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die Koordinatoren des Orientalistentages |
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Indologie |
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die Koordinatoren des Orientalistentages |
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Jörg Gengnagel (joerg.gengnagel@urz.uni-heidelberg.de) / Ute Hüsken / Srilata Müller:
Ritual in South Asia - Text and Context
The panel "Ritual in South Asia: Text and Context" explores ritual texts, ritual practice and the relationship between the two. It is the aim of the panel to consider specific rituals in South Asia keeping in mind the broader discourse of theories on ritual. One of the theoretical issues to be considered is the "textualization" of ritual, and what we are to understand by this term. Here we aim to focus on two aspects of textualization: the codification and fixation of ritual action on the one hand and how the process of renewed textualization might alter existent forms of ritual action on the other.
In speaking of the different aspects of textualization of ritual, we must first take into consideration ritual texts - instruction manuals, prayer books, etc. - which though being informative on the sequential nature of the ritual are often considered to be descriptive with little or no interpretation of the ritual. Another perspective on ritual emerges from the study of those texts which do not deal exclusively with ritual but are the religious texts of a particular tradition. In such texts - concerned e.g. with theology and meta-physical enquiry - ritual is embedded in a specific, ideological context and there is the creation and dissemination of a whole set of religious and philosophical positions with regard to ritual action and its exegesis. A further focus on the relationship between texts and ritual practice can also be seen as the attempt to address the issue of diachronic change. A one-to-one correspondence between the two has been questioned in the anthropological approach to South Asian ritual where it is sometimes held that the relationship between ritual texts and ritual practice is discontinuity - that lip-service is paid to texts but they count for little in the actual enactment of rituals (Fuller 1984). It is in this sense that Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994: 199) say that "Ritual practice prescribes the ritual much more closely than ritual exegesis", a proposition which requires further scrutiny.
Finally the panel also considers the similarity of rituals in various religious traditions, an overlap or borrowing which has led to the perception of them as polythetic categories (Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi 1981). The question then arises about how these rituals come to be located or inflected to particular, religious traditions and how they come to be contextualized within these traditions.
V O R T R Ä G E I N D E M P A N E L:Marion Rastelli: Unaltered Ritual in Transformed Religion. The puja according to Ahirbudhnyasamhita 28 and the Nityagrantha
The form of a ritual is not dependent on the purpose the ritual should serve, the meaning that its performer attaches to it, or other underlying assumptions such as religious conceptions. Thus a ritual's purpose, meaning and underlying assumptions can be transformed without altering the ritual itself.
This thesis will be exemplified by means of the puja described in Ahirbudhnyasamhita 28 and the Nityagrantha. Chapter 28 of the pańcaratric Ahirbudhnyasamhita describes the daily puja from the morning bath through the proper worship of God. The Nityagrantha, traditionally ascribed to Ramanuja and thus an authoritative text of the Visistadvaitavedanta, is devoted to the same topic and based on Ahirbudhnyasamhita 28. It follows this text very closely, in a large part word for word, and contains only a few additional passages. Thus the ritual described in Ahirbudhnyasamhita 28 and the Nityagrantha is externally almost identical.
However, there are essential differences between worshippers following the two texts, and these are (1) different purposes of worship, (2) different views of God and the relationship between God and His devotee, and (3) different cosmologies. These differences concern the inner attitude of the worshipper but not the outer performance of the ritual. They become apparent mainly in the reflections and mental visualizations that must be performed by the follower of the Nityagrantha. The paper will explore these differences in detail and show that an unaltered ritual can be performed against the background of transformed religious ideas.Alexander von Rospatt: Change and Continuity: the adaptation of Hindu samskaras to a Buddhist context
The rites of passage (samskara) are among the most important rituals of Brahmanical Hinduism. Because of their social significance both the Buddhist and Jain traditions developed their own sets of samskaras in analogy to the Hindu model. This paper explores aspects of the process of adaptation with particular reference to the upanayana ritual. It will focus on Newar Buddhism where this ritual has been adapted in two different ways, in accordance with the segmentation of the Buddhist society into a "lay-monastic" caste (householder priests and monks) and into the lower lay castes (merchants, artisans and peasants), which have no historic connections with monkhood. For the former group the upanayana rite has been combined with the pravrajya rite in order to serve as an initiation rite (bare chuyegu) into the samgha to which the boy belongs by patrilineal descent. Despite the adaptation of elements of the upanayana rite, the ritual clearly breaks with the Hindu model when after the tonsure (cudakarana) the top-knot (shikha) is cut off and the neophyte dons the monk's robes in exchange for the 'loin cloth' (kaupina). For the Buddhist lay castes, by contrast, the upanayana ritual has been integrated into the standard framework of the tantric Buddhist "worship of the vase" (kalasharcana) with comparatively little changes. Significantly, the shikha is not cut off and the kaupina is not removed before the conclusion of the ritual. The twofold adaptation of the upanayana ritual allows Newar Buddhism to uphold the strict separation of monkhood and laity even in a context where the institution of 'vocational', unmarried monks has long ago vanished.Alexis Sanderson: Tantrism and the State: Initiating the Monarch
From the 7th century A.D. onwards there is evidence of the emergence and growth of a tradition, beginning in India and spreading to Southeast Asia and the Far East, of giving the monarch Tantric initiation, either Saiva or Buddhist, the latter by derivation from the former. I shall present this evidence and argue that this practice is central to the character of Tantric religion in its mature form. I shall also argue that the centrality of royal initiation has been overlooked because its practice conflicts in awkward ways with key doctrines that sustain the propagation of Tantric observance outside this special and pragmatically crucial case.