dented rock surface perceived to be the god’s footprint in the archaic place of pilgrimage, Gaya (India); a recovered manual of rituals (from Xiapu county) for Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, juxtaposed to a Manichaean painting from southern China; sacred stories and related sacred stones in the Alor–Pantar archipelago, Indonesia; lotus symbolism, indicating immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia; lavishly illustrated variations of portrayals of Ravana, a Sinhalese god-king-demon; figurines made of cow dung sculptured by rural women in Rajasthan (India); and mythical artifacts called ‘Apples of Eden’ in a well-known interactive game series.
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible contain a significant number of texts describing ritual practices. Yet it is often unclear how these sources would have been understood or used by ancient ...audiences in the actual performance of cult. This volume explores the processes of ritual textualization (the creation of a written version of a ritual) in ancient Israel by probing the main conceptual and methodological issues that inform the study of this topic in the Pentateuch.
This systematic and comparative study of text and ritual in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible maps the main areas of consensus and disagreement among scholars engaged in articulating new models for understanding the relationship between text and ritual and explores the importance of comparative evidence for the study of pentateuchal rituals. Topics include ritual textualization in ancient Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia; the importance of archaeology and materiality for the study of text and ritual in ancient Israel; the relationship between ritual textualization and standardization in the Pentateuch; the reception of pentateuchal ritual texts in Second Temple writings and rabbinic literature; and the relationship between text and ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothea Erbele-Küster, Daniel K. Falk, Yitzhaq Feder, Christian Frevel, William K. Gilders, Dominique Jaillard, Giuseppina Lenzo, Lionel Marti, Patrick Michel, Rüdiger Schmitt, Jeremy D. Smoak, and James W. Watts.
Focusing on concepts, practices and images associated with purity in the ancient Mediterranean, this volume contributes new aspects to the current discussion about the forming of religious ...traditions, from a comparative perspective that acknowldges individual developments, mutual exchanges, as well as transcultural processes.; Readership: Scholars interested in the history of religions, religious contacts and social-cultural interactions in Antiquity, purity and impurity in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as mechanisms of social control and regulation in ancient societies.
Webb Keane argues that by looking at representations as concrete
practices we may find them to be thoroughly entangled in the
tensions and hazards of social existence. This book explores the
...performances and transactions that lie at the heart of public
events in contemporary Anakalang, on the Indonesian island of
Sumba. Weaving together sharply observed narrative, close analysis
of poetic speech and valuable objects, and far-reaching theoretical
discussion, Signs of Recognition explores the risks
endemic in representational practices. An awareness of risk is
embedded in the very forms of ritual speech and exchange. The
possibilities for failure and slippage reveal people's mutual
vulnerabilities and give words and things part of their power.
Keane shows how the dilemmas posed by the effort to use and control
language and objects are implicated with general problems of power,
authority, and agency. He persuades us to look differently at ideas
of voice and value. Integrating the analysis of words and things,
this book contributes to a wide range of fields, including
linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, social theory, and the
studies of material culture, art, and political economy.
Jacob P. Dalton offers a history of early tantric Buddhist ritual through the lens of the Tibetan manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang on the ancient Silk Road. He argues that the spread of ritual ...manuals offered Buddhists an extracanonical literary form through which to engage with their tradition in new and locally specific ways.
This article explores the history and procedures of the 49-day Buddhist funeral ceremony, which functions as a ritual for the dead and a healing tool for the bereaved. The significance of this ...ceremony has its origins in The Treatise of the Great Commentary of the Abhidharma (아비달마대비바사론, 阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論) and The Sūtra of the Fundamental Vows of the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha (지장보살본원경, 地藏菩薩本願經). While this 49-day ceremony has been practiced in Korea for centuries, it was overshadowed by Confucian-style funerals, which were predominant during the Joseon dynasty. Since the end of the Joseon dynasty, Buddhism and Buddhist practices, including the 49-day funeral ceremony, emerged in Korea and continue to be practiced with frequency today. This article maintains that these rituals have two primary purposes. The first is to aid the departed in a successful rebirth. The second is to help the bereaved cope with their loss, which often includes various forms of psychological distress. After introducing the 49-day ceremony as it is currently practiced in Korea, this article shifts its focus to delve deeper into the ceremony’s potential for healing. We will first examine the psychological healing elements that this ceremony offers, followed by considerations related to the grieving process, both within and outside of a Buddhist context.
Jewish ritual immersion has been practiced among Jews for over two thousand years, from the late second century BCE until today. Although much has been written in recent years on various aspects of ...this ritual as it was performed in different periods, no study has surveyed the practice from the perspective of the longue durée—from its earliest manifestations until the modern era. The present study does just that; it examines the textual evidence and material remains that shed light on how the ritual was performed over the course of the past two millennia, exploring who practiced it in each period, and how it developed and changed over the centuries.
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ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The American anthropologist Edward B. Harper coined the concept ‘respect pollution’ for a practice where a person shows respect towards another person at a higher level in the Hindu ...ritual hierarchy by doing something in relation to the latter that would normally be regarded as involving impurity and pollution. That could be touching someone’s feet or foot wear, eating the lefto-vers of others, or getting in physical contact with urine or feces. What would normally be regarded as impure becomes a source of purification or even salvation when it is an index of a ritually superior person, say, a saint or a god, or even, for women, one’s husband. This article explains the background of these practices in the classical rules of purification known from the medieval Hindu law literature with respect to each of these cases, feet, sandals, leftovers, feces and urine, but ex-pands the field by including places of death and cremation. In the second part of the article examples are given of the ways these cases are turned into ‘respect pollution’. DANSK RESUMÉ: Den amerikanske antropolog Edward B. Harper introducere-de begrebet ‘respect pollution’ for en praksis, hvor en person viser respekt for en anden person, der står højere i det rituelle personhierarki, ved at gøre noget i for-hold til denne, der almindeligvis involverer rituel urenhed og besmittelse. Det kan være at komme i berøring med andres fødder eller fodtøj, at spise rester af mad, andre har spist af, eller at komme i berøring med afføring eller urin. Ting, der el-lers opfattes som urene, bliver i en sådan praksis kilde til renselse eller endda frel-se, forudsat at de konkrete urenheder er knyttet personer med højere status i det ri-tuelle hierarki, det være sig en helgen eller en gud, eller, for kvinder, ens ægte-mand. Artiklen forklarer baggrunden for disse praksisser i de klassiske regler for renselse, der er formuleret i den middelalderlige hindulovlitteratur, i forhold til hver af disse eksempler, fødder, sandaler, madrester og afføring, men udvider feltet ved også at inddrage steder, hvor en person er død eller kremeret. I den anden del af artiklen gives der eksempler på, hvordan disse felter transformeres til medier for ‘respect pollution’.
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