Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual General Editor Axel Michaels Editorial Board Michael Bergunder, Jörg Gengnagel, Alexandra Heidle, Bernd Schneidmüller, and Udo Simon
V
2010
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
Transfer and Spaces Including an E-Book-Version in PDF-Format on CD-ROM Section I Ritual Transfer Edited by Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer Section II Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity Edited by Nils Holger Petersen
2010
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Cover: Mevlevi dervishes dancing at an Alevi communal event. Photo: Christian Funke
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Table of Contents Section I: Ritual Transfer Edited by Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer Davide Astori Passover seder and Masonic agape: Evidence of (Re)Invention or Transfer of Ritual?
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Kimberly H. Belcher Ritual Identity and Cultural Transition in the Syro-Malabar Rite Catholic Church in Chicago
27
Subhadra Mitra Channa A Ritual Transfer: From the High to the Low in Hindu-Tibetan Himalayan Communities
43
Moritz Fischer “Let the Tears Flow”: Performative Transfer of Healing Rituals in Pentecostal Healing Events between Repetition and Renewal and their Impact on the Globalisation of Christianity
65
Heiko Grünwedel Shamanic Rituals from Siberia to Europe: Cultural Exchanges between Indigenous Healing Traditions of the Tyva and Neo-Shamans in Germany
89
Arne Harms Happy Mothers, Proud Sons: Hybridity, Possession, and a Heterotopy among Guyanese Hindus
107
Liudmila V. Khokhlova Ritual Transfer in the History of the Sikh Community: with Special Reference to the Sikh Marriage Ceremony
125
Afsar Mohammad Following the Pir: Temporary Asceticism and Village Religion in South India
141
VI
Table of Contents Paul Otto Wampum: The Transfer and Creation of Rituals on the Early American Frontier
171
Tulsi Patel Transformations in Marriage Rituals: The Case of Urbanising OBCs in Rajasthan
189
Sudha Sitharaman Conflict over Worship: A Study of the Sri Guru Dattatreya Swami Bababudhan Dargah in South India
205
Donald S. Sutton Transfers of Ritual at a Northern Sichuan Site: Tibetan and Han Chinese Pilgrims, and Han Chinese Tourists
235
Ahmet Taşğın The Eastern Church in Sweden: The Transfer of Syrian Orthodox Rituals from Turkey to Europe
259
Ali Yaman Ritual Transfer within the Anatolian Alevis: A Comparative Approach to the Cem-Ritual
269
Anne Mocko Rewriting Ritual: Community and Ethnicity in a San Francisco Performance of American Origins
277
Section II: Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity Edited by Nils Holger Petersen Nils Holger Petersen Il Doge and Easter Processions at San Marco in Early Modern Venice
301
Jens Fleischer The Cornerstone and Its Ritual Power
313
Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen In the Sphere of Sacrosanctity: Altars as Generators of Space in the Late Middle Ages
323
Transfer and Spaces
VII
Minou Schraven Foundation Rituals in Renaissance Italy: The Case of the Bentivoglio Tower in Bologna
339
Erika Meyer-Dietrich Religion That is Heard in Public Spaces: Sound Production in Ancient Egypt in a Ritual Context
359
Mads Dengsø Jessen Altars and the Sacred Space: An Investigation into the Missionary Use of Portable Altars
373
Abstracts
391
Section I: Ritual Transfer Edited by Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer
Davide Astori
Passover seder and Masonic agape: Evidence of (Re)Invention or Transfer of Ritual? With Particular Reference to the Italian Ritual Here is what you read in Pauly-Wissowa s. v. agape (entry by Jülicher):1 “Terminus technicus (schon im N. Test. Jud. 12) für die christlichen Liebesmahle, ursprünglich allabendliche Zusammenkünfte aller Gemeindemitglieder zu gemeinsamer Mahlzeit. Die Elemente wurden durch freiwillige Schenkung aufgebracht, den Höhepunkt der durchaus religiös gehaltenen Feier bildete der Abendmahlsgenuss (I Cor. 11). Die Trennung des Abendmahls von der ‘Agape’ – es wurde Hauptteil des sonntäglichen Frühgottesdienstes – hat in verschiedenen Kirchen zu verschiedenen Zeiten stattgefunden. Bei Iustin. Apol. I 67 ca. 150 scheint sie schon vorausgezetzt [sic!], in Gegenden von Ägypten ist sie nach Socrates hist. eccl. V 22 ca. 375 noch nicht durchgeführt. Heidnischer Verdächtigung gegenüber, die zu jener Scheidung viel beigetragen haben wird, verteidigt Tertullian (de bapt. 9; apolog. 39; ad mart. 2) die agape fratrum; als Montanist (de ieiun. 17) hilft er selber verdächtigen. Augustin (ep. 22) klagt bitter über die Ausschweifungen, die unter solchem Titel vorkamen; durch Concilienbeschlüsse waren die Agapen schon aus den Kirchen verbannt. Agapen in einem anderen Sinne, Speisungen der Armen durch freigebige Wohlthäter, nimmt 1. Canon 11 der Synode von Gangra (4. Jhdt.) in Schutz. Die letzte Erwähnung finden die aussterbenden Liebesmahle 692 im Canon 74 des conc. Quinisextum.” Then, with regard to the meaning and explanation of both the verb and the noun of Greek origin, Chantraine2 gives the following: “αςγαπαv(ζ)ω Sens: ‘accueillir avec affection’, notamment en parlant d’un enfant, d’un hôte. Devient assez proche de φιιλεvω, mais plus expressive. Avec un objet désignant une chose, aimer, désirer (des richesses, etc.): sens 1 Pauly-Wissowa 1864–1963: Vol. I, col. 733. 2 Chantraine 1968–1980: Vol. I, 7 s. vv.
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Davide Astori non homérique. Dans LXX et N.T. se dit de l’amour de Dieu pour l’homme et de l’homme pour Dieu. JAgavph ‘amour’, et dans le vocabulaire chrétien ‘charité’ = lat. caritās.
Noter l’emploi au sens de repas en commun des chrétiens, d’où fr. agape. Le mot est tiré du verbe et n’apparaît qu’un peu avant l’ère chrétienne, mais tous les emplois ne sont pas issues de la LXX et du N.T.” It is on such a cultural basis that Freemasonry creates, at the very beginnings of its modern foundation, two kinds of banquets, both called “agape”: a non-ritual one (in Italian “agape bianca”, open to non-Freemasons), and a ritual form (for Freemasons only).3 The symbolic Lodges were obliged to hold three agapes in the course of the year, and according to a calendar which was to be stricty adhered to: a) on 24 June (the twenty-fourth day of the fourth month of the Masonic year, which begins on 1 March, the feast of St. John The Baptist – summer solstice; b) on 27 December (the twenty-seventh day of the tenth month of the Masonic year), the feast of St. John the Evangelist – winter solstice; c) and on the anniversary day of the Lodge’s foundation.4 3 At least, this is what appears to be related to the Italian terminological use. Professor Jan Snoek, whom I want to thank for this and other suggestions, marks the terminological (and conceptual) issues related to such use as follows: the French agapes blanches (organised by a Lodge, but open to non-masons) were created in France during the 19th century, yet only became popular in France and Belgium (“this is why there is no proper English translation for it, and even though I think that ‘White banquet’ could be a suitable solution, such a definition should be explained anyway” – private correspondence). It should be strictly distinguished from the meal (which only Masons have access to) following an initiation ritual in use in many countries of the world: the English term to be used is “table lodge”, now usually known as “festive board”, a part of the initiation ritual (first degree) and open to Masons only. Even though called “agape” in French and sharing the partaking of bread and wine, the “French” Rose Croix degree (7th of the Modern Rite = Rite Français and 18th of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) will not be examined here because of its different origin and aims. 4 In the French tradition, from which the Italian one took most of its inspiration, the abovementioned dates are established by the Code Maçonique des Loges Réunies et rectifiées de France, year 1779 (anonymous 1975), approved in the Lyon convent in 1778 and destined to give rise to the Regime or Rito Scozzese Rettificato. In Cap. XV (Dei Banchetti e delle Feste) the author states: “Tanto i banchetti troppo sontuosi, troppo chiassosi e troppo frequenti sono contrari allo spirito della Massoneria, quanto quelli il cui costo è modico e regolato, in cui regnano la decenza e la fraternità, sono atti a conservare ed a rinserrare i legami che uniscono i Massoni. Pertanto il Maestro Venerabile radunerà a banchetto i Fratelli quanto spesso le circostanze lo consentiranno […] Le feste da celebrare nelle Logge riunite e rettificate sono i due S. Giovanni, d’estate e d’inverno, e la festa del rinnovamento dell’Ordine del sei novembre […] Il giorno della festa di S. Giovanni d’inverno sarà principalmente consacrato ad atti di beneficenza […] Lo stesso si deve osservare per la festa di S. Giovanni Battista […] Ci
Passover seder and Masonic agape
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A famous definition of agape is given in the Dictionnaire de la Franc-maçonnerie (edited by Daniel Ligou), under “Banquet”:5 “Le banquet est une des plus vieilles et des plus solides traditions maçonniques. Déjà les Constitutions d’Anderson y font allusion, ainsi que les ‘règlements’ qui leur font suite. Dès cette époque, les tenues et les assemblées de Grande Loge se terminaient par un banquet et Anderson recommande aux Frères de ne pas les transformer en orgies, consigne qui paraît généralement avoir été suivie.[…] La tradition s’est maintenue. Chaque tenue est suivie – obligatoirement au Rite ‘Emulation’, facultativement ailleurs – d’un banquet ou ‘agape fraternelle’. Au Rite Emulation, le banquet est rituel, c’est-à-dire que la table est en fer à cheval, présidée par le Vénérable, tantes que les deux surveillants se tiennent à chaque bout. On commence par les ‘Grâces’ récitées par le chapelain et le repas est ponctué par une série de ‘toasts’, les ‘toasts officiels’ au Président de la République (en Angleterre à la Reine), aux souverains et chefs d’Etat qui protègent la Maçonnerie, au Grand Maître), les ‘toasts traditionnels’ (à la Grande Loge, au Grand Maître Provincial, s’il y a lieu à l’initié du jour qui répond, aux loges sœurs et aux visiteurs), puis ‘aux absents’, enfin ‘à tous les Maçons pauvres et dans la détresse’. Dans les loges travaillant aux Rites Français et Ecossais, l’‘agape fraternelle’ qui suit la tenue est souvent assez rapide et assez simple, présidée par le Vénérable qui dit parfois quelques mots au dessert. Les femmes des Frères y ont parfois admises. Les fêtes solsticiales organisées par les loges se terminent en général par un banquet ‘blanc’ auquel sont invitées les familles des Frères. Il y a parfois les toasts traditionnelles, plus ou moins ‘sécularisés’ selon les circonstances et toujours un ou plusieurs discours. L’équivalent du ‘banquet blanc’ pour la Maçonnerie anglaise est la ladies night. Les assises nationales ou provinciales des différentes Obédiences se clôturent également par un banquet, le plus souvent strictement réserve aux participants et aux représentants des puissances maçonniques invitées. Aussi, les discours qui y sont prononcés ont-ils parfois une certaine importance ‘politique’. Aux Rites Français et Ecossais, se pratique le ‘banquet d’ordre’ strictement réservé aux Frères. La table est également en arc de cercle, il est défendu de parler à haute voix et de fumer. Le service de table est fait par les Apprentis. L’intérêt de ces cérémonies est quelles ont conservé un rituel assez particusarà un discorso come per la festa di S. Giovanni d’inverno, e si faranno al banchetto tutti e sette i brindisi dell’Ordine […]”. 5 Ligou 1991: 105–106.
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Davide Astori lier que l’on admet emprunté aux traditions des loges militaires sous l’Ancien Régime. Dans ces ‘travaux de mastication’ ou ‘travaux de table’, on se met à l’ ‘ordre de table’, mains sur la table et serviette sur l’épaule et la chaîne d’union se fait en joignant les serviettes. On emploie aussi un vocabulaire spécial. […] Au banquet d’ordre, les Frères portent l’écharpe ou le sautoir et, parfois, doivent se décorer au plus haut grade qu’ils possèdent. Le banquet existe également à certains hauts grades. Tantôt, il s’agit de simples ‘banquets d’ordre’ réunissant les titulaires de tel ou tel grade, mais à tous les grades de Rose-Croix, il existe une cérémonie spéciale, ‘l’agape du Jeudi-Saint’, banquet d’ordre d’un type spécial au cours duquel les Chevaliers ‘consomment’ l’Agneau traditionnel. Un rituel de 1765 publié par Paul Naudon décrit ainsi la cérémonie: après la tenue, le Très Sage prend la tête du cortège qui quitte la salle, le ‘dernier reçu’ reçoit l’ordre de préparer la table qui est couverte d’une nappe blanche avec un pain blanc dans un bassin et trois bougies. Les Frères ôtent les boucles de leurs souliers et reçoivent une baguette, ils se tiennent debout autour de la table, le Très Sage fait une prière, rompt le pain qu’il distribue, fait de même avec une coupe de vin, puis ‘jette le reste au feu en forme d’Holocauste’. L’Agneau rôti doit être entier, on coupe d’abord la tête et les pieds que l’on jette au feu avant de manger. Pendant tout le repas, les Chevaliers sont tête nue et silencieux.”
In the Dictionnaire de la Franc-Maçonnerie et des Francs-Maçons, under “Banquet”, Alec Mellor sheds some further light on the English use of the term: following the Lodge session, the “refreshment” – or agape – “est … obligatoire”. It is hard to say how old exactly the custom of the Lodge’s brethren having a meal together (either during or after the ritual work) may be, since our knowledge of the rituals in use before 1730 is definitely blurry.6 However, the custom of a common meal at the end of the Lodge’s work has been a positively confirmed fact at least since 1717. The fact that the ritual agape takes place in a “consecrated” space (i.e. where the Lodge’s picture is placed on the ground in the presence of initiated members only) stresses the rejoicing and the harmony pervading the Lodge, both such states of 6 Jones (1973: 489) claims: “è comunque certo che i brindisi venissero usati agli inizi del ‘700 e probabilmente anche molto prima. Anderson suggerisce che ne venne fatto uno alla festa del 1719. Nel 1757, una lettera autorizzata dal Gran Maestro stabiliva che ‘il primo dei nostri brindisi in loggia è quello della salute del Re e dell’Ordine, con 3.3’. Sia i ‘Moderni’ che gli ‘Antichi’ erano d’accordo su questo punto”. As for the ritual forms practised before 1730, see Snoek 2002, who also suggests (private correspondence) that “at that time the initiations took place within the context of a ritual meal; Only later the two were split, or rather, the part preceding the initiation was abolished, and a more strict separation took place between the initiation and the meal afterwards, even though that meal remains part of the initiation ritual”.
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mind being exalted by the sacredness of the common meal.7 The banquet is so important inside the Masonic structure that Lessing, in a famous paretymology, links the word “Masonry” with mase (“table”).8 Since there are many “meal rituals” in use within the various traditions, rituals which developed over the centuries within Freemasonry – hence, any generalisation should be avoided – we will just focus on the contemporary Italian situation with specific reference both to Masonic and to seder rituals.
7 See Moramarco (1995: 167) [conf. Masonic Service Association of the United States 1986: 9–10], who quotes some eighteenth-century works reported in a bulletin of the Great Orient of France (1869): “[…] I nostri banchetti sono al tempo stesso filosofici, morali e religiosi. Essi principiano con una invocazione al Grande Architetto dell’Universo. Il pensiero che si intende esprimere è questo: l’uomo non può vivere senza cibo; la sua esistenza, dunque, è del tutto dipendente da una legge superiore alla sua volontà. Il pane e tutto ciò che serve come cibo sono tuttavia il prodotto del lavoro dell’uomo. Tutto ciò che sostiene e allieta la sua esistenza è il risultato del suo genio applicato ai materiali che la natura fornisce allo stato grezzo. Se dunque da una parte noi scorgiamo una prova schiacciante della nostra debolezza, dall’altra tutto ci rivela il nostro potere. Se l’uomo dipende dalle stagioni, dal movimento del sole, dalla fertilità del suolo, altrettanto egli è capace di capire le leggi e la ragione di tali eventi, e di usare, adattare e perfezionare ciò che lo circonda, nonché di leggere nel Grande Libro della Natura i disegni e l’oggetto dei suoi doveri e dei suoi diritti […]. Con l’aiuto di queste leggi noi […] ci eleviamo verso l’Iddio che riempie il tempo e lo spazio.” (in Moramarco’s quotation). 8 Angiolieri Alticozzi 1746, the first printed text published in Italy about the Institution, portrays “I Liberi Muratori a tavola” as follows: “[…] Quando si mettono a tavola, il Venerabile siede il primo in alto dalla parte d’Oriente; e il primo, e secondo Sopravegghiante si mettono all’Occidente dirimpetto al Venerabile. Se è giorno di ricevimento, il Recipiendo, o i Recipiendi, se sono più, hanno un luogo d’onore, e sono messi alla diritta, e alla sinistra del Venerabile. Al collo del Venerabile appesi ad un nastro azzurro pendono un Compasso, una Squadra, una Cazzuola d’oro, ovvero di rame dorato. La figura triangolare è quella quasi sempre da loro osservata, e però con tal ordine sono posti i candelieri sopra la tavola, i quali nelle Logge più famose, sono lavorati in figura triangolare con bassi rilievi, belli e vagamente storiati, e adorni di figure allegoriche spettanti all’Arte Muratoria […]. Questi sono i tre tempi, che bisogna osservare nel bevere; nel primo si porta la mano alla sua tazza, nel secondo si mette dinanzi a sé, come in atto di presentare l’armi, e nell’ultimo ciascheduno beve. Nel bevere tengono gli occhi diretti al Venerabile al fine di fare tutti insieme il medesimo esercizio. Nel levarsi dalla bocca la tazza, si mette un poco dinanzi a sé, si porta dipoi alla mammella sinistra, e poi alla destra, e questo si fa tre volte. Quindi si rimette la tazza sulla tavola in tre tempi, si batte nelle mani tre volte, e ciascheduno grida parimente tre volte: Vivat. È bel vedere farsi esattamente, e concordemente questo esercizio, e il romore, che si fa nel rimettere le tazze sulla tavola, è assai considerabile, e non è altro, che un solo e medesimo colpo […].”
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Fig. 1: Arrangement of a Banquet9
1: Maestro Venerabile (Worshipful Master) 2: Ex-Venerabile (Past Master) 3: 1st Sorvegliante (Senior Warden) 4: 2nd Sorvegliante (Junior Warden) 5: Oratore (Orator) 6: Segretario (Secretary) 7: Tesoriere (Treasurer) 8: Maestro delle Cerimonie (Ritualist) 9: Copritore Interno (Inner Guard) 10: 1st Esperto (Senior Warden) 11: 2nd Esperto (Junior Warden)
12: Elemosiniere (Almoner) 13: Ospedaliere (Charity Steward) 14: Maestro di casa (Master of the House) 15: Maestro d’Armonia (Organist/ Director of Music) 16: 1st Diacono (Senior Deacon) 17: 2nd Diacono (Junior Deacon) 18: Maestri (Masters) 19: Compagni (Fellows) 20: Apprendisti (Apprentices) 21: Visitatori (Visitors)
9 The antique origin of a custom later destined to become a practice which was to be followed can be observed in the Table Lodge ritual reported by the Recueil précieux de la Maçonnerie adonhiramite, contenant les Cathéchismes des quatre premiers Grades, l’Ouverture & Clôture des différentes Loges, l’Instruction de la Table, les Santés générales & particulières, ainsi que les devoirs des premiers Officiers en Charge; … dédié aux maçons instruits par un Chevalier de tous les Ordres Maçonniques (Guillemain de Saint-Victor 1786, see pages 27– 49 for the complete list of Instructions).
Passover seder and Masonic agape
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There is also a special “military-orientated” jargon of the agape,10 which certainly has its roots and explanation within the historical context of Napoleon’s France, where – somewhat arbitrarily – the concept of freedom was associated with those specific historical processes. Underlying both the more general and peculiar features of both the feast and the ritual are at least three different stratified and overlapping elements, each complementing the others: the first and most general one, which is essentially anthropological, is the “sacred meal”; the second comes from a palaeo-Christian tradition; the third appears to stem from the Jewish tradition of the seder. Let us take a quick look at the three of them.
1. The Sacred Meal As pointed out by Maiocco (1995: 77), “ci è dunque permesso di affermare che la comunione alimentare è una delle prime forme di religione”,11 who then stresses the fact that the priests of Dionysos would hold at certain times “banchetti e assemblee generali durante le quali conferivano premi agli operai più validi […] Occorre sottolineare la portata religiosa e sacra che i banchetti hanno rivestito sempre […] I membri dei clans primitivi si riuniscono per consumare insieme l’animale sacro. ‘Essi comunicano – ha scritto Durkheim – col principio sacro che vi risiede e che essi assimilano […]. I banchetti sacri avevano per oggetto di far comunicare, in una stessa carne, il fedele ed il suo Dio, al fine di annodare tra loro un legame di parentela’”.12
10 Here are some examples from Angiolieri Alticozzi: “Il fiasco dunque da loro si chiama Barile; il vino Polvere rossa; l’acqua Polvere bianca. Non usano bicchieri, ma tazze, e le chiamano Cannoni. Quando si beve in cirimonia Muratoriana si dice: Date della polvere. Allora ognuno si rizza, e il Venerabile dice: Caricate; e allora ciascuno mette del vino nella sua giara. Dipoi si dice: Portate le mani alle vostre armi… in atto di operare… fuoco, gran fuoco”. 11 [The “food-sharing” behaviour might be considered one of the first kinds of religion.] 12 [Banquets and general assemblies, during which the worthiest workers were rewarded […] The sacred and religious importance the banquets always had should then be duly stressed. […] The members of primitive clans used to gather in order to eat the sacred animal. “They communicate – as Durkheim wrote – with the holy principle in it, which they are assimilating […]. The sacred banquets aimed to make the believer communicate with his God in the same flesh, in order to establish between them a kinship”].
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2. Early Christianity The Agape feast as an early Christian banquet or common meal, featuring a Eucharistic ritual,13 is centred on the almost universal Christian practice of the sharing of bread and wine, with some ritual elements belonging to both the Jewish Passover Seder and some forms of Mediterranean funerary banquet, which should also be taken into careful consideration. In the Didaché, a proto-document of the Eucharistic liturgy tradition, the agape is presented as an unavoidable holy occasion of communion: the ekklesìa, experiencing “on earth” the “heavenly banquet”, binds the brothers together in unity, thanks to such an intense community impulse, aiming to contribute to the fulfilment of the christiana societas on earth through the sacredness of the brotherly, fraternal meal at the end of the feast.14 Even though 13 With reference to Early Christianity, such meals were widespread, though not universally accepted. 1 Corinthians 11, 20–22 and Ignatius of Antioch (Smyrneans 8, 2) both hint at the agape (or love-feast), as later do Pliny the Younger (Letter 97) and Tertullian (Apology 39; maybe even Corona militis 3); Clement of Alexandria, censuring the indecent behaviour sometimes linked with such meals (see Tertullian, De ieiunis 7: Sed maioris est Agape, quia per hanc adolescentes tui cum sororibus dormiunt, appendices scilicet gulae lascivia et luxuria), distinguished the so-called “Agape” meals (lust type), “pitiful suppers, redolent of savour and sauces”, from the agape (love type) “which the food that comes from Christ shows that we ought to look forward to” (Paedagogus II 1, trans. John F. Keating, The Agapé and the Eucharist in the Early Church: Studies in the History of the Christian LoveFeasts, Bibliolife, 2009 [1901], p. 89). Augustine of Hippo claims that “Agape” meals were common practice in his native land, even though already forbidden in Milan before his stay in the Italian city (Letter 22 1, 3: Comessationes enim et ebrietates ita concessae et licitae putantur, ut in honorem etiam beatissimorum martyrum, non solum per dies solemnes (quod ipsum quis non lugendum videat, qui haec non carnis oculis inspicit), sed etiam quotidie celebrentur. and Confessions VI 2, 2: hoc episcopum vetuisse). The official prohibition of such feasts was established first by Canon 27 (“Neither they of the priesthood, nor clergymen, nor laymen, who are invited to a love feast, may take away their portions, for this is to cast reproach on the ecclesiastical order”) and Canon 28 (“It is not permitted to hold love feasts, as they are called, in the Lord’s Houses, or Churches, nor to eat and to spread couches in the house of God”) of the Council of Laodicea (364 A.D.), then by the Third Council of Carthage (393 A.D.) and by the Second Council of Orleans (541 A.D.): feasting in churches was prohibited, and the Trullan Council of 692 decreed that “it is not right to offer honey and milk on the altar” (Canon 57) and that “it is not permitted to hold what are called Agapæ, that is love-feasts, in the Lord’s houses or churches, nor to eat within the house, nor to spread couches. If any dare to do so let him cease therefrom or be cut off” (Canon 74). 14 Some of the most important features related to the “spirit of union” of the rite are perfectly outlined in the following quotation from the Didaché: “We give thee thanks, our Father, for the life and knowledge which thou didst make known to us through Jesus thy child. To thee be glory for ever. As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, but was brought together and became one, so let thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom […]. Remember, Lord, thy Church, to deliver it from all evil and to make it perfect in thy love, and gather it together in its holiness
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they cannot be taken into full account in this paper, the ancient Greek-Latin roots of the Christian feast (with the important opposition between eros and agape) are not to be forgotten and should be duly stressed.
3. The seder shel pesach Before analysing the relationship between seder and the Masonic agape’s ritual, I would like to briefly sketch both the Jewish feast and the general contacts between Freemasonry and the Mosaic religion. The feast of pesach celebrates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt after 210 years of hard slavery. Rich in symbols, pesach marks the birth of a nation, the shaping of an identity. Among the different kinds of rituals connected to the feast, the main one is certainly the seder (etymological meaning: “order, rite”) celebrated during the night of the fifteenth of the month Nissan according to the Hebrew calendar. Here is a short summary of the ritual order of the banquet: 1. Kaddesh – recital of kiddush blessing – sanctification of the feast – first cup of wine. 2. Urchatz – the washing of the hands (as in the netilat yadaim) but without blessing. 3. Karpas – dipping of the celery in salt water or vinegar. 4. Yachatz – breaking the middle matzah. 5. Maggid – reading of the haggadah; the four questions; second cup of wine. 6. Rochtzah – second washing of the hands, with blessing. 7. Motzi / matzah – blessing over matzoth; eating of the matzah. 8. Maror – eating of the charoset and maror. 9. Korech – eating the matzah in a sandwich made of charoset and maror. 10. Shulchan ‘orech – eating of the holiday meal. 11. Tzafun – eating of the afikoman. 12. Barech – birkat ha-mazon, drinking of the third cup of wine and welcome to the prophet Elijah. 13. Hallel – recital of certain Psalms. 14. Nirtzah – drinking of the fourth cup of wine; in conclusion; a wish is expressed that the seder has been accepted. As far as the relationship between Freemasonry and Judaism is concerned, Fellman (1973), former Grand Master of Israel, linked the Hessenes to Freemasonry on the basis of a number of shared aspects (as, for instance, the tendency towards bibfrom the four winds to thy kingdom which thou hast prepared it…” (transl. Kirsopp Lake, The Apostolic Fathers, Harvard University Press 1965 [1912], Vol. I, pp. 323–325)
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lical allegorism, the sublimation of the ritual tradition, the value of silence, the presence of the sacred meal, and the concept of “temple-community”), while Shaftesley (1979) emphasised the huge Jewish presence within nineteenth-century English Freemasonry, with participation rates increasing after London’s “Israel” Lodge was founded in 1793. Mola (1981) claimed that the Italian Masonic brothers of Jewish origin made up about 3% of the total in the 1880s, and both Sensi (1967) and Carr (1984) successfully tried to show the Jewish origin of some Masonic features. Moramarco himself, who prefers to narrow down the matrix of the Masonic ritual to Christian patterns only,15 overlooked the aforementioned influence of the seder shel pesach, almost unknown – at least in Italy – to those brothers who did not belong to the Mosaic religion. We can easily remove such an apparent opposition by considering the fact that we should better speak of a Jewish-Christian and not pre-Christian tradition.16 Also, an important piece of evidence for how directly relevant the seder is in this respect, at least in the Italian context,17 in the development of the Masonic ritual, was provided by Dino Fioravanti, Librarian of the GOI (to whom I am also grateful for bibliographic information), who was able to prove
15 Moramarco (1995: 165): “[…] è evidente che il parente più prossimo dell’àgape massonica è l’àgape cristiana (la quale oggi è praticata con grande zelo mistico nelle ‘Lovefeasts’ della Chiesa evangelica dell’‘Unitas Fratrum’, altrimenti detta dei Fratelli Moravi, che consumano in tale occasione un pasto in chiesa). [nota dell’Autore: sulle origini del recupero evangelicomoravo dell’àgape, cfr. A.V. Schattschneider: Through Five Hundred Years – A popular history of the Moravian Church, p. 55]. Tale parentela, beninteso, non è ‘liturgica’ quanto piuttosto storica”. 16 Jewish elements cannot be ignored here, so that, for instance, the Last Supper turns out to be nothing else than a seder, and in general, the agape (at least as codified in the Didaché) should be considered as a reflection of the even more ancient Hessenic banquet – see Bacchiega (1971: 127–135). 17 The first GOI (1805–1814) took inspiration from the “table rituals” established by the Grand Orient of France, choosing to adopt the French rules and ritual (at least until 1808) as codified by Instructions pour les trois premiers grades de la Franc-maçonnerie, of which Instruction de la Loge de table, ou banquet – conf. Atti 1986 – was a part. The printed ritual Loge de table – Loggia da tavola in Vignozzi (1810: 36–60) was written in 1810 and is basically identical to the one described in the French text (Bazot 1810). Another “banquet” ritual, more concise and controversial in respect to the sources, is the one described in Italian and quoted in an ample manuscript by an anonymous author, and dating back to the early nineteenth century (the text is available on pages 82–83 of Archivio di Stato Firenze 1991). Both Statuti Generali della Franca-Massoneria in Italia (1806) and Statuti Generali della Massoneria Scozzese (1821) belong to the same time and are pretty much identical, each being a precious source helpful in defining the complexity of the Italian ritual genesis until Farina’s works.
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that Lìbero Samàle and Ivan Mosca created the Italian ritual of the agape with the clear intention of transferring the tradition of the seder shel pesach.18
Comparing seder and agape within the Italian Tradition A detailed comparison and analysis of the two traditions is given by me in the Appendix. Here, I will briefly try to go through the main points of my argument. The several similarities between the two ritual structures are due to a composite synergy of factors: if a common Greek-Latin philosophical tradition (in which the “sacred meal” finds its niche) lies underneath the surface, the identification of common features is definitely striking. Masonic agape and Passover seder are not only joyful celebrations or get-togethers, but they both also share a strong communal concern (a concern that could even be defined as “charitable”, considering the etymology of the word agape). If a deeper analysis of common connotations and symbols shows a clear relation between seder and agape, it is difficult (if not impossible) to evaluate with certainty the nature of such a relationship. And if a direct shift from the seder to the Masonic ritual is personally attested by Dino Fioravanti, with particular reference to the specific Italian context, we should then be convinced that the relationship between seder and agape turns out to be the result of a mix of “invention” and “transfer”. The seder served as a matrix of the Masonic ritual in two different ways: indirectly, i.e. the cultural milieu of the Jewish-Christian tradition, and directly, through the way the re-adaptation of the ritual of the seder was performed. All the modifications and adjustments made from the matrix to the new creation show the common typologies theoretically expected in such a process. The creator of the Masonic ritual sees in the seder of pesach those important features he was looking for. Not having to deal with the hard task of creating something ex nihilo, he finds in the seder all the essential structures which can make possible the celebration of a community moment and of a sacred feast, fulfilling at the same time the atavistic need of dating the birth of the institution he belongs to as far back in the past as possible (a usual dignifying pattern). As in the Masonic ritual processes, the seder needs a main “actor” and a corresponding “chorus”, but no passive “spectators” (a pretty convincing analogy when speaking about optimising processes of ritual transfer). If the seder’s purpose is to unify and to support the existence of a community, such an aim seems to suit well
18 Even though I am aware of the clear apologetic element (Dr. Frederek Musall has wisely reminded me to be more cautious in this respect), the intentional statement of the authors who created the Italian rite seems to me to be prevailing here.
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the Masonic will to better the idea of group identity (see for instance the esoteric concept of “egregore”).19 As expected,20 when moving from one context to the other, some specific modifications come up: loss of perception of the tradition the ritual belongs to; reinterpretation of the symbols (most of the ritual quotations are intelligible only to brethren well versed in Judaism); changes of dimension and form (script, structure, performance, aesthetics). All the aforementioned modifications fall within the usual standards of the different function and intention (instrumentalisation) of what is taken from the matrix to be then inserted into the new context. As suggested by Prof. Jan Snoek (Institut für Religionswissenschaft, University of Heidelberg) and Dr. Frederek Musall (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg),21 among the many other possible and still open issues waiting to be fully examined are, first of all, the status – and representativity – the Italian ritual patterns have within the general Masonic context; secondly, an analysis of the influence exerted by the Hebraist movement and tradition in the Netherlands, England, and France (especially considering that the exodus from Egypt was usually interpreted as a political parable there); and lastly, the need for a much stronger contextual approach (together with comparative and textual analysis), even though we are fully aware of the many issues involved in finding data and tangible evidence; such an approach could lead to an in-depth investigation of a topic already fairly well outlined. In closing, it seems to me – as described before – that there is enough evidence pointing towards the fact that the relationship between seder and agape is the result of a mix of “invention” and “transfer” processes: the influence of the cultural milieu of the Jewish-Christian tradition and the re-adaptation of a well-established ritual.
19 That Ps. 133, also known as the “Psalm of the brotherhood”, is so much appreciated by both Jews and Freemasons, is certainly not accidental, but seems to hint at common concerns. 20 See the theoretical model in Langer & al. (2006). 21 I would like to thank both of them for their patience and kindness while reading and discussing this paper and for the many precious pieces of advice they gave me. I am also thankful to Gualtiero Rota (Parma University) for helping me out with the revision of the text. As always, all mistakes that undoubtedly crept in are all my own.
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References Anonymous 1975. Code Maçonique des Loges Réunies et rectifiées de France, tel qu’il a été approuvé par les Députés des Directoires de France au Convent National de Lyon en 5778, 5779. Livorno: Bastogi. [Reprint with Italian Facing Translation] Archivio di Stato di Firenze 1991. Rituali e società segrete. Florence: Convivio/Nardini. Angiolieri Alticozzi, Valerio 1746. Relazione della Compagnia de’ Liberi Muratori. Naples: Carlo Salzano & Francesco Castaldo. (Reprinted 1992. Foggia: Bastogi (Biblioteca Massonica. Fonti 4)). Astori, Davide 2005. “Popolo ebraico ed Egitto tra rifiuto e rimpianto”. Palazzo Sanvitale 15–16. Parma: Monte Università Parma: 124–136. — 2007. “Cucina ebraica in Italia fra identità e integrazione”. In: Cecilia Robustelli & Giovanna Frosini (eds.) 2007. Storia della lingua e storia della cucina. Parola e cibo: due linguaggi per la storia della società italiana – Atti del VI Convegno internazionale ASLI (Modena, 20–22 September 2007). Florence: Cesati. Atti 1986 = Grande Oriente d’Italia – Collegio dei MM.·VV. della Lombardia. Atti del Primo Convegno nazionale di studio sui rituali massonici. Istruzioni per i primi tre gradi della Massoneria italiana, 1808 (Milan, 5–8 December 1986). Bacchiega, Mario 1971. Il pasto sacro. Padua: C.I.D.E.M.A. Bazot, Etienne François & J.L. Laurens 18103. Vocabulaire des Francs-Maçons suivi des réglements basés sur les constitutions générales de l’Ordre de la Franche- maçonnerie…. Paris: Caillot. Bekhor, Shlomo & Abigail Hadad 1999. Haggadà di Péssach: tradotta e commentata. Milan: Ed. DLI: Mamash. Benamozegh, Elia 1979. Gli Esseni e la Cabbala. Milan: Armenia. Beresniak, Daniel 1989. Juifs & Francs-maçons. Paris: Bibliophane. Brown, Norman Oliver 1966. Body’s Love. New York: Vintage Books [Italian transl. 1969: Corpo d’Amore. Milan: Il Saggiatore]. Cambareri, Saverio 2002. Agape Massonica. Presentazione di V. Gaito. Cosenza: Ed. Brenner. Carr, Harry 1984. “Hebraic Aspects of the Ritual”. Ars Quatuor Coronatum 97: 75–88. Chantraine, Pierre 1968–1980. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Paris: Klincksieck. Di Luca, Natale Mario 1999. “L’agape massonica”. Arkete: Esoterismo Sacralità Gnosi 1 [online-version]: http://www.zen-it.com/mason/studi/agape.htm, (19 March 2010). Fellman, Abraham 1973. “The Essenes and Freemasonry”. Israel Scottish Rite, December 1973: 14–21 Goldschmidt, Ernst David 1960. Haggādā šel Pesah we-tôldôtêha. Jerusalem: Mosad Byaliḳ.
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Goldschmidt, E. D. = Gôldšmîdṭ, Dānî`ēl: Haggādā šel Pesaḥ: mĕqôrôtêhā wĕtôldôtêhā bĕ-mešeḵ had-dôrôt bĕ-ṣêrûf han-nosaḥ hab-bādûq wĕ-taṣlûm hā-haggādā ha-´ătîqā bĕyôtēr (...) = The Passover Haggadah; its sources and history; withe the complete text of the traditional Haggadah, the most ancient Haggadah from the Cairo Geniza and sample pages of manuscript and printed Haggadot in reproduction. Jerusalem Bialik Institute, 1960. Guillemain de Saint-Victor, Louis 1786. Recueil précieux de la Maçonnerie adonhiramite, contenant les Cathéchismes des quatre premiers Grades, l’Ouverture & Clôture des différentes Loges, l’Instruction de la Table, les Santés générales & particulières, ainsi que les devoirs des premiers Officiers en Charge; … dédié aux maçons instruits par un Chevalier de tous les Ordres Maçonniques. Paris: Philadelphie. Jones, Bernard Edward 1973. Freemasons’ Guide and Compendium. London: Harrap [Italian transl. 1987. Guida e compendio per i Liberi Muratori. Rome: Atanòr]. Katz, Jacob 1967. “Freemasons and Jews”. The Journal of Jewish Sociology 9: 140–41. — 1970. Jews and Freemasons in Europe 1723–1939. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lake, Kirsopp 1965 [1912]. The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. I. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 1778–1780. Ernst und Falk: Gespräche für Freimaurer. Frankfurt, Stuttgart: 17, 20. [Italian transl. 1975. Colloqui per Massoni. Milan: Sapere]. Ligou, Daniel (ed.) 1991. Dictionnaire de la Franc-maçonnerie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Maiocco, Domenico 1995. “Corporazioni antiche e Collegia: aspetti religiosi e civici”. In: Michele Moramarco (ed.) 19952. Nuova Enciclopedia Massonica. Foggia: Bastogi Moramarco: 77–83. Masonic Service Association of the United States 1986: Masonic Feasts, Banquets and Table Lodges. Silver Spring: Masonic Service Association. Mellor, Alec 1989. Dictionnaire de la Franc-maçonnerie et des Francs-Maçons. Paris: Belfond. Mola, Aldo Alessandro 1981. “Ebraismo italiano e Massoneria”. In: Rassegna mensile di Israel, July–December 1981: 120–128. Moramarco, Michele (ed.) 19952. Nuova Enciclopedia Massonica. Foggia: Bastogi. Paedagogus II 1, trans. John F. Keating 2009 [1901]. The Agapé and the Eucharist in the Early Church: Studies in the History of the Christian Love-Feasts. Which Place?: Bibliolife. Pauly, August & Georg Wissowa & Wilhelm Kroll 1864–1963. Pauly’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft. Stuttgart: Metzler. Roth, Cecil & Donia Nachshen 1934. The Haggadah, a New Edition with English Translation, Introduction and Notes. London: The Soncino Press. Sensi, Aldo 1967. L’“iniziazione massonica” alla luce dei rotoli del Mar Morto. Florence: Giuntina.
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Shaftesley, John Maurice 1979. “Jews in English Freemasonry in the 18th and 19th Centuries”. Ars Quatuor Coronatum 92: 34–38. Schattschneider, Allen W. 1990. Through Five Hundred Years: A Popular History of the Moravian Church. Bethlehem, Pa.: Moravian Church in America. Shillman Bernard 1929. Hebraic Influences on Masonic Symbolism. London: The Masonic News. Snoek, Jan A.M. 2002. “The Earliest Development of Masonic Degrees and Rituals: Hamill versus Stevenson”. In: Matthew D.J. Scanlan (ed.). The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World. London: CMRC: 1–19 (The Canonbury Papers 1). Vignozzi, Antonio 1810. Vocabolario dei Liberi Muratori italiano e francese corredato dei loro Regolamenti basati sulle Costituzioni Generali e del catechismo massonico addetto ai primi gradi […]. Livorno: Tipografia Vignozzi [Reprint Bologna: Forni, 1987].
Appendix In this section I will try to compare the two rituals as follows: on the left side, the Italian Masonic ritual (whose text is fully reproduced) is given, while on the right side, I present a short commentary and possible cross-references to the seder (for the text, see the editions Bekhor & Hadad 1999 (Italian); Goldschmidt 1960 (Hebrew); Roth & Nachshen 1934 (English)). Note introduttive L’Agape rituale costituisce una vera e propria Operazione Iniziatica la cui tecnica consiste nel trasmutare, “in compagnia” (da cum – pane), il cibo materiale in “Cibo Spirituale”. È quindi necessario impiegare tutte le proprie facoltà affinché tale operazione conduca alla realizzazione voluta. Pertanto si raccomanda di: 1. lasciare fuori dal luogo d’agape ogni cura profana; 2. entrare nel luogo dell’Agape in abito scuro (oppure con un coprivestito nero rituale – la “clamide” andrebbe indossata sul corpo nudo), con le insegne massoniche del grado, in dignitoso silenzio (l’entrata sarà regolata dal Maestro delle Cerimonie [MdC.]); 3. osservare, durante i lavori, il migliore raccoglimento possibile: qualora si voglia parlare o commentare col vicino, lo si faccia sommessamente compiere quanto è necessario per raggiungere il massimo della serenità interiore;
The concept of “rhythm”, the closest to the etymology and the value of the Hebrew word “seder” (order), should be duly stressed here: being able to wisely manage and organise time (a typical Jewish concept) lies at the very basis of the creation of a closer bond between “brothers”. “Serenità interiore” (“inner serenity”) and “letizia” (“joy”), feelings deeply characterising both directly and indirectly the seder evening, are also important features strongly emphasised in the Masonic ritual.
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4. non essere frettolosi nella “consumazione” dei cibi e di trovare il “ritmo” con i Fratelli [FF.]; 5. impiegare tutte le facoltà nella penetrazione del Rito, onde parteciparne attivamente: al riguardo si raccomanda particolarmente, di concentrarsi su quanto esporranno il Maestro Venerabile [M.V.] ed il Fratello Oratore [Fr. Orat.]; 6. riservarsi di parlare costruttivamente quanto sarà concessa la parola, preventivamente richiesta al proprio Sorvegliante [Sorv.]; 7. uscire dal luogo dell’Agape in dignitoso silenzio, secondo l’ordine che verrà regolato alla fine dei lavori; 8. dopo la fine dei lavori, sistemare con ordine gli Arredi, gli Strumenti e gli indumenti rituali; 9. infine, dopo aver riordinato tutto, sostare con i Fratelli in letizia. Questo “sostare in letizia” è di fondamentale importanza, poiché in questo momento avviene la “digestione” di tutto il lavoro d’Agape. Cibi per l’Agape rituale – Pane azzimo – Vino rosso d’uva – Uova non gallate, cotte in cinque minuti – Verdure e ortaggi di stagione, freschi, e olive verdi – Agnello cotto arrosto su carboni di legna – Frutta fresca di stagione e frutta secca – Acqua di fonte – Tutti i cibi e le bevande saranno serviti dai Fratelli Serventi (gli Apprendisti più giovani); – Durante il Rituale va messo pochissimo cibo nel piatto; – Solo dopo, quando la Loggia sarà in libertà, si consumeranno i cibi più copiosamente, seppure moderatamente; – Saranno intercalati brani musicali prescelti e/o letture del Fr. Orat., predisposte opportunamente.
Items on the traditional Passover seder plate: chazeret (romaine lettuce), z’roa (roasted shank bone), charoset, maror, karpas (celery sticks) and beitzah (egg). For a first systematic approach to the symbolical meanings and connotations of the food used in both rituals, see Astori 2005, 2007.
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– La tavola di Agape deve essere approntata in ogni dettaglio, prima dell’ingresso dei FF.; – Saranno stati predisposti i candelieri, il libro sacro, la squadra e il compasso, il testimonio, il bracere, la Menorah, il bruciaprofumi con i carboncini e le resine (incenso e mastice) preparate dal M.V., i rituali ai loro posti, il candelino presso il Testimonio, carta e lapis di carbone per il tracciamento del Quadro di Loggia; – I FF. si riuniranno in silenziosa attesa, e con l’aiuto dei FF. Esperti, procederanno ad “allineare” i loro corpi per il Rito di Agape. – Il M.V. accende col suo fuoco il candelino tenuto nella mano destra del MdC. – Il MdC. entra, accende il testimonio, pone sui carboncini le resine indicate dal M.V., poi esce, per introdurre nell’ordine dovuto i FF. Prima gli Apprendisti, poi i Compagni, indi i Maestri, poi gli Ufficiali e i Dignitari, ultimo il M.V. (N.B.: gli Ospiti entrano con gli altri FF. secondo l’ordine che sarà predisposto dal M.V., coadiuvato dal MdC. e dai FF. Esperti). I FF. sono in piedi e non all’Ordine. Il M.V. invita i FF. a sedere.
Among the objects mentioned here, the most important one to be considered in comparing the two rituals is without a doubt the menorah, which is definitely one of the major symbols of the Jewish tradition, and whose presence in the Table Lodge meal is attested (even though it is seldom used).
Ven.: “Fratelli I e II Sorv., aiutatemi ad aprire i Lavori di Agape. Fr. I Sorv., qual è il primo dovere di un Sorv.?”. I Sorv.: “È quello di assicurarsi che siamo al coperto”. Ven.: “Assicuratevene, Fr. mio”. (Il Fr. Copr. Interno si alza e dice sommessamente, all’orecchio del I Sorv.: “siamo al coperto”). I Sorv.: “M.V., siamo al coperto”. Ven.: “Fr. II Sorv., qual è il secondo dovere di un Sorv.?”. II Sorv.: “È quello di assicurarsi se tutti i presenti sono FF. liberi muratori”. Ven.: “Assicuratevene FF. miei”. I Sorv.: “FF. tutti, in piedi e all’Ordine!”.
The opening sentence, repeating the usual introduction of the Masonic ritual, in the Masonic scheme of the above-considered value of sanctification (see Note introduttive). In the Ma nishtana, the same is being declared in order to stress the concept of “change” and “diversity”.
Both meals appear to be opening with some kind of havdalah, whose function is to distinguish one articular occasion from another.
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(Tutti i FF., compresi quelli all’Oriente, si alzano e si pongono all’Ordine – i Sorv. restano ai loro posti) “M.V., dai segni che danno tutti i presenti sono FF. liberi muratori”. Ven.: “FF., seduti”. (Pausa – molto lentamente:) “Fr. I Sorv., a quale scopo ci riuniamo in Agape?”. I Sorv. (lentamente): “Ci riuniamo in Agape affinché il cibo materiale divenga cibo spirituale”. Ven.: “FF., in piedi e all’Ordine!”.
The purpose of the agape is being explained here: the same happens in the exposition of the ‘arba ha-she‘elot (the four questions) during the seder ritual.
(Il MdC. si porta dal I Sorv. e lo accompagna all’Ara, dandogli la sinistra. Il I Sorv. apre la Bibbia al Salmo 133 e al Vangelo di Giovanni 13,31, pone la Squadra ed il Compasso in grado di Apprendista. Il I Sorv., sempre accompagnato dal MdC., che gli dà ora la destra, ritorna al proprio posto, deambulando in senso orario. Il MdC. tiene pronto il candelino acceso, nella mano destra, per porgerlo al M.V., al I Sorv. e al II Sorv. al momento che questi debbono accendere le rispettive candele dei candelieri, posti a loro dinnanzi, sulla tavola. Il MdC. spegnerà poi il candelino con l’indice ed il pollice della mano sinistra, umettati di saliva). Ven.: “In nome della Massoneria Universale, sotto gli auspici del G.O.I., apro i Lavori di Agape di questa R.L. […] nr. […] all’Or. di […]”. (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto, accende la propria luce con il candelino portogli dal MdC. dicendo:) “Che la sapienza illumini il nostro lavoro”. I Sorv.: (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto, accende la propria luce con il candelino portogli dal MdC. dicendo:) “Che la bellezza lo irradi e lo compia”. II Serv.: (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto, accende la propria luce con il candelino
The use of Ps. 133 and John 13,31 as well as the addition of the very last part, link the ritual to this particular occasion, thus at the same time renewing the usual 1st degree Masonic scheme.
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portogli dal MdC. dicendo:) “Che la forza lo renda saldo”. Ven.: “FF., a me per il segno (si esegue) e per la batteria (si esegue)”. FF. sedete. Fr. Segretario, date lettura della Tavola da Disegno tracciata nell’Agape precedente”. Segr.: “A.G.D.G.A.D.U., in nome della Massoneria Universale, nella ininterrotta secolare Catena, sono presenti nell’agape del giorno […] i liberi muratori, come risulta dal libro delle firme. Dopo l’apertura dei Lavori, essi si accingono faticosamente, ma liberamente, ad impastare con la cazzuola il cemento necessario alla Costruzione del Tempio. Essi usano gli strumenti ricevuti in consegna dalla Universale Massoneria ed i Materiali messi a disposizione dalla Natura. Consumato il cibo necessario, raggiunta l’armonia, vengono chiusi i Lavori, secondo le forme di rito”. Ven.: “Come il primo compito del Libero Muratore è quello di levigare la pietra grezza, accanto ai suoi fratelli, così noi dividiamo col nostro Fratello il pane della nostra terra. Spezziamo il pane, porgiamone al nostro vicino di destra e mangiamone” (compie il rito).
The “bread” relates to the yakhatz procedure stage when the matzah is being divided; the benediction of ha-motzi in motzi matzah and – during tzafun – the assumption of the previously hidden matzah in memory of the qorban pesach, then follow. During the seder, the guests are helping each other both in the hand-washing ritual and while serving the dishes, which are both seen as an act of generosity.
Ven. (dopo essersi accertato che tutti i fratelli abbiano mangiato un pezzo di pane, dice): “FF., versate del vino al vostro vicino di sinistra”. (Dopo che i FF. hanno versato un poco di vino, nel bicchiere – restando seduti – dice:) “Come il sole feconda i nostri campi, così il prodotto della nostra vigna alimenti il nostro lavoro”. (Tutti bevono)
During the qaddesh, the feast is sanctified with wine as the classical qiddush blessing is being recited: “Barukh atta adonai elohenu melech ha-‘olam bore peri ha-gefen”.
(I FF. si tolgono i guanti)
A typical moment of Masonic rituality, it stresses – as in urchatz – the sacral function of the hands.
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Ven: “FF., prendiamo le Uova”. (Dopo essersi accertati che tutti i FF. si accingono a consumare le Uova, dice:) “L’Uovo rappresenta il Mondo nelle sue Tre Verità fondamentali; e come per giungere al rosso del tuorlo è necessario usare la Forza per spezzare la corteccia e l’Arte paziente per penetrare il bianco Albume, così per conquistare la Verità dobbiamo giungere sino al Suo Centro”.
As for the use of eggs in qorban chagigah: the more you cook them, the more they grow hard (as is being said about the Jews in Shemot 1, 12).
(Tutti consumano – senza sale, senza pane, senza bevande) Ven.: “FF., prendiamo le verdure, gli ortaggi e le olive”. (Senza sale, senza pane, senza bevande, solo leggermente condite con olio d’oliva. – Dopo essersi accertato che tutti i FF. si accingono a consumare le verdure, gli ortaggi e le olive, dice:) “Come la Medicina è l’equilibrio della nostra salute, così il verde dei campi ed il frutto degli orti ci dissetino e ci riposino lungo il nostro faticoso cammino. Ricordiamoci che l’olio, dono dell’ulivo, è simbolo di pace”. (Tutti consumano)
During karpas, celery is put into vinegar to remind participants of the slavery in Egypt; during maror, bitter herbs are eaten for the same reason.
Ven.: “FF., prendiamo l’agnello”. (Senza sale, senza pane, senza bevande. Dopo essersi accertato che tutti i FF. si accingono a consumare l’agnello, dice:)
The main symbol of pesach is being used here: the lamb (see also Ligou 1991 about the Rose-Cross agape of the “Holy Thursday”, which is quoted in the article).
“L’Agnello simboleggia il Sacro Ariete Celeste, e con esso l’inizio del Mondo. Simboleggia inoltre il sacrificio, senza il quale è vano aspirare al successo in campo iniziatico. Col sacrificio di questo agnello, che i nostri voti siano puri nella nostra offerta cosciente al Principio Universale”. (Tutti consumano)
This Masonic ritual section, with its initial 22 invocation to the GADU and a wish being expressed for the rite to be successfully accepted, can to some extent be compared with the Jewish nirtzah.
(I FF. serventi ora servono le vivande più copiosamente, seppure moderatamente. Il pane va sempre spezzato e dato al fratello di destra, il vino va versato al fratello di
22 Grande Architetto dell'Universo (= Great Architect of the Universe)
Passover seder and Masonic agape
23
sinistra. Durante l’Agape si bene solo vino) Ven.: “FF., prendiamo la frutta”. (Dopo essersi accertato che tutti i FF. si accingono a consumare la frutta, dice:) “Come l’uomo consuma il Frutto del Sapere, così noi rinasciamo alla Vera Conoscenza, consumando i Frutti dei nostri Alberi: Essi sono il prezioso dono del Sole, in questo giorno di Festa”. (Tutti consumano) Ven. (dopo essersi accertato che tutti i FF. hanno mangiato la frutta, dice): “FF., colmate le coppe!”. (Pausa) “FF., in piedi per i sette brindisi!”. (Pausa) “Alzate i calici: Al G.A.D.U. (si beve un po’) Alla Mass. Univ. (si beve un po’) Alle sue guide (si beve un po’) A tutti gli esseri viventi (si beve un po’) Alle nostre famiglie (si beve un po’) Alla nostra terra (si beve un po’) Al sole fecondatore della natura (si vuota la coppa)
The drinking of the fourth cup of wine, in a supine position, is associated with hallel (during its final stages); the previously mentioned berachah (blessing) is being repeated. The rituality of the four glasses and the interpretative richness of their symbolical meanings may serve as a proof of the sacral value of this passage.
Oppure: al Sole (si beve un po’) alla Luna (si beve un po’) a Mercurio (si beve un po’) a Marte (si beve un po’) a Venere (si beve un po’) a Giove (si beve un po’) a Saturno” (si vuota tutta la coppa) (si siede e tutti si siedono) Ven.: “Fr. Orat., dateci le vostre conclusioni”.
Even though obviously not part of the Masonic ritual (because of its peculiar Jewish character), an interesting parallel of the maggid, during which the haggadah is being read, can be found in the “Tavola dell’Oratore”.
(Prima delle conclusioni del Fr. Orat., ogni
An innovation of ritual: however, the presence
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fratello riempie circa mezzo bicchiere di acqua al fratello di sinistra. Ognuno beve totalmente l’acqua) Fr. Orat. (pronuncia le sue conclusioni – nel concludere spiega qual è il settimo cibo, cioè l’acqua): “L’acqua, quale principio di vita, penetra tutte le cose della natura”.
of water as a symbol of the Wisdom of the Torah is attested within the Jewish tradition.
Ven.: “FF. I e II Sorv., avvertite i FF. delle vostre Colonne che è concessa loro la parola”. (I FF. Sorv. ne danno annuncio alle loro Colonne) Ven. (dopo che i FF. hanno parlato): “Fr. Elemosiniere, fate circolare il Tronco della Vedova”. (Si può farlo anche solo simbolicamente. Il Fr. Elemosiniere compie il suo giro e, dove abbia raccolto realmente il Tronco, porta il ricavato al Fr. Orat.) Orat. (dopo che il Fr. Elemosiniere è tornato al suo posto, senza contrare i mattoni eventualmente raccolti, e comunque dice): “M.V., i poveri hanno preso parte alla nostra Agape”. Ven.: “FF. I e II Sorv., annunciate alle vostre Colonne che i poveri hanno preso parte alla nostra Agape”. I Sorv.: “FF. della mia Colonna, i poveri hanno preso parte alla nostra Agape”. II Sorv.: “FF. della mia Colonna, i poveri hanno preso parte alla nostra Agape”. Ven.: “Fr. I Sorv., il cibo materiale è divenuto Cibo Spirituale?”. I Sorv.: “M.V., l’assimilazione è avvenuta”. (Viene fatta la Catena d’Unione) Ven.: “Fr. I Sorv., a che ora i liberi muratori chiudono i loro lavori?”. I Sorv.: “A mezzanotte”. Ven.: Fr. “II Sorv., che ora è?”. II Sorv.: “Mezzanotte in punto, M.V.”. (Il I e II Diacono collegano la parola sacra) (Tutti i fratelli re-indossano i guanti) II Sorv: “I Sorv.: M.V., tutto è giusto e perfetto”. Ven.: “FF. in piedi e all’Ordine!”
1st degree Masonic ritual common ending, with expansion: the poor ones are invited to participate, as in the opening of the maggid (ha lachmah ‘anyah):
(Il MdC. Si reca dal I Sorv. e lo accompagna
“This bread of affliction, the poor bread, which our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat”. It is important to notice that the original passage is not in Hebrew but in Aramaic (at that time a sort of ‘international’ language), to show that the invitation is open to everyone.
A quotation from Ps. 133 (‘The Blessings of Brotherly Unity’) follows here: besides echoing the series of psalms repeated – the socalled hallel – at the end of the seder, it sheds some further light on the aim of the agape itself: “1Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! 2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; 3as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore”. (From the King James Version)
Passover seder and Masonic agape all’ara, dandogli la destra) (Il I Sorv. chiude il Libro Sacro e depone Squadra e Compasso, come prescritto, allontanati l’uno dall’altro, poi ritorna al suo posto, sempre accompagnato dal MdC. che gli da la sinistra) (Il MdC ritorna al suo posto) Ven.: “In nome della Mass. Univ., sotto gli auspici del GOI, chiudo i Lavori d’Agape ed ordino al I Sorv. Di chiudere la Loggia” (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto) “A me FF. per il segno (si esegue) e per la batteria (si esegue)”. (Il M.V. spegne la propria candela con l’indice ed il pollice della mano sinistra umettati di saliva) I Sorv.: “FF., per ordine del M.V., chiudo la Loggia”. (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto e spegne la propria candela con il pollice e l’indice della mano sinistra umettati di saliva) II Sorv.: “I Lavori di Agape sono chiusi sino al giorno […]. (oppure: fino a data da destinarsi)” (*** batte tre colpi di maglietto e spegne la propria candela con il pollice e l’indice della mano sinistra umettati di saliva) Ven.: “MdC., provvedete a spegnere le luci della Menorah, indi a distruggere il tracciato del Quadro di Loggia”. (Il MdC. esegue, spegnendo ritualmente la Menorah, indi bruciando il Quadro di Loggia dalla fiamma del Testimonio; il Quadro viene fatto bruciare nel bracere) Ven. (legge il Salmo 133, poi:) “FF., ora che abbiamo raggiunto la concordia, siamo pronti a costruire il Tempio dell’Umanità. Ritiriamoci in pace, dopo aver giurato il Segreto sul lavoro compiuto. (Si giura) Fr. MdC., regolate l’uscita”. (Il MdC. si pone alla testa della Colonna dei FF. disposti nello stesso ordine di entrata, e con deambulazione antioraria, provvede a farli uscire.
25
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I FF. stanno riuniti ancora nella Sala dei Passi Perduti; mentre il MdC. rientra, spegne il Testimonio con il pollice e l’indice della mano sinistra umettati di saliva, compiendo le stesse operazioni che ritualmente svolge in Loggia. Il MdC. esce e dice:) MdC: “M.V., tutto è rimasto perfettamente in ordine”. Ven.: “FF., riprendiamo i nostri metalli”. Compiuto il rituale, e messa in libertà la Loggia, come indicato nella fase introduttiva “si consumeranno i cibi più copiosamente, seppure moderatamente”.
During the shulchan ’orech, as suggested by Rabbi Bekhor, “il pasto viene consumato in allegria. Non bisogna però eccedere nella consumazione di cibo” (“the meal is being eaten in joyful harmony, but you have not to exaggerate in eating food”): such notes are perfectly consonant with those expressed in the opening section of the agape.
Kimberly H. Belcher
Ritual Identity and Cultural Transition in the Syro-Malabar Rite Catholic Church in Chicago Mar Thoma Shleeha is the cathedral parish of the St Thomas Syro-Malabar Diocese of North America, the first Syro-Malabar rite diocese to be created outside India. Its 800 families of parishioners are Indian immigrants, Christians from Kerala, who now live in the Chicago metropolitan area. In ethnicity they are Malayalee (Malayalam speakers); in ecclesial communion they are Catholic (in communion with Rome); in ritual practice they are Syro-Malabar, worshipping according to their own rite, part of the East Syrian family of rites but adapted to an Indian context. The vitality of this community can be seen not only in its size, its establishment as the seat of a bishop, and its dedication of a beautiful new cathedral building in 2008, but also in the extraordinary enthusiasm that its young people are bringing to the task of acculturation. The strength of their heritage can be seen in the fact that the young people see this task as a deeply liturgical one, as is evidenced by their approach to ritual transfer and the formation of their own identity as “Syro-Americans”. Syro-Malabar rite Catholics are not new to ritual transfer. From at least the fourth century, they have practised a liturgy borrowed from the Assyrian Church of the East, in Syriac, while maintaining many Hindu cultural traditions. Baptism, Eucharist, ordination, and the daily prayer were East Syrian in shape, while birth, marriage, sickness, and death were marked by indigenous rituals.1 Their self-interpretation was invested in their evangelisation by the Apostle Thomas, their Syriac liturgy, and their Indian cultural identity.2 Portuguese colonialism interrupted the Malabarisation of the East Syrian rite with a new kind of ritual change – imposed Latinisation.3 This colonial regime caused many splits in the Thomas Christian community, from which the Syro-Malabar rite Catholic Church, which maintains
1 Thazhath 1987: 45–62. 2 Pallath 2003: 9–14. 3 Ibid.: 71–4.
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communion with Rome, is one of the largest resulting groups.4 Despite close ties with Rome and the use of many Roman devotional practices, current Syro-Malabar Catholics are proud of their East Syrian liturgical heritage, now celebrated in Malayalam as well as Syriac. Ritual transfer is a theoretical tool, which identifies cases in which the dynamics of ritual change are driven by a need to adapt a well-established ritual practice to a sudden change in cultural context.5 These dynamics are distinctive, in that a new tension between internal and external characteristics of ritual in a cultural context requires an evaluation of heritage elements (those from the “old” cultural context) and acculturation elements (those from the new context) to create new ritual practices and interpretations. For example, in the history of the East Syriac rite in Kerala, the importation of the rite into India entailed changes in its embedding in the Indian, rather than Syrian, cultural context. Insufficient documentary evidence remains to examine the processes of negotiation that enabled this transfer, but from the results, one can speculate that the new embedding created changes in the practice of the indigenous cultural traditions such as annual festivals and life-cycle rituals, and also created changes in the interpretation (and interpretability) of the Syriac rite. In Latinisation, on the other hand, the context change was the ecclesial and secular structures of Keralan society, which were altered by Portuguese colonial ambitions and power. This change created a pressure to accept certain external features of Roman ritual practice, as well as submit to Portuguese political power. The effects of this pressure on ritual dynamics of the Thomas Christian church can be seen, on the one hand, in the dedication of the East Syriac churches to their liturgical tradition,6 and on the other hand, in the willingness of another part of the community to abandon the heavily Latinised East Syrian rite, and escape Roman dominion, by coming into communion with the Patriarch of Antioch. The concept of ritual transfer thus facilitates examination of the connection between cultural pressures and ritual dynamics in cases where climactic contextual change causes cultural pressures to reach a critical level of impact. This essay examines the possibility that ritual dynamics in these contexts can also be used to 4 Other groups include the Chaldean Syrian Church, which is in communion with the Assyrian Church of the East; the Jacobite Syrian Church, which is one of the Oriental Orthodox Churches; the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome but worships according to the West Syrian rite; and Mar Thoma Church, which is independent, combining a Protestant doctrinal orientation with an East Syriac liturgical practice. There are also several more groups, but these few demonstrate the diversity of practice among the Thomas Christians. Membership numbers are difficult to find and verify. 5 Langer et al. 2006: 1–10. 6 This dedication, as will be seen later in the paper, persists today, together with an unusually widespread understanding of the antiquity of the liturgy. The community at Chicago, as can be inferred from later parts of the paper, also maintains a confidence and self-sufficiency in the adaptation of the liturgy.
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negotiate cultural transfer on the personal level. One key to the connection between ritual transfer and acculturation is the role played by authorising discourses – culturally-embedded modes of interpretation which assist in the appropriation of ritual experience for goal-oriented personal change.7 The case of the St Thomas SyroMalabar Diocese of Chicago shows that when a community’s tradition sees the liturgy as a powerful force in creating the shared and personal identities of its members, liturgical change may be used as a paradigm for personal acculturation. Guidance of, and participation in, the ritual undergoing transfer then becomes instrumental in negotiating the demands of acculturation and developing the necessary skills for an identity which is in continuity with one’s heritage, but can undertake the tasks of the new cultural context. According to the work of Langer et al., contextual aspects relevant to the dynamics of ritual transfer include media, geography/space, ecosystem, culture, religion, politics, economy, society, gender, the group carrying the ritual tradition, and history.8 The transfer of the Syro-Malabar rite from India to Chicago entails a change in the geography, culture, and society of the ritual context.9 The youth of this parish, who were the primary subjects of this study, have undertaken an additional layer of ritual transfer by creating and attending an English-language Qurbana, translated by members of the diocese. The young people who attend the English Qurbana include both first- and second-generation immigrants, and range from those having a minimal command of Malayalam, to those who are completely fluent in it.10 Both first- and second-generation youth with a broad range of self7 Asad 1993: 138–147. 8 Langer et al. 2006: 2. 9 The members of the diocese are largely professionally educated, upper-middle-class residents of suburbs of Chicago. The memory of the community (difficult to substantiate with concrete documentary evidence) includes that of a first generation that worked in less skilled areas, but now, most family units include at least one member working in technology or medicine (probably due to the relative ease of acquiring a visa with these qualifications). Many women with small children stay at home and some households include at least one member of an older generation who may not speak English fluently and probably does not work outside the home. Young people, both men and women, often aspire to professional jobs in technology, medicine or law, or to other occupations requiring a high degree of education such as teaching. 10 Respondents to my survey instrument who reported ages between 14 and 16, inclusive, included 17 born in India, two born in the Near East, and 25 born in the United States, almost all in the Chicago metropolitan area. These same respondents ranged from zero (no skill) to five (fluent) in their self-assessment of skill in Malayalam, with a median score of four. Range was one (minimal) to five (fluent), but one respondent self-reported a score of zero, seemingly for pertinent reasons. (Questionnaire received 30 March 2008.) 14 to 16 was chosen as the age range for this analysis because this group of questionnaires was predominantly administered in the 9th grade religious education class, which is attended by those who celebrate the Qurbana in Malayalam as well as in English. It thus represents a more diverse
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reported fluencies attend the English Qurbana, but very few adults attend, so the creation of the English mass has de facto meant a transfer in the group carrying the ritual tradition, as well as a transfer in its language.11 This ritual transfer of the Qurbana provides a keystone for the self-identification of young people with the community: they are proud of the English mass and of their role in it, and they consciously link its development to their acculturation in the United States – to the negotiation of their identity. The ritual transfer, meaning the composite transfer of the Syro-Malabar rite from India to North America and from Malayalam to English,12 becomes paradigmatic for the transfer of Syro-Malabar rite Catholic Indians into “Syro” Americans. They see participation in the Qurbana as essential to their changing cultural identity. They use images and practices from participation in the Qurbana when describing the challenges of their everyday life, especially moral and religious developments. Finally, they see the future of the English Qurbana, and their role in it, as significant for the whole future of the Syro community in North America. The young people use the word “Syro” to designate their religious, ethnic, and cultural uniqueness. This word is abbreviated from the name of the liturgical rite, that is, the distinctive way of worshipping that the community has developed and used over the centuries.13 In a questionnaire distributed to English Qurbana attendees in Spring 2008, 17 out of 59 respondents answered the question, “What is special about being a Syro-Malabar rite Catholic?” using one or more of the following terms: “rite”, “liturgy”, “mass”, “anaphora”, “Qurbana”, “worship”, “participate”, and “sacraments”. This liturgical outlook was the most common category of responses.14 Furthermore, 31 out of 60 respondents to the question “What is special about the Syro-Malabar rite Qurbana?” provided answers containing one or more of the following words: “culture”, “tradition”, “customs”, “India”, and
11
12 13 14
sample set than the bulk of the questionnaires, which were mainly distributed to participants in the English language Qurbana. It is not simple to distinguish these groups, as many young people attend English and Malayalam masses on different weeks, and the whole community celebrates the large festivals (Christmas, Easter, Thomas feasts) at one Malayalam-language Qurbana. While a low level of fluency in Malayalam was a reliable predictor of attendance at the English-language Qurbana, even first-generation young people with high fluency levels are more likely to attend the English than the Malayalam Qurbana. In general, age was a better predictor of attendance at the English Qurbana than either place of birth or level of fluency. Both these layers of transfer are seen as significant by the young people interviewed, and often as concomitant: especially among the younger ones; the development of an Englishlanguage Qurbana is seen as inevitable. This is the definition of “rite” according to liturgical specialists; however, it is also the meaning of “rite” among parishioners at Mar Thoma. Other common categories included the terms “culture”, “tradition”, or “custom” (13); “faith” or “belief” (11); or “family”, “belonging”, or “community” (10). Some answers fell into more than one of these categories.
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“Malayalam”. This demonstrates the close assimilation between cultural and ritualliturgical aspects of Syro-Malabar identity in the young people’s self-perception. Of course, the attempt by the young people to balance the claims of traditional Syro-Malabar and contemporary American culture on their identity is not solely ritually mediated. However, the cultural identity being negotiated by the young has religious, ethnic, and linguistic overtones, and only at Mar Thoma, many feel, are the various claims of this identity successfully integrated. Since liturgical practice is seen as integral to cultural establishment, the English language Qurbana is a site of identity negotiation, which is enacted according to ideas about ritual construction of identity similar to those proposed by Talal Asad in Genealogies of Religion. Asad suggests that medieval monastic disciplinary systems were a cultural environment in which ritual was valued not for a cognitively-deciphered symbolic “meaning”, but for its potential to change human persons’ desires, capacities, and interpretive frameworks – in a word, “identity”.15 The identity of these American Syros is an object of self-development, and they believe that participation in the Qurbana at Mar Thoma – a Qurbana which is in a parallel process of transfer – is formative. Their participation in the Qurbana changes both it – as they are changed – and them – as they allow it to shape them as Syro. Asad’s examination of liturgical discipline provides a helpful theoretical tool for unpacking this process. For medieval Benedictine monks, Asad argues, liturgy, the rituals of communal worship, is “directed at the apt performance of what is prescribed,… [which] involves not symbols to be interpreted but abilities to be acquired… it presupposes no obscure meanings, but rather the formation of physical and linguistic skills”.16 Such a view implies that “liturgy is not a species of enacted symbolism to be classified separately from activities defined as technical, but is a practice among others essential to the acquisition of Christian virtues”.17 A formative ritual discipline demands a goal – change of identity – and prescribes a ritual process to achieve that goal – liturgy. By entering into the liturgical disciplines, monks “reorganized the basis on which choices were to be made”18 by “creating a new moral space for the operation of a distinctive motivation”19. This was done through an authorising discourse, which facilitated the displacement of secular desires with the desire for God.20 Far from being an activity set apart from the utilitarian processes of ordinary life, monastic liturgy was enacted in order to create identity structures that affected the whole experience of the world, making utilitarian processes doxologi15 16 17 18 19 20
Asad 1993: 62. Ibid. Ibid.: 63. Ibid.: 135. Ibid.: 144. Ibid.: 138–147.
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cal. Thus practitioners’ experience of their own bodies and desires was ritually reread as evidence of their progression towards a goal that was itself constructed by authority and communal ritual practice. There are intriguing parallels between Asad’s description of medieval monastic attitudes towards liturgical practice and the understanding of Qurbana at Mar Thoma Shleeha. The young people at Mar Thoma, like Benedictine monks, understand their personal identity as involved in a pursuit of a greater religious potential. Of sixty respondents to the question, “What is your greatest long-term goal?” thirty gave answers that indicated a desire for a development in ethical or religious potential. In comparison, 34 respondents gave an answer showing desire for success in their career or education, 10 in family life; five gave “successful” as an undifferentiated answer. Thus, ethical or religious development is one of the most widelyheld goal systems among the youth who responded to the questionnaire. Many of the youth also explicitly relate this desire to their participation in the liturgy. For example, one of the most powerful answers to the question “What do you think is the most important thing about being a Syro-Malabar rite Catholic?” reflected a characteristic interrelationship of liturgy, tradition, family, development of religious identity, and the virtue of obedience: “The Syro Malabar rite is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, form of mass [and] is most similar to the mass practiced by the early Christians. Where the Western World has a stronger grasp of rational thought in their practice of Catholicism, the Eastern World has a stronger grasp of mysticism. I feel a greater sense of god-fearing faith with my parents – especially the women. Though sometimes it almost seems like a blind faith, the depth of prayer, the significance [of] Mary and the saints for intercession, the devotion to the rosary, and the humility to God shows a strong sense of obedience and humbleness to submit to God that I really respect and that I think more of our generation could use in their lives.”21 The answer understands the particular characteristics of the Syro-Malabar rite liturgical ritual as directly linked to the “mysticism” of the Eastern Christian churches. The respondent also links liturgical practice with self-development in these characteristic religious aptitudes, and these aptitudes are vital to the cultural identity he desires for himself and his peers. In linking liturgical practice, particularly the specific rituals of the Syro-Malabar rite, with an overall attitude towards religion and life, the respondent seems to be trying to express what Robert Taft called the liturgie profonde – that is, the ef21 Questionnaire received 10 April 2008 from respondent Y64. In quotations from questionnaires and interviews, spelling and non-essential punctuation have been silently corrected; minor corrections for ease of understanding have been indicated with brackets.
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fect of liturgical practice of a particular rite on one’s spirituality.22 In this article, Taft distinguishes between the textual content of a particular ritual or set of rituals and the existential appropriation of these rituals (not as individually celebrated but as part of a cultural system) into a particular mindset. In the above quote, the questionnaire respondent has done a remarkably good job of unpacking this difficult concept in the context of his own experience, but his convictions are shared with varying degrees of clarity among a significant group of the young people at Mar Thoma. More importantly, these views are most prominent among those who take an active role in directing the development of the English Qurbana and interpreting it for themselves and other young people. The connection between liturgical practice, mysticism, faith, and devotion is itself part of one of the prevailing authorising discourses shaping youth experience of ritual transfer at Mar Thoma. The authority behind this conviction is evident in the young person’s assertion that “the Syro-Malabar rite is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, form of mass [and] is most similar to the mass practiced by the early Christians”. This is a lay understanding of the fact that the East Syriac anaphora (before Latinisation) was a text dating substantially to the third century C.E. It was celebrated in Syriac, thus presumably preserving some Semitisms which might predate Greco-Roman influence on Christian liturgical practice.23 The integration of this scholarly understanding of the ritual with the respondent’s personal convictions about its effectiveness, together with the widespread nature of these convictions, implies that an authorising discourse relating the ritual performance of the Qurbana to the cultural and personal formation of Syro-Malabar rite Christians is operative in this community. The word “participation” plays a central role in focusing this shared understanding of the English Qurbana, but its meaning is not immediately evident. It is quite common for Anthony Achan (the Vicar) to close the English Qurbana with thanks to the young people for their participation, or to enjoin more vigorous participation in the future. If one assumes that participation means lively verbal contribution, this emphasis is surprising, because observation shows that the English Qurbana has a far greater per capita participation than the Malayalam language Qurbana, for most of the people at the Malayalam Qurbana do not sing or pray 22 Taft 2000. 23 For a brief summary of scholarly consensus on this very important eucharistic prayer, see Bradshaw 2002: 111–112: “Although all the extant manuscripts of this eucharistic prayer are of very late date, the comparative geographical and ecclesiastical isolation of the region and the strong Semitic influence on early Christianity there have encouraged scholars to believe that parts of the prayer may be very ancient indeed, perhaps as early as the second or third century. Furthermore, unlike other early eucharistic prayers, it appears to have been composed in Syriac rather than Greek.” Note the substantial agreement between this summary and the respondent’s description.
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aloud at all.24 Yet “participation” plays a large role in the young people’s conception of the formative role of their liturgy, because participating in the Qurbana is not just singing or reading aloud. Rather, the understanding of “participation” among the youth at Mar Thoma seems to be related to the liturgie profonde – the existential appropriation of the verbal and textual elements of the rite, or, to put it in Asad’s terms, the translation of “physical and linguistic skills”25 into a shaping of the disciplined person’s capacities and commitments. For example, consider the question, “What does it mean to participate in the Qurbana?” Responses by young people to this question ranged from the tautological (“to take part in the holy mass”), to the rubrical (“actively sing the hymns, respond to the prayers, listen and pay attention”), to more complicated replies. In an answer that is more representative than outstanding, one sixteen-year-old says that participation in the Qurbana “means to receive the Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, to give thanks and adoration to God, to praise God with the community, and receive eternal life”. This is characteristic of the tendency of the word “participation” to shade from the ritual requirements of participation to its central importance in the identity of the participant, an importance that is processual and even eschatological. For the youth at Mar Thoma, it seems, participation in the Qurbana sums up the fullness of their cultural and religious identity. To be Syro is to participate in the Qurbana: which means to say the prayers and sing the songs with the priest, to be prayerfully present and listen attentively, to receive the sacraments, to be devoted to the Qurbana and to Mother Mary, to come to understand the faith more completely, to celebrate the life and death of Jesus with the Indian community, to keep tradition.26 Thus, participation in the Qurbana does mean praying and singing aloud, but it also means a particular mental and spiritual disposition associated with these activities. Participation means “to respond to prayers with God in mind”, “to get closer to God” or Jesus, “to meaningfully pray”, or “to participate in the sacrifice that Jesus made”.27 The following answer to the question “What does it mean to participate in the Qurbana?” expresses the conviction perfectly: “While saying prayers and singing… is a major part of it, in the end I feel it is the physical, mental, and spiritual mode one maintains that places them in a spiritual union with the Body of Christ that is the Church and Christ that works through the Church.” This 24 Participation in the English Qurbana is largely age-dependent. Children sit in groups with either their age-mates or their cousins or close friends. They keep the mass book, with the text printed in it, in front of them. Older children pray and sing more loudly than younger children, and the youngest do not seem to say anything at all. 25 Asad 1993: 62. 26 Adapted from various answers to the questionnaires. 27 Various respondents’ answers to the question, “What does it mean to participate in the Qurbana?” on questionnaires distributed 30 March 2008.
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response suggests that ritual techniques consisting of physical and non-physical actions can lead to a spiritual experience marked by a perception of divine presence. Asad’s monastic disciplines include the incorporation of “physical and linguistic skills”28 into identity structures that include the monk’s desire for God and willing obedience to his superiors; similarly, participation in the Qurbana, according to Mar Thoma youth, inculcates religious, moral, and spiritual attitudes of a particular kind. Personal interviews confirm that participation in the Qurbana is a skill that is subject to development. Participation is, first of all, a task – a demanding task. One subject alluded to the “different levels” of the Qurbana and said that “more and more is asked” of the participant as the “Holy Sacrifice” is approached. Part of this perception of participation as a task undoubtedly comes from experience of the Malayalam mass, which is sometimes a task that is too difficult. “When I go to Malayalam mass”, one subject says, “in my head I’m translating everything that the priest is saying into English: ‘all right, he means this, I can remember that from the English mass.’” This task engages him, but it doesn’t help him participate, “because everyone there, when they pray out loud or they chant, they pray in Malayalam, but here everyone prays in English, so I can be a part of that.” Participation is a task that requires a distinct linguistic skill;29 that is, to pray in the language. This goes beyond the ability to say the prayers, because it involves the praying person’s linguistic identity. When this subject prays, he prays in English. Reciting English prayers in the mass can be prayer for him in a way that reciting Malayalam prayers, even when he “understands” them, cannot be. Similarly, another subject, asked whether the Qurbana is ever boring, answered: “Listen: mass is as boring as you make it. The more you participate, the less boring it is. I remember when people told me that and I didn’t believe it at first, but it’s true. The mass where I’m most bored at is the one when I’m just sitting – like, I’ll be really bored in Malayalam mass. I mean, I know Malayalam, I can speak it, but not to the extent where I understand what’s going on in mass.” Like the previous subject, this young man can speak Malayalam, but cannot participate in a Malayalam mass. Many young people who report complete fluency in Malayalam have this problem. “It’s a beautiful mass, utterly beautiful, and I grew up with it”, one girl remarks, “but I just don’t get as much connection with it.”
28 Asad 1993: 62. 29 Cf. ibid.
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The “connection” indicated by “participation” in this deeper sense is difficult to articulate; the youth usually explain by alluding to the difficulties of participation and strategies for overcoming distraction. One subject said: “Let me be honest, sometimes when I’m in mass, I get distracted … When I was in confession once, a priest told me, … ‘pray to mother Mary for peace in your heart’, so I’ll just say, ‘Mother Mary, please help me to have peace in my heart’, and it gets me back into the mass.” In other words, this person, while paying attention to the prayers and songs, is also monitoring his own internal state. When he finds himself thinking about matters outside the bounds of the liturgical action, he takes a moment of personal, nonliturgical (but ecclesially authorised) prayer to return himself to the correct internal state. Interestingly, other interview subjects reported a similar internal narrative about dealing with temptation in their daily lives. One subject was discussing situations in which he knows an action would be against his moral code, and he is trying to find the strength to resist carrying out the action. Recently receiving the Eucharist then becomes the internal utterance which decides the outcome: “[On Sunday] you receive Eucharist, that’s … the source and summit of the Catholic life … If you’re doing something bad, or if you think about doing something bad, you sort of think, where was I last Sunday? Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that.” Ethical life, like ritual worship, is not so much a matter of willpower as it is of perpetually and gently overcoming distractions. Again, these remarks about the relationship of ethical and spiritual life to participation in the Qurbana reveal evidence of authorising discourses operating in the community. One young man “remember[s] when people told me that” participating in the Qurbana made it more interesting, suggesting an underlying communitywide network encouraging greater participation. The interview context, as well as the social structures the young man participates in, make it likely that some of this authorising discourse comes from older or highly respected peers, rather than, or as well as, from (Malayalam-mass-attending) adults. The subject who remarked on his internal utterance, “Mother Mary, help me to have peace in my heart,” attests to the complementary importance of sacramental confession, a ritual practice which is an important authorising discourse in Asad’s studies as well.30 Finally, the subject who called the Eucharist “the source and summit of the Catholic life” was, consciously or unconsciously, quoting paragraph 11 from the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium. The terminology associated with the (Latin rite’s) liturgical
30 Asad 1993.
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renewal is thus, at several removes, guiding the interpretability of “participation” as a shaping of the liturgie profonde.31 The confident approach of the last subject towards ethical development may also have its roots in the experiential appropriation of the liturgy. In the Qurbana, as another subject said, “everything is attributed to God”, so that, although participation is the task of those present, the task “doesn’t leave space” for anxiety about its own lack of fulfilment. In other words, the task itself is so demanding and the presence of God so all-encompassing, that self-conscious responses like guilt are precluded from the ritual process. Use of the ritual space suggests that such confidence is part of the Syro-Malabar rite tradition, although it may be reinforced by the liturgical renewal and its scholarship. On 4 July 2008, for the rasa, the most solemn Qurbana of the year, many people came late, including some pregnant women and small children. Because the liturgical space was being transformed into secular space after this rite, in preparation for the dedication of the new cathedral the next day, there were no chairs available for the latecomers. They, assisted by impromptu helpers from some of the nearby seats, matter-of-factly went searching through the building for more folding chairs and dragged them into the worship area, filling the aisles and passageways with more neat rows of families. This confident ownership characterises the use of ritual space and time at Mar Thoma. People nonchalantly bring babies and toddlers to the evening festal masses, take them out to feed or change them, and return to the liturgical space and action unapologetically. The babies – and older children – whine, cry, fall asleep in the mass, and stay at the church with their families until midnight or later. It is the festive season! One’s own participation, not that of others, is the focus; thus, one does what is necessary to ensure that one can participate (such as finding a seat), rather than concerning oneself with others’ concentration. One young woman in the Syro-Malabar Youth Organization calls this “church mindset”. The church mindset is what allows true participation in the Qurbana, as opposed to mere verbal participation. Church mindset is a psychological space that is readied for the Qurbana, “the sacrifice and the celebration”. It is required for full participation in the Qurbana. People are motivated to develop church mindset by a desire “to prepare themselves for a real experience. They will make the extra effort to sit and pray before and get into that reflective mode and try to really experience what mass truly is.” This mindset is a developed attitude, a skill. Verbal participation is a means to this attitude; furthermore, one who has developed it, it seems, is participating in the mass, even if he or she chooses not to pray or sing aloud. One subject remarked on participation, “just sitting there silently, I don’t think that does 31 Robert Taft is of course an eminent participant in the liturgical renewal, and is himself strongly influenced by Eastern liturgical understanding; it is therefore difficult to perceive causality in these instances. Nonetheless, it seems likely that this is a case of mutual reinforcement rather than one-sided causality.
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anything for you – unless you’re praying silently – because that’s what makes the Qurbana different from what you do at home … as a group, you’re praising and worshipping and participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice.” The offhanded exception suggests that for this participant, verbal participation is very explicitly recognised as a means to an end – prayer which, even if silent, can be communal praise, worship, and sacrifice. This prayer is thus not merely a ritual practice, but an identity practice, which is the goal of ritual transfer in this community. The English Qurbana is created, maintained, and celebrated so as to enable the development of this liturgically-formed identity characteristic in those who are unable to pray using the linguistic and physical skills required for the Malayalam Qurbana. The youth at Mar Thoma recognise themselves as taking part in a cultural negotiation that will determine what it means to be a Syro-Malabar rite Catholic in the United States. “You need to understand your heritage”, one subject says, “but at the same time you need to balance with the future. We live in America; we have to assimilate to some extent.” Mar Thoma is crucial to attaining this balance: “it’s not like you come to America and all of a sudden you’re American,” observes another subject. “You keep some of your well-being with you. Your culture is still here with you at this church. At least you won’t be completely Americanised. You’ll know where you come from, your heritage.” The church thus provides a point of heritage, but that heritage is demonstrably (and rightly) in flux: “I don’t feel a loss about the cultural identity of who I am. I feel like I know who I am – but you know those things change in five years.” The subject’s tone suggests neither trepidation nor resignation, but curiosity. Cultural identity, like participation, is not endangered or in question, but it is in the process of changing. The young people themselves also feel competent to direct the dynamics of ritual transfer through their own process of self-development. One young man mentions the contribution of the Jesus Youth international outreach group, who “started helping us reaching out towards God, and through God, we got our ideas – we got our ideas through God, so we started to say, ‘maybe we should come up with something crazy to start helping our younger youth’.” His duplication (“we got our ideas through God”) reflects a desire to emphasise that, although the momentum came from outside, the inspiration and the direction of the English Qurbana came from the youth themselves. This is important because the youth see themselves as the context for ritual transfer. They are the ground for identity negotiation, and they take responsibility for filtering the contextual aspects of the tradition from Kerala to the United States, from Malayalam to English, and collectively and ritually determining their compatibility with the internal shape of the Qurbana itself. Thus, the young people themselves enable an authorising discourse, which simultaneously guides their appropriation of the transferred liturgy and ensures a confident ownership of their own tradition-in-flux. This provides identity structures which guide acculturation to American society, and, moreover, allows the youth to ap-
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proach the task of acculturation without a fear of loss of identity. This results in a “transparent” identity process: Syros are aware of their status as inhabiting multiple cultural worlds, but express no fear of playing competing “roles” or “wearing different hats”.32 Instead, the qualities they see as “Syro”, combining linguistic, cultural, social, and religious aptitudes and goals, “fill out” their daily life processes. They think of their ritual lives and their very identity as continually in a process of change together. For this community, ritual transfer provides a crucial place of identity negotiation, in which the traditional role of the Qurbana as central to self-interpretation acquires a new meaning in the context of acculturation. This meaning is organised by the concept of participation, including a new emphasis on oral participation in the prayers and songs of the liturgy, careful attention to the interior state that should accompany this activity, and transference of abilities and orientations acquired in the liturgical context into the secular world. This community’s identity formation suggests that in the study of ritual transfer, attention should be paid to how the community sees the transfer as a means for identity negotiation, and additionally to the interplay between authorising discourses, the structures enabling these discourses, and the ritual practices informing and informed by these discourses. Thus, it is possible to begin to elaborate some of the ways in which ritual transfer can be used as a paradigm for self-development and acculturation.
32 It is possible that this transparency is more an ideal established by the authorising discourses associated with the liturgy than a reality; in view of Asad’s study, however, and the experiential reflections of interview subjects, even such an ideal is an interesting study result. The subjects themselves, after all, express a gap between what might be called a “participatory ideal” and their own participation; however, the important thing is that they recognise that there is an ideal, acknowledge a broad level of common understanding of what the ideal entails, and have specific strategies for more closely approximating the goal.
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References Asad, Talal 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins. Bradshaw, Paul F. 2002. The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship: Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy. New York: Oxford. Flannery, Austin (ed.) 1998. “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium)”. Vatican Council II: Volume 1, The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents. Northport, NY: Costello, 350–426. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Pallath, Paul 2003. The Catholic Church of India. Rome: Mar Thoma Yogam. Taft, Robert 2000. “‘Eastern Presuppositions’ and Western Liturgical Renewal”. Antiphon 5/1: 10–22. Thazhath, Andrews 1987. The Juridical Sources of the Syro-Malabar Church (A Historico-Juridical Study). Kottayam: Pontificium Institutum Orientale.
Appendix
Image 1: Mar Thoma Sleeha Syro-Malabar Cathedral, Chicago, during the English language mass on October 19, 2008 Photo by David Hwang
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Image 2: Young adults receive communion at the English language mass on October 19, 2008. Photo by David Hwang
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A Ritual Transfer: From the High to the Low in Hindu-Tibetan Himalayan Communities The Jad (Bhotiyas): A Brief Ethnography My paper focuses on the community called Jads (officially recognised as Bhotiya), who are situated in the Garhwal Himalayas (India), and the ritual that is being described is the yatra (ritual journey) of the village god (devta), Me-Parang. The Jads live in the valley of the river Jhanavi or Jad Ganga, within a few kilometres of the Gangotri glacier that is the source of the sacred river Ganga, of Hindu cosmology. They have an economy based on sheep rearing, trading in wool and woollen products, and were traditionally a part of the Tibetan salt trade. They brought salt from Tibet and traded it with grain and other goods collected from the lower altitudes in India, and to some extent Nepal. In addition to trading and animal husbandry, they do a little bit of subsistence farming, growing a variety of millets, potatoes, and red beans, and some garden vegetables, primarily for household consumption. Like many pastoralists, they follow what is known as a transhumant lifestyle, going down to a lower-altitude village in winter, when the upper reaches become too snowbound for the domestic animals and make life difficult for the people. They come up again in summer to the higher-altitude village, from which their main identity derives and which is the site for the performance of all the rituals that involve their devta. At present, they shift between two villages, Bhagori (higher altitude) at Harsil, and Dunda (lower altitude) near Uttarkashi town. These are their summer and winter villages respectively, and are therefore conceptually regarded as one village, because the same residents move between the two. Their flocks of sheep move in cycles of four months, but take forest routes, not directly coming into the villages, although one may see a few stragglers near the village as well. The Jad identity is rooted in residence in the Jad village, namely Bhagori, the higher-altitude village, and in the sharing of the way of life and resources common to all who live therein. Leaving the village, because of marriage or livelihood, places one outside this identity; such people become “others”. Those who live here have two important things in common: their high-altitude pasture (Purumsumdu) near the Indo-Tibetan border, and their village god, Me-Parang. For performance of
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most life-cycle rituals they call the Buddhist lama, for he is the only religious practitioner available to them. The Hindu upper-caste priests do not serve them and do not consider them to be Hindu either. The Jad Bhotiyas do not marry their neighbours, the Garhwali cultivators; they marry those with whom they share pastures and a way of life based on pastoralism. Sharing of pastures puts people on a conceptual horizontal axis in terms of equality, so they can marry because they are “like each other”. There are substantive differences in their marriage system compared with that of the Hindus, both in Garhwal and on the plains. The pastoral communities are more or less egalitarian and inequality, where it exists, takes different forms.1 The distinction between wife-givers and wife-receivers does not exist.2 Women have freedom to choose their partners, parents have little say concerning marriage (arranged marriages are not the rule) or remarriage. There is freedom of remarriage for widows, as well as for those who choose to discard their husbands or are abandoned by them. If a couple does not have a son, they often invite a resident son-in-law, who is known by the Tibetan term Magpa; the property effectively passes to the daughter, and hence the status of the resident son-in-law is very low. Unlike in most of Northern India, the Jads marry within their village (at present they have but one), but they also marry out into other Bhotiya groups.3 Those with whom they trade (or have traded), like the Tibetans “on top”, and the Hindus “down below”, are placed on a vertical, unmarriageable axis; but not beyond the scope of communication. Although officially (as per government records) they are placed within the category of Bhotiya, they do not consider all Bhotiyas (a large range of people included within this category anthropologically and administratively) as “equivalent”; and it
1 The Jads are divided into two hierarchical groups, the Chiang (upper caste) and the Phiba (lower caste). These two groups do not intermarry. The Phiba and the Chiang have exactly the same life-style, and the only difference is that the Phiba are not allowed into the kitchens of the Chiang who claim to be kshatriya. 2 In this region, both among the Bhotiyas and the Garhwali Hindus, the practice of bride price was more common. The Bhotiyas, however, have minimal transfer of gifts in their marriage, in which the community participates to collectively give gifts to the newly married couple to enable them to set up their new household. A marriage of the type of cross-cousin marriage, where the girl marries her mother’s brother’s son, is preferred, which is also a way in which they are distinguishde, at least compared to North Indian Hindus. In kinship reckoning, all relatives from the mother’s side are given equal importance, so that the dhyani, the married daughters of a family, include the mother’s sisters’ daughters as well as the mother’s sisters, a practice not found among Hindus who count only the father’s sisters and their daughters as dhyani. Usually also all kinship relations are counted with the female as ego, for reasons which are too elaborate to be discussed here. 3 When they marry into other groups, the upper and lower caste distinctions are still followed. The other Bhotiya groups with which they commonly marry are those occupying the Niti and Mana passes near Kedarnath, those situated in Chamoli and Kinnaur (Himachal Pradesh).
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has been correctly understood as a “generic” name only.4 All trans-border traders were placed in the category of Bhotiya, including those in Sikkim and Nepal, and some scholars, like Brown, are of the opinion that British trade interests were active in maintaining the category.5 In the Garhwal region, the various Bhotiya groups are named after the tributaries of the river Ganga closest to the mountain passes they had used for trade; for example, the Jads were named after Jhanavi and used the Neilang pass located nearby. The term Rongpa is more familiar to the villagers, but most outsiders, and the literature, including the census, refer to them as Jads, so we shall refer to them as Jads in this paper.
How Ritual is Understood in this Discussion Rituals are performances that express certain beliefs and can be used for transmission of meanings; in other words, they are communicative in nature. The communicative aspect of rituals has been emphasised by Leach who understands them as “a form of social communication or a code of information”.6 Another author who treats rituals as communication is Rappaport (1999), according to whom ritual is a unique mode of communication because of its “ability to confer qualities of clarity, certainty, trustworthiness, and orthodoxy of the information it conveys”.7 There remains a theoretical openness to the definition of ritual, although most agree to the fact that rituals are performative or a form of action, as opposed to thought. In this paper, we will adopt the definition given by Eliade: “those conscious and voluntary, repetitious and stylized symbolic bodily actions that are centered on cosmic structures and/or sacred presences.”8 We will also understand rituals as communicative, like a language; and like a language they are understood to be part of a universe of shared symbolisms. In other words, to understand a ritual, it needs to be situated within a context of shared meanings. In this way, ritual is understood more as meaningful action than as form. Rappaport has dwelt more on the universal character of the “form” of the ritual in emphasising its unique ability to transfer meanings, because its character cannot be duplicated by any other mode of communication. According to him, what ritual can transmit, no other technique can, and this is because ritual has a form that no other mode has. He also believes that: “If, in contrast to the infinite variety of ritual contents, the ritual form is universal, then it is plausible to assume that the meta messages intrinsic to that form are also universal”.9 But if one delves 4 5 6 7 8 9
Fürer-Haimendorf 1981; Brown 1991. Brown 1991; Channa 2005. Eliade 1987: 405. Robbins 2001: 592. Eliade 1987: 405. Rappaport 1999: 31.
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more into what Rappaport has to say about transmission, the following important statement can be extracted “in fact the transmitters of ritual’s messages are always among their most important receivers” (emphasis by the author). This implies that Rappaport is aware that as a message (in content), ritual varies in the impact it creates, and it is most comprehensible to those who are direct participants, or those who “understand what it means”. Thus, one agrees with Rappaport that the “form” of ritual makes it an excellent vehicle of communication in a generalised sense, yet in its “content”, the ritual communicates specifically within a context. One may refer to Bell,10 when she refers to Stanley Tambiah (1979) who emphasises the power ritual has for institutionalised communication because of its formalism and distancing effect: “Saying is just saying and formalized acts are idiosyncratic, he argues, unless they conform to established social conventions and subject themselves to judgments of legitimacy”. Thus, a ritual is both legitimised and understood in a context, especially in reference to its content as opposed to its “form” (Rappaport). In the social context in which it is performed, the performers communicate directly to a socially and politically relevant audience when they are giving out their message whose efficacy is no doubt encoded in its invariant “form” as ritual per se, but whose content is meaningful only to a specified universe. Further, the limitation of “form”, viewed as invariant by Rappaport, becomes all the more meaningful when we are talking about a “transfer”.11 For if ritual can be transferred, this also implies that the world-views, the systems of meanings and cultural models, can also become comprehensible across the boundaries of the “transfer”. In Rappaport’s sense of invariant form, the concept of transfer is meaningless. Transfer is thus relevant only in terms of content. In the ritual that I discuss here, the yatra, the content of the message, is shared across the “pahari” universe of culture, and the transfer situation refers to taking on rituals by a community that had earlier not viewed itself as “empowered” to do so. The Jads, regarded as “jungle” (literally, of the forest), were earlier never in a situation, either socially or politically, where their devta could go on a yatra. Because of changed political and economic circumstances, discussed in more detail later in the chapter, they now feel confident to incorporate this ritual. Therefore, in this context, the “ritual transfer” is in relation to a revaluation of the self and the other, as well as a reciprocal evaluation by the others. In other words, the meaning that is being communicated is a “political” meaning because it is informed by and negotiates power relations. Although rituals carry the weight of “tradition” and the “archaic”, most anthropological works have recognised the historical significance of rituals which have
10 Bell 1992: 41. 11 Rappaport 1999: 31.
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sometimes even made history,12 and are commonly recognised as taking on political meaning in a changing world. The political use of rituals lies in the symbolic meanings being manipulated to convey messages of power. As Kurti (1990) has described, both the state and the people in Eastern Europe used political rituals, although for quite different ends, thereby reinforcing the fact that rituals have “polysemic” meanings. In the present paper, the political dimension of rituals has been emphasised in a situation where power relationships are becoming reformulated, and boundaries of identities are shifting and being renegotiated. In this context, the public nature of ritual and its visual impact, along with its symbolic power, are used to communicate a change in the status of one community vis-à-vis others who fall within its range of meaningfulness, or who matter, for some reason. The process of transfer also involves a manipulation of the meaning to convey different things at different levels, hence the polysemy. Thus, we refer to ritual as performative public actions that are used to convey meanings within a shared universe of beliefs involving the “sacred presence” (Eliade). They are not understood as “texts”,13 but as real activities, and as Bell puts it, “ritual practices are themselves the very production and negotiation of power relations”, being understood as a strategic means of negotiating power, with such action being situated and contextual, “within the network of strategic power relations”.14 In the next section I situate the ritual within its social and cultural context.
The Universe of the “Living Gods”; the Himalayan Communities Identified as “Pahari” Acknowledging the fact that rituals may have a political dimension, the question that still needs to be raised is why rituals should be used for such ends? In other words, what kind of society or community would negotiate power relationships and political and economic boundaries with the help of rituals, which overtly deal with the supernatural? Comaroff has identified literacy as the turning point where consciousness is modified to understand things in abstraction, to decontextualise knowledge from its context, and to objectify it.15 The non-literates understand things in their own context, in a polysemic and non-dualistic way. Thus, there is no separation of ritual and political, natural and supernatural, and the social in the world-view of the non-literate Jads. They thus essentially include the supernatural within the ambit of day-to-day social relations. In fact, it is better to use the term
12 13 14 15
Sahlins 1995. Marcus & Fischer 1986. Bell 1992: 196. Comaroff 1985: 143–144.
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superhuman, rather than supernatural, to refer to their devta since the dichotomy of natural and social does not exist. The Jads have an undifferentiated world-view that defines an integrated cosmos that is meaningful and works according to a logic well understood by those who share this view. The pahari culture, distinct from the mainstream culture of the Hindus of the plains, is defined largely by a cosmology that includes these “living gods”, as compared to the deified iconic gods of the Hindus. The sacred space on the pahar is shared by many other spirits and devtas, including those of the Buddhists and the Hindus. Thus the Jads see no contradiction in trying to keep them appeased. They therefore perform rituals at the Buddhist monastery, and may accept the help of Hindu practitioners to deal with a spirit. The pahar is also not defined strictly by the Hindu caste system, and the cultural differences between upper and lower castes are minimal.16 The animated universe is a shared understanding that makes “living gods” both meaningful and real. It is with reference to this understanding that the Jads can be defined as a people with a shared universe of meaning, but without any sense of a doctrinal religion. There is no term for religion in their language, for they have no sense of religion as a defined set of meanings that is different from day-to-day-living. They believe in the sacred, they believe in non-human, more powerful beings, such as devta, but not in religion as a Church or as a doctrine, or even as identity. The lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn on shared cognitions, and not by name or location, or even physical proximity. Thus, identities are drawn around a meta-language of communication, and are therefore of necessity, and can be shared and communicated only with those who can read it or “into it”. The reality of the existence of gods who are living, and who have agency, and movement, is best understood by reference to the work of Sahlins (1995). At the heart of this argument is the observation that, although the physiological apparatus for perception may be species-specific for humans, the perceptions, or “how we see the world”, are also conditioned by empirical judgements. “At issue rather is the organization of experience, including the training of the senses, according to social canons of relevance”.17 According to Sahlins, such an understanding is not new to western philosophy, and Locke, for example, believed that the same experiences constitute different sorts of “things” for different people, as is now explicit in the large number of studies of “ethno-classifications”.18 The entire argument then revolves around the question of “what is objectivity?” and many scholars are ready to concede a “relativistic” nature to it: “It must mean that objectivity itself is a
16 For more on pahari culture, refer to Berreman 1999. 17 Sahlins 1995: 155. 18 Conklin 1962; Morris 1984.
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variable social value – an interested selection of relevant perceptible attributes out of all those possible”.19 It is this relativisation of objectivity that makes possible the existence of an alternative “world-in-itself”, a sense of reality that does not necessarily correspond to western notions of objectivity – the existence of a humanised cosmos where ordinary objects, like bamboo and trees, can also be the bodies of gods. So, like the Hawaiians who believed that food plants, fish, and the wind were both simple objects as well as the bodies of gods, the Jads, too, believe that the deodar trees in their forests are gods, devta, and represent the superhuman beings of their universe. I was at first taken aback, while doing fieldwork, when people attributed agency to gods who were neither visible” nor “perceptible”, at least not to me. They also spoke and communicated very well with these living gods, who seemed to have as much agency as any living human being. In other words, the gods were treated as members of social life, their living presence constantly acknowledged, in phrases such as, “He wished it to be like this”, or “She has gone to meet her husband”, “He likes meat”, “She was feeling cold”, and so on. Then, I realised, as Sahlins says, “These are known by their relationships to a system of local knowledge, not simply as objective intuitions”.20 In the course of my work, I slowly began to realise the inscriptions in natural phenomena, the sound of the wind, the ripples on water, the sun and shadows and numerous other signs which the people were able to read. Some things never cease to baffle, yet I was convinced that there was an alternative system of rationality, and nothing that I say here will make sense, unless we get over the confinement to a specifically western epistemology and consequent ontological exploration of the world. One of the important empirical conditions for the existence of the devta was the higher altitudes, “there are no devta in the plains”, everyone said. The reason is because “the plains are dirty”; up here, “it is sangma (pure)”. This dichotomy between the pahar and the plains exists not just in terms of physical dirt, but in terms of a metaphoric differentiation between the “safe” and the “dangerous”, between self and the “others”, which culminated in the political separation of the pahar from the plains, and the creation of the new state of Uttarakhand, in 2001.21
The Devta Having accepted the ontological reality of the existence of the devta, in view of the philosophical debate, briefly summarised above, let us now see how they are understood by the local people of the pahar, including the Jads. The devta can be 19 Sahlins 1995: 158. 20 Ibid.: 169. 21 Channa 2005.
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seen as superhuman beings with special powers, but otherwise not too different from humans. Among their special (superhuman) qualities is their ability to transcend time, though not space. These gods are not living gods, like the Buddha, though the rajah of Tehri Garhwal is a living god in that sense – they are disembodied, yet present, and have a location, just like living beings. It is in this sense that they can be only in one place at a time, like humans, and that the entire concept of a yatra, which involves physical transfer, becomes meaningful.22 Each village in Garhwal, and also adjoining Himachal Pradesh (which is culturally similar and an area of intermarrying), has what they call a village devta whose status is that of a ruling deity. The rajah of Tehri Garhwal,23 also known as the living God or bolanda badri (the badri who speaks), is at the apex of a system in which all the other local village gods and goddesses are viewed as ruling monarchs over their territory.24 The ruling gods have their treasury, their coterie of functionaries who take care of and manage the god’s property. Most decisions, like when to plant crops, when to harvest them, when to take the sheep on their grazing routes, and even who to marry, are always controlled by the will of the ruling devta. There are many gods in each village, and there is generally a political hierarchy of these gods. Some of them are local manifestations of higher deities, like Badrinath, others are deified versions of kings who had lived earlier, and some may have just spontaneously evolved, or are viewed as having existed from time immemorial, like the many nag devta (snake gods). There are kinship relations that define the hierarchy of the gods within a single village, and of the ruling village gods in relation to each other. In one village, in Kinnaur (adjoining area), for example, the ruling deity is nag devta, who lives in the village temple with his three younger brothers; in the same village there are several other deities, and major decisions are often taken in consultation with them. I was told that because of the imminent threat of floods, the nag devta had held a midnight consultation with the Buddha (considered here as a devta) and a number of other visiting devta from adjoining villages. The nag devta has as his spouse the village goddess of another village, some distance away. In the manner of royalty in South Asia, the village gods only marry goddesses who are reigning deities, not ordinary ones. The female 22 On a visit to a village in Himachal, we visited the temple of the local village deity and were told that the “temple was empty as the goddess had gone on a visit”. Thus, it is only here that the devta is also regarded as physically absent from a certain spot, and present in another. 23 The state of Uttarakhand is divided into Garhwal and Kumaon divisions. Garhwal comprises the districts of Chamoli, Pauri, Tehri and Uttarkashi. Kumaon was annexed by the British during the colonial period, but Garhwal remained independent under the king. It is interesting that the Jads do not identify with the Bhotiya tribes of Kumaon, possibly because it is not the territory of their king. 24 The concept of Bolanda Badri is strictly confined to the pahar. The Hindus of the plains only believe in the shrine of Badrinath and worship him only in his iconic form. The concepts of living gods, or gods in human form, are ridiculed by the plains' Hindus.
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goddesses have their own village of birth (mait) which they visit from time to time, in the manner of married daughters visiting their natal villages.25 However, unlike the village deities of the surrounding region of the pahar, MeParang, the village god of Bhagori, is a stand-alone devta, not shared (or claimed) by anyone else and which is rather unusual for the mountain cosmology, unrelated to any other devta. By stand-alone, I mean that he is not a replication of any higher Hindu deity, like the many replications of Badrinath or Bhagwati, found in the villages of pahar, and he is neither related by kinship, like brother or uncle, nor by marriage to any other deity. “Me” means fire in the local language, and “Parang” is an honorific, a term of respect. “Me” also means grandfather. In appearance Me-Parang is the prototype of the ancient gods worshipped by the high-altitude pastoralist: he is represented by tall bamboo poles, tied with red scarves and cloth. However, this appearance is only symbolic, for the people here do not ascribe any particular form to any devta. They do not, for example, think that bamboo poles are Me-Parang, they only think that the bamboo poles that they have installed at the entry of the village are installed at the appropriate place of residence for Me-Parang who is yet to have any property or temple in his name. Elsewhere in the pahar, elaborate temples are built for the village devta, residences like palaces. In fact, the term quila (fort) is also used for the residence of some politically powerful devta. But none of these “residences” have any image of the devta installed in them in the manner of the Hindu temples. He or she may appear in any form, or in a favourite form, but “that form is not the devta”. Height has been viewed as a universal symbol of superiority.26 For the Jads, height also signifies purity (sangma) and therefore they believe that the devta live in their high-altitude village at Bhagori, but not “down there”. Purity of space (here high altitude) is considered a rational explanation for the presence of devta in their village and vicinity. While the Hindus say that this region is “sacred” because the river Ganga flows through it, the Jads say that the Ganga flows here “because it is sangma”. They believe every deodar tree in the upper altitudes, in the forests near their village at Harsil, is a devta. They also believe the forests in the upper reach to be the abode of matriyal or forest spirits. Therefore, Me-Parang lives in the highaltitude village. They must salute him every morning as soon as they get up, and when they are in their lower-altitude village (Dunda) this means looking up north and then saluting because he is always “up there”. “Up” and “down” are special signifiers of status in the cosmology of the Jads, “up” always superior and “down” always inferior. This dichotomy is analogous to pure vs. impure and safe vs. dangerous and the pahar vs. the plains. 25 Sax 2000. 26 Smart 1996: 133.
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Their devta descend into the bodies of people who are recognised as mediums. These mediums are treated as ordinary people and not as shamans or any kind of religious functionaries.27 Me-Parang has no temple assigned to him and does not command wealth, or a retinue of priests and servants who manage temple funds and rituals, as in the wealthier Hindu temples. He has only a medium, and his major rituals are collectively performed in the typically egalitarian fashion of the Jads. This clearly shows that his “royalty” is not of antiquity, but a recent phenomenon that has yet to take full shape. His people, too, are not organised into the kind of typical hierarchy of organised temple structures.
The Yatra as Ritual Keeping to the definition of ritual as given by Eliade, and quoted above, we come to an interesting divergence here. When we talk of rituals, these are defined as “conscious acts” or “stylized repetitive performances” that are usually performed by human beings in relation to what is usually designated as superhuman beings or the sacred. But here, many of these acts are actually stipulated to be performed by the devta or the superhuman being, and not by the people. Thus, while humans may be viewed as acting either according to the wishes of the superhuman beings, or acting to please them, here, there is no such constraint (ideally) when the superhuman is the lead performer. Yet if one follows closely these acts of the devta, they are not quite so different from the formal and stipulated character ascribed to rituals. Since the devta are superhuman, one may look upon collective expectations as the “stipulations” or “control” over the actions of the devta. Theoretically the yatra may be viewed as a practice with the problematic detail that here it is performed by a superhuman agency.28 The yatra is a sacred journey. When undertaken by humans, it involves a sacred goal, like a pilgrimage; when undertaken by a superhuman being, it can take the form of a social visit, like that of a daughter to her natal place or a wife to that of her husband, and so on. The superhuman beings mirror the lives of their human counterparts, except that they are not bound by space, and have a kind of eternal existence, living always in the present. The stipulation that the devta mirror human lives is evident in that rituals performed by them retain the social norms and values of local communities. It is only 27 Elsewhere in the pahar such mediums may have special status, and may also be treated as shamans or priests. 28 “Whereas Sahlins uses the notion of practice to formulate a theory of culture that can recognize symbolic and historical dimensions, the notion is also used by those concerned with related issues of social agency. Hence Jean Comaroff uses the term to indicate the process of communicative social action by which persons, in acting upon an external and objective order of power relations, construct themselves as social beings, molded but not determined.” Bell (1992: 78).
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to be expected that a woman would visit her parents’ home or a husband that of his wife. As Sax has pointed out, most of these devta are related to each other and the yatra mostly represent social visits, like the ones undertaken by humans.29 The lesser devta, that is the local ones, also visit the higher deities; in fact the yatra is quite often the same as a pilgrimage is for a human being. The human character of the devta is emphasised by the status of a village devta, who are ruling kings, like Me-Parang. Historically and ethnographically, divine kings are human kings recognised as divinity; here we have the gods as kings, and not the other way around. Because they are like rulers, one has to respect their wishes. Thus, when MeParang so wishes, he must be taken on a yatra. But what is important to note is that although recognised as a wish, the actual yatra takes on the character of a ritual defined by “a fixed core of basic rites” (cf. Gruenwedel’s article in this volume). However, what is the “fixed core” of the ritual we are calling a yatra, and how does it retain the formal, invariant character of a “ritual form” as defined by Rappaport, although it appears to the people and is meaningful to them as an act of volition of the living devta? The yatra is notionally fixed to the “will” of the devta, yet if we follow the calendrical routine of the yatra, it becomes evident that it is not exactly whimsical, for the devta also follow some rules. What are these rules? 1. Time: The time periods between yatra are usually fixed; thus, we were told that a certain goddess visits her husband once every three years, or that Me-Parang goes to Gangotri on the day of Janamastami. These intervals are largely adhered to, although there can be variations, so that in one year the devta might not go, or a special visit might be on the cards.30 But by and large a routine is followed, although the people look upon each yatra as a specific wish of the devta and a specific ritual episode. 2. Route: The route of the yatra is also fixed and it follows the villages where women of the village of the devta going on a yatra have been married. It also follows a route of familiar terrain and social interaction. For example, we were told that the goddess who is the village deity of a village in Himachal, close to the Indo-Tibetan border, used to go via Tibetan territory as long as the border was open and the cross-border trade with Tibet was in place. But ever since trade relationships stopped, and the border was closed, she takes a route that does not include Tibet. 3. Mode of Travel: The mode of travel is on foot and there are certain rules, like not crossing over bridges and not crossing over water. But here again very interesting changes are taking place, for in Kinnaur some gods who undertake 29 Sax 2000: 105. 30 Whenever there is a change in plan for a devta, it can be associated with some environmental exigency like bad weather, too much rain, or landslides, etc.
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Subhadra Mitra Channa long journeys to pay homage to the powerful Hindu gods of Uttaranchal have begun to go in cars. The people say the devta chose to do so, yet there are still devta, like the nag devta, who prefer to travel only on foot – but many others have begun to use cars. There are environmental reasons for this choice, for many of the routes and mountain passes that were used for foot travel are now closed. Because of landslides and because of deforestation, the glaciers have melted and the smooth passage provided by them has been replaced by rocky terrain that is impossible to walk on. The devta are thus prudently opting for more comfortable modes of travel. In Garhwal, where the distances are shorter, the devta still go on foot, including Me-Parang.
4. Fellow Travellers: There are always people accompanying the devta on his or her journeys. In the larger villages, the choice of who will accompany the devta is always made by the devta. In Himachal, the women rarely accompany the yatra, although there is no bar on them as such, but usually the devta picks young and able-bodied males. One old man told me that he has never been on a yatra because he was never picked by the devi, even when he was young. Another old woman said she had never gone before, but recently she went because the devta was going by car. When Me-Parang goes on a yatra, all the young men and women of the village accompany him, almost everyone except the very old and infirm, go along with him. 5. Dress: The devta’s dress for travelling is special. It is full of finery like embroidered and rich-coloured cloth, the colours representing the devta symbolically, like red cloth for Me-Parang, black cloth for nag devta and so on, tinsel crowns, and sometimes real gold and silver ornaments and masks, are put on the devta. In cases where the devta is going over difficult terrain, like glaciers and mountains, he or she dresses up only when they come within close distance of their destination. But the dress is viewed as a mask, not something put on a real body. 6. Pageantry: Since this is a royal procession, the travel of a sovereign, the paraphernalia of royalty is well presented. In the case of the wealthy devta, this may consist of solid silver or gold staffs carried by persons in the manner of heralding a king, along with the fanning of the devta with yak tails and blowing conch shells and beating drums and gongs. It is in the manner of a royal procession, and all the people in the village usually dress up and accompany the devta when he or she returns or embarks on a journey, either welcoming him or her back or seeing him or her off at the limits of the village. 7. The audience: It is important to emphasise that the communication aspect of the ritual that I am talking about here is not the kind of communication that looks
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upon ritual as a text.31 I am talking about a situated communication where the audience or the people who are receiving the message are of the local pahar, the Garhwali villagers and the people who see Me-Paran
The Significance According to Bell, “as a system of communication, ritual involves both indexical features that refer to the social hierarchy and symbolic features that refer to the cosmos”.32 While we have discussed the symbolic features in terms of the animate universe and living gods, the indexical meanings are well understood in terms of the physical implications of the journey, its route, and the meeting points and resting points that are on the social map of the region. As described by Galey, “Most village gods associate in common festivals, migrate to visit one another and constitute a local pantheon, having one of their temples for headquarters”.33 But the aspect of yatra that makes it politically significant is that the deities map out their area of influence over the area that they traverse while on a yatra.34 While the devta map out their range of influence, the divine journeys map out a social universe or a region of identity for the human beings who occupy this universe of meaning. It is this aspect of the yatra that is meaningful in sending out a message, and it is this dimension in concurrence with the other dimensions that makes the concept of a ritual transfer meaningful.
Ritual Transfer The exact incidence of transfer that we are talking about here is the Jads’ taking on some of the ritual concepts of the surrounding pahari people, the concept of the village devta and also his yatra. I have little data on what exactly was the cosmology and belief system of the Jads while they were still concentrated in Neilang. But the older people, who had spent a larger part of their lives in the higher village, told me there were few devta in their village. It is certain that the yatra is something that they have adopted only recently, about a decade or so ago. The significance of the yatra may be understood by the more general view, perhaps common to all religions, that all places of pilgrimage, all sacred spots that belong to one world-view, or known religion, also map out the extent or boundaries of that religion or of the sacred space. Whenever the political boundaries of a people expand, they tend to take their religious places with them, or try to reclaim 31 32 33 34
Marcus & Fischer: 1986; Ricoeur 1971. Bell 1992: 42. Galey 1994: 197. Mazumdar 1998: 44.
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such places if they believe they were lost. One may refer to the battle for Medina that finally established Muhammed as a prophet and Islam as a religion, or the Hindu fundamentalists’ attempts to reclaim places of worship (cf. Sitharaman in this volume). The sacred space of the Jads was bound by their cosmology of height and purity and by the domain of jurisdiction of their own devta. Until recent times, they considered that the range of influence of their devta was confined to their own villages, forests, and pastures, but it did not extend to that of the Hindus. As already explained at the beginning of the paper, they have different systems of marriage and kinship, and also gender constructions from the Hindus. The significant difference lies in how they conceptualise the sacred in terms of an animated universe. They have a non-literate tradition, as compared to the Hindus with their strong Brahmanical and textual traditions. Although the Jads had always occupied physical space in the upper regions of the Himalayas, having a sacred geography revered by most Hindus, and also local interpretations of such sacredness with their own significance,35 they had their own somewhat overlapping, but distinctly individual, realm of the sacred drawn largely with the village god of Bhagori, Me-Parang, in the centre. As long as they regarded themselves as a distinct entity from the surrounding Garhwalis whom they still refer to as zamindars (their interpretation of the term, cultivators), as opposed to their own selves as pastoralists (bhed charane wale), their village god had no relationship with any other devta of this region. Within the world-view of the pahar this also signified their social isolation. In Garhwal, the local deities, especially the reigning village deities, are viewed as the most important source of identity for the people of the village who are treated as the subject of the deity. It is almost like a citizenship, but on a very small scale. Here one has to pay more attention to the concept of divine kingship. Hocart, for example, comments that “the king is equivalent to the whole world inasmuch as he is the World Spirit, and also is the several gods who preside over the several parts of the world”36 and Kelley and Caplan further elaborate on this institution to say, “in which and for which the life-giving rituals, focused in on one person, structure life for everyone else”.37 So the belief that gods are kings and kings are gods is the base from which disputes can be staged about power and territory, whose authentification lies in its being seen as free of human agency:38 “The special power in ritual acts, including their major ability to encompass contestation, 35 36 37 38
Berti n.d. Hocart 1970:63. Kelley & Caplan 1990: 123. In some way this also links up with the Jads’ claim to kshatriya status, for if their village god is a sovereign, they too claim high-caste status. This aspect has been discussed in detail by me in another paper (Channa 2005).
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lies in the lack of independence asserted by a ritual participant, even while he or she makes assertions about authority”.39 The gods, by taking action upon themselves, relieve the human participants from the onus of asserting that it is not they, but the gods, who speak through their actions. By becoming agents themselves, the devta enter directly into negotiations involving power whose authentication lies in the very fact of their being superhuman. Also, given the relatively egalitarian society of the pahar, unlike the feudal structure of the Hindu society of the plains, the authority of the divine is probably the only authority that people are ready to accept.40 Thus the god king’s journey maps out social influence, political power, and also kinship relations and ecology. For example, since most of the higher Hindu gods and important shrines are located in Garhwal, the gods come from the neighbouring state of Himachal to pay homage at important shrines like Gangotri, Badrinath, etc., but not the other way round. This is reflected in the direction of marriage: women come from Himachal to Uttaranchal, but not the other way. Thus the women who marry into Garhwal from Himachal provide a resting place for the gods of their villages when they come on a yatra. Since there is no reverse movement of gods, there is no reciprocal marriage either (this aspect may need more discussion, but is beyond the scope of this paper). It is on this concept of real journey, involving a territory, that we must focus when we rationalise the process of “ritual transfer”. Diana Eck (1998) has used the now much applied term of “imagined landscape”, where a space is made meaningful by the events, people, and history associated with it by the collective imagination of a community. This “landscape” then becomes essentially linked to the identity or the “range” of belonging by which a people may draw the boundaries of their imagined identity. Eck makes specific reference to Radhakamal Mookerji’s association of Hindu sacred geography with Hindu nationalism.41 In the yatra the real and the imagined find expression in a practice, a journey of a people with their god-king, that redefines the social and political range of the people. The important thing to understand here is that, as Comaroff has pointed out, rituals “constructed rather than merely reflected meaning”, and that one need not separate the instru-
39 Kelley & Caplan 1990: 132. 40 The pahari are known for the lack of authority of the Brahmins. The Brahmins in general do not exercise much authority over the Pahari and, unlike the Brahmins of the plains, are meateaters and follow a life-style exactly like that of kshatriyas, or rajputs who predominate in the pahar. The lower castes are also not subjected to more extreme seclusion although some pollution rules, such as a prohibition on entry into the kitchens of higher castes, are maintained. The lack of purity of the Brahmin from pahar is one reason why they are looked down upon by mainland Hindus. 41 Mookerji 1921.
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mental from the semantic.42 Thus, the yatra makes sense in its active content, as a practice, a real journey with a defined route, and not simply as a symbolic event.
Social and Political Transformation The ritual transfer needs to be contextualised in its historical setting. Until 1962, the Jads occupied three villages in the upper reaches of the Himalayas, right next to the Tibet-India border, of which Neilang was their chief village and Jadung was another, smaller one, the third being Bhagori where they all live now. After the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and India’s war with China, the Indo-Tibetan border was sealed, the two villages very near the border were evacuated, and all inhabitants were resettled in the high-altitude village at Harsil. The Jads are always emphasising that they are not one but three villages here at Bhagori, and their point of unification is their common village god Me-Parang. When asked, older people denied that there was any Me-Parang at Neilang or at Jadung. At some time around the year 2000, the village god of Jadung, Chin, was installed in the village of Bhagori, but in a lesser position than Me-Parang, who holds prime position at the entrance to the village. It would be rational to assume that Me-Parang provided the required point of identification for a people initially belonging to three different villages, but now forced by circumstances to live as one. But the internal fracturing of identity still persists, just like the latent identities of all those who have been married into this village from the outside. All those coming from outside Bhagori are referred to as Chongsa Rongpas (interpreted as “outsiders”), the term being evoked most often when there is an internal quarrel. Since the greater number of people in the village came originally from Neilang which used to be the largest and most prominent of their three earlier villages, many claim that Me-Parang came from Neilang, but there is no consensus on that. The time when Me-Parang began to go on a yatra to Gangotri cannot be pinpointed, but it is somewhere after the time the villagers were resettled and became more integrated with local “pahar” culture.43 The introduction of this ritual indicates that not only has the status of Me-Parang been transformed over the years to resemble more and more the village devta of the Hindu Garhwalis, but he, too, has taken on the “icon”44 of Garhwali Hindus, the ritual of undertaking yatra once a year, to a Hindu shrine. The yatra therefore becomes an excellent medium for communication. In the present case, what is being communicated? By taking MeParang to Gangotri for a visit, the Jads are transforming their sacred geography 42 Comaroff 1985: 125. 43 This is based on interviews conducted with older people who had been residents of Neilang. 44 Sax 2002: 167.
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and, as a consequence, renegotiating their identity. To think of this as a real mode of communication, one must once again think about what kind of a ritual transfer we are talking about. I would think that we are talking in terms of what OhnukiTierney calls the “logical elaboration of a central minimal structure”.45 As of now, their devta had occupied a sacred space that was confined largely to a sacred geography that only marginally touched upon the Hindu sacred spaces. The imagined landscape of the Jads recognised, but was not inclusive of, the sacred domains of the Hindus. In introducing the yatra, they have not created a new ritual, nor drastically altered an existing one, but incorporated what was a part of core pahari culture, retaining as much as they could of the yatra of Garhwali deities. They now consciously recognise two aspects of their identity, one that they are now politically a part of pahari identity, realised in the state of Uttarakhand, and secondly they have moved away from their original association with Tibet to a more integrated political and economic relationship with the Hindus but of the pahar. It does appear to be a conscious effort on their part and a political move too. One may refer here to “alterity” theory, the relationship of self and other, for such a conceptualisation “bridges individual and society, system and history. In alterity theory, asymmetries of power at many levels are analyzed as instances of a general model of psychosocial life, inherently a dialectical or reflexive relation between powerful and subordinated, between self and others”.46 It is only the notion of reflexivity and identity, that can give us a clue to understanding ritual transfer as “conscious”. The “consciousness” of the effort is corroborated by the fact that there are many other dimensions of life that the Jads are deliberately changing. The most important that needs mention is the change of clan names. From their original names of what they called “thoks” they have taken on clan names of upper-caste rajput Garhwalis like Negi, Bhandari, Rawat, etc. Some have even taken on upper-caste North Indian names like Kapoor. And this is done very deliberately. I have actually observed them doing this, like deciding on which name to choose. But within their own village they also know who belongs to which thok (clan), so it is also obvious that these changes are for “outside” consumption. There is an effort to have personal names, compatible with mainstream Hindus, that are mostly being adopted from Hindi movies and names of film actors and actresses. Even older people have taken on second names that are more compatible with what they consider mainstream Indian names. I sometimes found it difficult to locate people by the name they had given me, for this was not the name by which they are commonly known.
45 Ohnuki-Tierney 1992: 19. 46 Kelley & Caplan 1990: 132.
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However, the changes are not unidirectional, nor is the process of adoption a simple one, for the Jads are “purposive actors” in this process.47 Thus the visit of Me-Parang to Gangotri does not acknowledge that Hindus are “superior”; rather, the claim is one of equality and recognition. The sacredness of the river Ganga was always a part of their overall beliefs concerning the purity of their environment. The acceptance of Ganga as a deity to be worshipped is a recent phenomenon, but still done according to their own rules, so it is not the Jads who go to worship at the temple of Gangotri, it is their devta who goes for a visit. The latter has a completely different significance from that of worship: it is the visit of an equal entity, a friendly handshake, “a recognition of one deity by another”. The visit of Me-Parang signifies that he recognizes Gangotri as his equivalent (though slightly higher), and in “turn demands a similar recognition”. As of now, no kinship has been established, but this may soon happen. The Jads therefore become incorporated within the Hindu cosmology as representatives of their devta who is also to be recognised as part of the pahari pantheon as a devta recognised by other devta. This is consistent with their claim to a high caste and social status within the local Garhwali society. Such a claim is of course backed by a real change in their economic, social and political position, vis-à-vis the local society. The Hindu Garhwalis, too, are not adverse to granting equal status to the Jads who are economically well off because of their acumen for trade. They have been making good use of the positive discriminatory policies of the government of India who include them under the label of scheduled tribes and provide them with reservations in educational institutions and with jobs. The village of Bhagori was adopted as an Ambedkar48 village and given special grants, and the people there have a medical dispensary and a school to which people from all the nearby villages come. They have higher income than the cultivators, for they have large herds of valuable sheep, trade in wool and carpets that are in great demand, and now have several well-educated young persons among them. Thus, from being regarded as a marginal people with a closer affinity to the Tibetans, they are on their way to assuming a status within mainstream Garhwali society, although they are still far from such a position within mainstream Hindu society. But the pahar,49 as a whole, has faced discrimination from the plains. In the pahar imagination, the 47 Comaroff 1985: 194. 48 The term Ambedkar village was introduced in Uttar Pradesh to designate villages primarily occupied by either low caste people (scheduled castes) or tribes (scheduled tribes). The overall plan includes allocation of funds for development that is in excess of what is allotted to an ordinary village. The name Ambedkar refers, of course, to B.R. Ambedkar, a national leader especially recognised as leader of the oppressed, the Dalits. It must be mentioned that the Jads do not recognise the concept of Dalit, neither do they regard themselves as oppressed. Quite to the contrary, they are attempting to gain a high-caste status. 49 Berreman 1983.
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plains are still distant and matter little; what are important are the local cosmology and the landscape of signification that includes the devta of the Hindu Garhwalis, as well as the other sacred beings, including Buddhist lamas. Their trade and pastoral activities do not take them below Rishikesh, and this is the space that they include in their landscape of interaction and symbolic significance. Moreover, the universe of communication, one in which the yatra has to be “read”, is available only within the ambit of pahari culture. The signals are therefore being sent only to their fellow paharis, like the local Garhwalis. Equally important is the increasing power of Me-Parang, with his resulting, salient function of welding together a Jad identity. As he takes his place among the royal deities of the pahar, he legitimises the collective identity of the people who fall under his jurisdiction. As already explained, the people of the village of Bhagori are not internally united by birth, history, or origin. Yet under the modern system of administration and political rule they must appear as one unit, to be able to avail themselves of all the advantages that they can now claim as one community. The name Jad itself is an improvised one, and even now many older people, especially the women, are not even aware of this name. My older informants were quite indifferent to the power of Me-Parang. Some told me that he was not a very important deity earlier, especially for those who have come from Neilang and Jadung. Yet the younger ones give him great importance. It is they who regard him as a tutelary deity, make regular offerings, and accompany him on his yatra. As local interactions intensify, with children going to school and college, the village becoming included in a larger self-governance unit known as the local panchayat, and the processes of Indian democracy making their way into the village, emphasising its identity and unity, the present generation is feeling a need to have its own representation in the local sacred geography that in Garhwal translates into identity and political power and process. For the Jads to become a part of this social and political dynamic, it becomes imperative that they, too, have their representative in this pantheon of interacting gods. So, Me-Parang makes his way in royal splendour to the temple of Gangotri to make his presence felt as a local ruler, a king who has his subjects to accompany him on his yatra. The reason for going to Gangotri is that it is the most important common shrine in this region visited by a large number of pilgrims. It is also the nearest shrine, with which the Jads have had a long-time association through the Hindu pilgrims for whom they worked as guides and transporters. Since Me-Parang is not yet part of any social network of local Garhwali devtas, his only destination can be a universal place of worship. His presence at Gangotri does not proclaim that the Jads have become Hindus, since such an idea does not exist in their worldview; neither does it prove that the Jads have begun to accept Hindu gods, for they had always accepted their power. What it shows is that the Jads are now communicating their position in the local political hierarchy and announcing their status.
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Conclusion Thus, ritual transfer, in their case, is the most powerful medium through which they can negotiate and communicate their transformed identity, as well as a different conceptual landscape of belonging. As Me-Parang triumphantly moves out of his village, he is taking his people out, too, to take their place in a local hierarchy of power to which they were, until recently, only spectators. Thus, as my friend Kaushalya had told me earlier, “we used to only watch the pilgrims go up to Gangotri, sitting by the wayside”.50 Today they accompany their village god to Gangotri with much pomp and show, stating thereby that “we are no longer ‘sitting by the wayside’; we too are there”. Thus, the yatra of Me-Parang communicates two important social and political processes: firstly, that the people of Bhagori now have a united identity, and secondly, that they have become part of the power hierarchies and negotiations taking place in the political arena of Garhwal. The yatra is part of a package of transformations to which the Jads have been inadvertently exposed, but which they have also taken on consciously to deal with what is being thrust upon them. Thus, it is a process of “articulation”.51 From the margins they are moving towards the centre.
50 Channa 2002. 51 Comaroff 1985: 124.
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References Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press. Berreman, Gerald D. 1983. “The U.P. Himalaya: Culture, Cultures and Regionalism”. In: O.P. Singh (ed). The Himalaya: Nature, Man and Culture. With Specific Studies on the U.P. Himalaya. New Delhi: Rajesh Publications: 227–266. — 19992 [1963]. Hindus of the Himalayas: Ethnography and Change. Delhi et al.: Oxford University Press. Berti, Daniela. Epics, Local History and Electoral Politics. [Unpublished Manuscript] Brown, Charles W. 1983. “Salt, Barley, Pashmina and Tincal-Contexts of Being Bhotiya in Traiil’s Kumaon”. In: O.P. Singh (ed). The Himalaya: Nature, Man and Culture. New Delhi: Rajesh Publications. — 1991. “What we Call ‘Bhotiya’s’ Are in Reality not Bhotiyas: Perspective of British Colonial Conceptions”. In: Maheshwar P. Joshi & Allen C. Fanger & Charles W. Brown (eds.). The Himalaya: Past and Present. Vol. 2. Almora: Shree Almora Book Depot: 147–172. Channa, Subhadra Mitra 2000. “The Life History of a Jad Woman”. European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 22: 61–81. — 2005. “The Descent of the Pandavas”. European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 28: 67–97. Comaroff, Jean 1985. Body of Power: Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Conklin, Harold C. 1962 [1957]. “Ethnobotanical Problems in the Comparative Study of Folk Taxonomy”. Proceedings of the Ninth Pacific Science Congress of the Pacific Science Association 4: 299–301. Das, Veena & Dipankar Gupta & Patricia Uberoi (eds.) 1999. Tradition, Pluralism and Identity: in Honour of T.N. Madan. New Delhi et al.: Sage Publications (Contributions to Indian Sociology: Occasional Studies 8). Eck, Diana L. 1998. “The Imagined Landscape: Patterns in the Construction of Hindu Sacred Geography”. Contributions to Indian Sociology 32/2: 165–188. Eliade, Mircea (ed.) 1987. “Ritual”. In: The Encyclopedia of Religion. Vol. 12. London: MacMillan & Co.: 405–422. Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von (ed.) 1981. Asian Highland Societies in Anthropological Perspectives. New Delhi: Sterling. Galey, Jean-Claude 1994. “Hindu Kingship in Its Ritual Realm: The Garhwali Configuration”. In: Maheshwar P. Joshi & Allen C. Fanger & Charles W. Brown (eds.). The Himalaya: Past and Present. Vol. 2. Almora: Shree Almora Book Depot: 173– 237. Hocart, A.M. 1970 (Org. 1936). Kings and Counciliors: An Essay in the Comparative Anatomy of Human Soceity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Kar, Jasobanta 1986. “Cultural Encounter and Change in the Eastern Himalayas”. In: Nisith R. Roy (ed.). Himalayan Frontier in Historical Perspective. Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies: 76–88. Kelley & Caplan 1990. “History, Structure and Ritual”. In: Annual Review of Anthropology 19:119–150. Kurti, Laszlo 1990. “People vs. the State: Political Rituals in Contemporary Hungary”. Anthropology Today 6/2: 5–8. Leach, Edmund R. 1968. “Ritual”. In: David L. Sills (ed.). The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 13. New York: Macmillan: 520–526. MacFarlane, Alan 1981. “Death, Disease and Curing in a Himalayan Village”. In: Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf (ed.). Asian Highland Societies in Anthropological Perspectives. New Delhi: Sterling: 79–130. Marcus, George & Michael Fischer 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mazumdar, Lipika 1998. Sacred Confluence, Worship, History and the Politics of Change in a Himalayan Village. [Unpublished Ph.D. Manuscript, University of Pittsburgh] Mookerji, Radhakamal 1921. Nationalism in Hindu Culture. London: Theosophical Publishing House. Morris, Brian 1984. “The Pragmatics of Folk Classification”. In: Journal of Ethnobiology 14: 45–60. Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 1992. “Vitality on the Rebound: Ritual’s Core”. Anthropology Today 8: 17–20. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 110). Ricoeur, Paul 1971. “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as Text”. Social Research 38: 529–562. Robbins, Joel 2001. “Ritual Communication and Linguistic Ideology: A Reading and Partial Reformulation of Rappaport’s Theory of Ritual”. Current Anthropology l42/5: 591–614. Sahlins, Marshall 1995. How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, for Example. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sax, William 2000. “Residence and Ritual in the Garhwal Himalayas”. In: Maheshwar P. Joshi & Allen C. Fanger & Charles W. Brown (eds.). The Himalaya: Past and Present. Vol. 4. Almora: Shree Almora Book Depot: 79–114. — 2002. Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandava Lila of Garhwal. London: Oxford University Press. Smart, Ninian 1996. Dimensions of the Sacred. New York: Harper Collins Publications. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1979. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113–169.
Moritz Fischer
“Let the Tears Flow”: Performative Transfer of Healing Rituals in Pentecostal Healing Events between Repetition and Renewal and their Impact on the Globalisation of Christianity 1. Ritual Transfer in an Intercultural Context The theme I am dealing with here is exemplified through findings from field studies in Pentecostal/Charismatic congregations in a migrational context, originating from Western Central and South Central Africa (Congo and Angola). For the sources, I concentrate on a Christian healing ritual, which I have observed in its performance in four different, but historically and personally connected Pentecostal congregations.1 I will analyse four distinct healing assemblies, which occurred in the course of the last fifty years and in different places between Africa and Europe. Migration and the establishment of African congregations in Europe did not only cause an overlap with the resident Christian culture. In addition, a transcultural practice was established, and the congregations in the Diaspora opened themselves to members of German groups, but also groups of other cultural origins. The accompanying ritual transfer is recognisable as a dynamic factor, especially in the context of Pentecostal/Charismatic healing church services. These performances do work effectively as performances only when they appear in the form of a ritual.2 This means that they are repeatable in time, thus maintaining a sphere of activity that is not restricted to the moment of the performance itself. That means they will be described and analysed with an emphasis on their common hidden socio-linguistic culturally-based “grammar”. Therefore, we will compare different occasions that have much more in common than the outsider might realise. Evangelist 1 The names of the congregations/churches which still exist, but also the names of persons belonging to these churches, the times, and the places have been made anonymous in order to protect the individuals. The names of internationally well-known persons and those persons who explicitly permitted it, were not made anonymous. 2 Rituals are always subject to structural change, to contextual change, and are per se dynamic. In spite of the etically identifiable changes of rituals, in an emic perspective the perception of the invariability of rituals remains.
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T.L. Osborn (1958 and 2006),3 Apostle A.A. Abala (1996, referring to a – for him – initiating performance of Osborn in 1957 in Mombasa),4 and Apostle Manuel Lumamba (2006)5 are the three key actors of the four observed events (see below 2.3.1 to 2.3.4). The three are tied together historically and personally by teacherscholar relations. They are connected by using the same script in these ritual healing campaigns which are in our focus. In the case of the ritualistic practice of FEPACO-Nzambe Malamu/GGG,6 which is the network of African-dominated Christian independent churches connecting all these actors, this sphere of activity is characterised by its multi-dimensionality, which is recognisable in a threefold perspective: intercultural (transcultural), synchronic (historical), and diachronic (current). It therefore has the structure of an interactive and performative network that is characterised by junctions that point to these three different “actors”. In the following sections, starting from a healing ritual at “GGG” that took place on 1 November 2006 in Weltendorf/F., a version of the intercultural identity of Christianity as an example of religious “globalisation” will become discernible. Looking more carefully at public, sensationcausing healing church services, these owe their attractive dynamics not least to their system of constructing rituals. The performative shape of every ritual being a “transformative performance with open meaning” is structured by typical religious sequences. In the process of the ritual transfer, it becomes clear that often not an entire ritual, but only certain sequences of a ritual are transferred. Burkhard Gladigow (Religious Studies, Tübingen) defines typical ritual sequences as a constellation of easily comprehensible ritual elements (rites) that can be part of different complex rituals.7 Rituals are structured by rites. With regard to their function and content, their sequence is partly fixed; on the other hand, rites can be combined in different ways. However, the rites have to remain recognisable for the participants. “Ritual sequences in different rituals refer to each other and correspond to each other.”8 We are primarily concerned with the transfer of certain ritual patterns of the Pentecostal/Evangelical healing rituals in a diachronic as well as in a synchronic perspective. Changes and omissions of single ritual sequences come into view. 3 T.L. Osborn (born 1923), is a missionary who has been active since 1944 until now as one of the world-famous Christian ritual healing ministers. 4 Alexandre Aidini Abala (1926–1997) from Congo was converted in 1957 in a T.L. Osborncrusade; with the support of Elim-Missionary-Assemblies in 1967 he founded the church FEPACO-Nzambe Malamu in former Zaire. He practised faith-healing like T.L. Osborn. 5 Manuel Lumamba (born in 1940, name changed) is still active in a Western African country and faith-healing as Church-leader of a big Pentecostal-Church, which split from FEPACO 10 years ago, has sub-branches in Europe, and is working among migrants. 6 In German “Gemeinde Gnädiger Gott”, which means “Church of the Merciful God”. 7 Gladigow 2004. 8 Langer et al. 2005: 31. (Translation from the German original version by M.F.).
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2. Healing Rituals and Ritual Transfer, their Genealogical Transmission in a Diachronic Perspective, and their Synchronic Effect 2.1 The Liminality of the Miracle Healing Ritual and its Three Phases or Sequences and a Re-reading of Arnold van Gennep’s “Les Rites de Passage” The middle of the three ritual phases or sequence-like single rites of van Gennep’s system (1. separation rites 2. threshold or transformation rites 3. affiliation)9 have also to be seen as the crisis that is linked to the task of overcoming (3.) the crisis. The “virtual” and in all rituals of liminality inscribed “text” of this social drama is also “quoted” in the ritual healing performances with a Charismatic/Pentecostal character, which we observe. 1. During the threefold course of the event, a break is brought about. 2. Then, in a liminal climax, the dramatic prayer for renouncement and liberation is followed by a heartfelt prayer for healing, that is, the holistic, physicalspiritual transformation in order to leave the state of illness and to enter a state of health – either abruptly or gradually. My suggestion is to use the threefold concept of van Gennep not only for changes bridging states of liminality of status, such as from childhood to adulthood, but also for other changes of status that involve states of liminality or liminoidity, such as: from sickness to health, from African local culture to Western global culture, from traditional religion to Christianity, from mainstream church-identity to fellowship in a Pentecostal Christian network. 3. Finally, there is a phase of re-integration after the self-confirmed healing, which is possibly welcomed with expressions of joy and – importantly – witness of which is borne to the world. 2.2 The Sequence or Phase of the Rite of Breaking Free or of Separation (1. Separation Rites) The offer exists of a ritual-supported detachment from the everyday social, cultural, ethnic, and economic context through the initial “praise”. The acoustic, emotional, “rhythmic” space that is created by the congregation’s physical resonance, through hymns of praise, bands, choirs, a choir leader, reveal that this has to do with the production of a consciously intended “intercultural trance”, or at least with an encounter with the theme of “breaking away from this world, from the powers that are experienced as evil and that want to rule your life”, through praise and 9 Van Gennep 1986.
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songs. In all the observed and analysed rituals, the participants are, in a subtle (not outspoken) way, invited and encouraged to reach a state of physical and emotional boundlessness. In a preparatory part of the service in Weltendorf/F. we recognise an offer to enter emotionally a state of trance, producing a transcultural situation by singing African-German hybrid songs, where African participants experience a change, as the well-known rhythms are transferred to the German-European context by using German song texts, the language of the so-called receiving or majority society. On the other hand, Germans or German-speaking non-Germans can enter the exotic world of African rhythms and dances, and they can feel welcome or at least linked with the “majority society” that is actually present in the church service. The integration of the congregation is supported by ritual techniques such as to swing with their bodies, to sing under guidance of the chorus, and to react to the heavy beats of the drums, which are synchronised with their human heartbeat, which in turn is accelerated by the speed of the drums. They are able, on a cognitive level, to meditate on some of the song texts, which are put on screen above the stage via a video projector (modern and various traditional techniques are combined into a hybrid work of art). The participants may forget the limits of everyday life and their situation, which is shaped by experiencing frustrating and emotionally cold anonymity in Western cities, factories, Underground-stations, or shopping malls. They, and even the German participants who might suffer a similar pain in their lives, are all separated from their “dark” everyday life. They are paradoxically welded together by the separation rite to form – to some extent – a common body. They are shaped into a fragile intercultural “unity”, which expects fulfilment of the many desires they bring along, such as the elimination of sickness, unemployment, tensions in marriage or family life, alienation in a foreign society, etc. 2.3 The Sequence of Liminal Climax: the Healing Ritual and its Genealogical Transportation via Ritual Transfer (2. Threshold or Transformation Rites) In the following, we have to analyse transcribed text passages taken from audio and audio-visual documentation. They show different but genealogically linked performers at work. They interacted at different places, with different participants, at different times. They are co-responsible for the accomplished transfer. I will now attempt to describe the logical order of sequences of the ritual in a diachronic perspective.
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2.3.1 Healing Revivalist Tommy Lee Osborn from the US (1958 Ghana)10 During the performance, Osborn’s English speech is translated sentence by sentence into the two Ghanaian main languages, Twi and Akan. Watching the film takes us into a double outsider-perspective with respect to Osborn himself and to the African participants in the performance. Osborn announces them and guides them to repeat the following prayer: “Say: ‘O, God in Heaven […] I have accepted Jesus. Now I ask you for healing […] Send your healing power now […] Destroy my illness […]’”. One can observe the following details concerning performer, translation, and participants: The performer: staying on the platform with outstretched, raised right arm with the outstretched hand directed at God above in a blessing attitude towards the crowd; a Bible in the left hand, resting at the heart; wearing a white shirt, standing upright, in front of the participants with his head held up high, with a clear, rhythmic voice, amplified by a microphone; speaking with very short, clear, concise sentences. The translation: by two traditionally dressed African pastors. They partly imitate the main-performer T.L. Osborn. The participants: standing, women and men in relatively closed groups, staying apart from each other in the zones of the area; self laying-on of hands with closed eyes and (gradually) repeating Osborn’s prayer. 2.3.2 Church-Founder and Native Healing-Revivalist Apostle Alexandre Aidini Abala from Congo (1957 Mombasa, Recapitulated 1996 Weltendorf/F.)11 Abala is speaking in Kiswahili, with two translations into German and French, which follow one another phrase by phrase and which take us into an insider-perspective. He declares, when giving testimony of his conversion, what T.L. Osborn had said (preaching in 1957) and how he, Abala, had reacted: (Osborn) And I have told you, ‘let us close our eyes once again’, and I have closed my eyes and have prayed: ‘God, if it is bad what we are doing here, then show us, and when you heal this woman here, who is blind, then I will serve you for the rest of my life. Then I will say: Amen.’ And the pastor Osborn said: ‘Close your eyes, we will pray now!’ […] And so I have shown to all: ‘Do it like this, do it, do not close your eyes […]’ and they have all said: ‘yes!’.
10 Transcription from Dr. T.L. Osborn – Schwarzes Gold / Afrika-Feldzug 1958. 11 Transcription from Aidini.Abala.Frankfurt.96.
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The performer (a. Osborn in Mombasa in 1957; b. reviewed by Abala in Frankfurt a.M. in 1996): The narrative construction of T.L. Osborn’s legendary performance as the basic narrative is reconstructed in connection with the story of Abala’s own conversion, represented on an urban, central European “stage” on the occasion of a legend-building performance of his own biography. Here we can recognise the peculiarity of the ritual transfer in healing rituals which are de-localised and de-contextualised from a certain space and time to another place during a specific occasion; Abala’s vow to serve God for the rest of his life in the case of a successful healing “then”, in 1957, in Mombasa, transgression narrative of the conversion from being a persecutor of Christians to a missionary of Christ, implicitly from “Saul” to “Paul”. The translation: into German and French by German and Congolese female pastors. The participants in b. (Frankfurt a.M. in 1996): migrant congregation, mostly from the Congo and Angola, asylum seekers, refugees from the regimes during the civil wars in Zaire and Angola from 1980 onwards. The participants in a. (Mombasa 1957), to which occasion Abala only refers: East African-Kenyan population; Indians, Arabs, many Muslims, and followers of indigenous African religions, as well as members of mission churches of the period of colonialism. The eyes of the participants during Osborn’s prayer for healing are closed (cf. 1958 in Ghana). 2.3.3 Church-Leader and Native Healing-Revivalist Reverend Manuel Lumamba (2006 Weltendorf/F.)12 The sermon is in Portuguese with two sentence-by-sentence translations into Lingala and German: God will now come down to us, to touch each of us […] I shall ask all of you to stop running around and not to open your eyes, not even the stewards; […] Father, I come to your right hand […] With the healing liberation service [...] Touch them and carry their illness […] Almighty God […] There is none that is as merciful as you […] Carry them in your mercy, o King […] Move your body, three times move your legs […] your arms […] If you are deaf or mute, you shall surrender to the hearing and talking within you […] He has taken away your illnesses. The performer: both hands raised, eyes closed, while speaking and praying slightly bowed to the side, upper body swings rhythmically back and forth, translators also with raised hands; three times AMEN at the end of the prayer; abrupt movement of hands away from the upper body. For me, this movement indicates an opening of the human as “person” not just hinted at, but accomplished; an opening 12 Transcription from Weltendorf.06.
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for something new flowing in from the outside, the shaking off of burdens that are the cause of the tension and illness-creating old situation. An imitation of jogging, arm movement, etc. as a motivation for the “paralysed” and disabled. The translation: by an Angolan male and a German female pastor. The participants: closed eyes, standing up, are invited to imitate or to simultaneously repeat the movements. Long-lasting applause; repetition of almost all of the movements simultaneously or some short time later; a very mixed group of participants with regard to age, gender, ethnic origin, clothes, or titles, hinting at their functions within the congregations, etc., approx. 75% Africans, 25% Germans, Asians, and others. 2.3.4 Healing Revivalist Tommy Lee Osborn (2006 Paris)13 The speech is in English with a translation into French. Here are some transcribed extracts from the film: Hallelujah. […] O […] Let the tears flow […] Let the tears flow […] I tell you, this is big before God […] You will enter Heaven. You will not go to Hell. You will follow Jesus […] You will not follow the devil […] Do you believe in this? From now on your life will be productive […] You will find friends. Hallelujah […] Put your hands here (crosses his hands on his breast, the people attending the intercession do so, too) […] He gave his only Son [...] Whoever believes in Him will not be lost but will have eternal life […] Eternal life begins tonight in your lives […] When you go to sleep you will have peace […] Say: ‘God is my friend, we are one, we live together, I love Him, He loves me’, these wonderful prayers […]. The performer: supports linguistic statement with body language, i.e. movement of raised hands, outstretched index finger, slight bowing of knees, standing up again, and pointing up, strong change of stress of words, and level of volume of voice changing from loud, intense to soft, requiring people to listen, talking vehemently quicker, but no yelling and not ordering the participants around. The translation: by an African pastor. The participants: mostly standing up, some with raised hands, eyes partly closed, seem physically and spiritually to be more relaxed than in Weltendorf/F.; with regard to body language they respond to the clearly visible care of the performer; they “move with him” by spontaneous shouts, confirming “Hallelujah!”. We find an intercultural audience, a mix similar to that in Weltendorf/F.
13 Transcription from t.l.osborn.paris.06.
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2.4 The Sequence of the Re-integration Rite, with the “Invitation to Bear Witness” and the Missionary Dimension of the Miracle Healing Church Service (3. Affiliation Rites) The credibility of the performer, as well as of the performance and performativity, are closely linked. It becomes clear that it has not only to do with creating sensations and effects but (in the quotation-like repetition of the miracle healing narrative) that it has to do with the emergence of the presence of the holy. It has as well to do with communion and with a witness, which seems to be effective in a missionary sense that means, to reach the attendents and to give rise to eventual conversion. The establishments of the congregation, the integration of migrants into the church and into society are further consequences that are demonstrated either directly or indirectly by this third liminal phase. It seems as if the immediacy to the time-space continuum of Jesus or the apostles is created especially by the use of imagination that, again, uses performative language in the broadest sense.14 Much more alive than is known from the historical churches, imagination plays a prominent role in the theology of Pentecostal churches. Imagination is brought by the performances into public, is presented and realised, i.e. in rituals, by crossing liminal boundaries, which is intended to lead to the realisation of individual or collective transformations (theologically thought of as an individually or collectively observable transformation of the world in a pneumatological style, “through the power of God, the Holy Spirit”).15 2.5 The Result of the Diachronic-Synchronic Comparison In all these examples we can especially recognise the peculiarity of the ritual transfer in the second sequence of liminal rites (threshold or transformation rites) in healing rituals which are de-localised and de-contextualised from a certain space and time to another place during a specific occasion. In a diachronic perspective, in all the examples given there has been an almost unchanged basic structure of the central prayer within the performance of the miracle healing ritual in the genealogical “tradition” of T.L. Osborn for more than 50 years. What is remarkable with regard to Osborn and A.A. Abala is the “trialogical” performance, in which the performer, the participants, and the “persons” in the narrative (i.e. Jesus, God, the blind Bartimaeus, the disciples) are linked together as a listening but also as a performative subject, and thus become “an entirety”. In the case of Manuel Lumamba, it has rather remained a dialogue between the participants and him; he is quite a
14 Klaus Hock (University of Rostock) points out the “immediacy” as being a formative element in African theologies: Hock 2005. 15 Compare the example in Weltendorf.06: chapter 22.
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poor narrator. Osborn and Abala create an exceptional emotional involvement. They appear to be authentic and full of presence. Regarding ritual sequences, the style of the sermon, the content, and the use of voice and body, there are no considerable changes discernible over the past decades. Particularly the communication between performer and participants during the prayer for healing has remained virtually the same. What has changed are the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic contexts, the available technological tools of media that are employed, the zeitgeist, and the historically shaped character of the social and economic audience. It is astounding how a circle is closed when T.L. Osborn, starting from his work at the end of the 1950s, now, in 2006, amidst an audience of migrants from Africa, meets a clientele that is nearly identical to the one I met in Weltendorf. The performers there belong to the generation of his children and grandchildren. The miracle healing ritual, which he initiated at that time in Mombasa, Ghana, and Lagos, has been de-contextualised, taught, and re-contextualised through the generations, the denominations, ethnic affiliations, and continents.
3. Ritual Dynamics Against the Background of a Diachronic/ Synchronic Analysis For the understanding of Pentecostal churches and movements (classical Pentecostalism/Charismatics in established churches/neo-Charismatic churches), which have rapidly grown over the past 100 years from a membership of zero to more than 300 million members since 1906, two criteria are helpful: the existence of historical connections and of synchronic, mutual relationships. These two criteria have to be applied within a global context, as the Pentecostal movement has been a global phenomenon from its beginnings.16 Individual church-like organised Pentecostal congregations, associations, and “churches” can only be understood with regard to their network-like structure. Their open, ecclesiastical, and socio-intercultural shape enables them to react rather flexibly to changes. Clear markers for those changes are either of a theological, cultural, or organisational nature. The two criteria of synchronicity and diachronicity, which refer to each other, have both to be applied together, as these two criteria strengthen each other in a phenomenological way, thus enabling us to grasp the phenomenon of the Pentecostal movement and its respective cultural shapes historically and globally. Equally important is a theological look at the uniting power and the centrifugal tendencies of this phenomenon. In our case, the interest is directed at special transfer processes of church services and healing rituals in an intercultural, transcontinental, and multi-denominational field of Christianity between the USA, Africa, and Europe. Miracle healing 16 Cf. Bergunder 2005: 189–191.
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rituals are analysed. With the help of an example of such a public Pentecostal/Charismatic event with transcultural participation that took place on 1 November 2006 in Weltendorf/F., using the diachronic and the synchronic perspective that supplement each other, it shall be explained how the discernible ritual dynamics is achieved by means of performance and performativity. Moreover, in the following analysis it will be shown how transfer processes work as a catalyst for intercultural processes. The diachronic-historical perspective verifies the synchronic perspective and vice versa (heuristic interaction/reciprocity).
4. The Healing Rituals Narrative in the Course of the History of Christianity from the Biblically Handed-down Healings Performed by Jesus and the Apostles up to the Pentecostal Movement in the Twenty-First Century in a Globalised World On the part of the supplicants, healing rituals in the New Testament are characterised by pleading, shouting, endurance or perseverance, and humility.17 Another characteristic feature, beside the plea for healing from a concrete illness, which is directed personally at Jesus or God, is the order of Jesus to his disciples also to heal (Mark 16:15–18), which is integrated into the Great Commission in the gospel of Mark. This command is repeatedly quoted by I. Q. Spencer18, T.L. Osborn, A.A. Abala, and also by Manuel Lumamba. In the history of mission and Christianity, faith healings and their corresponding rituals are not only connected historically, but also interculturally, and therefore always have a synchronic context as well. In order to outline this connection with regard to our theme, I would like to refer to the following historical-synchronic sequence: 1. The New Testament narratives (Jesus and the disciples and the congregation living in need) which are referred to continually in the course of the Christian discourse on miracles, especially with regard to Charismatic Early Christian itinerant preachers. 2. The history of mission and Christianity in the Middle Ages as keeper of traditions in their intercultural context.19 17 Cf. Kaiser 2006: 262–264. W. Kahl deals with the question of the morphology of healing and the restoration of miracle healing narratives in detail in Kahl 1994: 115. 18 I.Q. Spencer (1888–1970): Founder of the Elim-Missionary-Assemblies, located in Lima, New York, USA, and involved in the worldwide Pentecostal mission, whose organisation (now named Elim-Fellowship), was, and still is, cooperating with parts of the network of T.L. Osborn - A.A. Abala – Lumamba mentioned above. 19 “Christianity was and is being created and re-created on the margins, the boundary, the periphery, and in so doing challenges the validity of all boundaries and peripheries.” Thus the mission historian Kevin Ward in Ward 2000: 3.
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3. The Reformation in Europe up until its decisive phase, Pietism, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, resulting in the development of Methodism, the Holiness Movement in North America to the Pentecostal Movement from 1906. 4. One of their smaller branches developed into the Elim Mission in 1924, founded by I.Q. Spencer (1888–1970) in Lima, New York, USA. There were close relations between Spencer and William Branham (1909–1965), but also with other representatives of the controversial and productive New-Order-of-the-LatterRain[ Movement] (NOLR) from 1948 on. Their focus was, among other things, on miracle healing, and the service linked the young T.L. Osborn with the movement from its beginnings. His missionary activities brought him to Africa where, in addition to preaching and practising healing church services, he tried to develop indigenous churches by recruiting and educating “native evangelists”. One of these was Alexandre A. Abala, who converted in 1957 in Mombasa, where he was active for ten years until he returned to his home country, Congo, where, supported in part by I.Q. Spencer’s Elim Mission but also by T.L. Osborn, he founded the FEPAZaire Church in Kinshasa. Soon after he was able to win over the Angolan Manuel Lumamba, who, after the end of the civil war, and following the death of A.A. Abala, was very disappointed that he was not appointed as his successor. Soon after the splitting-off of most of the FEPACO congregations (2005) in his home country, Angola, that were renamed “Bom Deus”, he started to strategically join the migrant communities together with regard to their ethnic-national background, and was able to win over the majority of the communities in Europe. One of the migrant pastors is the Angolan Marcio Jambo in Weltendorf/F., head of GGG Germany. In his congregation Christians of different nationalities meet. The interactive and performative network of missionary activities of GGG reaches to West, North, and South Europe. It is influential especially in Africa and additionally in South America (Brazil). In this case, there exists the following historical-intercultural chain, connected especially by the transferring power of healing rituals, which have been transferred from North America and the Healing Revivalist Tommy Lee Osborn to East Africa. From Osborn’s evangelisation in Mombasa, the converted Congolese Alexandre A. Abala brought the performance of the healing ministry to his home country, Congo. There, Abala found an adequate disciple in the Angolan refugee Manuel Lumamba. After returning, Lumamba founded his own church in Angola, from where he established branches in West Europe, where he appointed the asylum-seeker Marcio Jambo to be the national overseer.
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5. The Performance/Performativity of Language(s) of Faith In this section we will ask how it comes that rituals or sequences are transferred. The eminent differences which exist between the narrative and the actors of the rituals in time, space, participants, cultural and social contexts, religious identity, and other specific phenomena can only be bridged by ritual performances. In other words, the differences are paradoxical preconditions for the ritual performances to function. Especially the threshold or transformation rites make use of the tensions that are caused by liminal status: where there is no sickness, there is no healing; where there is no sin, there is no faith and forgiveness; where there is no text (narrative of performance and its theoretically existing concept in performativity), there is no context (a performance realised here and now). 5.1 “Performance” in its Relationship with “Performativity” First, I will verify and clarify the documented and analysed material of Paragraph 2 (transcribed texts of performances) and Paragraph 4 (historical perspective) above from the viewpoint of the theory of performance/performativity. Performance has to be understood as a staging or carrying-out of an action and seems to require an acting subject. The speech act theory of John L. Austin (1955)20 is discussed and adopted in many ways in the theory of ritual studies. The cultural philosopher Gerald Posselt (Vienna) brings a very instructive development of this theory according to Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance21 and Judith Butler’s findings in excitable speech22, which is suitable for our investigations. Performance (as a speaker’s ability, as a linguistic act, an acting with words; as execution, staging, or production, as we have recognised in the healing rituals mentioned) appears to always require an autonomously acting subject – in contrast to performativity.23 Performativity disputes the idea of an autonomously, intentionally, and independently acting subject. The outwardly recognisable dynamics of performance and performativity are based on inner interactions between the two. We follow this attempt at a definition in very dense philosophical terminology, which helps us to understand the transferring relations between the individual and society, between the past which is reflected while synchronising the present with it, between the invisible and inner world of the participants and the visible and tangible external world, between the more traditional and culture-centred (southern) sphere and the northern hemisphere, shaped by the discourse of modernity:
20 21 22 23
Austin 1962. Derrida 1988. Butler 1997. Posselt 2005: 56.
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“The performativity of a performance underlines its power to create the performative subject and the action that it signifies in and through this act of performance.”24 This theoretical, broader definition of performativity, with its reference to the conditions required to realise and shape performances, puts a substantially stronger emphasis on the urge to completion inherent in all performances. There is a mutual relationship between this definition and the practical-effective and narrower definition of performances with their dramatic representations and the description of the dramatic implementation of the latter. Only after the category “performance” had been analysed with regard to what is common to language and ritual could a theory of “performativity” be developed. This has to be used and to be made clear in view of performances, thus employing the findings obtained on the meta-level.25 This narrower definition of performance is concerned with the understanding of this term as it is understood by ritual experts and social anthropologists when working explicitly as researchers of rituals, looking at “ritual dynamics”, “events”, at “entering a scene”, or only at “gestures”. Performance, then, describes the aspects of production and representation, of producing and of being represented as such, in which dramatic, narrower performance and effective, broader performativity that abstracts from performances are two sides of one coin. Therefore, the terms “performance” and “performativity” are decipherable, but – when only looking at one of the terms, without the other – they elude a clear-cut and unambiguous definition. They can be understood only with the help of the epistemological principle of mutuality and by unfolding one term in contrast to the other and vice versa. The terms in their combination open a multi-layered and not fully controllable set of meanings. This has to be seen with respect to the many shapes of performance that are relevant in view of the Pentecostal/Charismatic transcultural scene, for instance Nzambe Malamu-FEPACO26 or GGG.
24 Ibid. (Translation: M.F.). This includes in our cases of performances both: (a) verbal utterances as well as (b) non-verbal expressions, which normally interact. 25 The results of my empirical field studies as a participating observer who uses half-open interviews, records narratives, and collects case studies that have to be evaluated provide the setting. 26 This is the actual double name of the church, which is mostly at home in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Nzambe Malamu” is the call “God is good” in Lingala, an indigenous language in the Congo and Angola; FEPACO is the abbreviation for the French “Fraternité Evangélique de Pentecôte en Afrique au Congo”.
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5.2 Liminality as a Socio-Anthropological Condition of Performance/ Performativity The contribution of Victor Turner (1920–1983) was to have applied A. van Gennep’s concept of rites of passage (1909) in traditional, kinship-organised societies to societies with an increasing specialisation, complexity, and degree of social change. He focused on the middle of the three ritual phases or single rites of van Gennep’s system27 and described them in his concept as two separate phases, placed between van Gennep’s first (1. break) and last phase (3. reintegration/acceptance). Turner uses the terms crisis (2a.) and coping (2b.) to analyse the so-called threshold or transformation rites (van Gennep). This social drama, which is in the background, was also recognised by him as the “latent element of the aesthetic form of representation of the drama on stage”, and is now identified as the basic socio-cultural innovation that influences “the drama of life”. The latter we recognise in “the drama of healing” performed in Mombasa, in Ghana, in Frankfurt/M., in Paris, or in Weltendorf/F. We can imagine the thousands and thousands of suffering participants of Pentecostal healing and miracle revivals all over the world, yearning for health, prosperity, peace, and reconciliation. Turner described the twofold middle ritual liminal phase as a transforming cultural technique, which can be easily observed in games or in sub-cultural leisure-time activities (the ritual liminoid) but which, in fact, are socio-cultural strategies deeply rooted in human needs. It is not surprising that the healing ritual almost has not changed since biblical times, because its power depends on the ritually accurate application of its order on the present situation and context, as we see, for example, with Apostle Lumamba in Weltendorf/F. when referring to Jesus and his healing ceremonies (see below 6.2.). 5.3 “Flow”, Communitas, and “Globalisation from Below” The flow plays an important part in all performative rites. One of the most outstanding representatives of ritual research, the psychologist Mihály Csikszentmihályi, became well known when he coined the term “flow” in the 1970s in Chicago.28 In my opinion, the Pentecostal African migrant churches in the West, or even the entire Pentecostal movement, is a kind of “big modern laboratory” meant to cause change or to react to the need for change. The pressure of living in a diaspora produces new group affiliations. The flexibility that characterises the Pentecostal movement has also to be understood as a reaction to the social, worldwide changes that are triggered by the process of globalisation. 27 See above 2.2 to 2.4 (1. separation rites; 2. threshold or transformation rites; 3. affiliation rites). 28 Csikszentmihályi 1987.
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With regard to FEPACO being part of the worldwide network of the Pentecostal movement, I am also interested in analysing to what extent we may speak about a kind of systematic “globalisation from below”. Contrary to the prevailing tendency to see the spreading of the Pentecostal movement as being controlled “from above”, purely by Western authorities, there is an opposite view, which – based on a wealth of facts – is of the opinion that the Pentecostal movement’s success would not have been possible without the indigenous personal contribution of the cultures of the South.29 As “perhaps the clearest indication of flow, the merging of action and consciousness” has to be identified.30 A person in a flow event does not have a dualistic perspective. He or she may be aware of his or her actions, but the person is not consciously aware of him- or herself. Therefore, this concept is fitting to reconstruct the meaning of liminal rites or of those rites of the second phase. When Victor Turner refers to the category of the flow experience in the context of the meaning of communitas – which in our case is an intercultural, transcontinental, and multi-denominational communitas – then he does this for the following reason: crisis and coping with crisis are closely related in the context of threshold rites and transformation rites. In the same way, illness and healing are related in liminal performative healing rituals. The anti-structure of the communitas is an expression of the subversive social and cultural potential, which, according to Pierre Bourdieu, has to be understood as cultural capital. In a field controlled by migration, globalisation, and religious transformations, certain acquired forms of habitus can undergo performative processes. 5.4 How the “Ritual Dynamics” are Generated “In the Rapture of Ritual” is the illustrative title of a collection of essays on the theme of “ritual dynamics” from the perspective of cultural studies.31 Rituals are defined as “transformative performances with open meaning”. The examples taken from cultures all over the world and diverse religious traditions demonstrate, among other things, that the role of the performer, of the leader of the ritual, is very important. His ability to refine the body allows “an access to the ‘primal forces’ of the human persona, which should be raised during the performance in the observer himself, too”.32 Concerning this, attention must not only be given to the response of the participants in a ritual to certain body techniques through which their per29 In this debate, it is worthwhile and interesting to take up and to develop new ideas that stem from Asia and Africa. Thus, the Indian cultural scientist Arjun Appadurai introduced the topic under the title “Grassroot Globalization and the Research Imagination” (Appadurai 2000). 30 Csikszentmihályi 1987: 61. 31 Rao & Köpping. 2000. 32 Ibid.: 13.
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ception of reality is stimulated to change; it must also be turned to the response of the crowd, which not only frames and observes the action, but is also reacting, visibly or invisibly, to it. The illocutionary speech act carries out the action at the moment of the performance. However, as this moment is ritualised, it is never concerned with only one single moment in time. Rather, the ritualised moment represents a condensed historicity: it reaches beyond itself into the past and into the future, in so far as it is an effect of past and future evocations of the conventions that constitute the individual performance, while at the same time reaching far beyond it.33 The identity-building effectiveness of a performance as a force that constitutes the “world” and the “belief” is substantially dependent on the code of the context in which the performance takes place. However, it is not only concerned with performance as a precondition of speaking with regard to faith, but also with the performativity of religious language. How do performance and performativity prove to be structurally constitutive for the facilitation of faith?
6. How “the” Healing-Ritual is Transferred “Ritual transfer” is determined by the shift of a ritual, or elements of a ritual, from one context into another, or to an altered context. Transfer processes – in the course of which rituals may also disappear or be reinvented – take place in the present, determinate space, but also in view of the perspective of time. With regard to migration, globalisation, multiculturalism, and the worldwide interrelatedness of religious individual and social identities and their institutionalisation, this implies that there is an experience of loss, but also an experience of gain caused by the “re-invention or invention, the perception, and the transformation of rituals”.34 An altered context creates modifications of the intrinsic dimensions of a ritual. Contextual aspects, especially intercultural ones, may influence each other. Particularly in the context of the dynamic discourse, which is controlled by the multi-denominational and social conditions of migrant movements, the religious identity plays an important role. 6.1 Contextual Aspects Contextual aspects are empirically observable and describable by cultural studies (always in a mutual relationship which each other and with the ritual as such). In the following overview, I relate the research material according to Langer et al. 2006:35 33 The examples in the next section below will explain practically what we describe here theoretically. 34 Langer et al. 2006. 35 Ibid.: 1f.
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– Media, which contain the (pre-) script and the execution of the ritual → megaevents, concerned with healing in an enclosed space / stage / protagonist church leader / conquest of the social terrain of the European middle classes with the cultural or religious capital of Africa, culminating in transcontinental relationships – Geography / space → metropolis / Germany / Europe – Culture → Congo / Angola / migration – diaspora / other cultures from Asia and South Africa – Religion → Pentecostal with Protestant or residual Catholic identity – Politics – former Belgian colony / Mobutu dictatorship / civil wars / minority among Germans – Economy – economically exploited Katanga / business people / jobs in the services sector / unemployed – Society → illegal immigrants / all classes / socially and physically handicapped people – Gender → relatively many women / young people / young men – Group carrying the Ritual Tradition → intercultural, African “structure” – History → the historical connections between the above-mentioned fields form the historical contextual aspects of the ritual, which can be synchronised by the participants according to their needs. 6.2 Intrinsic Aspects/Dimensions of a Ritual These do not have to change to an equal degree in the context of transfer processes and mutual relationships36: – Script – biblical or New Testament healing narratives. “Jesus heals the blind Bartimaeus” (Mark 10:46–52). It is important that in Mark 10:49 ff. emphasis is not put on the miracle healing; in this narrative the emphasis is put on the assessment and the public acknowledgment of the healing (v. 52). In the ritual transfer, the “core of the message” can shift from one aspect of the narrative to another, when comparing it with Mark 8:22–26. – Performance → liturgical-narrative actions in the diachronic context of the past 2 000 years.37 – Performativity → message / power / linguistic subject of a statement / referential action / to create a linguistic act (G. Posselt). – Aesthetics → serving to create embodiment by using clothes, shaping of space, all forms meant to stimulate the senses (dance, songs, rhythm, smells, language, etc.) / to achieve embodiment. 36 Cf. ibid.: 2f. 37 Bingel 2007.
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– Structure → even from a post-structuralist point of view, it cannot be overlooked that there are parallel structures in rituals. Their dynamic features are clearly discernible even over different, diachronic periods of time. An analysis of the structure of miracle narratives dealing with restoration reveals that there is a common basic morphology inherent in these narratives, which can be identified in all narratives with a “comedic” character. – Intentionality (Strategic Use, Instrumentalisation) → success as performer / as organiser / as church / social and economic improvement of the congregation in Germany / positive and motivating feedback to parent church in Angola via stories about the success in Europe. – Self-Reflexivity through explicit or implicit diachronic quotation → by Manuel Lumamba on 1 November 2006 with regard to New Testament historical traditions (charismatic Early Christian itinerant preachers) – History of Mission/Christianity in an intercultural context. – Interaction → synchronic through participants of intercultural and partly marginalised background (ethnic-cultural as asylum seekers, illegal immigrants between Germany and other European countries and their home country/continent, unemployed) / feedback to Africa or North and South America; not least by the participants involved. – Communication → linguistic: translation between German / Portuguese / Lingala / Kikonga / French; emotional: through song / dance / body language. – Psycho-Social-Functionality (psychological and social) → shaping of unity in diversity with the aim of stabilising the church’s identity and the number of church members. – Mediality → by means of staged appearances of groups and individuals, but also through the recording and spreading of audio and visual media. There is another, profound concept of “mediality”, in which the leaders of the ritual as well as the participants in the ritual represent the subject. Physically encoded experiences are communicated with the intention of supporting the healing by means of transmitting positive energy or to protect against harmful and unclean energies. What is quite remarkable in this case is the importance of the transmission of energy and the ritual transfer of power by means of the layingon of hands of the exorcist or, in large meetings, of the participants themselves. During his presentation of the common prayer, they put their right hands to the heart or on the affected parts of their bodies.38 – Symbolism → the crossover of symbols from Africa and those of European culture → thereby acquiring internationality. 38 The “laying-on of hands of the exorcist” or the leader of a liberation performance can be identified non-biblically, biblically, and post-biblically in many religions. “In der Hand sammelt sich die Macht des Menschen, die über die Hand weitergeleitet werden kann; Kraftübertragung ist nicht selten identisch mit Entfernung des Übels“, so Böcher 1970: 171.
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– Ascribed Meanings → mutual show of respect and confirmation of respective functional, social, political, and performative identities. In the collective memory, a legend of the church leader or the GGG congregation and their meaning is constructed. 6.3 The Participants There are active and passive participants (protagonists/recipients) and corresponding power structures; there is a difference in the degree of involvement of the participants. Roughly, there are the main protagonists and the “choir”, but there is also the “invisible” part of the community, which is not present directly, but which “participates” and influences the ritual and its shape. 6.4 On the Meaning of Performative Religious Actions with Regard to Narratives as Stabilising and Transforming Elements for Migrants Who Experience Themselves as being Marginalised A large part of the members of GGG, that is, of the original group participating in the rites, moved from one geographic, social, and cultural environment to another. This is not only the case for church members from Africa, but also for members from other countries of origin and is caused by migration. German and European members stay in their original socio-economic context, as well as they enter into a different cultural context. For them there is a radical change with regard to the religious and denominational context. It is a transcultural ritual transfer when Germans take part in a Pentecostal healing ritual that clearly reveals elements of African spirituality. As is made clear in the context of GGG and FEPACO, the ritual transfer does not happen in one direction only, but ritual transfer also affects the execution of the rituals of the original group, that is, the original context. On the one hand, the community life of many Pentecostal churches has to be interpreted as being a reaction, trying to cope with the experience of political, socio-economic oppression with the help of a religious practice, while at the same time the ritual performance with its stabilising, self-preserving function helps to shape identity in a situation of change. Recognisable cultural patterns have meaning and confirm one’s own self.39
7. The Term “Ritual Transfer” What does “ritual transfer” mean? Apparently, it is an ambiguous concept that makes us aware of the dialectics between rituals that are transferred (“Ritual
39 Cf. Kapferer 1986.
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Transfer”) and rituals that are in use to transfer concepts, ideas, politics or power (“Transfer Rituals”). 7.1 Rituals that are Transferred (“Ritual Transfer”) Rituals are transferred from one period to another, from one culture, from one religion, or from one generation to another. This has to do with the question of “how”, with the question of the cultural meaning of rituals, their changeability and continuity. In the process of “ritual transfer”, a ritual, or single elements of a ritual, shifts from one context to another, or to an altered context. Transfer processes, in which rituals may also disappear or be reinvented, take place in a determinate space and time. Concerning migration, globalisation, multiculturalism, and worldwide networks of religious individual and social identities and their institutionalisation, this implies the experience of loss, but also of gain, through the re-invention and the transformation of rituals. A change of context brings about modifications in the dimensions immanent in the ritual. Contextual aspects, and especially intercultural contextual aspects, may influence one another. Particularly with regard to a dynamic discourse, which is partly shaped by multi-denominational and social conditions in the context of migration, religious identity plays an important role. So the dynamics essential for ritual transfer come into view in the transformation of reality, of its historical, social, (inter-)cultural, health-related dimensions. Our example of a healing church service deals with the “embodiment” of health. “Health” is what is aimed at by taking remedial action in a spiritual fight against illnesses that are experienced as a state of lack, by using (embodiment) performance. 7.2 Rituals that Transfer (“Transfer Rituals”) Here the transfer by ritual is brought into focus (the question of “what”, the contents, theology, doctrine, politics of rituals, etc.). Grammatically, “ritual” is the subject, and “transfer-“, as far as content is concerned, is a qualifier that is linked with the question of the inner dynamics of rituals. These questions arose first during my research – a comparison of Pentecostal/Charismatic healing rituals in the context of the GGG Church that was researched in field studies and analysed with the help of other kinds of materials. The question of a leitmotif (“guiding theme”) became important – a leitmotif that could be identified over the various contextual and structural changes of the transferred healing ritual. Therefore, it must be asked whether we need to talk about transfer rituals with regard to the contents they transport in(to) their narrative and performativity. Transfer processes, such as healing, embodiment, social-religious-(inter-)cultural
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group formation, or evocation, the support and overcoming of liminal processes, reveal that ritual dynamics is no end in itself, but that it is strongly shaped by objectives, ideas, and discussions.
8. The Event in Weltendorf/F. in a Social and in an Ecclesiastical Context With regard to the Pentecostal churches, what is aimed at is the achievement of salvation, the personal completion of life, and the realisation of “God’s reality” in this world. In a worldwide perspective, it is mostly marginalised people that are attracted to this form of passing on the message of the Gospel: people deprived of their social rights, economically disadvantaged people, and people with health problems, people persecuted because of their political convictions or their religion. The performative and “sharpened” message that is propagated in the sermons, in healing rituals, which take place on the streets of the slums and use open spaces in the mega-churches, promises a turning point in one’s life in the “here and now”. It fights against any willingness to be content to wait, with which the theologies of the Catholic and most of the historical Protestant churches are identified. Without its recall of and bringing into being the “Cross of Christ” as a code for marginalisation, injustice, exploitation, and exclusion, the Pentecostal Charismatic theology would lack something decisive: the direct motivation, fuelled by suffering and the experience of privation, to reach out to the power of the message of resurrection. Without the trusting reference to the centre of the Christian message, every healing of an illness, each protection from diverse powers, identified as being demonic, would result in nothing but an egoistic endeavour. Therefore, we conclude that ritual transfer does not always mean change of rituals or exchange of elements. The ritual transfer is, in the cases described, signified by an insignificant change of the ritual by itself, but by a tremendous change concerning contexts like time, culture, language, and the social, as well as political, conditions determined by the different local circumstances in a world, in its religious dimension, globalised by these transfers. Nevertheless, the hope of these Christian Pentecostal churches is still that the participants, as well as the whole world, might be changed in a positive way.
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References Appadurai, Arjun 2000. “Grassroot Globalization and the Research Imagination”. In: Arjun Appadurai (ed.). Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press: 1–21 (Millennial Quartet 2.) Austin, John L. 1962. How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bergunder, Michael 2005: “Constructing Indian Pentecostalism: On Issues of Methodology and Representation”. In: Allan Anderson & Edmond Tang (eds.). Asian and Pentecostal. The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. Oxford et al.: Regnum Book International & APTS Press: 177–213 (Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 3). Bingel, Christian 2007. “You will not leave from here unchanged”: Beobachtungen zu liturgischen Vollzügen im charismatischen Gottesdienst am Beispiel der Central Faith Ministry. (Diploma Thesis, University of Hamburg). Böcher, Otto 1970. Dämonenfurcht und Dämonenabwehr. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte der christlichen Taufe. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer (Beitra!ge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament 10). Butler, Judith 1997. Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Csikszentmihályi, Mihaly 1987. Das flow-Erlebnis. Jenseits von Angst und Langeweile: Im Tun aufgehen. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Derrida, Jacques 1988. “Signatur, Ereignis, Kontext”. In: Jacques Derrida. Randgänge der Philosophie. Vienna: Passagen: 291–314. Gennep, Arnold van 1986. Übergangsriten. Frankfurt a.M. Gladigow, Burkhard 2004. “Sequenzierung und die Ordnung der Rituale”. In: Michael Stausberg (ed.). Zoroastrian Rituals in Context. Leiden & New York & Köln: Brill: 57–76. Hock, Klaus 2005. “Appropriated Vibrancy. Immediacy as Formative Element in African Theologies”. In: Klaus Koschorke (ed.). African Identities and World Christianity in the Twentieth Century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 113–126. Kahl, Werner 1994. New Testament Miracle Stories in their Religious-Historical Setting. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Kaiser, Sigurd 2006. Krankenheilung. Untersuchung zu Form, Sprache, traditionsgeschichtlichem Hintergrund und Aussage zu Jak 5,13–18. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Kapferer, Bruce 1986. “Performance and the Structuring of Meaning and Experience”. In: Victor W. Turner & Edward M. Bruner (eds.). The Anthropology of Experience. Urban et al.: University of Illinois Press: 188–203. Langer, Robert et al. 2005. “Ritualtransfer”. In: Robert Langer & Raoul Motika & Michael Ursinus (eds.). Migration und Ritualtransfer. Religiöse Praxis der Aleviten, Jesiden und Nusairier zwischen Vorderem Orient und Westeuropa. Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang: 23–34 (Heidelberger Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des modernen Vorderen Orients 33).
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— 2006: “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Posselt, Gerald 2005. Katachrese. Rhetorik des Performativen. Munich: Fink. Rao, Ursula & Klaus Peter Köpping 2000. “Die performative Wende: Leben – Ritual – Theater”. In: Rao, Ursula & Klaus Peter Köpping (eds.). Im Rausch des Rituals. Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz. Münster & Hamburg: Lit-Verlag: 1–31. Ward, Kevin 2000. “Introduction”. In: Kevin Ward & Brian Stanley (eds.). The Church Mission Society and World Christianity 1799–1999. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans et al.: 1–12.
Audio-visual Material Aidini.Abala.Frankfurt.96. [Transcription: Extracts from 00:00–00:22 and 01:24– 01:49]. Production by GGG. (MP3) Dr. T.L. Osborn – Schwarzes Gold / Afrika-Feldzug 1958. [Transcription: Concentration on extract from 00:35 to 01.21]. Production by T.L. Osborn-Ministries. (DVD) t.l.osborn.paris.06. [Transcription: Extracts from 00:00 to 02:04]. Reproduced by GGG (homemade production of French organizer). (DVD) Weltendorf.06. [Transcription: Extracts from 00:00 to 01.57]. Production by GGG. (DVD)
Heiko Grünwedel
Shamanic Rituals from Siberia to Europe: Cultural Exchanges between Indigenous Healing Traditions of the Tyva and Neo-Shamans in Germany Sketching a map of current transformation processes of shamanic healing practices, there is no way to convey an analysis of global interferences and influences. Based on two samples of field research on the changes in neo-shamanic movements in Germany on the one hand, and Tyvinian autochthonous traditions on the other, evidence will be given that the mutual operations of reception can be described from the perspective of an asymmetrical two-way ritual transfer. The latter – which is my thesis – is channelled through spaces of common practice. Thus, the focus of this article lies on the interconnections between ritual transfer and intercultural contact zones, pointing out that the reference to the other in the emic discourse has developed to become a constitutive part of shamanic rituals. A comparison of their respective effects on identity-shaping will therefore raise the question of its contextual variance or invariance, showing that the ritual itself becomes transparent as a cultural interface. Characterised by this exchange between cultures, the different blueprints of life of the ritual performers, who turn out to be mediators of innovation as well as tradition, make the transfer of ritual paradigmatic for the fundamental dynamics of ritual in general.
1. Two Short Shamanic Biographies – Traces of Ritual Transfer there and here A shaman from the South Siberian Republic of Tyva in Europe? An Austrian shaman in Tyva? Let me start my reflection on ritual transfers between Siberia and Germany with two short biographies of shamans, here and there – narrating them almost as dramatically as reciting a play. Act 1: Yury1 was an actor at the national theatre in Kyzyl, the capital of the South Siberian Republic of Tyva. He was an actor, and not a bad one, known for 1 All names are made anonymous with the exception of the Tyvinian shaman Ai-Churek, who seeks publicity on her own.
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his mastery of traditional throat-singing khöömei. One day, performing the tiny role of a shaman in a play, there awakened in him an interest in shamanism. Moreover, in 1992 the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the way for the revival of religious practices formerly stigmatised as outdated. Yury discovered his affinity for indigenous shamanism and soon became the chairman of the state-approved shamanic clinic “Tos Deer”, which was founded with the support of the “American Foundation for Shamanic Studies”. In 1995, while visiting India, he was given the blessings of the Dalai Lama for his work in healing. After this he became acquainted with a doctor from Ukraine, who was willing and able to translate his seminars into English. Everything was ready for him to go on an international tour. In 2008, visitors of the “Rainbow Spirit Festival” in Germany were able to take part in a seminar on the healing power of throat-singing – held by a shaman from Tyva called Yury.2 Act 2: Peter holds a doctorate in psychotherapy and works in Switzerland. In addition to the training he received in different psychotherapeutic methods, including hypnotic approaches, he has dealt, since the mid-seventies, with shamanic dream-work and healing rituals. He became an active member of the “Foundation for Shamanic Studies” initiated by Michael Harner, and gave seminars in Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. The contact the Foundation had with shamans in Tyva led to a research expedition to Siberia. This, however, was far from being a passive observation of the indigenous rituals. Peter himself performed together with Tyvan shamans, his methods securing him a high reputation as a powerful shaman among the Tyvan people. When Peter returned to Tyva a second and third time, the population of Erzin, a small town on the edge of the Gobi desert, was already awaiting the foreign shaman in hopeful expectation. Rumour had it that the man from Europe had special abilities to heal.3 My questions after Acts 1 and 2 are the following: How do seminars on the selfhealing forces of Tyvan throat-singing get to Germany? And why are the inhabitants of Tyva in Central Asia waiting for a shaman from Switzerland? To explore these questions, I will proceed in four steps. Firstly, I will depict which kinds of rituals are at stake when talking about Tyvan shamanic rituals and their transfer to Germany. Based on that, I will draw some lines of the common references between ritual theory and the debate on shamanism. Secondly, I will discuss the relation between ritual transfer and intercultural contact zones. This leads me then to show – by comparing two shamanic websites – how ritual transfer becomes explicitly reflexive and thus a topic of the emic shamanic discourse. Finally, I will give some conclusions about the liminality of the ritual transfers. 2 Cf. www.rainbow-spirit-festival.de and www.khoomei-shaman.com (last access: 29 May 2008). 3 Cf. www.flss.ch (last access 29 May 2008).
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2. Ritual Theory in the Context of the Debate on Shamanism After 80 years of persecution and oppression under the Soviet regime, Tyvan shamanism has seen an unprecedented revival, beginning in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its mastermind, founding father, and later life-time president of all Tyvan shamans, Mongush Kenin-Lopsan, has established, as a necessity and consequence of this process, a collection of compulsory shamanic knowledge that could be labelled a “canon of traditional ritual practice”. In his book Magic of Tuvinian shamans,4 he not only establishes Tyva as the original birthplace and keeper of the most authentic form of shamanism, but also gives a detailed description of different kinds of shamanic rituals. Among these are healing rituals as a response to varied forms of illnesses, and cultic rituals in connection with designated ritual times and places, such as sacred springs, trees, rivers, or, in general, ovaas, Tyvan stone assemblages which mark places of outstanding spiritual meaning. Although the variety of ritual forms is complex, if not overwhelming, a certain corpus of core rites is observable in rituals of Tyvan shamans. Being aware of the fact that such a core is more a scholarly construction than a representative description, one may follow Daniel R. Plumley, who describes it as follows: “Though different seasons require different shamanic actions or ceremony, perhaps the Tuvan kamlanie ceremony best typifies the Tuvan shamanic tradition of cleansing negative energy and bad spirits from people, while offering respect, thanks, and restored balance to nature. Most often, kamlanie are performed adjacent to rivers, lakes, water sources like natural spring waters, arzhan. Participants are asked to sit on the earth, perhaps on skin or wool pads or blankets, and clear their minds of thoughts and mental hindrances. The shaman, in full dress that includes an ankle-length caftan with unique Tuvan symbols, begins the ceremony by raising a white, conch-like shell to her lips and blowing hard, a roaring trumpet sound that both establishes the ceremony’s beginning and warns evil spirits, or negative energies, to leave the place [...] The opening portion of the kamlanie is the ritual purification of the participants and the atmosphere and attributes to be used in the ceremony through the use of burning juniper, artish, in a small ritual ceramic, wooden, or at times shallow silver bowl, piala. Once the initial purification has been completed, the sacred fire can be lit. In order for the shaman to reach the spiritual world, she needs to move into an altered state of consciousness, where she can meet the appropriate spirits. The shaman may begin to coax ancestral spirits to the place first through the strange twang of a small Tuvan khomus (mouth harp), or possibly, by the traditional Tuvan khoomei, overtone singing of algyshes, shamanic hymns [...] Ritually with guttural khoomei break4 Kenin-Lopsan 1993.
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Despite the fact that Plumley’s description interferes with his own interpretations, and the problematic terminology he applies to his subject, the description gives a first overview of typical elements and a paradigmatic sequence of practices during a Tyvan shamanic ritual. As mentioned above, these rituals vary according to the micro-context in which they are performed, depending on the individual shaman and the specific participants. Taking into account that it is no more than a generalisation that has been given so far, the next question has to be: What do these Tyvan rituals have to do with the practices of German shamans? If there is a connection, what kind of theory can be found to describe it adequately? Ritual studies reflect processes of cultural change. This becomes clear already in the period of their formation, which coincides with a massive questioning of established rites and ceremonies, and reaches the current diversification of ritual industry. Rituals in this view are by themselves the master keys to understanding cultures.6 A hypothesis of the following contribution is that in the cultural exchanges between indigenous healing traditions and their reception in the West, 5 Conf. Plumley & Neumann Fridman 2004: 637-642. 6 Cf. Kreinath & Snoek & Stausberg 2006: IXf.
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rituals and their transfer are central to, if not decisive for, a description of the processes of mutual influence and interference which occur. This will be depicted paradigmatically, based on my field study on the relocation of healing traditions of South Siberian Tyva to neo-shamans in Germany. Contacts of this kind are, generally speaking, not a new phenomenon, however, they show, in my view, a new quality in terms of mediated globalisation. Portraying this cultural shift by means of ritual theory thus promises to generate a field of innovative approaches, which are capable of describing phenomena emanating from cultural border crossings. If, in this context, I refer to “shamanism”, it is obvious that I make use of a highly problematic term. Although it is not possible to sketch here a representative spectrum of the discussion on its usefulness, validity, and intrinsic pitfalls, some central issues have to be marked out. Then, in the light of ritual transfer, they will become transparent in a new way. The most basic methodological difficulty of research in shamanism lies from its very beginning in the entanglement with the phenomenon it is investigating. In other words, there is the potential criticism of an auto-constitution of its scientific object. In terms of categories that are applied by the study of religion, this shows itself in the fundamental questions of whether shamanism is a religion as such, or just a technique that is used in different religions, or whether the phenomenon of shamanism is restricted to Siberia and circumpolar regions or is of universal character. Discussing such fundamental questions then leads (at least since the acquisition of indigenous traditions by the New Age movement) to the often fiercely discussed question of whether there is a way to distinguish categorically between shamanism and neo-shamanism by their signatures. Both, the nature of the attribute “autochthonous” being a construction, as well as the contextualisation of neo-shamanism in the tradition of Western esotericism, are discussed. All these differentiations in the debate are correct and necessary. However, here they will represent the background melody, rather than the primary motif of interest. As for the reference to issues of ritual theory, I conclude from the fundamental uncertainty relation outlined above, “[that] [...] one should not take anything for granted when it comes to ritual [...]”.7 I believe that this could be the fundamental virtue of a theoretical approach to shamanic rituals. The approach here applied is thus to be understood as a theoretical approach, beyond the major theories, but with the goal in mind of transcending one’s own case study to a meta-theoretical perspective. The key to this is not to try to answer preconceived questions, but to analyse the questions themselves instead of assuming them to be givens. Theoretical reflections should occur in a constant process of self-reflection and preserve their openness, so that they position themselves neither as a priori nor a posteriori to the phenomenon itself, but in coordinated interaction with it. Concepts and approaches applied here to describe the ritual are thus not so much categorically analytical 7 Ibid.: XIV.
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instruments as ones used to reflect the connection between the observer and that which is observed.8 Alluding to Jan Snoek’s proposal to conceptualise rituals as polythetic classes,9 in the following I shall see a shamanistic healing-ritual as a certain kind of behaviour, which is often (but not always) distinguishable from everyday behaviour. Ritual specialists and clients are in asymmetric relation to each other, but both are, in the same fashion, executor and beneficiary, active and passive parts of these acts. In particular, the conceptual as well as performative choreographic linking, which is not restricted to the common time of the ritual, and the symbolic entanglement of the lives of the client and the shaman, plays a decisive role. In the majority of cases, a more or less standardised (but also creatively de-signable) border and transition marking takes place, which can be of situative, local, and habitual nature. Usually the healing ritual follows a fixed core of basic rites, which, arranged in different ways, form the structure of the ritual. Client and shaman normally connect an intentional and symbolic meaning with the completion of the ritual, which is embedded in a broader interpretative framework of illness, health, and the surrounding world.
3. Ritual Transfer and Intercultural Contact Zones The ritual definition given above is still far too essentialistic and static, as it neglects a number of factors which appear at first glance to be accompanying phenomena, but on closer examination necessarily appear as internal constitutive parts. These include, firstly, the presence of researchers, spectators, spiritual seekers, and tourists during the ritual execution, i.e. a transfer of the clients of the ritual. Secondly, there is the reconstruction of the ritual script using sources from different historical contexts, which thus renders the ritual execution according to this script a temporal, i.e. diachronic, ritual transfer. Finally, the movement of the ritual specialists in different areas, who thus perform a spatial ritual transfer. These distinctions are of course nothing more than heuristic; however, the differentiation of these three movements can help to refine perception. Also, it should be mentioned, and not dismissed, that, at least in the case of shamanic healing rites, it is the entanglement of synchronic and diachronic forms of ritual transfer which make up the dynamic and effectiveness of the recorded shifts. Therefore, one should ask on a deeper level what we are thinking of when we talk about the event of transfer. Is it a copy, an appropriation, mimesis, a new creation? What are the different contexts, i.e. cultures, out of which and into which the ritual is transferred? The definition of contexts plays a decisive role, as these contexts are perceived as different and constructed, but in a scientific perspective cannot be described adequately with 8 Cf. ibid.: VIII–XX. 9 Cf. Snoek 2006.
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straightforward, linear, and mono-perspectival models of interpretation. Rather, they are intertwined in a complex and multilateral way, and share several broken boundaries and horizons. These entanglements will now be related to and analysed in the light of Tyvan shamanism. To this end, I will introduce a distinction of transfer interfaces based on empirical studies in Germany and Tyva. That will allow breaking down hermeneutically the biographical dramatic events of ritual transmission by shamans narrated in the beginning. As a transfer interface, I understand: 1. Material ritual objects in the form of shamanic attributes: shaman drums, rattles, caps, coats, and helper spirits 2. Performative ritual art: shamanic songs, dances, ritual scripts, and, in particular, the Tyvan throat-singing, khöömei 3. Models of ritual interpretation: concepts, narratives, literature 4. Participation experiences: episodic memories and emotional changes of reflection with regard to the other and the alien 5. Media of documenting rituals: video recordings, photo albums, web galleries, diaries, and internet blogs Through these five dimensions, the transfer of ritual can take place – not exclusively but predominantly. I described them as “interfaces” – a term which is commonly used in technical contexts, but which has a broader meaning as well, successfully applied in cultural studies in order to refer to the following: Transfer is not an asemiotic relocation of certain practices from one context into another, but rather is rooted in the points of connections, where reinterpretations occur. The interface as an area of overlap thus constitutes the place where continuous negotiations of meanings can be observed. This concept refers less to the static character, determination, and seclusion of such channels of communication than to creative processes of mutual permeation. For example, let me explain in more detail the ritual interpretations mentioned in point three above: My observation is, that to describe their healing practice, Tyvan shamans have recourse to terms, which can be found in the European esoteric vocabulary, as well as using native Tyvan terms. The native terms can be distinguished as terms that frame a practice as a ritual in general, firstly terms that refer explicitly to healing acts, and secondly terms that describe different manners of healing.10 For framing the ritual, and thus separating an action as “holy”, “blessed” or “sanctified” from commonplace and everyday acts, the words дагылдар [dagyldar], ыдыктаар [ydyktaar], and алгаар [algaar] are used. The action of healing itself is designated by the terms домнаар [domnaar] and емнеер [emneer]. They denote, in the first case, a generic cleaning with spiritual aims, in the second case a therapy with drugs of material character. Thus 10 These terms and their structuring stem from my fieldwork in Tyva 2007. Furthermore cf. Alekseev 1987 and Kenin-Lopsan 1997.
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defining the general context of healing, Tyvan shamans refer to the different ritual ways through which this can be achieved in the following terms: – – – – – – –
Арыглаар [aryglaar] to clean Саң салыр [saŋ salyr] to carry out a cleaning ritual with smoke Бажын тудар [bazhyn tudar] to bring to the right place Ханнар [khannar] bloodletting Суйбаар [suibaar] to wipe off something bad Орук чирик ажыдар [oruk chirik azhydar] to open the road Чалбарыыр [chalbaryyr] to ask for well-being, to pray
The ritual specialist, the shaman, is called in Tyvan a хам [kham]; he performs the kamlanie as described by Plumley, which may include a divination (төлге [tölge]). Although these terms are all clearly Tyvan from the linguistic point of view, grammatically and semantically, they are not the only ones used by Tyvan shamans to explain and interpret their actions. As stated above, they welcome esoteric patterns of ritual interpretation and integrate them into their ritual vocabulary. These comprise, for example, self-descriptions as wizards, healers, magicians, or fortune-tellers, supplementing the sole status as a kham. Clients of the rituals and their individual problems are seen and examined from the perspective of energies, chakras, auras, states of consciousness, trance, and karma. Finally, but importantly, the above-mentioned Tyvan methods of ritual healing are accompanied by the esoteric figures of re-energising, removing blockages and curses, telling the future by clairvoyance, and furnishing protection with a talisman. In the practice of healing, Tyvan shamans, depending on the socio-biographic background of their clients, resort to several of these semantic fields and bring them into different relations with one another. A strict separation of Tyvan and esoteric patterns of explanation cannot be observed, rather a usage characterised by mutual permeation and inter-referential hermeneutics. However, this is not the end of the story. Striking as it may already be up to this point, this process of entanglement is not restricted to a unidirectional transformation of indigenous language from sources of Western esotericism. In fact, it is paralleled by a movement in the opposite direction. Tyvan (or, in general, Turkic) technical terms of shamanic world-interpretation enter the Western shamanistic scene. These, in turn, I describe as container categories, since they bear the signature of an explicit performance of their nature of strangeness. They work, detached from their original content via their strangeness, as a means of transport, and can be associated relatively easily with new meanings. A vivid example is offered by the Siberian shaman Ahamkara, organising seminars on Siberian shamanism in Germany. He uses traditional terms of the shamanic worldview11 putting them in a reshaped framework, which corres11 Cf. Alekseev 1987.
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ponds to his need to provide a spiritual offer in the esoteric scene of Germany12. In order to render the image more vivid, I would like to pick out four pillars of his freshly constructed neo-shamanic cosmology: the Tyvan term “аржан [arzhan]”, which denotes a mineral spring with healing powers, often regarded among Tyvans as sacred places, is transformed into the “shamanic teacher”. The signifier for the ruler of the underworld spirits “эрлик [erlik]” becomes the “Great spirit of the past”. Opposed to him is, in the traditional view, the creator deity of the upper world “үлген [ülgen]”, who becomes the “Great spirit of the future”. Finally, the term “тенгри [tengri]”, which represents the heavens, is transformed to the “Place of power and the world of eternity”. For Ahamkara, these coordinates of a cosmology adapted to the spiritual search of the Western individual client not only serve as a basis to construct weekend seminars on shamanic wisdom from Siberia, but also to lay the foundation for organising spiritual trips for German groups to Siberian places of power. Both movements – the immigration of esoteric terms into the vocabulary of Tyvan shamans and the adaptation of specific indigenous cosmology into German groups of neo-shamanic endeavours – are part of more global phenomena. The canon of traditional shamanic practice, which was established by the founding father of Tyvan shamanism, Mongush Kenin-Lopsan, has been transformed and amplified in several directions; one part of this process is the re-interpretation of Tyvan concepts in the light of esoteric models of thought. On the other hand, the neo-shamanic scene in Western Europe is growing out of its original approach of a cultural universalism and becoming more sensitive to questions of cultural specifics – incorporating them, of course, into its own framework of understanding. Coming back to the question of the transfer interfaces, which was the point of departure for this thought, an important result to be stressed lies in the fact that the interfaces of ritual transfers are permeable in both directions. A re-interpretation and translation of ritual aspects occurs in the cultural contexts, which are coupled by the interface, asymmetrically in two directions. In addition to the differentiation of content or objects of the ritual transfers given above, a closer look at the structures which underlie them as carriers and frameworks are worthy of further effort.13 In the case of shamanic healing rituals, transfer structures are formed by congresses, weekend seminars, esoteric fairs, and tourist encounters on the one hand, so-called “scientific-practical” symposia, ritual performances for researchers in Tyva, and tours through Europe on the other hand. The fact that such carriers crystallise in institutionalised form and can be identified in both contexts – Tyva and Europe – gives another hint that the property of the ritual transfer is bi-direc12 Cf. www.ahamkara.org (last access: 29 May 2008). 13 Cf. Kapferer 2006: 515–517: Kapferer describes this process as “ritual framing”. All acts occurring within a defined framework are bound together and related to processes with regard to the ritual. Certain dimensions of reality are isolated and form a self-referential system, which ultimately constitutes the teleological linkage of the acts taking place within it.
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tional and mutually constitutive in this double movement. A distinction between a translational and an expeditional ritual transfer is thus conceptually possible, but both should always be conceptualised in their mutual reference to each other. While doing so, I understand the first type of ritual transfer as the process when a ritual specialist goes to the other place and implements the ritual from his own context. Ritual specialists of the other place will participate, learn, and perform mimesis. An expeditional ritual transfer, on the other hand, can be observed when a ritual specialist goes to the other place, participates in local ritual, and learns from the local ritual specialists. He then applies the newly acquired ritual knowledge after returning to his original context. In the bi-directionality, both forms overlap multidimensionally and influence each other in many ways. It follows from this that linear models of these interactions cannot suffice for an understanding of the complexity of these processes. One detail of this mutual constitution shall now be outlined, based on the analysis of two websites of two shamans.
4. The Reflexivity of the Ritual Transfer: the Emic Discourse in the Websites of Two Shamans Act 1: “Tos Deer” is that shamanic clinic, among at least four such competing ones in the Tyvan capital Kyzyl, which enjoys the greatest international reputation. The chairman shaman Ai-Churek regularly tours Europe and the USA. In Tyva, Tos Deer represents, more than the other clinics, the primary drop-in centre in Tyva for visitors and researchers.14 14 Cf. http://shaman.shude.ru (last access 29 May 2008). My own field notes in the Tyvan shamanic clinic “Tos Deer” complement the information offered there. The Russian version reads as follows: Потомственная шаманка Ай-Чурек Шиижековна Оюн, происходящих из древнего племени “Девять курганов” Шаман международной категории является организатором, координатором международных конференций симпозимов, конгрессов, посвященных психодуховным проблемам человека. Признана одным из сильнейших шаманов Европы. Проводить семинары в Италии, Швейцарии, Франции, США. [...] Интересно, что в самой России шаманка провела семинары только дважды – в Москве и Новосибирске в 2006 году [...] Имеет авторски права на свой шаманский массаж на природный массаж. Ясновидением имеет большое предсказание духов, информирует из камней “хуваанак”. Имеет камнии из океана, моря, речньи и горные. Принимает по фотографии [...] Ай-Чурек Оюн активно ездит по зарубежным странам, ее уникальный дар стал предметом интереса со стороны как российских, так и зарубежных журналистов, которые специально ради нее приезжают в республику в центре Азии. В 1998 году был выпущен фильм “Кузунгу алгыжы” [...], с 1998 по 2006 годы изданы шесть книг об Ай-Чурек [...] Ваше участие в семинаре по шаманской практике является естественным инструментом и основной силой для поддержания здоровья, стимулирования творческого развития духа, разума и тела. Это активный шаг по направлению к источнику жизни, овладению древнейшими методиками.
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Act 2: The shamanic centre “Music Sky”, something like a cultural mirror of Tos Deer in Germany, will serve as a paradigm of one among various other initiatives of neo-shamanism. Its music-loving leader studied various exotic instruments, until in 1993 he learnt Tyvan throat-singing. In the year 2004, a spiritual trip took him to Tyva, where he also met Ai-Churek. The shaman from Bavaria received recognition for his healing work and afterwards called himself “Celtic Music Shaman”.15 Taking into consideration both virtual representations of shamanic institutions in a comparative manner makes transparent that the persona of the shaman is constructed as an interface of intercultural contact. This happens not only by referring to the origins and the archaicity, but also by pointing to the other place, the nonhere, the experience of the shaman in foreign worlds. In both cases, the concentration on the inside and the spirituality of the individual plays a crucial role in addressing the target audience and is reflected in the manufacture of a personal ability to perform a transfer of ritual, cum grano salis, applying an intercultural ritual competence of the shaman. The identity, authenticity, and authority of Ai-Churek and the shamanistic centre “Music Sky” are constituted by mutual reference to the other. Some excerpts from the websites of both shamans, split up according to reference categories, which are constitutive for the production of a performative shamanic identity, will show this:
15 Cf. http://home.vr-web.de/herbysmusic/schamanenzentrum.html (last access: 29 May 2008).
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Identity formation Shamanic centre in Bavaria
Shamanic centre in Tyva
Reference to cultural origins
Potential to rediscover our own Celtic roots
Hereditary shaman Ai-Churek from the ancient tribe “Nine Kurgans”. Through her clairvoyance she has a great predictive capability for ghosts, and provides information from the Chuvaanak stones
Reference to the archaicity of the spiritual offer
Services such as the search for By appropriating the oldest the power animal, element travel methods and purification rituals
Reference to the other place
Still-living traditional structures Recognised as one of the most and deep roots in the powerful shamans of Europe consciousness of the people there
The non-here
Experiences, which are not yet possible in Germany
Seminars in Italy, Switzerland, France, USA [...], in Russia itself [...] only twice – in Moscow and in Novosibirsk
The person of the shaman
The information, which is based on a personal collaboration with shamans in Siberia
Travels actively abroad, her unique gift became the subject of interest of foreign journalists
As an interface
Work and study permits as a shaman in Tuva
Shaman of international category
His competence in Contact with shamans of intercultural different cultures communication
Organiser of international symposia
Self-understanding Very special techniques as a religiontranscending technique
Scientific instrument for the preservation of health
Concentration on the inner spirituality of the individual
Peace and inner strength, selfActive step of turning to the confidence, spiritual development sources of life, stimulating the artistic development of the soul, mind and body
The sketched overlaps, transfer events, and mutual references are so striking that they may seem not to be per se a phenomenon sui generis of the present. Interesting and most specific for the contemporary situation, however, is the parallelism
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in mediality in both cases. As set out in the preceding chapter on transfer interfaces and intercultural contact zones, ritual interpretations represent – in the form of concepts, discourses, and narratives – an essential constituent of the transfer of ritual. On both websites, therefore, we encounter structurally similar strategies of explicit reference to the other as a foundation of shamanic authenticity. However, it would be a short circuit to think that such synchronous and spatial forms of ritual transfer were contrary to diachronic transfer processes within a cultural area. In the case of Siberian Shamanism, it is, in my view, rather the case that the transcending of synchronous culture and the diachronic intercultural transfer are mutually interdependent and emerge from each other.16 The revival of shamanic traditions in the Republic of Tyva after the collapse of the Soviet Union would not be imaginable without interaction events such as the visit of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies initiated by Michael Harner. One result of the actively coordinated joint ritual was the response of a Tyvan delegation of shamans to go on a journey to Switzerland and the United States. To regard this as a deviation from tradition or from the practice of intra-ethnic ritual transfers by postulating a notion of an untouched pure shamanism before contact would be far from reality as well. Cultural contact and ritual transfer have always taken place, and the diachronic ritual transfer was continuous in dialectical argument, as well as its stimulation by the synchronous. Today, this exchange manifests itself only in surprising new forms. To sketch these fascinating processes was the objective of this consideration.
5. The Liminality of Ritual Transfers How do seminars on the self-healing possibilities of Tyvan throat-singing get to Germany? Why are the inhabitants of the Central Asian Tyva waiting for a shaman from Switzerland? These were the initial questions, the reflection of which has brought us here. The physical meeting of indigenous shamans from Siberia and neo-shamans from Western Europe in staged contact areas, the resulting establishment of cultural interfaces, and ritual transfer have been considered. It turns out that such interfaces are places of translation, events of a common production of meaning, which separate and connect at the same time. For these places, it would be worthwhile to apply the terminology of Turner’s concept of liminality, even if this is a very broad interpretation of its original design. The transfer interfaces discussed in the context of shamanic healing rituals, and the carrier structures in which they are embedded, could represent something like a new proving field of the latter. They open up meeting rooms, which are characterised by the imprint of Turner’s anti-structure. The bi-directionally transferred rituals become sources for 16 Historical evidence was given elsewhere by other authors; e.g. Znamenski 2007; von Stuckrad 2003; Hutton 2001.
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new constructions of reality. They represent a specific transitive turning point, marked by the dissolution of old structures and the creation of new ones and therefore chaotic and dangerous.17 Shamans who dare to enter these liminal spaces become transdifferent18 personalities, i.e. they temporally evade on several levels being classified according to dichotomic structural classifications – without being able to emanzipate themselves absolutely from exactly these classifications. Such crossover artists on the frontiers between a multiplicity of worlds mediate tradition and post-modernism, and are subject to the tension, insecurity, and the tearing forces of the between. The emerging transnational communities of shamans and shaman clients gain, in their double appeal to exoticism and the appropriated other, a competitive advantage within the fabric of post-modern dissolutions and its implied compulsion to self-promotion. At the same time, ritual performers reach trans-different positions of existence, cultures enact themselves in their lives, and this in turn is reflected in their ritual concepts: tradition that is useful is preserved, the useful new is integrated. Dynamics and preservation of cultural memory are therefore not considered antagonistic, but rather as a supplement in dialectical tension. If, as outlined above, rituals can be understood as spaces of cultural negotiation, this opens finally a door to another horizon for the problems discussed above. The shamanic rituals mentioned can be considered a general model as far as the creations of interfaces described are paradigmatic for processes of intercultural contact. A two-way transfer is not limited to ritual, but applies to the meeting of cultures in a wide sense. Therefore, I think that ritual studies contribute to describing and understanding the complexity and richness of human behaviour.
17 Cf. Turner 2005: 94–111. Kapferer 2006: 510f. 18 On the concept of “Transdifferenz” cf. the Graduiertenkolleg “Kulturhermeneutik im Zeichen von Differenz und Transdifferenz” of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg www.kulturhermeneutik.uni-erlangen.de and Allolio-Näcke et al. 2005; 2008.
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References Alekseev, Nikolaj A. 1987. Schamanismus der Türken Sibiriens. Versuch einer vergleichenden arealen Untersuchung. Hamburg: Schletzer (Studia Eurasia 1). Allolio-Näcke, Lars et al. (eds.) 2005. Differenz anders denken: Bausteine zu einer Kulturtheorie der Transdifferenz. Frankfurt: Campus. — 2008. Kulturelle Differenzen begreifen. Das Konzept der Transdifferenz aus interdisziplinärer Sicht. Frankfurt: Campus. Aranchyn, Y.L. et al. (eds.) 2001. Istoriia Tuvy. Vol. 1. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Bellinger, Andrea & David J. Krieger (eds.) 1998. Ritualtheorien. Ein einführendes Handbuch. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Demant Jakobsen, Merete 1999. Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing. New York: Berghahn Books. Demmer, Ulrich 2006. Rhetorik, Poetik, Performanz. Das Ritual und seine Dynamik bei den Jenu Kurumba. Berlin: Lit Verlag (INDUS. Ethnologische Südasien-Studien 10). Dünne, Jörg & Stephan Günzel (eds.) 2006. Raumtheorie: Grundlagentexte aus Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Harth, Dietrich & Gerrit Jasper Schenk 2004. Ritualdynamik. Kulturübergreifende Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte rituellen Handelns. Heidelberg: Synchron. Hickethier, Knut 20074. Film- und Fernsehanalyse. Stuttgart: Metzler. Hine, Christine 2000. Virtual Ethnography. London: Sage Publications. Hutton, Ronald 2001. Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination. London: Hambledon and London. Kapferer, Bruce 2006. “Dynamics”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 507–522 (Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Kenin-Lopsan, Mongush B. 1993. Magic of Tuvinian Shamans. Kyzyl: Tuvinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. — 1997. Shamanic Songs and Myths of Tuva. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. — 2006. Traditsionnaia kultura Tyvintsev. Kyzyl: Tuvinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. Kharitonova, Valentina I. & Ksenia V. Pimenova & Elena S. Piterskaia 2005. Zhenshchina i vozrozhdenie shamanizma: Postsovietskoe prostranstvo ha rubezhe tysiachelety. Moscow: Nauka (Rossiiskaia akademia nauk. Institut etnologii i antropologii). Kharitonova, Valentina I. 2006. Feniks iz pepla? Sibirsky shamanizm na rubezhe tysiachelety. Moscow: Nauka (Rossiiskaia akademia nauk. Institut etnologii i antropologii). Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.) 2006. Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill (Studies in the History of Religions 114/1).
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Kristensen, Benedikte M. 2004. The Living Landscape of Knowledge: An Analysis of Shamanism among the Duha Tuvinians of Northern Mongolia. Copenhagen: Institute for Anthropology. Kuzhuget, Ailana K. 2006. Dukhovnaia kultura Tuvintsev. Struktura i transformatsiia. Kemerowo: KemGuki. Lamin, Vladimir A. et al. (eds.) 2007. Istoriia Tuvy. Vol. 2. Novosibirsk: Nauka. Levin, Theodore & Valentina Süzükei 2006. Where Rivers and Mountains Sing. Sound, Music and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Mart-ool, Viacheslav D. et al. 2002. Uchenye zapiski. Vol. 19. Kyzyl: TIGI. — 2004. Uchenye zapiski. Vol. 20. Kyzyl: TIGI. Plumley, Daniel R. & Eva J. Neumann Fridman & 2004. “Tuvan Shamanism”. In: Mariko N. Walter & Eva J. Neumann Fridman (eds.) Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio: 637–642. Schlottmann, Dirk 2007. Koreanischer Schamanismus im neuen Millennium. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang (Europäische Hochschulschriften 73). Snoek, Jan A. M. 2006. “Defining ‘Rituals’”. In: Kreinath, Jens, Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 3–14 (Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Srubar, Ilja, Joachim Renn & Ulrich Wenzel (eds.) 2005. Kulturen vergleichen. Sozialund kulturwissenschaftliche Grundlagen und Kontroversen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Stuckrad, Kocku von 2003. Schamanismus und Esoterik. Kultur- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. Leuven: Peeters. Turner, Victor 2005. Das Ritual. Struktur und Antistruktur. Frankfurt: Campus. Wallis, Robert 2003. Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London: Routledge. Whitehouse, Harvey 2006. “Transmission”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.): Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill, 657–669 (Studies in the History of Religions 1141). Zhukovskaia, Natalya L. & D.A. Funk & Valentina I. Kharitonova 2000. Shamansky Dar. K 80-letiiu doktora istoricheskikh nauk Anny Vasil’evny Smoliak. Moscow: Nauka (Rossiiskaia akademia nauk. Institut etnologii i antropologii, Ètnologicheskie issledovaniia po shamanstvu i inym rannim verovaniiam i praktikam 6). Znamenski, Andrei 2003. Shamanism in Siberia. Russian Records of Indigenous Spirituality. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. — (ed.) 2004. Shamanisms: Critical Concepts in Sociology. 3 vols. London, New York: Routledge. — 2007. The Beauty of the Primitive. Shamanism and the Western Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shamanic Rituals from Siberia to Europe Websites (last access 29 May 2008) www.rainbow-spirit-festival.de www.khoomei-shaman.com www.flss.ch www.fss.at http://home.vr-web.de/herbysmusic/schamanenzentrum.html http://shaman.shude.ru/ www.bluejay.eu www.ahamkara.org
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Happy Mothers, Proud Sons: Hybridity, Possession, and a Heterotopy among Guyanese Hindus Long gone are the days when colonial British Guiana1 produced some of the Empire’s finest sugar. The attention of globalised economic forces shifted to other commodities and regions, and once again it was relegated to a remote geographical “inbetweenness”,2 but the legacy of its colonial heyday remains decisive for postcolonial Guyana. Modern tourist advertisements, seeking to attract, among others, the admirers of a “happy multiculturalism”, rely on the sunny side of this inheritance, and proclaim Guyana therefore home to six “races” of very different origins, as a pepper-pot of differences, whose ultimate expression seems to be a hybrid and splendidly carefree carnival. Contrasting this romanticised picture with nuanced historical and social analyses, scholars have implicitly or explicitly criticised the pitfalls, silences, and exclusions of this and related constructions.3 But no observer denies the importance of social and cultural mixtures, of creolisations or hybridisations4, for an understanding of what Guyana became and continues to be. This certainly holds true for the descendents of Indian immigrants, forming now slightly more than half of the nation-state’s population, as well as for the consider1 Throughout this paper I use the political designations of the administrative entity to refer to the respective historical period – that is, British Guiana when writing about the colony and Guyana for the post-colonial state. 2 Apart from its periodically important position in a global market awakening to a hunger for sugar unknown before, the place which became Guyana could be mapped through a series of negations: being not El Dorado; not the insular Caribbean, nor fully part of Latin America; being the place of origin, the imaginary homeland (Safran 1991) to none of its inhabitants except the tiny minority of Amerindians, themselves relegated to the remote interior; and being now a point of departure for generations of migrants seeking to fulfil their dreams in the Northern Americas. 3 E.g. Munasinghe 2001; Khan 2004; Puri 2004; Williams 1991. 4 Following Hannerz (1996) I use the highly contested terms “hybridity” and “creolisation” interchangeably where I want to hint at processes, as well as the historical, social and political dimensions of mixtures, that is, I use them both as referring to “a combination of diversity, interconnectedness, and innovation, in the context of global center-periphery relationships” (Hannerz 1996: 67).
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able number among them considering themselves to be Hindu. Therefore, being a Hindu in Guyana means to be enmeshed in very involved hybrid formations. Transfers, arrivals, denied inheritances, eclectic mixtures, playful adaptations, contextualised re-readings, in short, historically embedded creolisations mark their everyday lives, as well as the realm of extraordinary rituals. Imagined or lived relations to a homeland seem to be entirely absent, lost in decades of translation, accommodation, and a growing orientation towards the Northern Americas, but then again such relations are very much present. The ritual of possession on which I focus in this paper – that is, the locally reinvented Kali-Mai-Puja – marks one of those ongoing relations with a South Asian past, and could therefore be described as a transfer not only across the ocean, but also into a hybrid today.5 To make sense of its persistence or re-creation, as well as its contemporary expansion, especially among younger males, a narrative of transferred codes, reconstructed meanings, and practices embedded anew, thus seems only a first step. This is because such enquiries only partially help in grasping, what it is that let this religious formation survive and flourish; who these people are that lend a very sensuous reality to “their” deities as possessing powers; or why this ritual, marginalised as it is, is still in place. Additionally, I suggest that another line of enquiry is necessary, one that is oriented towards a politics of the body, of maleness, and towards the ritual space as an arena for these articulations, even more so since such an analysis helps to circumvent the phonetic or intellectual void in which rituals of possession appear, when reasons for actions, responsibilities, and motivations are, by the actors themselves, treated not as a subject-position or actions rooted therein, but, on the contrary, as the denial of a subjective agency, that is, as nothing but divine will, commanding the men to do service.
Across the Black Waters The Guyanese Kali-Mai-Puja is often understood as the legacy of South Indian immigrants to the Caribbean.6 Although I very much doubt this assumption and some of its implications, elements of South Indian origin abound in this ritual formation, and it is obviously connected to the long-term presence of Madrassis in this part of the world. Madrassis – a generic term for all those shipped to the Caribbean from the South Indian port of Madras – arrived in British Guiana as a small part of the Indian workforce,7 who were brought to the Caribbean to replace the freed 5 Since this ritual emphasises, in its direct interaction with deities as well as in its attention to ritualistic detail, the aesthetic, sensual aspects so strikingly, I am tempted to call it not only a presence but a hyper-reality. I hope this will become subsequently understandable. 6 Stephanides & Singh 2000; Younger 2002. 7 According to historical accounts only one fifth of the immigrants was shipped via Madras to Guyana (Vertovec 1995: 133, Visswanathan 1995: 127f., Younger 2002: 133).
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slaves in the sugar plantations. In the aftermath of Abolition, to be more precise, between 1836 and 1917, these Indian coolies arrived as indentured labourers, enlisted, gathered, and shipped through the ports of Calcutta and Madras on behalf of British planters. But, contrary to colonial representations8, these workers hailed, as historical accounts have shown, from all social strata and many regions of British India, being united by impoverished circumstances that made the decision to risk the entirely unknown an acceptable one.9 All this implies an immense social, cultural, and linguistic heterogeneity among the workers, which gave way to a homogenisation, engendered, as it were, over the decades and generations by the need to overcome internal differences and the conditions of plantation society. These processes are well documented and I shall return to some of their historical outcomes shortly. Before doing so, I would like to stress some implications of these generalisations for an understanding of anything Madrassi in the Caribbean context: here, too, was a multitude of cultural, social and linguistic formations glossed over by the colonial stereotype of the Madrassi, of his perceived unruliness and violence.10 Apart from its historical inaccuracy, the stereotype’s illusionary singularity prevented the South Indian presence from becoming significant in any general way – its apparent claim of an Indian singularity was only realised, one might add, when the obvious cultural multitude succumbed to the contemporary homogenised Indo-Guyanese cultural formation. The difference postulated by this cliché therefore ceased to exist in almost all social arenas – except in the continuing association of certain ritual practices with the descendants of the Madrassis. To question this association – of a certain set of practices with a certain set of people – from both a historical and an ethnographical perspective will be an underlying current of this paper. The majority of the coolies stayed on in the New World after the end of their five or ten-year contract, and their declining to return to India immediately marked a clear rupture.11 Goods, money, and gods were flowing only very modestly, and a continuous exchange between poorer peoples, especially in the Global South, was almost impossible at the time. Contact with India ceased for the most part, and with it the – for today’s transnationalities so obvious and lively – relations to relatives, languages, practices, and sacral spaces “back home”. Nevertheless it would be seriously misleading to see the indentured migrants and their offspring as lacking of notions or traditions of belonging. Instead, as is now well known, particular IndoCaribbean forms of social organisation, dialects, music styles, and so on grew and
8 Carter 1996: 42. 9 Brennan & McDonald & Shlomowitz 1998: 54–55; Munasinghe 2001: 68–69; Vertovec 1992: 10–13; Visswanathan 1995: 128–131. 10 Kale 1995: 78. 11 Bisnauth 2000; Vertovec 1992.
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flourished.12 Furthermore, social processes of ethnically or racially understood demarcation, e.g. being of Indian descent, have remained valid until today. The Guyanese Hindus did not, so to speak, merge into an immigration society, but stayed, more or less and according to context, separated from others as a distinct ethnic group.13 A relation to the home country, as understood sacrally, remained decisive for the constitution of this particular group.14 Rituals, texts, and gods which were and are understood as having originated from India continue to be conducted or venerated, albeit in a selective and often creolised manner. Nevertheless – and this is also perfectly true for our age of the Internet and air tickets – there seem to be but very few connections with and to India that go beyond the imagined tradition, beyond the imagination of an original home.15 India here does not seem to be the other side of a geographical or social continuum, I would argue, but in her very absence becomes a foil for fragments of identity understood from the perspective of the diaspora:16 an absence that is paradoxically both interrupted as well as accentuated by the weekly benevolent possessions which are central to the KaliMai-Puja. The absence of ongoing relations with a near-mythical place of origin is interrupted through the very real, indeed hyper-real movements, actions, and advice of gods thought to be controlling their human vessels. At the same time, this very absence is accentuated by the fact that these are ritual actions transferred from one shore to another, subject to re-creation and re-reading, becoming completely enmeshed in the social and cultural formations of a Caribbean present, its grievances, illnesses, and creativities. To be more specific, these fragments of identity are embedded above all in the history and in the present of plantation society.17 Racially or ethnically defined Indians formed here, for the greater part, the lowest strata of a society which was substantially reconstructed through their settlement. The Caribbean capitalist modernity underwent, in other words, fundamental changes with the abolition of slavery, and the arrival and settlement of the so-called coolies as a new labour force to work in the canefields. But these changes did not result in a fundamental alteration of the plantation society, since its principle of order – that is, a hierarchical ranking of the “races” – was merely extended to the new population. The arriving Indians 12 Halstead 2006; Khan 2004; Vertovec 1992. 13 Williams 1991. 14 The story of Indian Muslims and Christians – probably to be written around other relations and plots – is beyond the scope of this paper. 15 It would be worthwhile to show how marked exceptions, like the joy and importance of Indian movies, are also structured by certain creolised imaginations of India. Also, how these very movies help to construct an India that probably never was. 16 Following Anthias (1998) in combining poststructural insights and sociological criticism, I understand “diaspora” as one, always positioned and negotiated fragment of identity among others, which might outweigh each other according to context. 17 Singh 1966; Bisnauth 2000.
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were therefore brought into a society whose dyadic structure18 was merely opened up and complemented by an Indian presence. Several discourses – themselves shaped by colonial and post-colonial plantation society – culminated in those marginalising ideologies and related practices which stigmatised the Indian immigrants and their offspring as superstitious, servile, weak, or uneducated. Out of these, I want to stress only the continuing association of the Indo-Guyanese (and their colonial predecessors) with rural space and the dependent manual labour most often located there, which has had far-reaching consequences. In a society whose imagery is defined by the idea that freedom is, above all, independence from the white elite, their plantations and the sugarcane, it is continuously degrading and marginalising to be associated with the plantations and their regimes of labour.19 Today the Indo-Guyanese constitute, as already stated above, slightly more than half the population and are very much present at all economic, administrative, and political levels of the country. Nevertheless, they still dominate disproportionately the coastal rural areas and the labour force in the vast sugarcane plantations. Many rural agents see themselves, as did the men I worked with, as being continuously deprived of any possibilities to escape the catchment areas of the plantations and the marginalisation connected with them. In the formation of this experience there is a dovetailing of, among other things, the economic conditions of one of the poorest countries in the world, ethnic exclusions, lack of education, and cultural ascriptions. Subject as the men with whom I worked are to these social marginalisations, it is precisely the doubly marginalised and outright demonised Kali-Mai-Puja that, for them, holds the promise of agency and transgression. To outline its specific history, set within the Indian presence, but being subject to a wide range of influences and creolisations, will be the aim of the next section.
The Kali-Mai-Puja Kali-Mai-Puja20 could be translated as the “Worship of Mother Kali” and subsumes a variety of rituals conducted at weekly pujas, often simply called services, or at the big pujas celebrated twice a year. It involves, furthermore, the veneration of a
18 Of course, Guyana had and has a considerable number of other Third Parties (the Portuguese, Chinese, Amerindians) but this prevented neither the colonial nor the post-colonial society from arranging its history mainly around this dyad and triad. 19 Khan 1997; Williams 1991. 20 Throughout this paper I omit diacritical signs in words and names of South Asian origin, since they seem to be of no importance for the contemporary Indo-Guyanese.
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host of deities,21 the most intensely worshipped being Kali, often called simply Mudda, sometimes Mariyamman. In contrast to Mariyamman, who is the form of the deity worshipped almost exclusively by Tamil-speaking South Indians,22 Kali is the form of the goddess worshipped more or less most intensely throughout the whole Indian subcontinent, and amongst most of its profoundly diverse social groups.23 People as diverse as shocked missionaries, awed colonial administrators, hippies, poets, coolies and software engineers have taken a bewildering array of (knowledge about) ritual practices related to the goddess to the remotest corners of the world. But, although she might be the most famous of the Hindu deities among non-Hindus and although her image has taken a powerful hold on the modern western imagination as well,24 she is anathema to many Caribbean Hindus. From a historian’s point of view, this refers not so much to the bloody sacrifices25 and states of possession, which are locally associated with this goddess, but more to the aforementioned processes of homogenisation and the various reformations of ritual practices, which are an important part of them. To understand Kali’s transfer to and within Caribbean societies thus involves less an investigation of the South Indian presence, as contemporary Guyanese Hindus would insist, but more an analysis of the sanitisations, internal transfers, and creolisations of local Hindu ideas and practices.26 Of these already carefully researched processes27 two important points, both relating to the construction of a local orthodoxy, need to be reiterated. This local Hindu orthodoxy has, first of all, to be understood as having been shaped not only by homogenisations covering decades and generations, but also very much through internal reforms. Directly and indirectly connected to Indian reform movements,28 as well as dialectically bound to the plantation society’s culturally dominant Christianity, an orthodoxy established itself whose creolised version of Hinduism came to be dominated by bhakti, the Vaishanava pantheon, and a host of Christianised practices.29 21 Kateri, Master/Kal Bhairo, Sanganee, Durga, Saraswati, Ganga, Shiva, Suraj Narayan, Hanuman, Krishna, Ganesh, Mooneshprem, Nakurababa, Dartee. 22 Kapadia 1995; Nabokov 2000; Whitehead 1980; Younger 1980; 2002. 23 Kinsley 1975; McDermott & Kripal 2003. 24 Urban 2003. 25 Bloody sacrifices are today found only at the Big Pujas and at other special rituals. But since I want to concentrate on the regular, that is, weekly services and the arenas they function as, I leave these practices aside for now. 26 McNeal 2003. 27 Baumann 2003; Khan 2004; Munasinghe 2001; Vertovec 1992; Williams 1991. 28 Cf. regarding the Indian Arya Samaj Klimkeit (1981: 168-225) and regarding its relevance for the religious history of the Caribbean Vertovec (1992: 117; 1995: 135). 29 Other elements bringing the orthodox Hindus closer to Christianity involve a strong emphasis on communal ritual practices, including regular speeches, singing and collective
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But the relevance of the Hindu orthodoxy for this paper lies, secondly, less in its direct content, but more in its exclusion of content, that is, in those ideas and practices which, again, are marginalised and eradicated from the already marginalised Hindu mainstream to constitute it. In other words, many of those ritual elements which are part of a religiosity associated with South Asian village deities, as well as with Shaktism, were excluded from the sanitised, dominant version of Hinduism. Even so, many of these practices, ideas and symbols did not become extinct, but became associated strictly with Hindus of South Indian origin, the Madrassis. Colonial and North Indian discourses – both operating as frames connecting certain ideas about purity and superiority with the colour of the skin – as well as the perceived unruliness of the Madrassi South Indians, all dovetail in the construction that a partially violent30 and bloody worship, involving possessions, is neither Indian nor North Indian, but only South Indian. Related to this, two points seem important. First, there seems to be an ongoing, mutual devaluation of ritual practices and the ethnic group, and secondly, it must be emphasised that the division among Guyanese of North Indian and South Indian origin seems to be completely irrelevant in virtually all contemporary cultural practices and everyday affairs. Indeed, those already well-documented processes of homogenisation31 among the Caribbean Hindus could be described as being so decisive that linguistic, cultural, and social differences, at least in the long run, ceased to exist. The Kali-Mai-Puja, especially with regard to its rich South Indian symbolism, is a case in point: from an early time on, a multitude of devotees was drawn to its rituals, and the degree to which a South Indian orthodoxy may have dominated what was to become the Kali-Mai-Puja is probably lost in history,32 but its presumable dominance was definitely broken when the controversial Pujari Jaimsee Naidoo (collaborating with a psychiatrist and an anthropologist) “con-
veneration; also, a denial of the concept of auspicious dates for respective deities, substituted by a regular temple worship on Sunday; or the meaninglessness of birth and caste for the ability to become a ritual specialist (cf. Vertovec 1992). 30 Seemingly violent practices such as putting burning camphor into one’s mouth or letting the right arm be whipped often generate a strong effect among the onlookers and are means by which possessed dancers publicly prove the degree and quality of their possession. 31 E.g. van der Veer & Vertovec 1991; Vertovec 2000. 32 Available material relating to the history of Kali and the Kali-Mai-Puja in Guyana and the wider Caribbean before the 1990s is extraordinarily scant. Apart from the methodologically dubious, obviously gone-native work of Stephanidos & Singh (2000), the hardly neutral collaboration of Singer et al. (1976) and, regarding Guyana, a highly speculative Younger (2002), only scattered fragments and works of fiction remain – Dabydeen (1991), Naipaul (1995: 82f.), Phillips (1960), all pertaining to ritual formations having not much in common with the contemporary Guyanese Kali-Mai-Puja.
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vinced” the deities in the early 1970s to let go of their Tamil and speak English through their possessed mediums.33 But then, why do people frequent a ritual that is widely and suspiciously associated with practices of sorcery, dangerous ghosts, and demigods? Why is a ritual able to expand that lets its participants achieve subject positions that are not only different, but are also within the marginalised group of Hindus again marginalised, that is, degraded as Madrassi? How can a ritual survive being not only transferred over the Ocean’s black waters, but also into these doubly marginalised fringes of society? Or to put it differently: when worshipping the goddess Kali stigmatises, why is she worshipped? Healing is central to the ritual and probably in itself is an important part of its appeal. This is especially true for the very heterogeneous group of attendees who take part in the services conducted every Sunday to cure illnesses either of themselves or their close kin. To them, the interaction with gods and goddesses through their human vessels, that is, the possessed dancers, seems to be an effective means to restore health. Stories of miraculous cures are shared among attendees and ritual specialists, which roughly revolve around the same plot: only after Western medicine, Christian priests and orthodox Hindu pandits have all failed, afflicted people or their close kin turn in despair to the marginalised ritual of possession. Healing, then, is said to be achieved not instantly, but only through a tedious process of regular worship of the deities and interactions with the possessed dancers. Furthermore, a kind of pact is made: the sufferers, or their families commit themselves to regular attendance and often also to yearly special rites. In this process – and this seems to be crucial – an enduring relationship with the so-called South Indian deities becomes established, a relationship which conveys, I would argue, in itself a specific identity. In other words, those who find health here discover in and through the very process that they are Madrassi. To substantiate this, I shall briefly elaborate on local ideas about health and sickness. According to a widespread argumentation – one I was told time and again – certain illnesses are understood either as heavenly punishment or as the result of the absence of some divine protection. Both punishment and lack of protection occur, furthermore, only when the duty to worship is neglected, when the deities are not made happy and occur, as I was told, primarily to remind those who have fallen ill of their responsibility to worship and obey their deities. Nevertheless, the deities need, according to my local informants, to be worshipped only by those who are attached to them via ancestry, that is, by descendants of South Indian immigrants. Being afflicted by illnesses which are cured in the temple makes these people, one is tempted to say,
33 Singer & Arenata & Naidoo 1976.
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South Indian. For in the worship of these deities, which is incumbent only on South Indian Madrassis, they now successfully take part.34 But let me for a moment turn back to ethnography again. Although the central goddess, the “Supreme Power of the Universe”, as they call her sometimes, is thought of as female, the ritual itself is firmly in male hands, at least in rural Berbice, the region from where Kali-Mai-Puja is said to have spread and where I conducted my research.35 For most of the participants this seems to be no contradiction, since women are considered potentially or acutely polluted because of menstruation. Nevertheless, such a conception of impurity does not altogether exclude the women, who participate extensively. Ritual centrality of any kind, however, remains unachievable to them. The relatively numerous group conducting – with but a few exceptions – all ritual activities is therefore entirely male, remarkably young, and most often unmarried. For lack of a better term I call this the “ritual elite”, on which my empirical work mainly focuses, the core group. The core group differs in dress from the attending crowd: theirs is a uniform which consists of a white or yellow wrap-around skirt, a white shirt, and a red shawl wrapped around the hips. The core group itself is, furthermore, composed of three hierarchically ordered segments. The largest of these segments has no precise or ritually central functions. It is – in stark contrast to the two other segments36 – open to every man or boy who wishes to take part. Hierarchically superior, and therefore in an intermediate position, is the segment of the drummers. Its main function is well defined and important. Many of the sequences of worship, particularly the dances – often lasting for hours – are accompanied by drummers, and, according to the core group, are made possible only through their efforts. The highest authority and ritual centrality rest with the segment around the priest, the pujari. It is composed of him and his assistants. Unifying the core group in all its heterogeneous ritual functions is achieved by proximity to the deities, not least in bodily terms. This proximity is not only spa34 Apart from theological explanations, this identification is enacted again and again through the aesthetics of ritual performances themselves. Strikingly, a generational handing down of these duties has, at least today, to be neglected as motivation for taking part in this ritual: the vast majority, being asked about their motivations, had stories of affliction to tell or felt called by the goddess to do service. 35 The literature indicates difference from this male domination on a historical (Bisnauth 2000, Mehta 2004) and a regional scale (McNeal 2003). How and if the developments and formations I describe in this paper will influence the future of Hindu possession in the Caribbean and beyond remains to be seen. 36 Entrance to the two other segments is said to be commanded by the deities, mostly either through illnesses or appearances in dreams. The deities decide, furthermore, to which of the segments the individual shall belong, and this affiliation is said to remain for life. A further sociological analysis of factual ways into and strategies of affiliation would have to deal with the above-mentioned denial of subject positions.
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tial, but is characterised by, one could say, different grades of intimacy, the most intense of which would be physical permeation by the deities as possessing powers.37 In various important ritual sequences, members of the core groups are the closest to the deities (both in their form as idols and as possessing powers), receiving intense blessing through this proximity38, as well as repeated direct blessings by possessed dancers. They are said to call them with their drumming into the ritual space and they are the ones who worship Kali and her entourage for the sake of the community, who translate or comment upon divine utterances, who mediate between the deities and the attending crowd; in many cases these very men are, for a certain period of time, the deities themselves. As a precondition for this proximity and intimacy, they have to cleanse themselves as a whole group through an act of fasting. To partake in the ritual as a member of the core group, each and every one thus has to renounce anything polluting – that is, meat, alcohol, sex, and cursing – for at least three days. Bodily purity, guaranteed through their “biological maleness”, has thus to be increased through a certain abstinence, which itself qualifies as serving the deities. In this bodily practice of fasting there converge different South Asian imageries of sacrifice and the increase of power, of temporary and social purity, as well as ideas of (heroic) control of one’s own body,39 which are altogether part of a specific conception of masculinity. These conceptions of male bodies concern, in line with Connell’s terminology, a local form of marginalised masculinities.40 That is, the masculinity as articulated and performed within the ritual is entangled in an inferior relation to hegemonic masculinities of the same historical situation.41 The difference emerges clearly when we compare this marginalised emphasis on (temporary) renouncement and a purity resulting from it and understood in a masculine context, with the locally so often emphasised masculinity of excessive drinking and accounts of riotous sexuality.42 Nevertheless, these two masculinities do not differ entirely from each other, but exist in a complex relation of articulation. These articulations are mani37 In contrast to many other rituals of possession, in the Caribbean and beyond, possession is in the Kali-Mai-Puja not connected to a sexual symbolism. There are no marriages or sexually interpreted affairs as for example in many African rituals (e.g. Lewis 1971). Nor are the deities entering the bodies through certain, at times primarily sexually understood orifices (e.g. Osella & Osella 1999), but instead from the ground through the feet and legs. 38 Hinduism emphasises more than other religions spatial proximity to, interaction with and sight of and by the deities as an important ritual means, which is thought of as a blessing in itself (Eck 1998; Fuller 1992). 39 E.g. Kapadia 1995: 124; Michaels 1998: 348; Osella & Osella 2003: 733–735. 40 Connell 1995. 41 The volume by Reddock 2004 enquires into different Caribbean masculinities, but much more work needs to be done here. 42 Cf. Beckles 2004; Moore 1999; Rohlehr 2004.
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fested, for example, in the explicit emphasis on control and power, on ordered hierarchies, but also, obviously, in women as the Other of this definition. But let me turn to the ritual again. Building on this fundamentally bodily, as well as gendered, ability to become qualified for ritual centrality, a highly blessed, if not outright divine tool or instrument is the body available to the members of the core group. Focusing now on the numerous dances of possession which are performed, I want to make this particularly clear. In the Kali-Mai-Puja, divine possession is understood as a temporary and benevolent seizure of the body – and in certain cases also of the consciousness. Rising up from the ground, the divine power is said to ascend into the feet and legs, and from there to controlling the body, sometimes also the mind, and then, abruptly, leaving the person again. Officially there are two different and again hierarchically ordered qualities of possession. Very common are the ones labelled “half manifestations”. Here the divine power is thought to have risen only up to the throat and no further. This type of possession is performed throughout the ritual, mostly by members of the core group, but also by other participants, including women. Their movements, expressions, and utterances are very diverse and expressive, but rarely given much attention, and are in no way linked to what is locally termed a successful service, that is, a ritual which is said to bring the deities into a happy, peaceful, and protective mood. Quite the opposite could be stated: their performances are ignored and often excluded from the shifting central stages of the ritual by members of the core group to ensure the smooth completion of the rituals, considered important. Directly related to the success of the service are those performances of possession considered “full manifestations”. Only this second type is seen as an all-embracing transfer of control – here a divine power is thought to have taken control of the whole body and, more importantly, of the dancer’s head. Because of this, their speech is said to be divine, is attended to closely, and, if necessary, translated.43 Furthermore, through diagnosis, approval of relationships, acceptance of offerings, and blessings, “full manifestations” are able to mediate processes of healing. They are performed by the pujari and his assistants, and are limited to a performance of Kali, her sister Kateri, and her brother Master; they take place in front of the shrines of the deities invoked and form the concluding climax of the weekly ritual activities. As soon as all the other important rituals are done,44 the members of the core group come together in front of the respective shrines, and initiate and maintain the possessions, one after another, through drumming, singing, sacrificing, and a continuous pouring of water over the dancers. In the same way as the ritual embeddings of the “full manifestations” are clearly structured, there are certain basic 43 People acting as “full manifestations” tend to speak in an odd, rather distorted way, which is often difficult to understand. 44 That is, individual and collective worship of the statues and shrines, a speech by the pujari, a communal simple lunch and communal singing.
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structures in their movements and utterances. The dancers switch, in an individually determined manner, from one code of behaviour to another, that is, from being someone considered non-possessed to one considered possessed – thereby allowing, I would say, the audience to be able to see quite clearly the change of authorship in the movements which are supposed to have taken place. But leaving aside elaborations on processes of a ritual mimesis,45 of upholding the claim to be (fully) possessed, as well as the differences, negotiations, and conflicts, in questioning this hierarchical order itself, my aim is to elaborate on this ritual scenario as an arena for a marginalised masculinity, one where religious activities render bodies as blessed or divine, where transferred ritual practices serve to create spaces of difference from the society which contains them, in short, as a heterotopia. In thinking through different historical situations and trying to bring together those ever-present spaces of an engulfed difference, of temporal and spatial areas clearly demarcated and socially embedded alterations, Foucault invented the term heterotopia and set it clearly apart from what he understood as those spaces that have no place, that is utopias.46 Without critically engaging with this heuristic term, its strong functionalistic undertones, breadth of meaning, and its continuing currency as a concept, I feel that Foucault’s emphasis on an engulfed difference – without connotations of resistance or subversion, on spaces within a dominant order and yet partially beyond its discursive formations, its imaginations – helps to understand why so many young men take part in this ritual at the very fringes of contemporary Guyana. In the very process of performing and achieving cures, of maintaining relations between deities and devotees, of the sacrificing, drumming and singing, in short, in labouring to make the Mudda happy, the participants establish and perpetuate the ritual as a world of its own. Embedded in historical and social conditions, within cultural parameters and imaginative possibilities, the space and time of the KaliMai-Puja has to be understood as a focus and arena of identities and activities which are a deviation from the hegemonic mainstream. The adoption of a doubly marginalised identity as imparted here is, for the core group, as I have shown, fundamentally connected to specific constructions of masculinity. Embodiments and representations of certain, specifically masculine identities and performances, knits together possible answers to some of the questions I have brought up. To take part and display oneself as a masculine actor of the ritual elite, I would argue, imparts on the one hand a certain social valorisation – that is, the men are strong-willed enough to intensify their “given biological purity” through temporal renunciation, they fulfil duties to the deities and enable, mediate, and thereby maintain processes of healing possible nowhere else. On the other 45 Cf. Gebauer & Wulff 1998. 46 Foucault 2005.
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hand, certain conceptions imparted in this process of self and the body transgress the above-mentioned social marginalisation of male Indo-Guyanese, in a very tangible way – the participants’ identity as unmarried men in a patriarchal society47 and particularly as alienated quasi-industrialised48 manual labourers. This relates to what has been termed by Eckert49 the “Charisma of Direct Action”, that is, the possibility to experience a collective power, a participation, and an effectiveness that is unmediated and not handed down through leaders, “but which actually rests on their force, their numbers, and their muscle power”.50 Coming back once again to local concepts of health as articulated in the ritual heterotopia, being healthy is thought of as being caused, not directly by human activity, but by benevolent deities. But to make them happy is, as my informants put it, only possible through the accurate and devoted accomplishment of the Kali-Mai-Puja. Therefore, if only satisfied deities heal and only the ritual activities of the core group generate their satisfaction through the conduction of proper rites, the actors of the core group are extending their agency to a transcendental realm, and are causally involved in the healing and the related social prestige this also confers on them. As men acting in this way, an agency is then available to them that differs enormously from their ordinary social status – but one that is also paradoxically highly marginalised once they step out of the heterotopic space. Locally, this is proven in the many proud affirmations about how many formerly incurable illnesses were defeated in and out of this very ritual space, in the importance of these stories for the ritual community being told over and over again. Furthermore, the members of the core group are, as illustrated above, in a permanent spatial proximity and intimacy with the deities, which is at its most intense when they are said to be and are being treated as being physically fully permeated by divine powers, as purified abodes of the gods, as temporarily divine. Keeping in mind the marginalised status of the young men as outlined above, the contrast between their bodies in ritual and in everyday life becomes clear. Marginalised and disciplined bodies stand out in contrast to divine ones. And further: diasporic fragments of identity – relating to a specific culture or land of origin – may be of minor importance in contemporary Guyana, but here, in the performance of possession and its wild dances, they appear and reappear. In this context they are not only part of a creolised version of history, of an imagined belonging, but are nothing less than a very sensuous reality. Their appearance is spectacle, common assurance, a performative linking to a faraway continent and in the same moment performance of a masculine purity. 47 Cf. Chopra 2004 48 For this terminology I am indebted to Levi-Strauss, who described the sugar plantations as “open air factories” (cited in Scheper-Hughes 1992: xii). 49 Eckert 2001; 2003. 50 Eckert 2001: 100.
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Although some observers51 praise the contemporary Kali-Mai-Puja, especially in its cultural hybridity, as a remedy for the Guyanese everyday, troubled as it is by the irreconcilabilities of its colonial past, by the haunting ghosts of race, this ritual of possession, whose underbelly is a thriving, mostly private industry of nightly exorcisms and peace offerings to malevolent spirits, is too much entangled in these very colonial legacies, in the aftermath of “divide-and-rule”, in the politics of identity revolving around skin colour and ethnicity, to be a treatment itself. True, AfroGuyanese take part, worship, and dance, but only infrequently, and, what is more important, under the suspicious eyes of the majority. The Kali-Mai-Puja hints therefore at the cultural dilemma of post-colonial Guyana: transferred, embedded anew, and creolised as the overwhelming majority of its cultural articulations are, they are still subject to claims of ownership, of orthopraxies and evolving orthodoxies. The Kali-Mai-Puja is a striking example of this: here even the traces of those historical and contemporary actors reformulating the ritual by claiming to know the proper ways are blurred when creolisations come to be seen as a mere obedience to divine orders, as the result of divine speech through a mere human vessel. The difficulties involved with those claims of authorship for a scientific analysis, relying as they do on (collective) subject positions, make a critical assessment of conceptions of the body and social personas necessary to understand why these very instructions of the goddess are heard, dreamt, spoken, and followed.
51 E.g. Karran 2000.
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Munasinghe, Viranjini 2001. Callaloo or Tossed Salad: East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Nabokov, Isabelle 2000. Religion against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Naipaul, Seepersad 1995. The Adventures of Gurudeva. London: Heinemann. Osella, Filippo & Caroline Osella 1999. “Movements of Power through Social, Spiritual and Bodily Boundaries: Aspects of Controlled and Uncontrolled Spirit Possession in Rural Kerala”. Purusartha 21: 183–210. — 2003. “‘Ayyappan saranam’: Masculinity and the Sabarimala Pilgrimage in Kerala”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9/4: 729–754. Phillips, Leslie H.C. 1960. “Kali-Mai Puja”. Timehri Journal 39: 37–46. Puri, Shalini 2004. The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism and Cultural Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reddock, Rhoda E. (ed.) 2004. Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses. Kingston: The Press University of West Indies. Rohlehr, Gordon 2004. “I Lawa: The Construction of Masculinity in Trinidad and Tobago Calypso”. In: Rhoda E. Reddock (ed.). Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities: Theoretical and Empirical Analyses. Kingston: The Press University of West Indies: 326–403. Safran, William 1991. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return”. Diaspora 1/1: 83–99. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy 1992. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press. Singer, Philip, Enrique Arenata & Jamsie Naidoo 1976. “Learning of Psychodynamics, History, and Diagnosis Management Therapy by a Kali Cult Indigenous Healer in Guiana”. In: Agehananda Bharati (ed.). The Realm of the Extra-Human. The Hague: Mouton: 345–369. Singh, Chaitram 1966. Guyana: Politics in a Plantation Society. New York et al.: Praeger. Stephanides, Stephanos & Karna Singh 2000. Translating Kali’s Feast: The Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and Fiction. Amsterdam et al.: Rodopi. Urban, Hugh 2003. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Veer, Peter van der (ed.) 1995. Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. — & Steven Vertovec 1991. “Brahmanism Abroad: On Caribbean Hinduism as an Ethnic Religion”. Ethnology 30/2: 149–166. Vertovec, Steven 1992. Hindu Trinidad: Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Change. London et al.: Macmillan Caribbean. — 1995. “Hindus in Trinidad and Britain: Ethnic Religion, Reification, and the Politics of Public Space”. In: Peter van der Veer (ed.) 1995. Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 132–156.
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Liudmila V. Khokhlova
Ritual Transfer in the History of the Sikh Community: with Special Reference to the Sikh Marriage Ceremony This paper describes contextual aspects of ritual transfer in Sikh history, focusing on the historical evolution of the main rites constituting the marriage ritual. Sikh history constitutes a good example of the development of rituals under such circumstances as the re-emergence of “primal identities” (such as ethnicity or religion).1 It will be shown that the extent of Hindu influence on Sikh rituals, especially on the Sikh marriage ceremony, reflects stronger or weaker tendencies of the self-identification of Sikhs as an independent community versus Sikhs as part of the larger Hindu society. The marriage sacrament, which never attracted the attention of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, became one of the main identifying features of the Sikh community in modern times. The paper will also discuss some “internal dimensions” of the ritual – the meanings ascribed to the text recited during the performance of the main rite (the circuits around the holy book) of the Sikh marriage sacrament. The sources describing Sikh history until the beginning of the nineteenth century are few in number. The authors of the official chronicles written in Persian were generally not very interested in Punjabi affairs, at best concentrating their attention on describing occasional events like royal visits, etc. The corresponding accounts written or commissioned by British officials did not appear before the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. As for the corpus of Sikh devotional literature, it should be stated that only the Janam Sakhis,2 the hagiographic stories describing Guru Nanak’s life, provide any historical evidence. However, it is to be remembered that the Janam Sakhis in their present form emerged almost a century after the death of Nanak. The stories contain a great many improbable fantasies and myths, and thus may be considered interesting only as texts that have formed the perception of Guru Nanak for numerous generations. There are many stories in various Janam Sakhi collections describing Guru Nanak (1469–1539) as the reformer who rejected all kinds of rituals aimed at obtaining union with God. As to 1 Langer et al. 2006. 2 McLeod 1980; Singh 1969.
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social rites, including those that comprise the layman’s life-cycle, they most probably were of no interest to Guru Nanak. In accordance with the descriptions of scholars who try to reconstruct the shape of Guru Nanak’s community during the lifetime of the first two Gurus, it can be stated that the early panth consisted of a limited number of members who used to regularly visit their Guru, pay respect to him, and receive blessings from him. A member of the community (Nanak panthi) was not supposed to withdraw from the responsibilities of the world, and salvation was to be found by practising meditation in the context of the panthi’s ordinary life. Thus, in their practical lives the members of the panth observed traditional festivals and performed rituals very similar to those of their Hindu and Muslim neighbours.3 Interestingly, the majority of the late Janam Sakhis describe Guru Nanak as “rejecting” the sacred thread (janeu), with which he was invested at the age of nine,4 while the earlier and more realistic Miharban vali Janam Sakhi5 makes reference to his “wearing” janeu. The rite itself gave Guru Nanak an opportunity to criticise external rituals from an ideological (but not from a practical) point of view.6 Within the lifetime of Guru Nanak, two important new rituals aiming at strengthening the panth appeared.7 The first was the institution of the community kitchen (langar). Its practice was continued by later Gurus, and to this day it has remained one of the main symbols of equality inside the Sikh community. The second of the newly established rituals was the appointment of a new Guru. Tradition has it that, when appointing his successor, Guru Nanak bowed to Guru Angad and placed before him five copper coins and a coconut, signifying that from then on his elect would succeed to the Guru’s throne.8 Later on, with the expansion of the panth, new congregations came into existence, and the caste structure of the community changed correspondingly. All the ten Gurus were khatris by caste, but starting from the time of the third Guru Amar Das (1479–1574) many jats joined the community attracted by its egalitarian ideas, and in particular since caste, as a religious institution, was renounced. The expanded panth needed its own ideal image, its own distinct identity, not only in the spiritual field, but also in the sphere of social practice. Guru Amar Das divided the whole of Punjab into 22 dioceses (called manjis), and gave charge of each to a devout follower of his. This way the Sikh community es3 4 5 6
Habib 1976. Some Janam Sakhis say this ritual took place when Guru Nanak was 13 years old. Singh 1969: 62−63. Tradition has it that during the ritual Baba Nanak pronounced the following verses: “If compassion be the cotton, and contentment the thread, and continence the Knot, and the Truth the twist it would make an ideal Thread for one’s Soul, which would ever defy death” (Singh 1979: 37). 7 Singh 1979: 58. 8 Ibid.: 155.
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tablished its formal organisation, but there remained the need to create its own rituals and symbols. Guru Amar Das proclaimed some specific days as festive and started compiling a collection of verses – which later became the basis of the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib. He also decided to create a magnificent new temple in Amritsar, with the sacred pool near it, so that in the course of time the temple might become a place of holy pilgrimage for Sikhs. As the followers of Guru Amar Das came from Hindu stock, the symbols he created had to be distinct from the Hindu symbols, while at the same time being similar to them. That is the reason why many Sikh rituals and symbols may be considered good examples of “ritual quotation” – a situation in which complete rituals, individual rites, or some features of rituals, such as symbols, are transferred with the intention of making them recognisable to the participants.9 One example of a “ritual quotation” is a sacred pool (bauli) which Guru Amar Das ordered to be dug up in his village of Goindval with the aim of it serving as a place of pilgrimage for Sikhs. The sacred pool had 84 steps (as Hindus believe in eighty-four hundred thousand incarnations of a man). Guru Amar Das promised liberation (completion of the transmigration process) to everyone who bathed in the sacred pool and recited the whole composition of japji by Guru Nanak. This way the main idea of Guru Nanak – “all rituals are false and do not lead to salvation” – was transformed into another idea: “Hindu rituals are false, Sikh rituals are true”.10 It should be stressed, however, that until the time of the fourth Guru, the process of creating new rituals took place “exclusively inside the sphere of religion.” The first attempt to change the rituals connected with the “life-cycle” – the system of rites that concern each and every member of the community – took place during the time of the fourth Guru Ram Das (1534–1581), when a relatively small initial group of spiritual followers of Nanak was transformed into a large congregation with a distinct social structure of its own.11 Guru Ram Das composed two important texts for marriage ceremonies that are still in use today: Ghorian, sung before the main marriage rite, and Lavan, considered at present to be the main text of the marriage ceremony. There is no evidence, though, as to how widely these
9 Gladigow 2004. 10 Simultaneously with creating new rituals for the Sikh community, Gurus and their followers theoretically continued rejecting the significance of any ritual for salvation. Below is the statement of Bhai Gurdas, a near relation of the third Guru, converted to Sikhism by the fourth Guru, Ram Das, in 1579, and scribe of Adi Granth, compiled by the fifth Guru: “All rituals are false: yagnas, the raising of the sacred fire, japa, tapa, continence and forced discipline, customary charities, pilgrimages, asceticism, belief in tantra and mantra, yogic postures, fasting and worship, blessing and cursing, miracle-making, belief in tombs and crematorium, yoginies and saviors, Shiva and Shakti, gods and goddesses. Only the Guru’s Word saves, or the companionship of the Holy” (Singh 1979: 210). 11 McLeod 2000: 52.
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compositions were used during marriage ceremonies at the time of Guru Ram Das and his successors. The successor of Ram Das, Guru Arjun Dev (1563–1606), laid the foundation of the Harimandir (Golden Temple). He also compelled all Sikhs to contribute one tenth of their income for community purposes, and basically completed the work of creating the holy book of the Sikhs, wherein he included the sayings of his predecessors, his own verses, and some select verses by Hindu bhakti poets. This creation of Adi Granth (Guru Granth Sahib), the sacred book, which was later treated as the only Sikh Guru, is considered to be one of the main three events in the early history of the Sikhs. The other two are Guru Nanak’s foundation of a new religion with an appointed guru-successor, and the creation of the Sikh khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh.12 The Adi Granth does not contain direct information concerning the social life around the time of its composition, but laborious research analysing its idioms, metaphors, etc. may yield some material for a historian, allowing him to pinpoint contours in the social conditions in the Punjab during the late medieval period. The details concerning the marriage ceremony are very scanty. The main details extractable from the text are as follows: 1) The groom, accompanied by a marriage procession, musicians, and drummers, went to the bride’s house to solemnise the wedding ceremony; 2) The bride was afterwards, in a palanquin (doli), brought to the groom’s house, where she was received with great courtesy; 3) The mother-in-law sprinkled water over her head and drank it.13 The rites of this marriage ritual have survived until today in both Hindu and Sikh wedding ceremonies. Most probably, the changes that took place in the political and religious life of the Sikh community and the elite’s attempts to create new rituals and symbols did not have any profound influence on everyday life-cycle ceremonies of the common people. An even more radical reshaping of the panth took place during the time of the sixth Guru Hargobind (1595–1644), who armed his followers and turned the panth into a military organisation. The details known of the ceremony when Hargobind was invested into his high office14 already symbolised the changes. The young Guru refused to accept a seli (“woollen cord” worn as a necklace, or around the head, by the earlier Gurus as a symbol of their spiritual status), and wore two swords, one on each side – one to signify temporal power (miri), and the other spiritual power (piri or faqiri). 12 Singh 1979: 175. 13 Ibid.: 207. 14 After the news of the martyrdom of Guru Hargobind’s father, Guru Arjun was received by Sikhs in Amritsar.
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The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh (1666–1708), is traditionally believed to have carried the process of reshaping the Sikh community to a climax by creating Sikh khalsa on Baisakhi Day 1699. It is commonly believed that Guru Gobind Singh included in his pahul initiation ceremony a sermon in which he explained the substance of the Rahit-Khalsa Sikh way of life.15 It included the definition of a distinct Khalsa identity consisting of five Ks: uncut hair (kes), a wooden comb worn in the hair (kangha), a steel bangle (kara), a dagger (kirpan), and a pair of breeches (kaccha).16 The epoch beginning in the early eighteenth and leading up to the early nineteenth century is marked by the creation of nine Rahit-namas, texts dedicated to the description of an exclusively Sikh way of life (rahit). These texts, dated differently by various scholars, are predominantly poetic, but among them also exist two extended texts in prose, namely the Prem Sumarg and the Sau Sakhian. It is in the Prem Sumarg that we find the earliest available detailed description of the Sikh marriage ritual. The Sikh tradition traces its authorship to Guru Gobind Singh, but academic circles attribute this text to different writers and different periods of time. The anonymous author of the Prem Sumarg, which describes the ideal marriage ceremony of the Sikhs, is considered to be, most probably, khatri by caste, and to have believed that Sikhs constitute only a part of the larger Hindu community. There are many similarities between the wedding rituals described by the anonymous author of the Prem Sumarg and the marriage ceremonies practised by modern Sikhs. The following practices seem to be the most important ones: 1) The bridegroom and the bride make four circuits around the sacred object (in the Prem Sumarg it is the sacred fire, in later times its role is played by the Adi Granth); 2) The bridegroom, having his sash tied to the bride’s shawl, precedes the bride in all the four circuits; 3) While the pair circumambulates the sacred fire, the complete text of Guru Ram Das’s Lavan is sung; 4) The person conducting the wedding ritual addresses the Sikh sword (Sri Bhagauti), asking it to be a witness of the marriage ceremony.17 The main difference between the ideal ritual, described in the Prem Sumarg, and the marriage ceremony of modern Sikhs lies in the sacred object to be circumambulated by the bride and bridegroom. According to the Prem Sumarg, the sacred object is a fire kindled in a pit of “dhak wood” (Butea frondosa) with ghee poured 15 Singh 1979: 290. 16 McLeod 1989: 32. 17 Sri Bhagauti is one of the names of the goddess Devi. According to McLeod (McLeod 2006), Sri Bhagauti designates here supreme god in the form of a sword.
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over it. After completing each of the four circuits round the fire, a new portion of ghee is cast on the fire, and simultaneously an appeal has to be made to the lord of fire, to bear witness that a circuit has been completed. The choice of sacred object in the wedding rite, either the traditional holy fire or the sacred book, later became the main issue of controversy between those who consider Sikhs to be only part of the larger Hindu community and their opponents, who claim a separate identity for Sikhs. The other important difference between the prescribed rituals concerns the text pronounced by the person who is conducting the marriage ceremony. According to the Prem Sumarg, he is supposed to mention the castes (baran)18 of both the bride and the bridegroom, seven times during the ceremony.19 But the code of marriage conduct (Rahit Maryada) of modern Sikhs does not permit any mentioning of caste affiliation, either in marriage or at any time of religious or social activities.20 Caste considerations have, in the meantime, turned out to be very important in various fields of Sikh life, especially on the occasion of choosing a marriage partner. This social practice of the Sikhs has often been criticised by Western scholars as a sign that the community’s rules are based on double standards and hypocrisy. Although partially true for modern Sikh society, this statement is not correct as far as the founders of Sikhism and their early followers are concerned. The gurus thought that caste affiliation had no bearing on either liberation from transmigration or on social discrimination of any sort, but they most probably considered the members of the Sikh community to be free to decide for themselves whether or not to observe caste restrictions in choosing a marriage partner. It was considered that, if some Sikhs wished to take caste prescriptions into account at the time of marriage, this should not be looked upon with disgrace. All the ten Gurus themselves got married in accordance with the prescriptions of the khatri caste, the caste to which all of them belonged. The attitude of the author of the Prem Sumarg towards caste considerations in relation to marriage is very close to the above perspective.21 However, the author of
18 Baran = varna (understood here as khatri, jat etc.). 19 The following text was pronounced by the person conducting the ceremony: “Lord of the Fire! Sri Bhagauti, Sri Khalsaji! In accordance with the will of Sri Guru Akal Purakh, the daughter of […] and granddaughter of […], by name, of […] complexion and […], has by the command of Sri Akal Purakh and at this auspicious time been married to the son of […] and grandson of […], by name, of […] complexion and […] caste (baran). May both enjoy happiness forever. Let all bear witness.” (McLeod 2006: 38). 20 Sikh Rahit Maryada 1990. 21 Below are some recommendations from Prem Sumarg: “Within the khalsa of Sri Guru Akal Purakh, no sense of separateness should be permitted. All become members of a single caste (baran) […] If it so happens that one takes a wife from some another caste (jati) and they have offspring, do not attach any importance to the caste relationship.”
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the Prem Sumarg must have been under very strong Hindu influence.22 This influence is even more noticeable in the case of the author’s attitude towards the problem of widow remarriage. Remarriage, in general, was not recommended,23 but if it did happen, a remarrying widow ought to take part in a special purification ritual.24 This idea of the author of the Prem Sumarg clearly demonstrates the increasing influence of Hinduism on Sikh rites and habits during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This influence became especially strong during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839). Ranjit Singh considered himself to be the preserver of Sikh traditions, but his way of living, with 21 wives and consorts, the luxurious marriage organised by him for his grandson, and many other acts typical of Hindu rulers, could hardly have been appreciated by those Sikhs who believed in the spiritual values of Guru Nanak’s teaching. In the hope that he would earn eternal merit, Ranjit Singh distributed material treasures of the Sikh khalsa to Brahman priests, and Brahmans in turn participated in the Maharaja’s funeral rites, boldly observing the act of cremating alive a number of Ranjit Singh’s wives and concubines.25 True believers of Sikh Gurus considered all these events to be contrary to Gobind Singh’s teaching, who is believed to have said at the time of his initiation ceremony that “Women shall be equal to men in every way: no purdah for them any more, nor the burning alive of the widow on the pyre of her spouse”.26
22 The treatise insists on prohibitions concerning the acceptance of food from members of lower castes: “eatables should not be taken from sweepers, spirit-distillers and the like […].” Khalsa Sikhs are prohibited from accepting food from members of the following castes: chuhra (sweepers), chamars, sansis, dhanaks and kalals who distil spirits. Though the author explains that “this is because of the kind of work they fulfil and not because of their caste”, the strong Hindu influence on these instructions is quite evident. 23 “A widow should live a life of chastity. In case her sexual desire remains strong […] she should take some medicines to resume her self-control. If no method of discipline works as sexual desire remains powerful, a suitable candidate should be found preferably from her husband’s circle of relatives. The woman should summon five male or female Khalsa Sikhs from her father’s family. She will humbly ask them for permission to marry. They will try to dissuade her by answering: Daughter! How much better to maintain your chastity! Do not let yourself be tempted. Do not do wrong. The eventual result of this intention must be harmful. You will be disgraced and you will suffer distress [so agonizing that] it does not bear mention. It is much better to remain loyal to your dharma […]. If a widow has children, on no account should she remarry” (McLeod 2006: 49). 24 “The person conducting the ceremony should feed the fire with ghee and direct the woman to jump through the fire god’s flames […] Then the officiant should say: ‘Lord of the Fire, this woman has passed through your sacred flames (hom) […]’. Then pouring on more ghee, he should say: ‘You are witness to it. Sri Bhagauti [symbolized by the naked sword] will also bear witness’” (McLeod 2006: 50). 25 McLeod 2000: 92. 26 There is no historical evidence concerning what exactly happened on Baisakhi day of 1699, but Sikh tradition has a very detailed and clear picture of the events.
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During British rule, which followed the defeat of Ranjit Singh in the AngloSikh wars, the external influence on Sikh social institutions became greater. It is enough to mention here that Dalip Singh, Ranjit Singh’s son, converted to Christianity voluntarily, and many other educated Sikhs followed his example. It is also remarkable that, while many Sikhs merged back into their old faith, Hinduism, at the same time there were attempts at reforming the social life of the Sikhs, undertaken by either Sahjdhari Sikhs or by recent converts to Sikhism from Hinduism.27 The Sahjdhari, or Nirankari reformatory movement inside Sikhism, was initiated at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Sahjdhari Sikh Baba Dayal (1783–1855). It was an attempt to dissociate the Sikhs from both Hindus and Muslims. The “purge” of Sikhism by Sahjdharis started with the rejection of numerous rituals and beliefs of the Hindus which were also shared by Sikhs (such as, for example, cow worship, crematory rituals, idol-worshipping, etc.). Trying to make changes to the traditional marriage rite, Baba Dayal completely rejected the concept of selecting the so-called “auspicious days” for the wedding. Deprived of his right to preach at the community temple (Gurdwara) because of his own reforms, Baba Dayal founded a separate Gurdwara exclusively for his followers. His reforms were continued by his son, Darbara Singh, who officially introduced the anand marriage ceremony as obligatory for all Sahjdhari Sikhs. The general idea of Hindus to circumambulate some holy object at the time of the wedding remained untouched, but the details were changed significantly. Instead of seven rounds about the sacred fire (as practised by Hindus), for the Sikhs it was shortened to four times, and the holy book replaced the sacred fire. There being no need for a Brahman priest (a must for Hindus), any person belonging to the community, male or female, was allowed to conduct the wedding ceremony, and the ceremony could take place in any house, not necessarily only in a temple.28 Like many other new Sikh rituals, the new marriage sacrament is a typical example of “ritual quotation”. Accustomed to the Hindu marriage rite of circumambulating the holy object, the members of the Sikh community easily accepted the new rites with their familiar elements. Started by Baba Dayal and Darbara Singh, the anand marriage ceremony was later promoted further by the reformatory Singh Sabha movement. The Singh Sabha movement was initiated in Amritsar in 1873. Its social basis initially consisted of big landlords who were later joined by students and intellectuals; all of them were inspired by the idea that strict measures should urgently be taken for the protection of the Sikh faith. Branches of Singh Sabha were created in different parts of the Punjab, and very soon two main groups emerged: the suppor27 Singh 1979: 602–604. 28 Prem Sumarg already contained such details as four (instead of seven) rounds and a lack of professional priests (they do not exist in Sikhism at all), but by the time of Baba Dayal, nobody, probably, followed the recommendations of the Prem Sumarg.
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ters of Amritsar Sabha came to be known as “Traditional Khalsa” (Sanatan Khalsa), and the more radical group, based initially in Lahore, acquired the name of “True Khalsa” (Tat Khalsa). The conservative Sanatan Sikhs considered Sikhs and their traditions to be part of the wider Hindu world, while their opponents, the followers of Tat Khalsa, were of the opinion that Sikhs should be treated as a community absolutely distinct from Hindus. The main ideas of Tat Khalsa Sikhs were expressed perfectly by Kahn Singh Nabha in his booklet Ham Hindu nahin – We are not Hindus, published in 1899. The author insisted on a separate Sikh identity and wrote that Sikhs should never observe caste restrictions nor visit shrines belonging to followers of other religions, and should abstain from practising non-Sikh rituals. One of the main points of disagreement between the two groups was the marriage sacrament: for Sanatan Sikhs the holy object circumambulated by the marrying couple remained the sacred fire, while the Tat Khalsa Sikhs, supporting the anand marriage ceremony, insisted on offering homage only to Adi Granth. Sanatan Sikhs objected that there were no proofs that Sikh Gurus themselves made circuits around the holy book or ever advised their followers to do so. They insisted that the anand marriage order had nothing to do with Sikh tradition, as it had been introduced by Nirankari Sikhs at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The heated debates between the two groups lasted for ten years, but because of the dominant support of the public, the Tat Khalsa programme ultimately won. It can be said that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the main social and political objective of the Sikh community was the establishment of a separate identity. In 1909, the anand marriage ceremony became Sikh law. After the addition of some definitions, the Sikh code of conduct (rahit maryada), including the marriage sacrament, was finally approved in 1945, and nowadays prevails inside the Sikh community. It is necessary to analyse why the marriage sacrament, and not any other issue, became the main point of difference between the Sanatan and Tat Khalsa Sikhs. It seems that the main reason for this is that the marriage sacrament necessarily puts every member of the community into a situation of alternative choices. Being a very diffuse structure, Hindu society incorporates numerous groups worshipping different gods, celebrating different holidays, performing different rituals or the same rituals but each in a different way, etc. But there exist some focal rites, like circuits round the holy fire, which is considered to be the only possible sacred object in the marriage ceremony:29 hence, a non-performer of this rite is not a Hindu. The Sikh community, in general, is not as diverse as the Hindu one. However, the question “who is a Sikh?” is also very difficult to answer. Few Sikhs are willing and can afford to follow all the prescriptions of Rahit Maryada: to rise very early 29 At least those Hindus that were neighbours of Sikhs.
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(between 3 and 6 a.m.), to regularly recite the daily rule (nit-nem), to go through pahul, the initiation ritual – all of this is strictly followed only by a very select group of Sikhs. Even the prescribed five “Ks” are not kept by many Sikhs. For example, kaccha is difficult to combine with modern jeans; kirpan creates problems in aeroplanes, public meetings, etc.; kes may be a hindrance for a good career, etc. In fact, many Sikhs keep only one “k”, that is kara. There are also social differences: Sikhs of the jat caste are more liberal than khatris; the educated young people and Sikhs outside India are more liberal about solving problems of visible Sikh identity than the old generation in India. Concerning marriage rules, a great majority of Sikhs still take caste considerations into account; some Sikhs demand or give dowry; some believe in inauspicious days and inauspicious people, etc. Nevertheless, making circuits round the Adi Granth and not round the sacred fire30 is one of a few ritualistic features that unite all Sikhs in the focal rite of the marriage ceremony. It should be remembered that all Sikh rituals were created by intellectuals – the spiritual and political leaders of the community. Thus, the question arises: “How do common people understand the rituals?” The focal rite of the marriage ceremony constitutes very good material for investigations in this field, as practically every Sikh participates in it: once as the main character, and many times as a witness. Every Sikh, many times in his life, listens to the text of Lavan, which is recited at the time the marrying couple makes its four circuits round the holy book. Most probably the verses written by Guru Ram Das in the sixteenth century were well understood by his contemporaries, as gurus were preaching in the language understood by common people. There is a story about this related to the times of the third Guru Amar Das. When a Brahmin, proud of his book-knowledge and proficiency in Sanskrit, put the following question to the Guru: “Why do you impart instructions to your disciples not in Sanskrit, the language of Gods, but in Punjabi, the language of illiterate masses?” the Guru replied: “Sanskrit is like a well, deep, inaccessible, and confined to the elite, but the language of the people is like rain water – ever fresh, abundant, and accessible to all”.31 However, later on the language changed, and nowadays the verses of the Adi Granth are no longer accessible to laymen with a good command of standard modern Punjabi. I interviewed twenty people (ten men and ten women) in Delhi (in January of 2008) and the same number of people in the Moscow Gurdwara32 (February–March
30 With the exception of the Namdhari sect. The latter continue the Hindu tradition of going around the sacred fire. 31 Singh 1979: 169. 32 Specific to the Gurdwara in Moscow is the fact that about half (and sometimes more) of its attendants are Sikhs from Afghanistan. The majority of young people are clean-shaven. I interviewed only Indian Sikhs.
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2008), asking them about the meaning of various portions of the Lavan.33 All the interviewees had secondary or higher education in science, arts, or commerce, and had acquired their knowledge of Sikh religion at home. The limited number of people I interviewed does not allow me to come to any statistical conclusion, but the results may provide some insights as to how the text of one of the most common Sikh rites is understood. About 30% of the interviewees in each of the two groups said that the language of the Lavan was a secret one and that it could not be comprehended at all. The majority of them were young well-educated men with a good command of English. About 60% of those questioned were ready to explain the meaning of the Lavan, though they also confessed that they were not confident about their interpretations. 10% said they understood the text well. Below I shall quote the interpretations of the three interviewees who belonged to the last group. Each verse of the Lavan has two meanings. On a superficial level, it contains instructions for a marrying couple; on a deeper level, each verse describes the union of atma with paramatma, the main theme of the philosophy of bhakti. Only two of the interviewees (in Delhi) knew about this second meaning of the text. The scope of the present paper does not allow for a description of all the interpretations of the various text fragments that were offered to me. The most typical misinterpretations were based on misunderstandings of contextual meanings of certain words and their combinations. The poetic language, often devoid of necessary inflections and postpositions, allows combining of words freely, in accordance with the imagination of the interpreter. For example, the nominal phrase “nirbhau bhai” (fear of fearless [God]) has been interpreted by several people as “fearless fear”, that is “absence of fear”. Most of those interviewed attempted to oversimplify the meaning, and tried all means to connect the expression with the situation of marriage. Below are some examples: (1) nirbhau
bhai
manu
hoi
haumai
mail
gavāiā
fearless
fear
soul
having become
egotism
filth
made disappear
Lit. translation: “When fear of fearless (God) comes into the Soul (heart), [God] removes the filth of concentration upon Ego.”
33 Adi Granth (“Guru Grant Sahib”) Lāvān: 774.
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Translation by W. Owen Cole and Sambhi Piara Singh: “By holding him in reverent awe and singing his praises self-centeredness is washed away.”34 Interpretation of a Sikh businessman in Moscow: “The bride is afraid to go to sasural (father-in-law’s house) and God removes her fears.” (2) hari
tījrī
lāv
mani
cāu
bhaiā
bairāgīā
God third round soul (Loc) desire became detached (Obl. Pl.) Lit. translation: “O Lord! In the third round the desire, (similar to that) of detached (saints), comes to the heart.” Translation by McLeod: “The third round is the time for detachment, for freeing our minds from all worldly desire.”35 Interpretation of another Sikh businessman in Moscow: “In the third round carnal desire (to have a spouse) comes into the mind of an unmarried man.” Some interpretations were connected with local mythology: (3) hari
ātam
rāmu
pasāriā
God
self’s
soul/essence
spread
Lit. translation: “The God spreads his essence.” Translation by McLeod: “The Master is present in all his creations.”36 34 Cole & Singh 1978: 118. 35 McLeod 1984: 118.
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Interpretation of a small shopkeeper in Moscow: “atam ramu is like an egg in which an individual’s atma stays. When the dead body is burnt [at a funeral pyre], one can sometimes see this egg. Afterwards it is broken, and atma is released.” Some suggested interpretations tried to express the idea of superiority of the Sikh way of life. (4) sahaj
anaⁿdu
hoā
celestial bliss
joy
happened
Translation by Sant Singh Khalsa:37 “By great good fortune celestial bliss is attained.” In fact, sahaj implies a lot of possible interpretations: the word-form may be treated as the oblique case of the noun sahaju which means: 1) “ineffable radiance”, a condition existing beyond the cycle of transmigration; 2) “born together”; 3) “knowledge”; 4) “respect”; 5) “joy”; 6) “God”; 7) “devoted wife”. It might also be understood as the adjective sahaj, meaning “light” or “easy”. Combinations of all of the above listed meanings with the meaning of the noun anaⁿdu (“joy, happiness”) may result in many different interpretations. The respondents have suggested the following, “the joy of togetherness” (“now husband and wife are like two people born together”); “the joy of the wife who respects her husband”, who is a “devoted wife”; “the joy of life that will proceed smoothly, easily, without mishap, etc.” One of the respondents (a shopkeeper in Moscow) explained the expression sahaj anaⁿdu as “joy of relaxation”, adding: “You Western people usually have troubles after marriage, but we live peacefully, and our married life goes smoothly”.
Concluding Remarks Sikh history presents good examples of a diachronic transfer of ritual, namely the re-emergence of “primal identities” (such as ethnicity or religion). Within the lifetimes of the founder of Sikhism Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and his successor, Guru Angad (1504–1552), the main focus was put on the rejection of all rituals as a
36 Ibid. 37 English Translation of Siri Guru Granth Sahib: http://www.Gurbanifiles.org, p. 774
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means to achieve salvation. No attention was paid to life-cycle rites, which were shared by members of Hindu and early Sikh communities. Starting from the time of the third Guru, Amar Das, the expanded Sikh panth demanded its own distinct identity not only in the spiritual field, but also in the sphere of social practice. New Sikh rituals came into existence and the idea that “all rituals are false and do not lead to salvation” was changed into: “Hindu rituals are false, Sikh rituals are true.” At the time of the fourth Guru, Ram Das, ritual transfer also spread to the life-cycle, first of all to the marriage sacrament. As the adepts of Sikhism usually came from Hindu stock, the new Sikh rituals, rites, and symbols were supposed to be distinct from Hindu symbols, and at the same time remain similar to them. That is why many Sikh rituals and symbols might be viewed as good examples of “ritual quoting” from Hindu sources. The increasing Hindu influence on Sikh rites and habits, which occurred during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was opposed by the reformatory movement initiated inside Sikhism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The main object of that movement was to return “back to the original Sikh faith”. The Sikh renaissance, which took place in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, was a typical example of re-adoption or re-invention of a ritual. It is remarkable that the marriage order, that never attracted any attention from Guru Nanak, has been considered in modern times one of the main identifying features of the Sikh community. The main rite of the marriage ritual – the circumambulation of the sacred book instead of the sacred fire – has become one of the main symbols of separate Sikh identity. Contextual aspects of ritual transfer in the history of the Sikh community have been supplemented here with the analysis of one of the “internal dimensions” of ritual, namely of the meanings ascribed by the participants to the text recited during the circuits round the holy book. The majority of common Sikhs, even those who regularly attend Gurdwara and participate in service ceremonies, interpret the text of Adi Granth in their own way, or prefer the mechanical repetition of the text, without making any attempt to understand the text’s deeper meaning. This contradicts the main ideas of Guru Nanak, who considered the mechanical performance of any ritual to be absolutely useless.
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References Cole, William O. & Sambhi P. Singh 1989. The Sikhs: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London & New York: Routledge. Gladigow, Burkhard 2004. “Sequenzierung von Riten und die Ordnung der Rituale”. In: Michael Stausberg (ed.). Zoroastrian Rituals in Context. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 57–76 (Studies in the History of Religion/Numen Book Series 102). Habib, Irfan 1976. “Jats of Punjab and Sind”. In: Harbans Singh & Gerald N. Barrier (eds.). Punjab Past and Present: Essays in Honour of Dr. Ganga Singh. Patiala: Punjabi University. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. McLeod, William H. (ed.) 1980. The B40 Janam Sakhi. Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev University. — 1984. Sikhism: Textual Sources for the Study of Sikhism. London: Manchester University Press. — 1989. Who is a Sikh? The Problems of Sikh Identity. Oxford: Clarendon press. — 2000. Exploring Sikhism. Aspects of Sikh Identity, Culture and Thought. Oxford University Press. — (ed.) 2006. Premsumaarag: The Testimony of a Sanatan Sikh. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sikh Rahit Maryada 19907. Amritsar: Shromani Gurdvara Prabandhak Committee. Singh, Gopal 1979. A History of the Sikh People. New Delhi: World Sikh University Press. Singh, Kirpal (ed.) 1969. Janam Sakhi Parampara. Patiala: Punjabi University.
Websites Siri Guru Granth Sahib: http://www.Gurbanifiles.org; (English Translation)
Afsar Mohammad
Following the Pir: Temporary Asceticism and Village Religion in South India For us, Kullayappa is the only one devudu (God). All his stories and all his memories and every act we perform in his name are inseparable from our everyday life. We know other gods too, but they’re not part of this world, only Kullayappa lives with us and stays with us in our village. He is the only God who came down all this way to reach us. And, we pour all our energies into reaching him again. Faqiri is the most faithful act to reach the pir. Faqiri pulls you towards him and faqiri pulls you to the centre of the village. Lakshmi Reddy (85)1 Faqri fakhri – Poverty is my pride. Prophet Muhammad
Introduction About five hundred years ago, as the villagers of Gugudu narrate, Lord Rama took a new avatar and became a Muslim pir. Each day hundreds of devotees, mostly Hindus, visit this remote Telugu-speaking village in Andhra Pradesh and pray to this pir, and also perform various Islamic rituals, including faqiri (deliberate embracing of poverty on the path of devotion). Before coming to the sacred site called the pir-makaanam (the house of the pir) in Gugudu, these devotees undertake an intense temporary ascetic practice for three days – locally termed faqiru deeksha – during which they call themselves faqirs. But what happens when Hindu and lower-caste Muslim devotees observe faqiri rituals and what do they learn from these rituals? This question led me into a labyrinth of stories and ritual practices, revealing incredibly diverse manifestations of village religion. Focusing on the very popular and specific village ritual faqiri, I begin this analysis of an ascetic practice by focusing on one faqir, Lakshmi Reddy, said to be the heir of the pirs’ 1 Conversation with Lakshmi Reddy in Gugudu on 7 December 2006.
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first devotee, Kondanna, who had supposedly met and was personally blessed by the pir five hundred years ago. Devotees perceive Lakshmi Reddy as an ideal faqir, and yet also tell stories about their families’ commitment to faqiri to emphasise that their family history also reveals the history of faqiri in Gugudu. Born into a non-Muslim farming community, Lakshmi Reddy visits the village pir-house every morning and evening to pay respects to the pir named Kullayappa, the “lord with a cap”. Kullah is Persian for “cap”, and appa is Telugu for “lord” or “father”. Like other non-Muslim devotees, Lakshmi Reddy calls the pir Kullayappa, while Muslim devotees call him Topi waale Saheb (“saint with a cap”) in Urdu. Invoking the name of the pir, Lakshmi Reddy makes the Muslim “priest”2 recite the first verse of the Quran. But when Lakshmi Reddy visits the pir-house on the seventh day of Muharram,3 his actions indicate that this is a special occasion for him. After having a bath in the local holy well,4 he goes straight to the pir-house and hands over the red thread, which he has made specifically for this occasion, to the priest. After putting the sacred thread before the hand-shaped icon of the pir, the Muslim mujavar recites the first verse of the Quran and returns it to Lakshmi Reddy who then puts it around his neck. This specific ritual is the formal announcement of the intense faqiri that Lakshmi Reddy and other devotees like him enact during Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. Muharram is popularly known as “The Festival of Pirs” (pirla pandaga) in the villages of Andhra Pradesh. Both Hindus and Muslims observe the ritual of faqiri, which is ordinarily in remembrance of Muslim martyrs; each village remembers these martyrs as pirs, for ten days, by performing several rituals and devotional practices that blend with local temple practices. Faqiri is an Arabic term that derives from faqr, which means “poverty”. Faqiri is an act of embracing poverty on the path to purification, but in my study, it relates to the journey of devotion to local saints and pirs.5 In Gugudu, the local village 2 Local Telugu usage is: Muzavaru pujari, a combination of both Muslim and Hindu terms. Muzavaru is the trustee of any Muslim sacred site and pujari is the temple priest. 3 Muharram and the seventh day: Muharram is the first month of the Islamic calendar and Muslims observe ten days of Muharram in memory of the martyrs at Karbala. Each day is set aside for very specific rituals and narratives. In Andhra villages the icons of the martyrs, known as pirs, are put up on the first day of Muharram. The seventh day of Muharram is crucial as it was the day on which Khasim died as a martyr. Even more important is the tenth day, on which Hasan and Hussein are remembered. On the seventh and the tenth days villagers take out the icons in a huge procession. Additionally, all villagers fast on the seventh day and faqiri begins. For more information on Muharram in South Asia, see: Korom 2003: 53– 96; for information on Muharram in India, see Saiyed 1995: 152–82. 4 In Telugu this local holy well is called “Koneru”. It is still a sacred site of Hindu temple culture in South India. Taking a bath before the visitation (darshanam) is a typical Hindu ritual. 5 For a clearer understanding of the importance of faqiri in a Sufi context, see Schimmel 1975: 120–24.
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legend narrates that faqiri began five hundred years ago when Lakshmi Reddy’s forefather Kondanna was personally blessed by the pir and advised to perform faqiri annually during Muharram. Although Lakshmi Reddy feels that he has a special place in the practice of faqiri in Gugudu, he is not alone in this practice. Thousands of other devotees follow this ascetic practice, namely the supplication to the local pir, Kullayappa. However, Lakshmi Reddy asserts that he was born to do faqiri, and he claims that the pir himself chose him to lead a faqiri life. Like Lakshmi Reddy, thousands of devotees who visit Gugudu enact faqiri as a temporary asceticism for a few days during the month of Muharram, and, like Lakshmi Reddy, they endeavour to follow the lessons they have learnt from the temporary faqiri throughout the rest of the year. In this paper, I will focus on personal devotee narratives from Gugudu, in order to explore the significance of village religion in South India. It will be shown that these devotee narratives demonstrate that the villagers understand faqiri as a counter-system to the traditional mode of permanent asceticism, especially in so far as it constitutes a departure from the conventional space of tapas performed in the wilderness (aranya), so prominent in the ascetic practices of Hinduism. This paper will also explore the question of why non-Muslims perform a Muslim faqiri ritual as a local version of asceticism that highlights the significance of community life in the village (uru) rather than an asceticism born out of the wilderness (aranya). I will also describe the lower-caste Muslim practice of faqiri, so that the reader can get a more clear-cut idea of the shape of the ritual. This paper has three parts: in the first part, a general account of asceticism in South Asia is given, as a backdrop for the closer study of the shift to temporary ascetic practice, as practised in Andhra villages; in the second part, individual narratives of local ascetics are reiterated; and in the third part, some specific interpretations of this locally produced ascetic practice, and the impact of faqiri on village religion, are elaborated upon. In many villages in Andhra, the public, annual religious event of Muharram, “pirla pandaga” (the Festival of Pirs), provides a model for the observance of faqiri. Most of the rituals and practices enacted under the rubric of Muharram commemorate the seventh-century battle of Karbala, when the two grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, Hassan and Hussein, died as martyrs. Today, Hassan and Hussein are worshipped like the hundreds of local saints found throughout Islamic South Asia, and this has changed the perception of them as Islamic martyrs. In villages, the process of localisation (or local appropriation) goes as far as to imagine a local ritual site, called “Karbala”. Karbala was the actual battlefield in Iraq where the historic seventh-century battle took place. In the state of Andhra Pradesh, the local village communities construct ritual sites which are called “Karbala”. There, villagers re-enact the final rites for the Muslim martyrs. In villages like Gugudu, Muharram can scarcely be seen as a marker dividing Muslims from
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non-Muslims, or Shi’a from Sunni; it evokes rather the spirit of collective life, and constitutes an intense ascetic practice that blends with local temple and village deity traditions. Each year, the Islamic calendar begins with the re-creation of this emotive religious memory, as both Hindus and Muslims, in a single community, symbolically re-enact the entire drama that led to the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandsons at Karbala. The village devotees build replicas of the standards of the pirs, including the martyrs, known as alams or pirs, and undertake huge processions on the tenth day, and perform final rites at the local “Karbala”. The idea of temporary asceticism manifests itself in each ritual performed in the village during Muharram. However, Lakshmi Reddy and thousands of others who participate in these processions are not Muslims. Nevertheless, Muharram is as important to them as to any Muslim, and the enactment of faqiri demonstrates their allegiance to this tradition. How can we make sense of Lakshmi Reddy’s assertion that he lives to perform faqiri? Within Hindu tradition, the practice of asceticism has been presented as a means to transcend the social world and as a “complete abandonment of all social life”.6 Patrick Olivelle offers five defining elements of the traditional Hindu system of asceticism: 1. the cutting of social and kinship ties; 2. living an itinerant life without a fixed home; 3. mendicancy, associated with the abandonment of socially recognised economic activities and the ownership of property, especially food; 4. abandoning of ritual activities customary within society; and 5. adherence to celibacy. In the traditional Hindu system, ascetic life is a fixed path that cannot be taken up by members of all castes, and is often limited to Brahmins. With regard to asceticism as conducive to mystical experience, Sufis follow several ascetic practices, many of which are esoteric in nature. The practice of faqiri is also considered an exclusive tradition with rigorous rituals in different Sufi orders. Various studies on Islam view the practice of faqiri as a specific Sufi esoteric act, or a practice at the lower end of the Sufi hierarchy of mystical practices.7 In 6 Olivelle 1995: 12. 7 Helene Basu, in her study on Sidhis in Gujarat, observed that the faqiri is at the lower end of the Sufi ritual hierarchy. (Werbner & Basu 1998: 117) Though Basu identifies faqiri as at the lower end of the Sufi ritual hierarchy and also those who observe faqiri as “threshold people” with liminal identity, her study still focuses on a Muslim community. In their studies of vernacular Islam in South India, Jackie Assayag and Joyce Flueckiger observed that the faqirs are an identifiable community who are usually invited by local religious groups to take part in the gatherings. (Assayag 2004: 133; Flueckiger 2008: 184). Recently, Akbar Hyder has provided, in his book Reliving Karbala, ethnographic evidence for faqiri in an urban context
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many of these studies, faqirs are presented as a distinct group with special powers and ritual practices. Often, as Richard Eaton observes, the term is applied either to persons with extraordinary miraculous powers, or persons who chose a specific religious path by joining a faqir order.8 The classical definition of asceticism in the Islamic tradition refers to three stages: 1. the renunciation of the world; 2. the renunciation of the happy feeling of having achieved renunciation; and 3. the stage in which the ascetic regards the world as so unimportant “that he no longer looks at it”.9 In spite of their differences, both Islam and Hinduism, in South Asia, regard asceticism as an austere practice that transcends the social world and its boundaries.
The Idea of Temporary Asceticism Departing from what we might expect on the basis of standard accounts of asceticism in South Asia, the evidence regarding the practice of faqiri as temporary asceticism, gathered in Gugudu, speaks for a re-affirmation of the social world, rather than a transcendence of it. Both Hindus and Muslims in a village Muharram enact faqiri for three or forty days. Regardless of the number of days performed, the local de-votees claim that the ethics of faqiri stays with them for the rest of the year, trans-formed into a model for everyday conduct. Most of the devotees perceive temporary asceticism as an inner state that transgresses external acts, such as visiting the pir-house, circling around the fire-pit, and various food rituals. Contrary to the classical understanding of asceticism, the temporary asceticism found in Gugudu is an open practice – practitioners of which remain within the social sphere – that, for a while, becomes the centre of community life and cuts across various interfaces of religion, caste, and gender. At the same time, faqiri does share some of the social features characteristic of standard asceticism. It contests the hierarchies and social boundaries which usually regulate the practice of asceticism, by allowing all groups to participate in its ritual practice. Most importantly, dalits and women actively enact faqiri in various forms. While dalits consider faqirias an opportunity to participate in esoteric ascetic practice, women modify it as a vrata (vow) and perform it for themselves or on behalf of men. As opposed to the traditional notion of asceticism, in Hinduism as well as in Islam, this village practice connects various aspects of social life, including pracin the case of Hyderabad. The practice in this context is, specifically, Islamic in nature (Hyder 2006: 15). 8 Eaton 1978: 317. 9 Schimmel 1975: 37
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tices relating to the local temple and village deity. Through the practice of temporary asceticism, the ascetic is shifted from the wilderness (aranya) to the centre of the village (uru).10 In the village context, this alternate ascetic practice plays the role of community builder for the faqirs, who strictly adhere to various villagecentred collective responsibilities and rituals. Like vratas and other vows, faqiri insists upon certain restrictions; however, while vratas or vows are aimed at the fulfilment of certain wishes, the practice of faqiri remains an ideal way of life that individuals choose as a way of developing their moral being. Within families, faqiri functions as a way of teaching ethics, collective responsibility, and as a path to go beyond the self (the feeling of swa or swantam, as expressed in local Telugu). The idea of temporary asceticism manifests itself in the public events of the village during Muharram. By presenting the icons of the pirs as models for collective responsibility, village Muharram reinforces the idea of faqiri as a link between the self and the external world. The ritual processions that walk through several neighbourhoods of the village connect various communities, both low and high, thus redefining the normative Muharram tradition. Several studies on the Shi’a sect of Islam and Muharram performances understand Muharram as a Shi’a Islamic practice and focus on the observance of the Muharram public event in relation to Shi’a Islamic identity.11 Some recent studies also focus on non-Muslim participation in Muharram. Likewise I have observed that village communities in Andhra revise the definition of Shi’a practice by extending the boundaries of each Muharram ritual, and providing local meanings for each Muharram practice. In a village context, local communities practically initiate this alternate process by modifying the notion of personal allegiance through centring most of their rituals on a local pir, thus clearly highlighting the significance of an alternate ascetic practice. Close observation of faqiri rituals in a village Muharram would show us that the very concept of the exemplary model, as explained in traditional Islam, undergoes deeper changes, too. While in urban and normative Shi’a Islamic practice the prominence of faqiri rituals is secondary, in villages it acquires a central role during Muharram, as many villages and thousands of devotees consider local pirs their exemplary models and embrace faqiri. During faqiri, devotees try to imitate the personality of the local pir in all aspects. Participants eat what they believe the pir once ate, and they imitate his path to demonstrate their devotion to him. At the same time, it emphasises their intention to re-fashion their personal lives according to an ideal provided by various events in the life story of the pir. The individual faqir narratives that will be pre10 For a detailed understanding of the dichotomy between wilderness and village, see Olivelle 2007: 43–62. 11 Schubel defines Shi’ism as “the school of thought in Islam which stresses personal allegiance and devotion to the Prophet and his family as the most crucial element and sign of one’s submission to the will of God” (Schubel 1993: 17).
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sented in the next section of this paper make it clear that faqiri acquires the status of an alternate and temporary asceticism, as practised by lower-caste communities through a continual exchange of rituals between Muslim and Hindu practices. Basically, faqiri rituals allow devotees to transcend the limits of everyday obligatory rituals, such as performing sugar fateha, a routine ritual of offering sugar to the pir, making the Muslim priest recite the first verse of the Quran and performing kanduri,12 a sacred food ritual in memory of the local pirs. Many devotees believe that the faqiri ritual is a mode of negotiation between internal and external devotional practices, and that faqiri concretises their devotional journey in internalising the Muharram ethos. As explained by several devotees, external practice means performing rituals external to the body: physical acts such as walking around (pradakshina) the fire-pit, distributing sugar in the name of the pir, or preparing the sacred kanduri food. By internal practice they mean a direct communication with the pir while performing various rituals. Based on local Muharram narratives and faqiri rituals, it becomes evident that village devotional communities also continually redefine the notion of an exemplary model, which has a central significance in the normative Muharram tradition, often termed Hussainiyat, the legacy of Hussein. Thus, the re-constructed model of the pir, as an exemplary person, serves as an alternate mode of learning about temporary asceticism, also since many villages replace Hussein with local pirs. In the village context, this transformatory process takes place at two different levels: first of all, the local pirs build up a personal image, and secondly, the holy five (the family of the Prophet) is also incorporated into local pirs. These two aspects play key roles in the making of faqiri. In the process village communities produce faqiri narratives which “shape [their] self understanding and social life”.13 In order to emphasise the value and efficacy of faqiri, these village devotees construct local narratives connected to the Prophet’s family, depicting their intense devotion. In many Telugu oral narratives, folk-songs, folk-performances, proverbs, and everyday conversations, we find local pirs, considered as belonging to the family of the prophet. Faqiri narratives produce a blended story, borrowing themes from the Ramayana14 and Muharram. Gugudu has its own Ramayana narrative highlighting the devotion of Guha, a boatman who ferried Lord Rama during his life in the forest. The local Ramayana narrates that Guha, in his intense devotion, turned into an ascetic, and began living far away from the village, in a forest, believed to have 12 For a more detailed study on the ritual of Kanduri, see Bowen 1993: 229–50. 13 Narayan 2007: 5. 14 The local appropriation of Ramayana stories is not unusual. As one Telugu writer put it, “There is no river where Sita didn’t bathe and there is no forest where Rama didn’t roam.” For more information on the importance of local appropriations of Ramayana stories, see Prasad 2007: 25–6.
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been Dandakaranya, a mythical forest in the Ramayana. Villagers, even today, continue to describe this mythical forest graphically and explain the changes which took place when the pir appeared for the first time. In a village narrative, the presence of the pir transformed the entire aranya into uru. As the local legend narrates, the pir replaced the old notion of tapas and encouraged people to take up faqiri. The narration further says that, in his next life, he became a faqir, deeply influenced by the message of the local pir Kullayappa, and returned to his village as a man in the world. Yet, he continued faqiri as a sign of his deep devotion for the local pir who is an incarnation of Lord Rama, according to village legend. However, these Hindu-Muslim blended narratives function as tools to establish the practice of faqiri, and those who enact faqiri attribute diverse identities to the pir, as each personal devotee narrative reveals a distinctive manifestation of the pir. The formation of the idea of temporary asceticism within the context of the new village reveals a new pattern of religious life with a new set of ritual and devotional practices, exhibiting an interplay between devotion and asceticism. As one nonMuslim devotee described it: “If there is no faqiri there is no Muharram, if there is no Muharram there is no Gugudu village.” These words clearly reiterate the importance of the relatedness of faqiri with Muharram and the village, in this context. The place undergoes sanctification by being named “local Karbala”. Both the naming as well as the re-enactment of the dramatic battle of Karbala every year have acquired a prominent role in the religious life of this village. All the devotees who have observed faqiri for ten pure days finally cut off their threads on the tenth day, declaring the formal end of the ritual. But, as many devotees believe, the act of wearing the red thread remains symbolic, and the values they learn from the hagiography of the pir stay with them forever. As I have mentioned before, the temporary practice of faqiri also represents the shift from the wilderness (aranya) to the village (uru). Geographically, Gugudu is not one village (uru), but a combination of two villages: an old village, paata uru, and a new village, kotta uru. The old village represents traditional asceticism, while the new village stands for the beginning of faqiri. One of the most striking images of this village is that of a great firewalk during Muharram, and of thousands of devotees observing faqiri, wearing the red thread. As the local oral history of the village narrates, the Muharram public event began five centuries ago and before that Gugudu village did not exist; hence, the practice of faqiri was a first step towards the formation of the new village. The pirhouse is at the centre of the village, or, as villagers describe it, at the “navel” (nadiboddu in Telugu) of the village, which is turned into a ritual space for the initiation of faqiri. Hundreds of devotees, speaking various South Indian languages, such as Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Urdu, visit the pir makaanam every Thursday or Friday, and during Muharram thousands of devotees enact the faqiri ritual, demonstrating their unrelenting devotional commitment towards the pir. Most of the village
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communities consider that this ascetic practice developed as an alternative form to the village community life, distinct from the austere tapas of the wilderness. To put it simply, the village communities say that the ascetic practice called faqiri, relocated as the pir makaanam, becomes the centre of each ritual activity. Various local communities that collectively enact faqiri rituals argue that this alternative practice is there to redress “their” spiritual needs, not those of the upper castes. At the village level, most of the lower-caste communities claim this ritual as their own, and argue that temporary asceticism is an alternate form of ritual, enabling the peasant and artisan communities in the village to enter the spiritual realm. In Gugudu and many other villages in Andhra, faqirs narrate several stories, challenging the established notion of Brahmanical ascetic practice. To delineate the ritual of faqiri, I begin my depiction with the narratives of four individual faqiri participants, which represent an inter-ritual ethos in the village culture. Considering this to be a form of the transfer of both ritual and narrative, as defined by Robert Langer as “a shift of a rite or ritual into another or changed context,” I emphasise the role of the participants in actively reconstructing the faqiri vow, which depicts the religious life in many villages as having “a fluctuating group of participants”.15 Focusing on four personal faqiri narratives, in the next section, the specific aspects of temporary asceticism as found in Gugudu will be outlined.
Four Faqirs on Their Path In this section, I will recount four personal narratives of faqirs, who re-fashioned their lives, modelling them on the lessons learnt from the oral hagiography of the pir. These four personal narratives demonstrate four different aspects of faqiri in Gugudu: 1. faqiri as a temporary practice that moulds the entire life-style for a longer period; 2. faqiri as a bridge between devotion and asceticism; 3. faqiri as a set of practices that define the social identity of one specific Muslim sub-caste called dudekula, a cotton carder’s caste; 4. faqiri as a form of vrata (vow), as appropriated by village women. These four categories are crucial in village religion and reflect the practice of temporary asceticism at different levels, as a broad-based tradition. Though each caste has developed its own perception of the pirs, when it comes to the practice of temporary asceticism they all share certain rules and restrictions which define the ritual contours of faqiri. Although the focus of this paper is on the practices of non15 Langer et al. 2006.
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Muslim devotees, in order to delineate the process of the transfer of ritual I will also discuss the practices of one specific Muslim sub-caste, Dudekula (cotton carders), since they clearly represent a liminal identity and in-between space between Hinduism and Islam in village religion. While describing the personal narratives of four faqirs, the main objective of this section is to highlight the ritual basis which makes faqiri a prominent practice. Three key terms – barkatu, niyyatu, and ummah – define the ritual contours of faqiri, and local devotees also use these terms to interpret faqiri in diverse ways. These terms barkatu16and niyyatu17 are widely used in many villages, with similar meanings. Barkatu is an Arabic term, meaning “blessing”, and is also a sign of prosperity. Niyyatu means “personal intention” or “pure intention”. More specifically, barkatu is often used in a collective sense, portraying the complete ethical life of a village. Village Muslims use another term, “ummah”, to sum up the essence of these two terms. Though ummah is a very prominent Islamic category,18 yet in a village Muharram context Muslims use it as an inclusive category to emphasise the unity of the village. For the local Muslims, the entire essence of the life of the Karbala martyrs lies in the making of the ummah (community), and the commemoration of Muharram reinforces that sense of community life. Hindu devotees use the term “ummadi”19 (“collective” in Telugu) to define this collective life. Ummadi sounds similar to ummah, but does not originate from Arabic or Urdu terms. Nevertheless, both ummah and ummadi are used widely in the Muharram context, but in distinct ways. Villagers infer that the pirs in fact developed awareness for the community through their teachings and ritual practices. The three terms, barkatu, niyyatu, and ummah, in turn also define the contours of the idea of temporary asceticism. Gugudu villagers make a clear distinction between an ordinary person and a faqir, even when the same person becomes a faqir by wearing the red thread. Being a faqir means being pure, and those who wear the red thread are considered to be “persons with pure intention”. This notion of “pure intention” is not limited merely to persons; it further extends to spaces as well, specifically, to the village space “uru”. Usually, villagers say, if a village is not good, “the village has no barkatu”, which is similar to the saying that if a person is bad, “the person has no niyyatu”. The usage of these two terms clearly makes a distinction between public and indi16 Barkat and Baraka: two Arabic terms used interchangeably in the villages of Andhra. For an explanation of these two terms in an Islamic context, see Werbner 2003: 22. For more on Baraka, see von Denffer 1976. 17 For a classical analysis of the term “niyyat”, see Renard 1996: 37. 18 Ummah: for an explanation of community building in an Islamic context, see Renard 1996: 168–75. For information on the diversity of the ummah, see Lobban 2004: 3. 19 Ummadi: this Telugu usage has nothing to do with the Arabic or Urdu origins of the word. But village Muslims often use this term, combining it with the Arabic term Ummah.
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vidual lifestyles. In essence, faqir means “one who has niyyatu, and whose acts bring barkatu to the village”. Mostly villagers are identified with the characteristics of the village culture; and the public life of their village determines half of their personality. For instance, Gugudu has always been considered a village with niyyatu and barkatu, with a “clean” image at both the personal and the community levels. For many pilgrims and villagers, Gugudu means the village of Kullayappa and the village of faithful faqirs. If a person behaves inappropriately or improperly, they consider it a “blot on the very personality of the pir”. This is one direct and explicit way of imposing or constructing the local pir as a model of conduct. This becomes explicit through the narrative of some villagers’ life stories (as indicated below), which provide insights into the ethical framework, involved in the process of socialisation, as well as into the process of village community-building. When people say “Gugudu”, two key themes come to mind: the narrative of the pir, and the narrative of Kondanna’s family, whose heirs have been continuing the temporary ascetic tradition for at least five centuries. Thus, Gugudu is a village of Kullayappa, and secondly, it is the home of Kondanna’s family, known for their perfect niyyatu, and their vision for the barkatu of the village. As one village elder put it, “they still lead faqiri life and remain a true embodiment of faqiri for the well-being of the village.” In the next section, I will focus on one of the heirs of the tradition of temporary asceticism, Lakshmi Reddy who, in spite of his non-Muslim identity, remains a powerful symbol of faqiri. Lakshmi Reddy’s personal narrative has had a deep impact on the local religious life, and serves as a role model for local faqirs.
Lakshmi Reddy: Faqiri as a Model Although faqiri is a temporary ascetic practice, Lakshmi Reddy has made it his life’s purpose, and he abides by the faqiri lifestyle throughout the year. Eightyfive-year-old Lakshmi Reddy, the heir of Kondanna, is unmarried. He says he has never owned anything himself, and sincerely affirms that poverty is his pride. In December 2006, when I met him for the first time, he was living with his brother’s family. It was a very small house with a small verandah, one big room, and one kitchen. One afternoon when I visited his place, he had just had lunch and was walking towards the pir makaanam. As soon as he saw me, he invited me to his place, and the first question he asked me was whether I had had lunch. When I said “no”, he immediately asked his daughter-in-law to bring lunch for me. When he saw that I was hesitant, he told me, “Don’t hesitate. We give you just what we eat. I’m very sorry we won’t eat white rice. We just eat raagi mudda (a ball made of millet) and pappu (lentils). That’s all we have, that’s all we eat and that’s all that the pir swami bestowed upon us.” As Lakshmi Reddy explained in a different context, faqiri has taught his family two values – hospitality, and the sharing of food, which even-
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tually took on a public manifestation in the enactment of the food ritual, kanduri. As Lakshmi Reddy explained, “Even if an enemy visits your place, you have to be friendly and respect him or her as a guest. You need to be very tolerant to do so. So, hospitality means tolerance and not being hostile. Secondly, sharing should begin with food. That was the first lesson Kondanna learnt from the pir swami.” “It’s the pir swami’s prasadam”, Lakshmi Reddy repeated while I was trying hard to eat the millet ball. Questioningly I looked into his face and he began explaining: “Yes, it’s true. The pir swami gave us this much and it was his ‘order’ that we won’t get more than this food just for today. That’s how our family faqiri began. It begins with food and then goes to spirituality in quest of the ‘paramaatma’ (the ultimate soul).” Popular lore tells more about his family’s food story, since it has by now become a part of the ritual of kanduri itself. In several villages around Gugudu, villagers told me the same story about the connection of Lakshmi Reddy’s family with faqiri and kanduri. They often said, “faqiri is the first boon offered to them for their great devotion. Only devotion stays. Food and other things just vanish. If you get something to eat today, just be happy with it and share it with others.” When villagers mention faqiri and kanduri, their narration goes back to the story of the first appearance of the pir in the wilderness (aranya) of the old village. Clearly, this is reminiscent of the family history of Lakshmi Reddy, too. Villagers believe that the appearance of the pir was the beginning of faqiri during Muharram. When the pir swami appeared to Tirumala Kondanna, the ancestor of Lakshmi Reddy, the pir swami was very particular about the rituals related to food. As narrated in many pir stories, the pir would always teach that “food is the direct fruit of all our actions. Those who get enough food for today, those are good people. To earn a day’s food, everyone has to till the land, graze the cattle, and use his or her body as a tool.” Most of the Muharram stories, in one way or another, are connected to the idea of temporary asceticism and the three key terms, barkatu, niyyatu, and ummadi, appear in every narration. Barkatu is one term being appropriated in this context. The word originates in Sufi practice; despite the word’s derivation from Arabic or Urdu, barkatu is used almost like any local Telugu term denoting “prosperity”. It has always been said that if a village has no barkatu, that village will not have good land, nor sufficient rainfall, but will instead suffer severe drought and numerous deaths will occur. Lakshmi Reddy himself considers barkatu a fruit of constant niyyatu, pure intention, and affirms that the rituals of Muharram provide a model of conduct. Most of the Muharram stories invariably begin with these two basic ideas, which define village religion in various forms. In turn, in many stories Lakshmi Reddy’s family is repeatedly referred to in various roles, as they are perceived as an embodiment of both barkatu and niyyatu. It was said that the family usually does not get more than one meal a day, and they have to work hard to earn that. Lakshmi Reddy, even in his eighties, works hard, and never wants to let his body
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rest. His daily chores continue from morning until night, non-stop. He goes to the fields or works at home, and sleeps little. Still, “poverty” is his way of life. Even so, he never complains that he is poor. For him, poverty is the primary sign of temporary asceticism. Lakshmi Reddy’s journey as a faqir began at the age of ten, and he has since then never turned away from his life as a faqir. He remembers every small detail from village life and has pointed out many times that “I have seen more than eighty Muharrams in the village. Personally I consider it a great fortune for me.” Being the oldest faqir in the village, he commands great respect in Gugudu and the neighbouring villages. He explained that most of the important things in his life “just happened as if they were all pre-determined.” When his father died, he took on the responsibilities of his family, including the responsibility of carrying the pirs during Muharram. He indicated that faqiri has been a foundational practice for his entire life, and said, “Faqiri made a big impact on me, in particular with regard to family and community. Since I was initiated into this ritual at a young age, it laid a foundation for my life. The pir swami might not have told me directly, but I felt like I was communicating with him every moment. Sometimes I feel like he has become an integral part of my thinking and every action.” His first experience with the red thread is still fresh in his memory. He described it in minute detail, as if it had just happened the other day. He recounted: “It was Thursday morning. I had prepared my red thread the day before. In those days, we used to make sacred threads by ourselves. It was always fascinating to see that colourful shiny string. In those days, they were so beautifully made that I used to feel bad removing my thread. But you have to remove it on the tenth day. Otherwise, the vow fails. Nowadays, we don’t find that much work goes into the making of these threads. They just use two threads and one silky string; one reason might be ‘over-usage’. Now they need to make thousands and thousands of threads. In spite of an increasingly large number of devotees, we miss something now, maybe that old pure devotion. Actually I wanted to take faqiri much earlier in my life, as I was so anxious to put on the beautiful silky thread. My father never allowed me to do so. ‘I know you are anxious. But mere enthusiasm isn’t enough. If you’re wearing the thread, it’s very strict tapas. You can’t afford to make mistakes with niyyatu nittu.’” He heard the term niyyatu nittu for the first time in his life from his father. When he asked him to explain the term, his father told him that “niyyatu nittu is pure intention, pure act, and pure devotion.” He explained that niyyatu is an Islamic term and nittu is a colloquial term for nishta, which is a very common Hindu term for “perfect observance of rituals”. It surprised me when he categorically stated, “I know it’s both Muslim and Hindu. But I have always heard them together since my
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childhood. So I can’t see them as separate terms now. I used to hear this term almost every day from my parents, not only in the context of devotion, but they used to tell me that every act and word should have niyyatu nishta.” In addition, Lakshmi Reddy understands this specific aspect in terms of personal rather than public life: “Everything begins with you and ends with you. Many things that we do, such as going to the makaanam, performing fateha, prostrating ourselves before the fire-pit, and walking in the public procession, are simply external acts. Beyond these, you’ve your own self (swa). How are you going to face it? That remains the source of all thoughts and actions around Muharram and the pir swami. First I see it as an opportunity to look inside, and that’s what we learn from the pir swami. When he first appeared to my great-grandfather, the pir swami made him think about himself. The journey into niyyatu begins there.” When I asked him, “If you think niyyatu is personal, what happens when you walk in a public procession carrying the pir?” He answered: “I know thousands of devotees strain to touch me when I am walking in a procession. Yet, I always know that it’s not actually me that they’re trying to approach, but the pir swami. If you think it’s because of you, your ego gets bloated and all your niyyatu goes bad. I remain stuck to my personal aspect even then. I never forget that I’m a poor peasant and I’ve been given this great blessing to carry the pir. While the procession moves forward, I remain within myself, constantly uttering the name of the pir swami.” As Lakshmi Reddy explained, the consistent practice of faqiri has allowed him to distinguish more clearly between internal and external states. He said that even when he carries the pir in a huge procession, nothing external can distract him. He said that when devotees touch his feet, or as a part of the ritual wet his feet with several pots of water, his senses fail to perceive it. He said, “Even when thousands of devotees swarm around me, my dialogue with the pir never stops. I just see the pir everywhere, inside or outside.” During such intense moments, devotees bring their new babies to him, and he utters the name of the pir and gives the babies their names. Devotees also believe that during such moments the pir will answer their prayers, through the voice of Lakshmi Reddy. But at moments like these, Lakshmi Reddy hardly experiences the external world. When I asked him about this state of mind, he said, “It’s not because of me. It’s the power of faqiri. If you observe faqiri with complete devotion, you also experience it, and I believe everyone who observes faqiri here experiences that intense moment inside.”
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For Lakshmi Reddy, faqiri has infused in his personality enough moral strength and uprightness to face life. In the process, he has also learned to restrain himself from bodily desires. As Lakshmi Reddy began observing faqiri at the age of ten, by the time he reached early manhood, he had become familiar with most faqiri values, including abstinence from bodily pleasures. Though not wanting to generalise, Lakshmi Reddy strongly believes that the faqiri rituals bring similar changes to any person who visits the pir. Lakshmi Reddy explained, “It also depends how deeply you are involved in the ritual, but most of the people who take this vow remain true to it. At least in my experience, I have seen it clearly. You are supposed to follow this for three days only, but it also depends on the person.” However, Lakshmi Reddy’s story is an exceptional one, as very few people follow faqiri in such a strict way. For Lakshmi Reddy, faqiri is still a temporary practice, but the essence of faqiri has penetrated deeply into his everyday life and he himself explained: “During the Muharram days, the symbolic enactment of faqiri is like preparation and practice. I prepare my body and my mind towards faqiri and then follow it.” The next example is that of the untouchable Obulesu, for whom faqiri is an experience that deals with his social and caste identity too.
Obulesu: An Untouchable’s Path to Faqiri The most important aspect of niyyatu and barkatu is that they are never defined by the boundaries of caste hierarchies. Lower-caste communities, often considered polluted castes, enter into a space of purity, albeit with certain limitations, using these two terms. Yet, those limitations do not bother these lower-caste communities, as most of these devotees consider this an opportunity to tread a path of purification, and they vehemently claim this path as their individual way of communicating with the pir. Born into an untouchable caste, Obulesu considers this path of faqiri a way to fulfil his desire to practise asceticism. Twenty years old, Obulesu observes faqiri for only ten days. He has been observing faqiri for five years. He usually begins with fasting on the first day of the Muharram and usually breaks his fast in the early morning, then fasts the entire day, as devout Muslims typically do in the month of Ramadan. In the early morning, at 4:30, when the call for morning prayer echoes from the local mosque, he gets up, listens to morning devotional music (naadaswaram) at the makaanam, and eats his morning meal, prepared by his mother. Obulesu’s annual faqiri ritual begins on the first day of Muharram. The night before the first ziyaratu darshanam (visit to the pir-house) of the pir swami, he prepares himself for faqiri. He prepares his own red thread by interweaving red, green, and silky threads. In the early morning, he has a ritual bath and goes to the makaanam and has darsanam of the pir swami. As usual, the muzaavaru pujari recites fateha over his red thread and returns it to him. Obulesu puts on the sacred
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thread, in his words, “as the Pirs watch me wearing it and the pujari recites the fateha puja.” In spite of all his efforts to “purify” himself, Obulesu is not allowed to enter the makaanam. He remains standing at the steps, between the fire-pit and the front door of the makaanam, as Dalits and women are not supposed to enter into the house. Other than this, he considers himself to be as “pure” as other devotees. He performs every ritual and keeps himself clean and pure all the time. Obulesu very often aggressively contests the notion of an established purity confined only to upper castes. “Only faqiri”, he says, “provides you with an opportunity to be on a par with other caste groups. When you’re observing faqiri, you’re no more an untouchable. And yet, still you are not supposed to enter the house.” During several of our conversations, he also argued that the castes which are now considered “upper” castes were lower castes at a certain point in history. He said, “We and they were the same. As the times changed, they are now treated as upper castes.”20 According to him, the Reddy caste, now considered an upper caste in the new social hierarchy, was like any lower caste in this region, and was called Kaapu, when it was an agrarian community in pre-modern times.21 Yet, Obulesu would never risk stepping into the house or touching the icon, and silently accepts the local hierarchy when it comes to practice: “There should be some good reason for this practice and I prefer to respect it. I remember many instances when two or three untouchables tried to touch the steps of the house, the next moment they fell into the fire-pit and were severely injured. Even if you do something wrong unknowingly, the fire will soon punish you. However, if you have red thread, it will protect you. For me, sacred thread is an opportunity to assert my purity against the high-class notions of purity. The pir swami never denied my right to worship, and when it comes to devotion everyone is pure in body and heart too.”
20 Presently, the Reddy caste has many variations in the villages, as they have a significant, indeed crucial status on the economic map of Andhra. From its beginning as an agrarian community, this caste slowly reached the level of village headmen and then, as their economic conditions improved, their social status rose in accordance with that of an upper caste. However, they are still a strong force challenging Brahmanical ideas of Hinduism at the village level. 21 During the time I was conducting my fieldwork in the village, local youth were planning a Dalit Youth Organisation. For an understanding of Dalit appropriations of the Muharram public event from an ethno-musicological point of view, see Wolf 2000: 77–93.
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Faqiri as a Caste Practice As for many other castes, for lower-caste Muslims, locally called Dudekula22 (cotton carders), the faqiri ritual provides an opportunity for a family and caste group reunion as well. In such an instance, local pirs acquire the status of the family or caste deity called kula daivam. Madar Wali is a small cotton businessman who runs a “bedding” (cotton mattresses) store in Karnataka. For his family, coming to Gugudu is like a “little hajj”. In addition, it is an occasion just like any marriage or big festival that brings the family together. His family was a “joint family” when his father was still alive, but after he passed away, all his brothers and sisters “left their nest and went in separate directions to eke out a livelihood.” For several generations they have been “eking out a living” using cotton and making mattresses, pillows, etc. They work hard all through the year, and save money to come to Gugudu with their families. They make it a point that no matter where they are on their journey through life, on the seventh of Muharram all of the extended family should be in Gugudu. Together they rent a house for fifteen days, and all their families meet and share their experiences. Madar Wali said: “Now we feel like homeless birds. But when we come to Gugudu, we feel like we are finding our own gudu (nest), and just like birds we come back to the nest, as if returning to the good old days of our joint family.” As older brother in the family, Madar Wali is responsible for upholding a family tradition. During their stay in Gugudu, I once chanced upon their kanduri ritual one afternoon. The place was bustling with activity, kids playing and shouting, and the whole family busy talking to each other while preparing the kanduri food. They arrived in Gugudu the day before the seventh and prepared everything for the next morning’s faqiri ritual. Visitations to the pir have been their family practice of ibadat (devotion) for several centuries. For Madar’s family, faqiri is the ultimate ritual, which constantly reminds them of the value and purpose of life. Their family begins to observe faqiri rituals on the seventh of Muharram and continues until Akhri, the final day, the tenth of Muharram. They told me, “We observe faqiri only for three days, that’s what our elders told us. The faqiri ritual has a close connection to the Karbala events, it begins on the seventh since that day the enemy cut off the water and food supply to the martyrs. Recollecting their ‘gham’ (tragedy), we empathise with them by fasting.” When I asked them: “What does faqiri mean to you?” they answered: “Practically we observe faqiri for three days only. Along with fasting, we abstain from bodily pleasures to maintain purity by all means. On the se22 Dudekula Muslims are a sub-caste with significant numbers in Andhra villages. Liminal in nature, the caste has appropriated several Hindu practices, as well as Islamic practices. My next project will focus on the ritual practices and liminal narrative strategies of this community.
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To my question: “Personally, how does this faqiri ritual affect you?”, I received the following reply: “Since we have been doing this faqiri for several years, it’s like it has seeped deep into our minds, as water into the soil. Now I cannot separate it from my personality. My grandfather used to say ‘nafs ko maaro’ (‘hit the lower self’). ‘Lower self’ is something like shaitaan (evil), always trying to take you over. It interrupts your zikr, the remembrance of God. It won’t allow you to remain pure and it entices you with all its staggering appearances and emotions.23 My grandfather’s or my father’s generation had relatively more time and patience to keep themselves pure constantly. Nowadays, it’s not possible. I see this as an age of commercialisation. People lean more towards business than piety. We need an immediate model to follow and we can’t wait for an even longer time. The faqiri serves both purposes equally. In the faqiri ritual, you have an immediate model in the form of the pir that guides you and warns you constantly. Three days of faqiri provides you with a model for observing various acts of purity in everyday life.”
Kullayamma: Women and Faqiri Born into an untouchable caste, Kullayamma was given the name of the pir swami. Now forty years old, Kullayamma observes faqiri as all male devotees do. For women it is not common to observe faqiri. Very few women perform the faqiri rituals these days. Wearing the sacred thread, Kullayamma fasts for the entire ten days. During several conversations, she specifically pointed out that, being a woman, she had to refrain from faqiri very often. She told me: “Several reasons interrupt this practice. As all male members in a family usually observe faqiri, it has been an automatic additional burden upon female members in the same family. Secondly, most of the women, rather than observing faqiri, observe a ‘three-night stay’ in the makaanam.” “But you’re not allowed into the makaanam, are you?”
23 He used the Urdu phrase, “Shaitaani harkatein” to express the intensity of the “Satanic games”.
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“Yes, we do this in the Lord Hanuman temple. We generally avoid these night stays during the seventh to tenth of Muharram.” “Is there any specific reason?” “We can’t find enough space in the temple to carry out night stays during Muharram. You can see how huge the crowd is! If you sprinkle sand from above, it won’t even touch the ground.24 So we prefer to do it outside Muharram, starting any Thursday and continuing till the third day.” “That means you have made some adjustments to the ritual … no?” “We had to. Since Muharram is important for everyone in the family, we had to make this adjustment. Moreover, we have three Kullayappas (three people with the same name) in the family. My husband is Kullayappa, my fifteenyear-old son is Kullayappa, and there is me. Our parents from both sides also observe faqiri. Since I’m the youngest in the family, I usually prefer adjustments in order to make arrangements for their faqiri rituals.” “Arrangements meaning … ?” “They eat only one meal every day, that also before sunrise. So, I get up earlier and prepare their meal. Serving the faqirs is also an act of merit (punyam savaabu).25 Instead of during Muharram, I will observe faqiri even before Muharram.” “You do as everyone does who observes Muharram?” “Except putting on the thread, we do everything. Moreover, we visit Gugudu very often after every faqiri ritual. But we never miss observing this ritual.”
Understanding Temporary Asceticism Having recounted these four personal stories, I will now discuss various aspects of faqiri. As can be seen in the faqiri narratives above, faqiri serves many functions in the social life of a village, and reflects the interfaces between religions, castes, and gender. For untouchable castes and women, who have been denied equal roles in ritual processes, faqiri is also regarded as a “spiritual weapon of the weak”, as it allows them to compete with others in getting closer to God, or the pirs. This spiri24 She used a Telugu saying: “pai ninchi isaka veste nela raaladu” (“If you sprinkle sand from the top, it won’t even touch the ground”). This is a very common idiomatic expression to talk about huge gatherings. 25 Punyam savaabu: punyam, an originally Sanskrit term for “merit”, used by Hindus. Savaabu is derived from Urdu savaab, also meaning “merit”. But as with other terms, villagers have mixed the two, or better, have combined them.
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tual empowerment begins with the body. As Obulesu and Kullayamma put it, albeit in different versions, for many centuries the bodies of women and untouchables have been considered “impure” and they thus had no right to perform any ritual, but now, faqiri allows them to claim ritual authority and devotional power. In their claim for authority, they go as far as asserting that their purity is stronger than that of any upper-caste community. One early morning at a tea-shop before the makaanam, I had a lengthy conversation with Obulesu over a cup of tea. He particularly emphasised a term, imaanu (Telugisation of the Arabic term imaan), that means “faith”26, and told me the following: “Once we put on the red thread, our imaanu reaches its pinnacle. Since our imaan is stronger, even if we walk through fire we won’t feel the heat of it. You cannot see anyone complaining, not even of simple bruises. Niyyatu is important. Faqiri ritual actually prepares you for everything, including the final fire-walk. So, the fire-walk is an ultimate test for our purity in performing rituals. Sometimes even Muslims wonder how could this happen! Purity has no caste. If you’ve a real heart, pirs even walk to you and embrace you. Only pirs have those open arms. All remaining gods and yogis won’t even touch us and some are even afraid of touching our shadows. They always say ‘keep distance’ while pirs say ‘come closer‘. We go closer with our imaan and purity.” Another lower-caste devotee, Kullayappa, said: “Wearing the red thread is not a simple ritual. One has to be completely clean before wearing the thread. After removing hair from the private parts of the body, one has to take a complete bath. You have to clean everything; bodily cleanliness is the primary requirement of faqiri. In the very early morning after the first prayer in the mosque, we go to the holy well and take a bath there. Before that, we remove all hair from our private parts. After the bath, we go to the makaanam; the muzavar pujari recites fateha over the thread. Then, while the pirs watch us, we put on the red thread.” Kullayappa’s interpretation of the term niyyatu stresses two important aspects – full awareness and single-heartedness. However, the entire process of the faqiri ritual, right from the preparing of the red thread to the full bath with a clear intention, the reciting of the fateha, the fasting, and then the removal of the thread on the akhri – clearly translates the above expression into an act. Moreover, the most important aspect, in my opinion, is the question of the body, which remains the centre of every activity during the complete ritual process. This specific mention26 Imaan: faith. See Fyzee 2002: 5–17.
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ing of bodily rituals in faqiri also takes us back to the importance of the body in relation to the Islamic concept of purity, tahaara. In spite of their strong reservations regarding the veneration of the pir swami, several local Islamic experts consider this ritual maintenance by lower-caste devotees “genuine and sincere”.27 In certain cases, such as that of Lakshmi Reddy, ritual purity reaches its greatest height, as some devotees remain permanently unmarried to abstain from sexual impurities. Another devotee, Fakirappa, put it aptly: “It’s like you are wedded to the faqiri way of life. Personally, this state of mind and body gives me a lot of psychological relief. I strongly feel that I have vanquished this body and transcended its physical limits.” Several of these personal experiences related to the body also resonate in local Muharram and sainthood narrative traditions, in folk-genres, and in proverbial usages in everyday life, where various aspects of the bodies of the martyrs are “metaphorised”. In many folk-narratives, the severed bodies of the Karbala martyrs are recurring themes and metaphors that show their commitment for collective life and martyrdom. The icon itself is a symbolic representation of the body of the pir. Village communities have a clear knowledge of this bodily representation of the pirs, and interpret these representations at different levels. Very often the red thread is understood metaphorically as the “hungry and thirsty innards of the martyrs”. In my conversations with local faqiri practitioners, I observed that they were particularly and cautiously talking about the impact of the “thread” on their bodies. Obulesu said: “When you’ve a thread on your body, it’s a constant reminder that you’re a faqir, as if it’s saying repeatedly ‘You are a faqir, a pure and clean faqir. The red thread that you’re putting on is nothing but the innards of those great martyrs. That’s the reason it’s red, like blood.’ It doesn’t mean that we behave differently with no thread. But, when there is a thread on the body, it constantly reminds you that you are a faqir. The thread still commands our inner life, even when it’s not there. But when it’s touching your body it’s like a direct and straight command from the pir.” Though village Muslims are not that particular about faqiri, they ritually observe fasting and abstinence from bodily pleasures for three or ten days. However, many Muslims continue to wear the red thread for various rituals. Khaja Hussein, a Muslim pilgrim, said:
27 In interviews Zafar Sherief, the local Imam in Gugudu, and Hameedullah Sherief, a Telugu translator of the Quran and popular Islamic scholar in Andhra, said that they also consider that “the concept of imaan makes them observe every ritual purity (tahara) with particularity”.
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Concluding our conversation one day, he said: “They need symbols; they need objects to keep their minds focused. But for us, Hussainiyat (allegiance to Hussein) stays inside forever. Nothing erases it and you don’t need some external force or object to remind you of it.” During several conversations, Khaja Hussein clearly tried to make a distinction between Hindu and Muslim observances of Muharram.28 However, when it comes to Muharram faqiri rituals, we rarely find any difference between Hindu and Muslim practice. In spite of its Islamic origins, faqiri as a practice demonstrates a shared identity and communitarian attitude, as most of the devotees share similar perceptions and perform the same rituals on their path to the pirs. This communitarian aspect becomes explicit when devotees connect various ideas to the formation of the village uru.
Faqiri and Uru In this section, I will discuss the importance of faqiri in constructing the centrality of the identity of the uru (village) in a South Indian context. As we can observe in South Indian villages, such as Gugudu, the advent of Muharram as a public event has had an enormous impact upon local notions of asceticism by relocating the ascetic in the social world. A continuous effort to establish pir-houses, similar to temples, as structures at the centre of the village, plays a significant role in the new identity of the ascetic in the village religion, and the formation of the identity of the uru itself. In short, pir traditions have successfully made the uru a ritual centre by 28 In an interview with Khaja Hussain, a small businessman, on 26 January 2007, he told me that he visits Gugudu not only for Kullayappa, but also to sell sweets. For Khaja Hussain, pilgrimage is also a passionate way of expressing devotion. Using up all his savings, he visits the Azmeer and Kadapa Sufi dargahs once a year.
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connecting the pir and faqiri practices to the public event of Muharram, which remains a major public commemorative event in many Andhra villages. As is evident from the above faqiri narratives, we can see a parallel system of temporary ascetic practice developed by village communities, which began to make a distinctive journey from the wilderness to the centre of the uru. Kullayappa, in his two positions as a pir and as village deity, mainly established the connections between various communities and emphasised the social accountability of devotional practices. Muharram has become a central stage for the performance of these practices in different ways. Both Hindu and Muslim peasant and artisan communities have helped alter the public event of Muharram into an open theatre of various devotional practices with faqiri as the hub of this circle of rituals and practices. During several conversations, Lakshmi Reddy told me that faqiri is the central element of all village activities, and that faqiri is like the third eye watching over village life. As he explained, “you’re under the constant watch of this eye and you are never going to escape it.” While the Muharram public event has continued to have an impact upon the villagers, village devotees additionally began constructing faqiri, which has its ethical foundations in Sufism, Muharram, and pir traditions. Local faqiri narratives demonstrate variants of temporary asceticism, combining the notion of nishta and niyyatu at both the personal and the community level. The process by which communities and individuals negotiate these larger terms remains a crucial aspect of faqiri. The communities have also coined local interpretative terms to explain this process. The personal stories that I have narrated above show clearly the interface between Hindu and Muslim ritual exchanges. As related in the first personal narrative, Lakshmi Reddy is very conscious of the impact of faqiri rituals on his personality and life. Very often, he explicitly and openly speaks about it, and he uses shared devotional terms frequently. Adhering meticulously to faqiri tradition, he even sacrifices bodily pleasures, whereas other faqiris practise their own version of the faqiri ritual by making adjustments to the ritual. For Madar Wali, the faqiri ritual is a family matter. Their yearly three-day meeting during Muharram is an invigorating experience for the whole family. Madar Wali and the members of his family try to restore their religious experience by bringing together their separated families, and providing each member of the family with something meaningful in the form of faqiri. For Obulesu and Kullayamma, who belong to lower castes, faqiri is a ritual that opens doors into the realm of ascetic practice as an alternative form of devotional practice. Many of the faqirs, although observing strict faqiri practices, still remain key persons within village community life. The above narratives demonstrate various manifestations of the domestication of asceticism. As Olivelle explains, “the ascetic is not an outsider to that community but a significant and integral part of it. The ascetic is not in the wilderness, removed
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from the social group; he has truly re-entered the village”.29 However, the ascetic’s re-entry into the village, in a pre-modern religious culture, was closely connected with pir practices and public rituals linked to Muharram. As could be observed in the personal faqiri narratives, many of the faqirs perceive temporary asceticism to be an age-old tradition, passed on from generation to generation. The time periods stated by local communities coincide with the local history of Muharram practices and village-bound agricultural communities in many villages of Andhra. Close observation of the local faqiri practices provides evidence for the modes of non-institutional Sufi and Hindu asceticism practised extensively in villages. Similarly, faqiri as a shared practice with an emphasis on the transfer of rituals is an example of how boundaries between Islam and Hinduism are opened. Studies focusing on various manifestations of Sufism deal mostly with various Sufi practices that are connected with different schools or traditions of Sufism. Collective festivals such as Muharram open up fresh ritual spaces and re-write the officially drawn boundaries between each religious culture.30
29 Olivelle 1995: 25. 30 For the role collective festivals play in a Hindu context, see Fuller 1992: 128–54.
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Image 1: The pir and Anjaneya are neighbours here. Photo by the author
Image 2: Muslim faqirs singing for the pir. Photo by the author
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Image 3: Faqiri thread with silky line Photo by the author
Image 4: Selling the faqiri threads Photo by the author
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Image 5: dalit faqir
Photo by the author
Image 6: Women performing puja after the vrata Photo by the author
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References Assayag, Jackie 2004. At the Confluence of Two Rivers: Muslims and Hindus in South India. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Bowen, John R. 1993. Muslims Through Discourse. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. von Denffer, Dietrich 1976. “Baraka as a Basic Concept of Muslim Popular Belief”. In: Islamic Studies 15 (3): 167–86. Denny, Frederick M. 1988. “Prophet and Wali: Sainthood in Islam”. In: Richard Kieckehefer & George D. Bond (eds.). Sainthood: Its Manifestations in World Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Eaton, Richard M. 1978. Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Flueckiger, Joyce 2008. In Amma’s Healing Room. Bloomington: Indiana Publishers. Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn 2004. Islamic Societies in Practice. Gainesville: University of Florida. Freiberger, Oliver (ed.) 2006. Asceticism and Its Critics. New York: Oxford University Press. Fuller, Christopher J. 1992. The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India, Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. Fyzee, Asaf A.A. (transl.) 2002.The Pillars Of Islam. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hyder, Syed Akbar 2006. Reliving Karbala: Martyrdom in South Asian Memory. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press. Korom, Frank J. 2003. Hosay Trinidad: Muharram Performances in an Indo-Carribbean Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. In: Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Naqvi, Sadiq & V. Kishan Rao 2004. The Muharram Ceremonies Among the NonMuslims of Andhra Pradesh. Hyderabad: Bab-ul-Ilm Society. Narayan, Kirin 2007. My Family and Other Saints. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Olivelle, Patrick (ed. and transl.) 1995. Rules and Regulations of Brahmanical Asceticism. Albany: State University of New York Press. — 2007. Ascetics and Brahmins: Studies in Ideologies and Institutions. Florence: Florence University Press. Prasad, Leela 2007. Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramaraju, Biruduraju 1998. Andhra Yogulu. Hyderabad: Navodaya Book House. Renard, John 1996. Seven Doors to Islam: Spirituality and the Religious Life of Muslims. Berkeley: University of California Press. — 2008. Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood. Berkeley: University of California Press. Saiyed, A.R. 1995. Religion and Ethnicity Among Muslims. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
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Schimmel, Annemarie 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Schubel, Vernon 1993. Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: Shi’i Devotional Rituals in South Asia. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Somasundaram A. & Satya Pal Ruhela 1999. Fragrant Spiritual Memories of a Karma Yogi. New Delhi: Diamond Pocket Books. Werbner, Pnina & Helene Basu 1998. Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults. London & New York: Routledge. Werbner, Pnina 2003. The Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. London: Hurst & Company. Wolf, Richard. K. 2000. “Embodiment and Ambivalence: Emotion in South Asian Muharram Drumming”. In: Yearbook for Traditional Music 32: 81–116.
Paul Otto
Wampum: The Transfer and Creation of Rituals on the Early American Frontier1 When Henry Hudson and his crew first entered the region that would become New York, they encountered native people who offered them “stropes of beads”. These belts of beads were likely wampum-belts of white shell beads fashioned from the shellfish of Long Island Sound and traded, as well as used among the Indians of north-eastern North America. As the Dutch, English, and French would learn in the coming years, wampum meant far more to native people than simply decorative apparel or “baubles” and “trinkets”. Wampum manufacture, use, and exchange played a profound role in native society. Giving some indication of its importance to native people, Plymouth colony governor William Bradford wrote in the 1640s “wampum makes the Indians of these parts rich and powerful and also proud thereby.”2 Holding to a cultural value that emphasised social exchange, including building and maintaining reciprocal relationships, Native Americans used wampum and other products in a wide range of rituals, from simple exchanges of friendship to complex negotiations of intertribal diplomacy with a goal of social cohesion. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European traders, settlers, Indian agents, and colonial officials all learned the importance of wampum and utilised it in their interactions with Native Americans. During this time, wampum and prac-
1 Support for research on this project came from the Earhart Foundation. Appreciation is also expressed to several individuals who read and commented on various drafts of this essay, including Lynn Otto, Mark David Hall and Marshall Joseph Becker. As commentator to the conference version of this paper, Manfred Berg offered penetrating insights that constructively pushed forward the analysis of this essay. Comments from conference participants were also helpful. In my research on wampum, generally I have benefitted from correspondence with George Hamell. Finally, I thank members of the Pacific Northwest Early Americanists’ Workshop (hosted by Richard Johnson) for their reading and comments on this essay. 2 Bradford 1942: 204. Many anthropologists and historians have written on different aspects of wampum and its use by Europeans and Native Americans; several of these are listed below. My interest in wampum stems from my research on Dutch-Indian relations in New Netherland; see Otto 2006.
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tices involving wampum evolved in response to the unique intercultural, colonial context.3 This was true especially for wampum’s role in European-Native American diplomacy. Native people, in response to the enormous pressures of European colonisation, and Europeans, with the goal of acquiring trade monopolies and advancing various colonial and imperial agendas, each came to understand and adapt to one another’s diplomatic rituals. As a result, a unique frontier diplomacy incorporating aspects of the practices of both groups developed. These rituals originated with native people, but eventually became common practice in meetings between Europeans and Indians, and also included elements of European diplomatic practice. Wampum stood at the centre of this frontier diplomacy. As Europeans and Native Americans developed cooperative diplomatic protocols on the frontier, wampum evolved from strings of shell beads used for diverse exchanges and cultural purposes to belts inscribed with pictographs used primarily for treaty negotiations between Europeans and Native Americans at the frontier.4 While this evolution ostensibly represented a two-way cultural exchange, it is not clear that both sides embraced equally the cultural shift indicated by this ritual transfer. Europeans likely made pragmatic decisions in choosing to participate in wampum rituals. Moreover, while native people apparently remained motivated by their own cultural values, it should not be assumed that they too might not have been pragmatically motivated. Although wampum had pre-contact antecedents, it very much became a product of European-Native American contact. While these origins are not entirely clear, the evidence seems to suggest that Indian adoption of short tubular beads of uniform size, made of whelk and later quahog clams, came after the advent of European traders and the availability of tools that facilitated the manufacture of these refined shell beads.
3 The term wampum is used loosely here. For centuries, native people employed a variety of shell products in the ways described here. Out of these shell products there emerged tubular beads that came to be called wampum by Europeans. As will be explained elsewhere in the essay, wampum underwent ongoing evolution resulting from and paralleling contact with Europeans. 4 This evolution of wampum did not exclude its use for other purposes. For one, the nature of wampum use varied from group to group among those who used it. For another, it appears wampum continued to serve some of the traditional purposes it always had among native people. Furthermore, wampum evolved in other ways. It became a key component in the fur trade in New England, New Netherland, and New York. As the fur trade moved west, wampum continued to be employed in this way, even among native people who did not traditionally use it. In addition, in cash-poor New England and New Netherland, wampum was quickly adopted as a form of currency by settlers and colonial officials. Finally, wampum belts evolved not just in the political and diplomatic realm, but also in the ecclesiastical among European missions to the Indians. Becker 2002; Hamell 1996.
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This essay outlines the development of this frontier diplomacy and wampum’s role in it, placing it in the broader context of wampum’s evolution in all its dimensions. It then analyses the ritual exchange in the light of Robert Langer’s “Transfer of Ritual” argument.5 While the case of frontier diplomacy in North America supports some of the aspects of the transfer of ritual model outlined by Langer and his co-authors, in other cases it may also reflect something unique to the American context. At the time of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in north-eastern North America, many Indian groups employed wampum in a variety of social, economic, religious, and political rituals. Operating with a cultural value that placed high priority upon social cohesion and reciprocity, native people undertook few transactions without employing ritual giving and exchanges of material goods, and these often included wampum. Exchanging wampum and other gifts was a means of maintaining social balance between individuals and groups. While the particular use of these shell beads and the specific rituals may have varied from 6 group to group, the centrality of social reciprocity remained constant. For example, native people practised condolence rituals in which wampum was given to “wash away the tears” of the bereaved. One such offer was made in the months leading up to the First Dutch-Munsee War in New Netherland, when a European resident was killed by a disgruntled Indian man and local native leaders offered the Dutch governor “two hundred fathom” of wampum “to the widow if thereby they 7 would be at peace”. Native American groups also initiated and sealed diplomatic agreements by the giving and receiving of wampum. An early example of this was observed by Dutchman Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who was the first European to journey to the Oneida country in 1634–1635. While he lodged with them, the Oneidas received “a belt of [wampum] and some other strung [wampum] […] from the French Indians as a token of peace that the French Indians were free to come among them”. The whole assembly sang joyously and acknowledged the prospect of peace this foreboded. They shouted their agreement, “then hung up another belt”, delibe8 rated for a long time, and eventually “concluded the peace for four years.” In addition to diplomatic exchanges, diverse social exchanges such as marriage rites, condolence ceremonies, and burials, among others, all featured wampum by one group or another. The accompanying image [Image 1] displays an Iroquoian burial. Laid
5 Langer et al. 2006: 1–10. 6 Neal Salisbury offers a few helpful introductions to the idea of social reciprocity in Salisbury 1982: 118. 7 Quoted in Otto 2006: 118. 8 Gehring & Starna 1988: 14–15.
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out next to the deceased (placed in a foetal position before burial) is an array of 9 goods including a belt of wampum to accompany him in the afterlife. Probably the best-known Indian ritual featuring wampum developed among the Iroquois to create and maintain their “League of the Longhouse”. Growing out of the condolence and other rituals already noted, the rituals creating and maintaining the Iroquois “League of the Longhouse” aimed at reconciling differences. Annually, sachems from each of the five component groups – the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas, and Cayugas – fifty in all, would gather for a Grand Council. One European account described the council: “There all the Deputies from the different Nations are present, to make their complaints and receive the necessary satisfaction in mutual gifts – by means of which they maintain a good understanding with one another.”10 Of prominence among these gifts was wampum. The origins of wampum are not entirely clear to scholars today, but by the time of regular contact with Europeans, wampum consisted of strings and small belts of white beads made from whelk shells (Busycon canaliculatum and Busycon carica) found in abundance in Long Island Sound. Before this time, a variety of marine and inland shell products and beads, as well as quillwork, were valued among the native people throughout the region. With the advent of European trade and colonisation that made available awls and other tools facilitating the manufacture of shell beads, wampum became more refined and standardised in shape and size. So-called “true wampum”, these standardised beads were cylindrical, had a smooth surface, and averaged 5.5 mm in length and 4 mm in diameter by the mid-seventeenth century. Furthermore, with the aid of European tools, native people began making dark beads from the purple portions of the quahog clam (Mercenaria mercenaria), which has a much harder shell than the whelk. Although popular conceptions of wampum involve substantial belts of white and dark beads with pictographs, such belts did not develop until after the contact with Europeans.11 In fact, rather than understanding wampum as a unique native product which was later adopted by Europeans, a more accurate picture is one in which wampum, as it was known in 9 Lafitau 1977: plate 20. 10 Le Mercier, François 1668, quoted in Richter 1992: 39. Wampum was heavily used by all Iroquoian speakers in the northeast – the Huron Confederacy as well as the Iroquois Longhouse; it was also used to a lesser extent by their native neighbours. 11 There are very many anthropological sources on wampum’s origin, manufacture, nature, and use. One of the older standards is Beauchamp 1901: 319–480. Representative work of recent decades includes Hamell 1996; Becker 1980: 1–11 (and many other articles as well); and Ceci 1990: 48–63. A fine survey of wampum is the published graduate thesis by Lainey 2004. The study of wampum, however, deserves much more attention. While recent considerations acknowledge the evolution of wampum in the contact period, lack of sustained focus on its development has obscured or overlooked some of that development. My own research on the topic is in the preliminary stages – I am still processing secondary materials while beginning to delve into the primary sources.
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the colonial period, developed from traditional native practices and was shaped by the presence of Europeans. Wampum’s evolution is closely tied to the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans, and evolved in tandem with their ongoing relations. Soon after regular trade, voyages began along the coasts of what would become known as New England and New Netherland. First the Dutch, and then the English, discovered wampum’s value to the indigenous peoples. The Dutch first made the most of this, discovering that the peoples of Long Island Sound harvested whelk and other shellfish, out of which they made shell ornaments including discoidal and tubular beads. They also discovered that the inland peoples, particularly the Iroquoian speakers, placed a great demand upon the tubular beads, which the Dutch referred to as sewant, and the English commonly referred to as wampum or peak.12 This discovery by the Dutch helped to open up and sustain the fur trade with the Iroquois. This led to two additional developments. First, the cash-poor colonies of New Netherland, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay soon adopted wampum as their local currency.13 Second, the makers of wampum soon made significant changes to their pattern of subsistence and habitation. The traditionally migratory people became more sedentary, establishing themselves in year-round villages and dedicating themselves to full-time wampum production. As fur supplies dwindled and dependency upon European goods grew, these people took advantage of the wampum trade to secure for themselves a stronger position in the trade with Europe.14 While wampum would continue to function in the fur trade, it would not sustain its role as currency in the colonial economy. By the late seventeenth century, traditional European currency – gold and silver – became more common in the colonies and eventually displaced wampum.15 In the meantime, however, the nature of wampum and its use evolved in the diplomatic realm. Europeans came to North America to trade, to settle, and to expand their empires, and in doing so interacted with native people on a variety of levels. From the beginning, as Europeans and Native Americans met one another they made efforts at accommodation and cooperation, even while conflict also erupted. Such efforts 12 Both are Algonquian terms. Sewant refers to the individual beads regardless of colour. Wampum, short for wampumpeague, specifically refers to the white beads. Hamell 1996: 42–43. 13 As did Rhode Island, New Haven and Connecticut. In addition to wampum, furs also served for currencies of exchange. 14 Otto 2006: 66–68. Eventually, Europeans would begin to manufacture wampum. During the eighteenth century, such wampum production was conducted in Euro-American factories such as the Campbell factory in New Jersey; see Morse 2006: 1–6. The growing value of wampum led to important changes among the Narragansetts and Pequots in the relations with New England culminating in the Pequot War. See Ceci 1990; Cave 1996 and Salisbury 1992: 203–235. 15 Herman 1956: 21–33.
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usually took place in the context of ritual exchange and transfer, such as when Henry Hudson and his crew exchanged European-manufactured goods with the indigenous people for diverse food products, animal skins, and “stropes of beads”.16 As contact continued and expanded, it became clear to both sides how radically different the culture of the other was, and how volatile their relations with one another could be. However, it also became clear how the accommodation of one another’s rituals might smooth these relations. Little by little, the successful cultural engagements that took place created patterns that could be repeated and built upon. Over the next several decades, as Europeans and Indians encountered one another throughout North America, they adapted to and even adopted one another’s rituals. In the colonial northeast, wampum figured prominently in this exchange and modification of rituals. These rituals were largely rooted in Iroquoian practices, but by the late seventeenth century, a recognisable model of “frontier diplomacy”, including both Europeans and Indians, had emerged, which continued throughout the eighteenth century even as it expanded and continued to evolve.17 This frontier diplomacy included several elements.18 In the first place, guests, especially to an Indian village, would be conducted through the Wood’s Edge Ceremony in which strings or belts of wampum would be given to clear the eyes, ears, and throat of the recipient. Next, they would be hosted at a feast and given a good night’s rest. Once the proceedings began, the first order of business generally consisted of some effort to re-establish the basis of the relationship that brought the two sides together. This would include a rehearsal of past agreements and was usually accompanied by the presentation of wampum. One side would speak, iterating previous agreements and presenting a string or belt. The next side would acknowledge the presentation and reiterate the previous agreement, typically presenting another string or belt. After this important step, the two sides could move towards a discussion of the matters at hand. Here strings or belts played a different role – the wampum served to certify the qualifications of the speaker and to authenticate the words being spoken [Image 2]. Following a predetermined agenda, a speaker from one side would come forward and would lay upon the ground or table strings or belts of wampum. Each of these would represent a different point to be made in the forthcoming presentation. As the speaker delivered his message, he would pick up a string or belt with each new point. For native people, wampum reinforced the message and made the speaker’s words “true”. Words that were accompanied by wampum could be 16 Quoted in Otto 2006: 42. 17 The best recent discussion of wampum and frontier diplomacy is Merrell 1999: 187–193. 18 This broad summary of frontier diplomacy is drawn from my reading of a wide range of primary and secondary sources, some of which are noted elsewhere in this essay. Richter 2001, Fenton 1985, and Foster 1985 carefully delineate the various steps of Iroquois diplomacy.
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trusted. Finally, as agreements were made, and the meeting moved towards closure, Europeans would draw up treaties or some record of the agreement that would be signed by both Europeans and Indians; appended to these were wampun belts that symbolised the agreement. Wampum was central to frontier diplomacy and actively utilised by both sides. In his account of the Moravian missions of the eighteenth century, George Henry Loskiel described one variation of the practice: “Upon the delivery of a string, a long speech may be made, and much said upon the subject under consideration: But when a belt is given, few words are spoken, but they must be words of great importance, frequently requiring an explanation. Whenever the speaker has pronounced some important sentence, he delivers a string of wampum, adding, “I give this string of wampum as a confirmation of what I have spoken.” But the chief subject of his discourse he confirms with a belt. The answers given to a speech thus delivered, must also be confirmed by strings and belts of wampum of the same size and number as those received.”19 Furthermore, wampum served mnemonically, aiding the speaker in remembering his message. He might brandish it in such a way as to reinforce his message, or, possibly, the belt or string were understood by native people as embodying the message itself. This is how it was understood as reported in the nineteenth century, and may have been so also in the seventeenth.20 And when each point had been made, the speaker would lay the wampum down again, hand it to his listeners, or display it in some other way. Europeans, too, would use it in this way by sending messages with wampum belts, such as when Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, sent belts in 1758 to the Iroquois to summon them to war against the French.21 Over time, wampum’s mnemonic role was enhanced with the incorporation of simple designs woven into the belt in alternating white and black beads. Eventually larger belts were developed in which pictographs were displayed [Images 3 and 4]. Such designs might convey broad messages of friendship, alliance, or war. Large wampum belts containing significant symbols and designs would be woven to capture the essence of a treaty agreement between the two sides.22 Contact with Europeans contributed to this evolution of wampum in several ways. First, European tools made possible the wider production of wampum beads, providing for 19 20 21 22
Loskiel 1794: 27. Foster 1985: 106–107. Abercromby Papers: AB 364. These include fairly well-known belts such as the Penn or Great Treaty Wampum Belt that supposedly depicts a colonist and Indian holding hands. There is some debate on the authenticity of this belt and the provenance of other belts with pictorial designs. Speck 1925.
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larger belts and more frequent use of belts and strings. Second, these tools also made possible the use of dark shell for “black” beads. Thus, the geometric and pictographic designs clearly resulted from European contact. Third, European traders seeking new sources of furs, and colonial officials advancing political and imperial agendas, created a new context of competition and struggle in North America in which wampum served to help build alliances and agreements to accomplish those aims. Native people, however, had their own agendas, and even as wampum belts evolved, native people employed them in traditional ways. With its focus upon social cohesion, native diplomacy regularly employed a variety of metaphors to advance such relationships. Indians would commonly speak of rekindling or keeping the council fires burning, burying the hatchet, clearing the paths between villages, or maintaining long-standing friendships, among many others. As pictographic belts developed, many of these included motifs that closely paralleled these traditional metaphors.23 Meanwhile, even as Europeans began to accommodate Indian ways, they still recognised the important differences between written records and oral traditions, even if they did not fully understand the power of the oral traditions. In a major meeting (1659) between Dutch officials and leaders of the Mohawk people in one of the earliest cases of Europeans giving wampum to punctuate points of their speeches in native fashion, the Dutch speaker encouraged his native listeners to “tell it to your children” since “our children will always be able to know and remember it through the writings which we leave behind us; we die but they remain forever. From them they will always be able to see how we have lived in friendship with our brothers.”24 Despite the lingering differences of understanding, the two sides had still come to adopt a common set of protocols, which lasted until the late eighteenth century. But as important as wampum had become to frontier diplomacy from the late seventeenth century into the eighteenth, and through much of the eighteenth century, its importance began to decline after the American Revolution. By the 1780s, the Iroquois began to demand copies of written treaties. Many reasons for this are possible. Observing their deteriorating position on their land and with respect to their declining influence upon European and Euro-American governments, native people had learned that agreements could be broken or reinterpreted. As a result, they may have chosen to eschew the place of wampum in favour of the copia vera of written treaties. Perhaps they also came to lack confidence in the durability of their oral traditions as supported by treaty belts. Also, as the Euro-American frontier moved westward, the Iroquois and Hurons found themselves left behind, so to speak, as important diplomatic players. As a result, fewer treaties in total were be23 Foster 1985: 109. 24 Gehring 1990: 456–457.
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ing signed by native people who traditionally used wampum and the respective colonial or national governments.25 For their part, the Americans, too, understood the strengths and weaknesses of the treaty belts. At the Fort Stanwix Treaty negotiations of 1784, the Iroquois representatives wanted copies of the proceedings, but the U.S. delegates “refused [them] a copy of [the officials’] speech.” They asserted that the wampum belts accompanying the proceedings should be enough. “We explained […] over and over again our speech to you”, they said, “and the strings and belts which accompanied every part of it.”26 After about 1800, the rituals of frontier diplomacy centring upon wampum belts ended. How do the emergence of wampum and the creation of colonial America frontier diplomacy compare with the parameters of ritual transfer outlined by Robert Langer and his fellow researchers? The example of wampum as a dynamic material artifact playing a role in an ever-changing social and cultural context offers an important case for evaluating Langer’s concepts regarding the transfer of rituals. At the same time, the application of this transfer model to the study of wampum offers insight into a historical process that has not been considered in the light of anthropological theories. The authors assert that when the context for the ritual changes, it can be expected that some of its internal dimensions might also change. The inverse may also be true, the authors suggest, so that when a change of internal dimensions is observed, one should look for changing context. In the case of the early American frontier, where two culturally distinct groups came together as indigenous and intruder, it is obvious that the context had changed. One assumes that new rituals are likely to develop and, as the story of wampum diplomacy reveals, such cross-cultural rituals did develop. On the other hand, frontier relations were ever-changing, as Europeans advanced deeper into the continent, meeting new and different groups of native people, as the objects of Native American and European envoys changed, and as the colonial and imperial context also evolved. A close study of the particulars of frontier diplomacy may point to important changes in the broader ritual and the changing cultural context. When and how, for example, did belts begin to incorporate patterns and designs? Who initiated these changes and why? Did such changes reflect the response of one group to the cultural demands and expectations of the other group? With respect to the nature of that contextual change, Langer et al. assert three forms of ritual transfer – synchronic, diachronic, and recursive. Which one applies 25 Becker 2002: 61–62. 26 At the Treaty of Ft. Stanwix in 1784, the Iroquois tried in vain to get a paper copy of the treaty, but the U.S. delegates said that the wampum belt they gave should be sufficient, Graymont 1922: 16–17, 279–280; Craig 1848: 424. In fact, Iroquois began making these requests as early as the 1750s and by the 1790s copies of treaties had replaced wampum belts in these diplomatic proceedings; Becker & Lainey 2004: 27.
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best to ritual transfers involving wampum? Synchronic transfer takes place when a part of a group changes one contextual aspect, for example geographical, but not others, such as religious, as, for example, when a part of a group migrates to a new location but keeps its basic cultural values intact. Diachronic transfer takes place when a group remains in one geographic location, but changes take place in the historical context. Finally, recursive transfers indicate reciprocal influences from group members who have migrated away from and then back to the root group. In the case of diplomatic rituals involving wampum, ritual transfer does not neatly fit into any one of these categories. The recursive is probably the least applicable, since what is under consideration here is not a case of changes strictly within the group of origin. Since the ritual changes resulted from the meeting of two cultural groups – one indigenous and one invasive – characteristics of both the synchronic and the diachronic come into play. For Europeans who took with them their ideas on diplomacy, treaty making, and so forth to the New World, the changes they made as they adapted to Indian diplomacy were synchronic in nature. Their values did not change, but their geographic context, including new cultural elements (native society) which they had to accommodate to accomplish their goals, did. They learned that they could only negotiate effectively with the Indians by engaging in important social and diplomatic rituals, and by punctuating their speeches with belts of wampum. For Europeans, this was a utilitarian adaptation. While Europeans and Euro-Americans may have adopted the use of wampum in frontier diplomacy, it does not appear that this adoption ever amounted to more than just an accommodation to Indian practices in order to gain what they really sought – trade agreements, Indian alliances, or territory. For native people who essentially remained in one geographic location, their transfer was diachronic in nature – their historical context changed as a result of contact with Europeans. While the meaning and purpose of wampum belts seemed to persist, native people applied the dark beads made available by European tools to the development of belts with designs and pictographs memorialising specific messages or aspects of their treaties with Europeans. Eventually the use of belts in diplomacy fell away altogether.27 Believing in the efficacy of these rituals, Native Americans shaped and transformed diplomatic rituals in order to facilitate relations with Europeans, and to address a changing context that posed serious challenges to their livelihood, their place on the land, and their political sovereignty.
27 However, a recursive element may have come into play as native people migrated west to escape the onslaught of European colonisation, and contributed to a crucible of frontier activity in the Ohio country, where they brought with them frontier diplomatic practices created in their homelands to the east. There is a synchronic aspect here as well, especially as a new frontier diplomacy emerged in the eighteenth century.
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Furthermore, it should be understood that the adaptations made by both peoples took place in the context of important power relations. Each side had something the other needed and wanted. Whoever held the balance of power could influence the shape frontier diplomacy took and the role wampum would play in it. On the one hand, native people controlled access to the fur trade, to territory, and to military resources in the form of Indian auxiliaries. On the other hand, Europeans offered access to trade goods, guns, and to wampum itself in their role as middlemen. Europeans could not gain what they wanted without the cooperation of Indians. Native people stood between them and many of their objectives. To gain native cooperation, Europeans were forced to adapt to diplomatic practices that made sense to the Indians.28 For their part, Native Americans were not invincible occupants and found their sovereignty over their territory eroding as profound changes took place within their society. They acted as they could to maintain control over their land and to assert their political sovereignty and cultural values by insisting on diplomatic rituals that made sense to them. In fact, they continued to seek regular and frequent meetings with colonial officials with the aim of renewing, reinforcing, and strengthening these alliances through speeches punctuated with symbolically ornamented belts. As power shifted from Native Americans to Europeans, these efforts became increasingly fruitless, and native people were forced to accept loss of status and the power to maintain relationships with Europeans that were advantageous to themselves. According to the authors of “Transfer of Ritual”, the actions of individual agents should also be taken into account. They write: “A special position must be admitted to the participants, i.e. the actively and passively participating persons […] without them a ritual cannot be performed.” This is an important point, but in the case of frontier diplomacy, data may not be available to fully answer it. Langer et al. indicated that there are active and passive participants. Active participants are those who are directly involved in the rituals, while passive participants are those who observe and benefit from the rituals, but do not play an active role in them. In the case of frontier diplomacy and the evolving use of wampum, we can certainly point to individuals who prominently participated in frontier diplomacy. Indeed, historians have already considered how cultural mediators have played a role on the frontier. These individuals had the cultural awareness and flexibility to build bridges of communication and cooperation across the cultural divide.29 The historical record only occasionally provides enough details to help us understand the particular role of unique individuals in the actual ritual transfer involving wampum. As noted above, such evidence would be helpful in tracing the 28 Daniel Richter demonstrates the unique strengths held by the Five Nations Iroquois because of their geographical location and their political stability; Richter 1992: 2–3. 29 See, for example, Richter 1988: 40–67 and Cayton & Teute 1998.
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evolution of wampum diplomacy. Furthermore, pinpointing individuals who actively shaped the ritual transfers on the frontier helps to get at the issue of diplomatic power struggles, which in turn affect the evolution of wampum and frontier diplomacy. Surely, certain European individuals first chose to give wampum as they spoke diplomatic words, and individual natives first incorporated pictographs into specific wampum belts. In the case of Europeans, it can be demonstrated that traders were often at the forefront of frontier diplomacy, and that these individuals, some of whom served also as translators, undoubtedly paved the way for European accommodation to Indian diplomacy. But who these individuals were on either side, what specifically motivated them, and how they actually implemented the changes outlined (especially the change in the nature of wampum belts), is rarely revealed in the sources. Occasionally, however, individuals do stand out such as Arendt van Curler or Corlaer, as he was known by the Mohawks. Van Curler had come to New Netherland in 1637 to assist in managing the estate of Kiliaen van Rensselaer. He became an astute trader and often served as a mediator between the Dutch and the Indians until his death in 1667. He was important enough to the Iroquois that after his death they applied his name – “Corlaer” – to the succeeding colonial governors with whom they negotiated. It is likely that in the 1659 DutchMohawk conference noted earlier, he led or influenced the Dutch delegation as they gave wampum while speaking their points to the Mohawks. But such examples are few and far between, and the process by which Europeans and Native Americans created shared diplomatic rituals remains vague.30 Finally, my research into wampum raises an issue not adequately addressed in the article by Langer and his fellow authors. The authors discuss changing contexts, changes to internal dimensions, and the role of individuals in the ritual transfers. While the authors do not imply as much, however, it would be possible to infer from their presentation that the rituals themselves, or the individual rites, were static before major contextual changes prompted ritual transfers or certain individuals brought about those transfers. This is particularly an issue in considering ritual change on the frontier. Wampum was clearly an evolving material artifact and its use among native people varied from group to group and evolved over time. Wampum beads evolved in size and uniformity, and contact with Europeans and their tools influenced this. “True wampum” did not really exist before the arrival of Europeans, but it was “true wampum” that was soon being employed by Indian groups as Europeans penetrated into the interior and developed closer relationships with the indigenous people. Wampum belts developed among Iroquoian speakers and their near neighbours, but wampum beads were used in different ways by various groups in the Northeast. Even among the Five Nations and the Hurons, variations existed in the 30 Otto 2009: 184; Richter 1988: 46.
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application and manifestation of wampum. Therefore, while we can explore the transfer of rituals and the development of new ones, the dynamic situation of the American environment and the European-Native American frontier makes it difficult to carefully delineate pre-existing rituals and to identify specific transfers. Considering the fact that wampum’s evolving role in the new frontier diplomacy, which provided a means for Europeans and Native Americans to negotiate with one another in North America, seems to reflect a unique example of ritual transfer, perhaps an additional category should be added to Langer and his fellow researchers’ rubric. Recognising the contribution of both sides, the shifting power relationships, and the dynamic context in which this ritual transfer took place, is it not worth considering the category of synergetic?31 This term captures the flexible, two-way nature of the exchange and provides a single category in which to place this variety of ritual transfer. The example of the early American frontier is one in which both sides had something to offer and both sides had something to gain. Contributions were made by both groups in a give-and-take struggle of power to achieve ends specific to each group. Out of this matrix emerged a ritual – frontier diplomacy, including the exchange and presentation of wampum strings and belts (themselves products of intercultural contact) – that would not have emerged in any other context. To sum up, the emergence of frontier diplomacy centring upon wampum in the colonial northeast both reinforces the ritual transfer matrix outlined by Langer et al. and offers some variations worth considering. As expected, the changing context experienced by both Native Americans and Europeans led to changes in their diplomatic behaviour. Both sides changed or modified their protocols to accommodate the demands of the frontier context. Europeans adapted to Indian social expectations by patiently listening to Indian grievances, and by giving strings or belts of wampum as they spoke about their own concerns. Native people introduced Europeans to wampum, but also adapted European tools that contributed to an evolution in size and style as wampum belts grew larger and began to include symbols and pictographs. Eventually, wampum use in frontier diplomacy declined and then fell away all together. Nevertheless, even as the ritual transfer reflected by evolving wampum use and the emergence of frontier diplomacy confirms the theories set forth by Langer and his co-authors, important differences remain. In the first place, the categories of synchronic and diachronic seem too restrictive to adequately describe what happened. With both sides accommodating one another in a new intercultural context, what developed were not so much changes to the rituals of the one or the other group, but the creation of new rituals which reflected the new cultural context, a process which might best be described as synergetic. In the second place, if it is 31 I thank Richard Johnson for suggesting this term.
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assumed that rituals are to some degree static before a contextual change brings about the transfer of rites, then the evolution of wampum as an artifact, even before the arrival of Europeans, points to real difficulties in trying to establish a baseline for analysing ritual transfer. Let me conclude by observing that my consideration of the development of frontier diplomacy in North America with the attendant evolution of wampum in the light of the ritual transfer matrix has aided me as a researcher in teasing out certain nuances in wampum’s story. Perhaps the story of wampum’s development in the early American frontier will, in turn, indicate ways in which the theory of ritual transfer should also be further developed.
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Image 1: Burial ceremonies among the Iroquois Source: Lafitau 1724: Vol 2, Plate XX
Image 2: The Indians Giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet
Source: Smith 1766, between pages 52 and 53
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Image 3: Ordinary Belt of seven rows from near Georgian bay, Canada Source: Beauchamp 1901: Plate 23.
Image 4: “Penn” Belt
Source: Beauchamp 1901: Plate 13.
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References Abercromby Papers 1674–1787. The Huntington Library, San Marino (California). [Manuscripts] Beauchamp, William M. 1901. “Wampum and Shell Articles Used by the New York Indians”. New York State Museum Bullettin 41/8: 319–480. Becker, Marshall Joseph 1980. “Wampum: The Development of an Early American Currency”. Bulletin of the Archeological Society of New Jersey 36: 1–11. — 2002. “A Wampum Belt Chronology: Origins to Modern Times”. Northeast Anthropology 63: 49–70. — & Jonathan Lainey 2004. “Wampum Belts with Initials and/or Dates as Design Elements: A Preliminary Review of One Subcategory of Belts”. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 28: 25–46. Bradford, William 1942. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647. Edited by Samuel E. Morison. New York: Modern Library. Cave, Alfred A. 1996. The Pequot War. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Cayton, Andrew R.L. & Fredrika J. Teute (eds.) 1998. Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Ceci, Lynn 1990. “Native Wampum as a Peripheral Resource in the Seventeenth-Century World-System”. In: Laurence M. Hauptman & James D. Wherry (eds.). The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press: 48–63. Craig, Neville B. (ed.) 1848. The Olden Time. Vol. 2. Pittsburgh: J.W. Cook. Fenton, William N. & Elizabeth L. Moore (eds.) 1974. Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times. By Joseph F. Lafitau. 2 vols. Toronto: The Champlain Society. Fenton, William N. 1985. “Structure, Continuity, and Change in the Process of Iroquois Treaty Making”. In: Francis Jennings et al. (eds.). The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 3–36. Foster, Michael K. 1985. “Another Look at the Function of Wampum in IroquoisWhite Councils”. In: Francis Jennings et al. (eds.). The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 99–114. Gehring, Charles T. & William A. Starna (trans. & eds.) 1988. A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634–1635: The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Gehring, Charles T. (transl. & ed.) 1990. Fort Orange Court Minutes, 1652–1660. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Graymont, Barbara 1922. The Iroquois in the American Revolution. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
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Hamell, George R. 1996. “Wampum: Light, White, and Bright Things are Good to Think”. In: Alexandra van Dongen (ed.). One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure. Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen: 41–51. Herman, Mary W. 1956. “Wampum as a Money in Northeastern North America”. In: Ethnohistory 3/1: 21–33. Lafitau, Joseph-François 1724. Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains compare es aux moeurs des premiers temps. Paris: Saugrain and Charles-Estienne Hochereau. — 1977. Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times. Toronto: The Champlain Society. Lainey, Jonathan C. 2004. La “Monnaie des Sauvages”: Les Colliers de wampum d’hier à aujourd’hui. Sillery: Septentrion. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Loskiel, George H. 1794. History of the Mission of the United Brethren. Translated by Christian I. La Trobe. London: Brethren’s Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel. Merrell, James M. 1999. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. New York: Norton. Morse, Dan F. 2006. “Wampum Manufacture in New Jersey”. The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association 59: 1–6. Otto, Paul 2009. “Intercultural relations between Native Americans and Europeans in New Netherland and New York”. In: Hans Krabbendam & Cornelis A. van Minnen & Giles Scott-Smith (eds.). Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations, 1609– 2009. Amsterdam & Albany: Boom Onderwijs & State University of New York Press: 178–191. — 2006. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. New York: Berghahn Books. Richter, Daniel K. 1988. “Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664–1701”. Journal of American History 75: 40–67. — 1992. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. — 2001. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Salisbury, Neal 1982. Manitou and Providence. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, William 1766. An Historical Account of the Expedition against the Ohio Indians, in the Year 1764. London: T. Jefferies. (Reprint) Speck, Frank G. 1925. The Penn Wampum Belts. New York: Heye Foundation.
Tulsi Patel
Transformations in Marriage Rituals: The Case of Urbanising OBCs in Rajasthan1 Marriage in India continues to remain one of the most critical of the long-drawnout phases in the lives of people. Marriage is a social institution, involving a number of events such as betrothal, wedding, divorce, and remarriage, each associated with rituals. Marriage in Hindu society is a sacrament involving a series of rites. This is especially so since, for the female, marital rites are the most significant of the few other sacraments she goes through during her life. It is a crucial rite of passage. Kane’s treatise on Dharmashastra gives an exposition of the rules and duties pertaining to marriage, but does not list the series of rites and rituals pertaining to the marriage ceremony (wedding).2 Kapadia, however, lists the essential rites to be performed to make a marriage complete (signifying the beginning of the third set of samskaras that mark the initiation into higher life and make one conscious of one’s proper role as a member of the community): “[…] the main rites are: homa, or offering in the sacred fire, panigrahana, or taking the hand of the bride and saptapadi, the bride and the bride groom taking seven steps together. All these rites are performed in the presence of the sacred fire and are accompanied by vedic mantras. They are necessary for the marriage to be complete, because when they or any of them are not properly performed, the marriage may be legally questioned. Hindu marriage is a sacrament. It is performed because it is said to be complete only on the performance of the sacred rites accompanied by the sacred formulae.”3 However, the forms of marriage, especially the rites and rituals associated with the wedding (an event in the marriage), may not have remained the same over time. While love, arranged, and love-cum-arranged marriages all take place, these are all solemnised through various customary rites and festive procedures. These may take 1 I am thankful to Anya Wagner, Professors Gita Dharampal-Frick, Robert Langer, A.M. Shah, and the participants at the conference whose comments on an earlier version of this paper have benefited me a great deal in revising it. 2 Kane 1968. 3 Kapadia 1955 [1966]: 168.
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place in a range of locations, for example, the wedding rituals and festivities may be organised at home or outside in hotels, farmhouses (resorts), places of worship (common in South India), etc. There are collective weddings as well as single wedding events. Divorce, remarriage after divorce, and widowhood are some of the other transformations occurring in the institution of marriage in Indian society. In this connection, Kane refers to the divergence of modern decisions from the smritis and the digests.4 Further, he notes that the customs of countries, villages, and families have been specially recognised from very ancient times in the sphere of marriage.5 This paper, however, focuses only on the transformation of wedding rituals among the agricultural castes, most of whom are now categorised as “Other Backward Classes” (OBC) by the Indian State. These castes have traditionally permitted divorce, and remarriage of their women after divorce and widowhood, which constitutes one of the markers of their lower ritual status in the caste hierarchy. Many members of these agricultural castes have migrated and continue to migrate to urban areas within and outside the state of Rajasthan. As urbanised sections, how do members of these castes view the institution of marriage, as well as the rites and rituals associated with getting married? What ritual transformations take place with regard to the kanyadan and the performance of homa and saptapadi? Furthermore, this paper tries to address the following question: for these sections of society, how do the contingent conditions in towns and cities, on the one hand, and their links and relationships with their urban as well as rural counterparts, on the other hand, impinge on the sphere of wedding rituals and on their transformation, along with many other of its festive aspects? It also asks: why do they prefer to adopt different rituals from those adopted by their caste and rural counterparts and practised by their parents? Marrying is one of the three vital events in one’s life, the other two being birth and death. All three are associated with rituals. Hindu marriage is a sacrament, a sacred and indissoluble bond between a man and a woman, established for fulfilling dharma, especially the duties of a householder (grihastha). Grihastha ashrama is the second of the four stages (following varnashrama dharma) into which a Hindu’s life is understood to be divided. Thus, marriage is a holy union for the performance of religious duties by a householder. Observing the duties through dharma, artha and kama, the householder paves his way to attain moksha. It is through progeny that a householder repays his ancestral debt (pitri rin) incurred through his own birth to his parents. Marriage is thus a means to have offspring that enables one to return the ancestral debt. Progeny through marriage is regarded as the ideal means for fulfilling this duty towards one’s ancestors. 4 Kane 1968: vol. 1, 34. 5 Kane 1968: vol. 3, 879.
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While marriage is aimed at repaying ancestral debt, marriage rituals are not uniform for all sections of Hindu society. Hindu marriage is graded in order of superiority on the basis of rituals followed in procuring a bride who resides patri-virilocally. Besides caste endogamy and gotra exogamy, which are crucial factors in matchmaking, the ritual observances in obtaining the bride are also important. Thus, according to Hindu scriptures,6 wedding rituals matter in ranking marriages and, as a corollary, in ranking those who follow the different wedding rituals.
Methodology This paper addresses the question: how do the OBCs in towns and cities organise weddings and how do their rural counterparts do so? Also, how and what is communicated through the transformation of wedding rituals? It is important to point out here that the secular and the religious were always two aspects of a wedding, even among Brahmins, let alone among others. The wedding feast and festivities constitute the secular aspect. It is common in north India to treat the groom like a prince/king and the bride like a princess/queen. The jaan/barat is a procession of the groom’s people led by him, reaching the bride’s house on horseback, etc., as if it were an army marching to conquer the bride, a fact that is attested by numerous wedding songs and in numerous symbols of dress. The weddings of royal princes and princesses and of wealthy merchants set the model for others. In contrast, in south India wedding parties of both groom and bride meet at a temple compound for the rituals and subsequently throw a reception party, separating the religious part from the secular. While rituals clearly have symbolic significance, they are an index of the ranking order of castes observing the rituals. The association between ritual and social ranking is explicit as well as implicit in scriptural literature. The strong caste-mindedness of Indians made Kapadia suspect the adoption of legal relaxations of caste, sub-caste, and sagotra marriages promulgated during the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.7 The first part of the paper deals with the ritual and secular organising of weddings and its relationship with caste rank order. The second section situates the wedding rituals and compares ritual transformation in weddings observed over the past three decades. During these decades, several weddings have been observed in villages and towns in Rajasthan. This paper deals only with weddings observed among the predominantly Anjana Choudhary (also known as Patel), an OBC (Other Backward Castes) known by this term, and which, with several other castes, is entitled to the benefits of positive discrimination measures enacted by the State. This section deals with various rituals during the wedding ceremony, mainly in terms of modifications and 6 See Desai 1966; Kane 1968; Trautmann 1981. 7 Kapadia 1955.
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changes. While acknowledging the customary variations across caste, class, and region, it deals with changes taking place in the essential rituals of a wedding: homa, phera, and saptapadi (seven steps taken or seven vows taken after the homa; the bride and the groom make these vows to each other and are thus united as a couple). The third section analyses the dynamics of these rituals as performances, both cognitive and affective. While the paper recognises that rituals are not static, and given that the Hindu jurists differed on which forms of marriage are permissible to which classes,8 it explores how weddings, i.e. rituals and festivities, are an attempt to give expression to status enhancement, sought by influential and urban members among the OBCs.
Forms and Hierarchy in Hindu Marriage The fundamental typology of marriage in ancient Hindu law includes eight forms of marriage based on rituals involved in forming a marital union. The Manusmriti lists those eight forms by classifying them into two categories on the basis of the rituals of kanyadan (gift of the virgin girl). Accordingly, the first four are named after divinities, while the four in the second set are stigmatised after demonic beings. The first four are considered as legitimate forms of marriage, involving the gift of a virgin girl by her guardian (father, paternal grandfather, brother, other paternal relatives, mother, maternal grandfather, and maternal uncle in order of preference, with slight variation in the maternal kin order of preference9). These are Brahma, Daiva, Arsa, and Prajapatya. The remaining four, the illegitimate ones in the second category, are termed non-kanyadan forms of marriage by Trautmann.10 They are Asura, Gandharva, Rakshasha and Paisacha.11 Ideally, like the religious 8 9 10 11
Trautmann 1981: 288. Cf. Desai 1966. Trautmann 1981: 289. The eight forms of marriage. (Source Manu, 3. 27–34, Bühler’s translation): A The kanyadan forms Brahma: “The gift of a daughter, after decking her (with costly garments) and honouring (her by presents of jewels), to a man learned in the veda whom (the father) himself invites.” Daiva: “The gift of a daughter who has been decked with ornaments, to a priest who duly officiates at a sacrifice, during the course of its performance.” Arsa: “When (the father) gives away his daughter according to the rule, after receiving from the bridegroom, for (the fulfilment of) the sacred law, a cow and a bull or two pairs.” Prajapatya: “The gift of a daughter (by her father) after he has addressed (the couple) with the text, ‘May both of you perform together your duties’, and has shown honour (to the bridegroom).” B The non-kanydan forms 5. Asura: “When the (bridegroom) receives a maiden, after having given as much wealth as he can afford to the kinsmen and to the bride herself, according to his own will.”
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gift in general, the gift of a maiden must be made without expectation of return. The two-fold categorisation of marriage is based on whether or not the bride is given to the bridegroom without receiving any consideration from the bridegroom for receiving her in marriage. Thus, the second category is regarded as the sale of a daughter. However, jurists have had great difficulty in separating the Arsa, marriage of the legitimate category, from the Asura, in the illegitimate category of marriages, insisting that the former is a gift. The gift of cattle is invoked as part of the sacred law whereby the cattle are given dharmarth, out of respect for scriptural injunction. As the notion of marriage through sale and purchase was antithetical to kanyadan, which was considered a religious gift, the sanctity of the sacred and indissoluble union could not be brought about based on secular exchange. The Manusmriti has prescribed a series of rites and sacraments for Hindus, especially those of twice-born castes, but as one goes down the social hierarchy, the number of rites and sacraments wane and are less stringent with regard to the prescriptions of kanyadan. Besides, there are variations in the permissibility of these forms for the four varnas. The case of Kshatriya marriage by conquest, abduction, and elopement is an example. Yet another variation is found when the Indo-Aryan basis of marriage is contrasted with the Dravidian marriage rules which view the gift of a virgin in a strikingly different manner: cross-cousin marriage in Dravidian kinship falls outside the kanyadan ideal of the Dharmashastra marriage rules. While the Dharmashastra provides for different duties concerning different social categories, it prescribes all in a universal sense, and still the contrast between social categories is evident. Even if one agrees with Trautmann that the Dharmashastra are more relevant to the Brahmanical forms of marriage, it must, nevertheless, be admitted that the manual for wedding rituals used by many a Brahmin officiating at wedding ceremonies follows the same procedure for all the four varnas, with specific words in a few places (not more than six, and this without affecting the ritual procedure in any way) being changed according to the varna of the bride’s guardian.12 Sharma’s wedding manual, like many such manuals, is likely to be a modern version of the ancient manual used by modern priests. Such manuals are available in many languages in Indian cities on street corners.13 These are often used by priests neither proficient in Sanskrit nor familiar with ancient Sanskrit texts. The manipulation of rituals by Brahmins is not unknown in Indian society! I have observed several 6. Gandharva: “The voluntary union of a maiden and her lover, […] which springs from desire and has sexual intercourse for its purpose.” 7. Raksasa: “The forcible abduction of a maiden from her home, while she cries out and weeps, after (her kinsmen) have been slain or wounded and (their houses) broken open.” 8. Paisaca: “When (a man) by stealth seduces a girl who is sleeping, intoxicated, or disordered in intellect.” 12 Sharma 1997. 13 Ibid.
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weddings rituals shortened or elongated in accordance with the desire and capacity of the patrons. How the flexibility of Brahmanical rituals allows them to be used for social mobility is a complex sociological issue. The Sharma manual, too, claims the Brahmanical form of marriage to be the best; however, the publisher notes that it is a simplified manual and has been prepared so that it may apply to all people. The weddings I observed as a guest of many upper-caste couples in cities are also at variance with the manual in terms of the series of rituals, such as the ingredients for homa, the auspicious time for the rounds of the sacred fire (phera), the length of the ceremony, etc., though the spirit of the ritual of kanyadan is upheld. Here, another question needs to be posed: in what way is the ritual dynamic in marriage affected by social relations? Recent changes in wedding rites concerning the ideal of kanyadan discussed below throw up analytical challenges for ritual dynamics and social transformation. Ritual is described by Schechner as behaviour transformed by exaggeration, repetition and rhythm into specialised sequences of behaviour serving specific functions, as shown in the context of religion and worship, marriage, hierarchy or territoriality.14 The functions of ritual constitute the centrality of social dynamics, furthered through ritual modulation and the adoption of new rituals as a menu of options.
Dynamics of Wedding Rituals among OBCs Although the folk versions of marriage rules and rituals have been in existence for a long time, there is a paucity of rich ethnography on marriage rituals among the non-twice-born castes. One must hasten to point out the studies about the non-kanyadan forms of marriage, as classified according to the Manusmriti, among the Pandits of Kashmir in Madan,15 the Patidars of Gujarat in Pocock16 and Bengali kinship in Inden and Nicholas.17 However, one needs to bear in mind that these are not studies of the middle-order agricultural or other lower castes. In addition, the urban Patidars of Pocock consider themselves to be different from the Kanbis, their rural counterparts. The Patel in Rajasthan is found in its north-western belt in the districts of Jodhpur, Pali, Sirohi, Ahore, Jalore, Sanchore, and Barmer. Until the 1930s, this was a predominantly rural-based non-literate caste, with only one exceptional lone migrant to an urban area from several villages in this region of Rajasthan. By the 1940s, there were at the most four lone migrants in towns, and only two of them brought their wives to town later. By 1980, over a hundred households were found 14 15 16 17
Schechner 1993. Madan 1965. Pocock 1972. Inden & Nicholas 1977.
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in towns and cities in Rajasthan and many others elsewhere in India. About half a dozen have migrated outside the country, too. Marriage among the Patels differed a great deal from that among the higher castes, such as Brahmins, Rajputs, Charans, Baniyas, and Sonars of the region. Patel weddings until the 1970s were characterised by the absence of dowry; the practice of sister-exchange or aunt-niece exchange or both (hato), which put bride-givers and bride-takers on an equal footing; and combined weddings of a family’s daughters at the ever-green auspicious occasion of aakha-teej (the third day of the Hindu month of Vaishak, falling in AprilMay after the winter harvest), performed when the oldest daughter of the family reached puberty. Her younger sister(s), though wedded at the same time as she was, were not sent to their conjugal homes to consummate marriage. Getting married was separated from cohabitation until each one had attained puberty. This is evident in the case of the child widow (discussed later) who was wedded according to custom at the same time as her elder sister, also expressly to save the family’s resources. Thus, custom provided for a separation of wedding and cohabitation on the basis of a girl attaining puberty. Another occasion to hold such a wedding of all the family’s daughters was in the event of a mortuary feast of the family’s elderly members. While sagotra exogamy was followed, near relatives from the maternal and paternal sides were avoided as matches in marriage. Village exogamy was not practised. At times, a bridegroom might be younger than the bride, though this was not always preferred. The bridegroom’s family not only approached the bride’s family for the match, but the betrothal was also held only in the would-be bride’s house, with no reciprocal visit to the would-be groom’s house. The bridegroom’s relatives brought gifts of jewellery, clothes, dry fruits (coconut, water chestnuts and dates), and dry sweets such as mishri and gur, besides some cash for the bride.18 However, today the town-dwelling Patel do not fix betrothals of children until they have reached at least high-school age. Gifts and some silver jewellery were brought for the bride a few times, but not more than seven times before the wedding, with little ceremonial reciprocity from the bride’s family for the groom. Those who insisted that gifts for the bride be brought at least seven times before the wedding were criticised for being mean with their hagga (children’s in-laws, but in this case, daughter’s in-laws), as this kind of insistence was not seen as emanating from any actual poverty on the part of those insisting. Besides, this was contrary to the idea of kanyadan. Monetary and other support - or both - were also provided for the bride’s family, if the need for it was felt and also communicated. Brides’ families did not hesitate to ask for such support, including resources to accommodate the bridegroom’s party for the three days’ duration of the wedding. On the whole, the bride’s natal kin had the decisive voice regarding the timing and organisation, 18 Urban Patels mark their difference from the rural ones by getting almonds, raisins, cashew nuts, seasonal fruits, and sweets found in sweetshops in cities.
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to all of which the bridegroom’s people usually agreed. In the case of parents having no son and one or more daughters, a would-be son-in-law was brought in as Ghar Jamai (son-in-law residing uxorillocally) who was later married to the daughter who had been settled as a match for him. He took on the social and legal responsibility of a son vis-à-vis the rest of his wife’s family. Widow re-marriage was common. It was rare to find a widow of reproductive age with only one child or no children, who was not remarried. Her natal kin arranged the widow’s remarriage, usually in another village.19 Such practices of marriage were largely followed by some other castes also, such as Jats and Raikas (agriculturalists and sheep and camel herders) in the region, unlike the Jats in Haryana studied by Chowdhry who practise leviratic marriage of widows in the family. Women worked on family farms alongside men.20 Besides the poor literacy rate, predominantly agricultural occupation, and rural life, some of the marriage customs (seen as socially backward) have contributed to the Patels being categorised as OBC in Rajasthan. In the last half century, urban migration has gradually increased. Nearly half of the migrants are male, and their wives and children remain in the village. Others, who have shifted their wives and children to cities, have found education as an avenue for upward social mobility to be attained through a regular and high salaried job for sons and only subsequently for daughters. While the first ten years’ cohort (now aged 55–65) of educated men in clerical and defence services have recently retired, a couple of women from the first such female cohort are not likely to retire for another 8–10 years yet. It is still common to terminate education after completing senior school if a child does not get high scores. Daughters are kept at home to be married off, unless they show promise of professional openings after senior school, or if the latter be the case, are betrothed to boys who are training to be engineers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, accountants, or managers. Sons with low grades in school and college are induced to join small businesses of the immediate or larger family, or some such venture, through social networks of kin, caste, and region. Exchange marriages of sisters or aunt and niece, or both types, have almost disappeared among migrant Patels in towns and cities, and are only sparingly found among youngsters in rural areas too, though collective weddings of a family’s daughters are organised in cities as well. For instance, a girl studying for a Bachelor of Law and her two younger sisters, one in college and the other still in school, were all married at the same time in the year 2002. A Jat family’s three daughters were all married at the same time in 2008; the eldest is in the third year of college and the youngest is finishing senior school. The girl’s betrothal while she is in senior school is desirable, though not always possible. While there is a feeling of 19 Cf. Patel 1982 and 1994. 20 Chowdhry 2006.
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equality between the two affinal families, wife-taker households are gaining an upper hand in urban areas. When a girl in class X was engaged with a boy who was training as a professional 25 years ago in Jodhpur city, the girls’ parents (her father was himself a highly-placed government engineer) were especially respectful in their behaviour towards the illiterate mother and literate father of the bridegroom. The girl’s father would stand up to receive the boy’s father and greet him courteously. His wife would bow down to press the groom’s mother’s legs (a customary greeting expressing respectfulness), before the groom’s mother reciprocated. In most other cases, the groom’s mother would be the first to bow down, a practice which is being reversed rapidly to emulate the manners of greeting followed by the upper castes. In the above case, the groom being very promising, the girl’s parents considered it to be a highly desirable intra-caste hypergamous marriage arranged by the girl’s father. He broke off the earlier betrothal of his daughter because the boy had discontinued his studies after five years of schooling, while the girl continued her schooling. The girl’s engineer father was a lone migrant to the city for a few years after he got a job there in a government department. Subsequently he brought his wife and children to the city. By then he was already a father of three children and had two more later. A large number of guests were invited by the girl’s family on the occasion of the girl’s betrothal with the prospective professional groom. The large gathering of relatives and friends was strikingly unusual in view of the custom of half a dozen guests at a betrothal. A few others have followed this example and invited a large number of guests to the betrothals of their daughters, and received both much criticism and admiration. During 1984-85, when I spent a year followed by a couple of spells of a few months each, after having spent three years in rural Rajasthan to do fieldwork, I frequently heard the discourse around matchmaking and marriages of children and grandchildren by women who often got together by day or even at night, when they would gather to sleep over at the homes of married sisters, daughters, or sisters-inlaws, to meet and chat late into the night under the open sky in large courtyards. During one summer, they would refer to two women from the village, who were married to men (one of them from another village) employed as non-commissioned officers in the Indian Air Force. These women, who had visited their husbands for a few months, were all enamoured of their urban experience. They talked about their charming life with their employed husbands in the cities. Others admired both these women for their good fortune, as they recounted how relaxing it had been in the city with no work: just making roti (literally, unleavened bread, but implies cooking a meal) and eating. One of the women from the group had a daughter approaching puberty and her match had to be fixed. The girl was beautiful and healthy. In fact, she had been married as a child, but had lost her husband, perhaps due to a snakebite, a few years ago. Her marriage was not consummated and the
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girl became a child widow. The mother would bring up the matter of her prime concern again and again with other women around. She wanted them to let her know of any suitable match for her daughter, so that she could be married off (or rather remarried, which is termed nata and involves few rituals, without any festivity). She wanted to give her daughter in nata. But the mother would make her preference clear by reiterating that she wanted an urban groom for her daughter so that she would have next to no work to do. “She would not have to bury her head in the earth if she were in haer (literally, city)”, implying she would not have to work on the land. “What work is there in the city? Just cooking and nothing else”, she would state. Her elder daughter had moved to the city, helped by her mother’s urban-dwelling brother to join her husband who was employed as a menial worker in a defence organisation in Jodhpur. As luck would have it, the mother was overjoyed to find a wealthy illiterate man, double her 14-year-old literate daughter’s age, who promised to keep her as his second wife in the city, unlike his first wife, who worked in the village on the family farms. This match raised curiosity among many in the village and envy and jealousy among others. A city-dwelling groom holding a job or engaged in trading and having a village homestead, rural family links, and agricultural land was the topmost choice as a match in the region among most Patels, and continues to remain so even today.21 Use of bullock carts to carry jaan (the groom’s people) to the bride’s house or village has long been replaced by motorised vehicles, such as tractors, cars, or jeeps as markers of status and wealth. The bride’s relatives received the groom’s people and helped them alight from the carts, the procession then walked with singing and dancing to the bride’s house. However, in urban weddings, the custom of the groom reaching the bride’s door riding on a mare, while others walk in the procession after alighting a kilometre or so from the bride’s house, is commonly emulated by the Patels. The urban ritual of jaymala (the bride and the groom garlanding each other after the groom arrives) is on the increase, a ritual practised also by the royal princesses in Hindu mythology. Imitating Bollywood films and urban style, the bride and groom sit on an elevated platform beside each other to meet guests. This practice began among Patels of Jodhpur in the early 1980s, while students from villages in other districts studying in a Patel hostel in Jodhpur were amazed at such a display of the bride (unveiled) and the groom sitting beside each other in full public view at a wedding they attended in 1997. Those relatives who came over for these weddings were truly awestruck by the urbanising effects at these weddings, ranging from dress, cuisine, décor, to the stay of the grooms’ people being reduced from three days to a night, or even less. One feature that marks a Sanskritising influence is the abolishing of the ritual of the groom’s senior male agnate symbolically washing the bride’s feet after the groom’s party is re21 See Kalpagam 2008 for similar preferences in rural areas in Uttar Pradesh, studied in 2007.
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ceived. As a replacement, the bride’s father performs the ritual of symbolically washing the groom’s feet. This transition of the symbolic washing of the bride’s feet is so gradual that, while in two of the weddings held in Jodhpur in the mid1980s the brides’ fathers honoured the grooms through a symbolic washing of their feet, at the Patel wedding held in Kota in 2005 the groom’s father’s cousin washed the bride’s feet in full public view to honour her, in accordance with the practice carried over from the past. While these are picked up as acquisitions, ostentations, and emulations of urban style, they also distance the actors from their rural counterparts who are considered pejoratively as country bumpkins, a feature that compares well with a similarly situated peasant community in Haryana studied by Chowdhry, and with the self-distancing of the Patidars from the agricultural Kanbis in Gujarat, studied by Pocock.22 The two essential rituals to be performed to solemnise a Hindu wedding are homa and saptapadi. But there is some confusion about these two rituals, both among common people and among contemporary jurists. Given local variations in rituals, what are seen as appropriately solemnised weddings may or may not be considered as such by jurists. This is brought out forcefully by Chowdhry who refers to Menski’s (2001) observation that simple marriage rituals may be denied recognition by Indian courts at any time, especially in view of the fact that homa (offerings made to the sacred fire at the time of marriage) and saptapadi (seven circumambulations of the fire) are essential ceremonies for all Hindu marriages.23 The saptapadi, i.e. seven steps, commonly called phera (making the rounds of the sacred fire), is also used as a metaphor for valid marriage, as opposed to the illegitimate forms of marriage discussed in the first section. The nata (secondary marriage) or karewa, leviratic marriage in Haryana, are not recognised by the law courts because of their being too simple.24 It is perhaps because higher-caste Hindus abstained from the remarriage of widows that these customary forms of marriage through minimal and simple rituals did not find recognition as legal marriages in India. Bollywood films use the seven-phera metaphor; one film is entitled sat phere, seven rounds (of the sacred fire). There is no necessary uniform observance of the norm concerning the number of circles during the homa among different castes in north-west India.25 More on the prevailing confusion about these two rituals will be discussed in the next section. 22 Chowdhry 1993; Pocock 1972. 23 Chowdhry 2006: 187. This variation increases as one moves from the first marriage to the subsequent ones, where ritual and festivity are subdued or nearly non-existent. 24 Chowdhry 2006. 25 There are some differences in the number of circles round the fire among castes of Brahmin and Kshatriya varna. A few couples (out of a dozen questioned in Delhi to contrast with what happens among the urbanward OBCs in Rajasthan) reported the number of circles round the fire as four, while a couple of them were sure it was seven circles they went round
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Most of the OBCs, the middle range of castes of traditional peasants and artisans, have been following the practice of four circles around the sacred fire, three led by the bride and the final one by the groom. A Patel groom’s wedding organised in Kota district of Rajasthan in 2005 involved seven circles round the fire, because the priest, who claimed to be highly educated and knowledgeable in Sanskritic rituals, insisted on it. The groom’s people (barat) and the bride’s people attending the ceremony were at a loss after the first four circles. The folk songs sung by women to synchronise with each phera for the occasion had been composed in accordance with only four circles round the fire. It was a bit awkward to hear only the Pandit’s chants for the remaining three circles in the ensuing silence. In contrast, the loud chorus of about one hundred women singing during the first four circles had drowned the Pandit’s chants during the ritual. Nevertheless, it clearly gave the message that the educated bride’s (a graduate with an MSc degree) educated father (expressed as padiya-likhiya, bhaniya-padiya), an engineer employed in a government undertaking, was introducing newer nuances to rituals into this largely rural based community of Patels. The bride’s father, as the main organiser of the wedding, was through his acknowledged “high” status fulfilling an exemplary role for the guests who were witnessing the ritual. In his acceptance of the bride and groom’s increased number of circumambulations around the sacred fire, he, like many of those mentioned above, who had introduced new rituals into weddings in the 1980s, also made a statement of style. And through this he was able to communicate his ability to transform the ritual for the audience, and in a way join the ranks of what Schechner calls the avant-garde.26 The bride’s parents sat opposite the bride and the groom to participate in the homa and perform the kanyadan rite, a ritual introduced by city-dwelling Patels in the 1980s. Earlier, kanyadan was symbolised by the bride’s maternal uncle lifting her after phera and carrying her out of her house to join the groom. The bride’s grandparents, however, had not done so when the bride's parents had made rounds of the sacred fire (phera) over two decades ago. Among several peasant castes (now under the OBC category), the parents did not sit across from the bride and the groom in front of the sacred fire during the wedding rituals, and did not join them in the oblations to the homa fire. Nor did they perform the rite of handing over the daughter to the groom (kanyadan) in front of the fire. The Brahmin priest represented the bride’s parents in the act while he performed the homa. Often the barber assisted the Brahmin in performing many preparatory rituals at such weddings. Weddings witnessed from 2002 to 2007 have shown an increasingly large number the fire at their own weddings. A Baniya couple married in late 2006 took four circles around the fire. A Rajput lady insisted she went round the fire seven times at her wedding, while her neighbour said she was absolutely certain that the Rajput lady’s daughter went round the fire only four times during the latter’s wedding ceremony in 2005 in Delhi. 26 Schechner 1993.
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of parents (or a brother and his wife, if one of the parents of the bride is deceased) who sit opposite the bride and groom to perform homa and the kanyadan rites. Many erstwhile bride-price practising castes (almost all declared OBCs now) have begun to give valuable gifts to their daughters and also some amount of dowry, in the last three decades. Patels, however, denounce the giving of dowry. A medical doctor groom’s father in Jodhpur city is rumoured to have struck a dowry deal with a wealthy businessman whose daughter was studying to be an engineer in Pune. He was criticised by several people in different contexts for being a greedy fellow, ruining the caste’s valuable custom of non-dowry marriages by indulging in such a deal. Dharamdan of a virgin, i.e. giving a daughter in marriage without any pecuniary or other advantage in return, was held as an ideal by Patels even during the weddings of women who are presently in the age group of 70–80 years. Until the present, any demand made by a groom’s people from a bride’s is secretly guarded and not appreciated.
Wedding Rituals Meaning Difference and Status Patel men, like many other OBC men migrating to cities, alone or with their wives and children, have, over the last few decades, been adopting a range of rituals considered as urban, and by implication sophisticated and civilised, in betrothals and weddings. A ritual modification and adoption takes place on the suggestion of the priest, neighbours (usually other castes), friends, and the young bride or groom. The bride and groom or their young siblings have gone through formal schooling, unlike their parents, and prevail upon the parents to be urbane and, by implication, non-rural as well as modern. These are considered to be the city’s fashionable events. The dynamics in performing the two rituals considered essential to solemnise a Hindu wedding, the homa and saptapadi, as practised particularly among the OBCs residing in urban areas, provide their own nuanced understanding of the wedding rituals. There is a great deal of flexibility built into the performance of these two rituals at the ground level. But there is also some confusion in their interpretation in texts and manuals, besides among people from different castes and also within the same caste. “Proper ritual” for an “appropriately solemnised” wedding is a legal requirement for a marriage to be complete; a wedding can otherwise be dismissed in law courts as incomplete, even if its civil registration has taken place due to the inadequate and unsatisfactory adoption of relevant Hindu rites and ceremonies. Chowdhry refers to Menski’s (2001) work on modern Indian family law, and states the following with regard to “proper rituals”: “These include the homa (ritual sacrificial offerings made to the fire at the time of marriage) and the saptapadi (seven circumambulations of the fire). Unless these rituals have been satisfactorily
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observed, a marriage is not valid by law, and therefore a marriage certificate issued by a court cannot be legally upheld.”27 In the 47 rites or courses, or upcar, constituting the wedding ritual as listed in the manual by Sharma (1997/samwat 2055, the Hindu calendar which is fifty-eight years ahead of the Christian one), the very second upcar after the groom and the bride’s father or guardian have arrived is to set up the sacred fireplace (vedi). The fire is lit as the nineteenth course, after which the Brahmin asks for the bride to be ready and arrive. Turmeric or some other herb is applied on the right hands of the groom and the bride (thus the popular expression for giving a girl in marriage, hath peele karna, i.e. to colour the hands yellow) and their hands are put together as the twenty-fifth course. Kanyadan is mentioned as the twenty-seventh course, in which a bride’s kin declare their gifts in cash and kind, and the father requests the groom to accept the gift of his daughter. The first round circling the sacred fire is the thirty-fourth course. During the four rounds of the fire, the bride leads in three circumambulations, and the groom in the fourth. Saptapadi occurs at the thirty-seventh course in the series of rituals. Interviews with a few of the Brahmins who officiate at weddings in Delhi, and with the wife of one of these Brahmins, revealed yet another version of the rituals requisite for a proper wedding, apart from their elaborate detail. The manual of wedding (vivah) by Sharma mentions the two lengthiest of the rituals as kanyadan and saptapadi.28 According to the manual, kanyadan is performed during the sacrificial offerings made to the sacred fire. It is in the midst of these offerings, where two officiating priests – one each on behalf of the bride and the groom – sit facing the groom, who has the bride on his right, and have the bride’s father request the groom to accept his daughter; the groom spreads his right hand to receive her hand along with other gifts. The virgin girl is thus a gift given to the groom, as are other gifts in cash and kind. The four circumambulations of the sacred fire, three of which are led by the bride and the fourth by the groom, are completed during the homa. Saptapadi follows a few rites later. Seven steps in synchrony are taken by the bride and the groom facing the pole star. At each step, the bride and the groom take vows to be companions and stay by each other’s side in all situations and events in life, with one being the breadwinner and the other the provider in the household. It is only upon their mutually agreeing to the promises that the wedding is complete; the groom now accepts the bride who occupies her place on his left, leaving her earlier seat on his right that she had during homa. Sacrifice and promise are two different steps, and the officiating Brahmins clarified that phera is different from saptapadi. The confusion between phera and saptapadi is not uncommon. The priest in the wedding in Kota in 2005 insisting on seven phera is an illustra27 Chowdhry 2006: 187. 28 Sharma 1997.
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tion. Officiating Brahmins modulate rituals at the behest of their patrons, and this is reiterated by Brahmins themselves. One of them stated: “Where is the purity of rituals today? In Delhi, people finish with the meal during the party and then ask the priest to perform the wedding ritual in half an hour! Many priests toe the line. In our region in the hills (Uttaranchal) a wedding takes five hours”. How the separation between phera and saptapadi came about is not the subject of this paper. However, our main concern is the adoption of rituals that mark urbanity and education as social messages about the performers of those rituals. The ancient Hindu law of marriage might be said to have made some impact on the OBC community in Rajasthan in shifting their preferences to what Trautmann (1981) calls the kanyadan forms of marriage, as against the non-kanyadan ones. The process affected many castes which are now upper ones – even Rajputs and Baniyas. This is likened to the coronation of Shivaji as a Hindu King of the Marathas by bribing Brahmins of Benares (Varanasi) which is well known (personal communication with A.M. Shah). The impact of films on audiences in emulating rituals and festivities, and that of manuals such as Sharma’s on attendant priests, seems to be on the rise. The emulatory performances by audiences are also contributing towards the Sanskritisation of the wedding ritual. The Sanskritic way of performing wedding rituals is seen as an ideal type of ritual for a wedding. This is increasingly displayed, among other things, by the upwardly mobile, city-dwelling OBCs. In modifying supposedly corrupt folk and popular rituals in favour of pure versions of the rituals, they make a transition: from rural to urban, from illiterate to educated, and from lower caste to higher. Over time, and through varying experiences in life, they seem to belong to more than one culture, and subscribe to contradictory values and aesthetic canons in adopting nuanced rituals with the intent to shift to a desirable one. Thus, it is clearly not the ubiquity of a “cosmopolitan style”, but an urban (haer) style of ritual produced across geographical borders.29 It is what unites the urbanites, rather than what unites ruralites (gam wala or gamadiya), that matters in ritual modification. Schechner views ritual as performance, and holds that performative analysis is a good method of looking at small-scale face-to-face interactions. The public display of rituals is extendable to the local worlds around people who perform them with a rupture of boundary between the virtual and the actual (neither fully factual nor imaginary).
29 Schechner 1993.
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References Bühler, Georg (ed.) 1886. The Laws of Manu. Oxford: Clarendon Press (The Sacred Books of the East 25). (as cited in Trautmann, 1981) Chowdhry, Prem 1993. “Persistence of Custom: Cultural Centrality of Ghunghat”. Social Scientist 21 (9/11): 91–112. — 2006. Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Desai, Sunderlal T. 1966. Mulla Principles of Hindu Law. Bombay: N.M. Tripathi Pvt. Ltd. Inden, Ronald B. & Ralph W. Nicholas 1977. Kinship in Bengali Culture. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Kalpagam, Uma 2008. “Marriage Norms, Choice and Aspirations of Rural Women”. Economic and Political Weekly 43/21: 53–63. Kane, Pandurang V. 1968. History of Dharmashashtra. Vols. 1–4. Poona: Oriental Research Institute. Kapadia, Kanaiyalal Motilal 1955. Family and Marriage in India. Bombay: Oxford University Press (University of Bombay Publications. Sociology Series 3). Madan, Triloki N. 1965. Family and Kinship: A Study of the Pandits of Rural Kashmir. Bombay et al.: Asia Publishing House. Menski, Werner F. 2001. Modern Indian Family Law. Richmond: Curzon Press. Patel, Tulsi 1982. “Domestic Group, Status of Women and Fertility”. Social Action 32/4: 363–379. — 1994. Fertility Behaviour: Population and Society in a Rajasthan Village. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Pocock 1972. Kanbi and Patidar: A Study of the Patidar Community of Gujarat. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Schechner, Richard 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge. Sharma, Pandit R. 1997. Ath Vivah Padhati. Meerut: Jawahar Book Depot. Trautmann, Thomas R. 1981. Dravidian Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sudha Sitharaman
Conflict over Worship: A Study of the Sri Guru Dattatreya Swami Bababudhan Dargah in South India An Initial Foray There has been, in recent years, a deluge of research on Sufi shrines and saints in India. These studies have centred on two themes: first, on a description and analysis of ritual practices in these shrines, and second, on the miracles of the saints and the subsequent religious conversion. Most of these studies tend to look at the symbolic meanings (and experiences), or their psychological or social functions (harmony and integration), or both.1 However, studies concerning the ways in which shrines are entrenched in modern-day politics stand neglected. This enquiry, broadly speaking, has to do with the theme of “religion” and “politics”, and about how they implicate each other. This concerns not just the way in which cultural organisations and political interests have used religion to justify a given or imagined social order (e.g. by the Hindu Right), or to challenge and change it (e.g. Sufism), but more importantly how the nation state constructs clearly demarcated spaces and regulates them in accordance with a religious ideology, and further authorises religious personalities and religious practices. I shall attempt to elaborate on these questions through a reading of debates concerning the ritual practices in the shrine Sri Guru Dattatreya Bababudhan Swami Dargah,2 located in the hills of Dada Pahad (the hill of the Sufi), also known as the Chandradrona hills, at the highest point in the Chickamagalur district of Karnataka (South India). Scholarship on Islam in South Asia has often identified dargahs3 (shrines) and mazars (tombs) as centres of spiritual healing, and highlighted their association 1 To name a few, the recent ones include Currie 2006; Dale & Menon 1978; Eaton 1978; Gaborieau 1983; McGilvray 2004; Pfleiderer 1984; Roy 1982; Saheb 1998. 2 While “Sri Guru Dattatreya Swami Bababudhan Dargah” is how the shrine is referred to in all governmental documents as well as in most court judgements, a fundamental ground of contention in recent years, as we will see, concerns whether the said shrine is a dargah or a temple. 3 A dargah is a shrine or tomb built over the grave of a revered religious figure, often that of a Sufi saint.
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with personality, space, and the power of certain “dead” individuals. Many Muslims believe that dargahs are portals by which they can invoke the deceased saint’s intercession and blessing. The dargah in Bababudhan houses the chillah (altar or seat of the deity) of Dada Hayat Meer Qalandar,4 while many also see it as a peetha/temple of Swami Dattatreya5. In addition, others believe that Dada Hayat Qalandar and Swami Dattatreya are two forms of the same divinity. Dattatreya, of the Hindu Puranas, is the three-headed reincarnation of Brahma, Vishnu, and Maheshwara, and is accompanied by four dogs.6 Dada, as the legend has it, was a close associate of Prophet Mohammad, who travelled to India to preach Islam.
4 The legends linking Dada Hayat to Prophet Muhammad are many. In his account of the history of Sufism in India, Rizvi claims that “Shaikh Abdul-‘Aziz Makki (Dada Hayat) was a companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Shaikh Abdul-‘Aziz Makki was so profoundly absorbed in asceticism and solitude that, according to tradition, he shaved his head, beard and moustache. When the Prophet Muhammad saw him, he greatly approved and remarked that the people in Paradise looked just like him. At his request, the Prophet allowed him to lead a retired life in a mountain cave and Himself prayed for his welfare and longevity” (Rizvi 1986: 304). Focusing on the hagiographical accounts of the life of Dada, we also learn that he travelled to the Dada Pahad to propagate Islam, and apparently was instrumental in saving the poor from the local landlords, who had made life miserable for them. The palegars, write Abdul Wasi Asri and Abdul Jabbar in their Tazkira-e-Hazrat Dada Hayat Mir Qalandar, “had turned this natural haven into a veritable hell with their oppression and cruelty, playing holi with the blood of innocents every day”, sacrificing them to appease blood-thirsty goddesses. Moved to pity by the plight of the people, Muhammad dispatched the Dada to rescue them (Sikand 2003: 60). 5 Dattatreya emerges primarily in the epic literature as a powerful sage and is elevated in the Puranas to the status of a yogi, guru, and avatar; the first datable evidence of the deity comes from the thirteenth-century Mahanubhava sect, where Dattatreya is regarded as one of the five manifestations of the supreme God, Parameshwara. While the Puranic tradition claims that he was the reincarnation of Vishnu, the followers of Nath tradition believe him to be the incarnation of Shiva. In the Markandeya Purana, Dattatreya appears as an antinomian yogi. In the Siva Purana, Dattatreya is said to have developed the sanyasa mode of a worldrenouncing mystic. Further, according to the Mahabharata, Dattatreya belonged to the lineage of the sage Atri. However, the most popular version has it that Dattatreya is the son of sage Atri and Anasuya (Rigopoulos 1998: 109). The two key figures in the Dattatreya tradition of Maharashtra were Sripada Srivallabha (1323–1353) and Narsimha Sarasvati (1378– 1458), considered to be the two first historical avataras of Dattatreya. Within the broader Dattatreya movement, there were Muslim ascetics and holy men who are considered avataras of Dattatreya pointing to a climate of religious exchange in Maharashtra (ibid.: 116). It is believed that Anasuya, the mother of Dattatreya, also meditated in the hills of Bababudhan. There are also stories about Anasuya having the power to make chapattis out of the soil from the cave. One of the narratives also states that a mendicant once tried to molest Anasuya and she was rescued by Dattatreya. 6 A triadic iconography of Dattatreya combining aspects of the deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva emerges during the fourteenth century (Rigopoulos 1998: 116).
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Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi, popularly called Bababudhan,7 a native of Baghdad, came to Chickamagalur in the sixteenth century via Yemen, continued his lineage, and played a major role in reviving the dargah. For centuries, both Muslims and non-Muslims have worshipped at this shrine. The practice of worshipping saints at their tombs, and praying for their intercession, has remained an issue for a number of theological debates among Muslims for centuries. Among others, one of the main issues of disagreement has centred on questions of “syncretism”8 or the degree of “Hindu influence” and “Hindu par7 The patterns of interaction that developed between the religious and wider cultural institutions, which these individuals brought with them and the pre-existing religious and cultural forms in the different regions in which they moved, constitutes one of the central processes at work in south Asian history. Local legend has it that Bababudhan (also called Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi), a native of Yemen, was supposedly appointed to manage the affairs of the shrine after Dada Hayat. Bababudhan is best remembered for having introduced coffee into the area. “According to Herklots ..., this saint, ‘intoxicated’ by the love for God, brought with him seeds from Moka (al-Mukha) in Yemen and introduced coffee in Mysore way back in the fourteenth century. But the editor of the Mysore Gazetteer (1930: 1137) claims that it was introduced by one Hazrat Shah Jama Allah Maghribi. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that India’s first coffee plantations came up on the Baba Budhan Hills around 1840…” (cited in Assayag 2004: 137). Before his death, Bababudhan appointed his nephew, Sayyed Musa Husain Shakhadri, as his successor. The custodianship of the shrine is still retained by the family, the present sajjadah nashin – custodian of the shrine – Sayyed Ghouse Mohiuddin Shakhadri, the fourteenth in line from Sayyed Musa, is said to continue to possess the powers of Bababudhan. 8 Conceptualising Islam’s interaction with traditions in India through terms like syncretism, hybridism of mystical sects, Indo-Muslim tradition, or even as a process of interrelatedness of syncretism and anti-syncretism remains largely inadequate. In the recent work on the subject, there are attempts to challenge such essentialist portrayals. Stewart and Shaw (1994), for instance, concede the inadequacy of syncretism as an analytical category. Thus, they argue, “syncretism” as a technical term is always arbitrary. In theology and comparative religion, it has often been used as a classificatory term for a variety of phenomena. It is used with negative, neutral, or sometimes positive connotations for phenomena otherwise called mixing, assimilation, acculturation, integration, inclusivism, or synthesis. While Stewart and Shaw describe a number of critical aspects they also, however, replace the notion of syncretism by attempting to demonstrate the structural interrelatedness of syncretism and anti-syncretism and how they are not mutually exclusive, as has often been argued, but remain complementary. Any meeting of cultures or religions sets free a dynamic process of assimilation and reassertion of identity (1–27). Perhaps the reluctance to see religion other than as a category of identification, and to place religious identity at a stage of historical development prior to the emergence of the nation, may require reflection. Van der Veer rightly points to the background of syncretism in the context of the dynamics of religious change, in which it forms one aspect within a wider range of patterns in the interaction of their “own” and the “other”. In other words, syncretism has to be “seen as part of the religious discourse” (Stewart & Shaw 1994: 208). Thus, the use of the term syncretism as an analytical category in the modern Indian context leaves open the question of whether the meeting of “Hindu” and “Islamic” features is to be understood as a “mixture” of religions, a patchwork model, or
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ticipation”. A long-standing argument against the worship of saints is that the imputation of divine powers to the saint and his tomb threatens the monotheistic nature of Islam, and goes against the fundamental concept of tauhid, which considers worship of anything other than Allah as amounting to shirk (polytheism) and a bid’a, an innovation contrary to Sunnah, the normative example of the prophet. The fundamental issue here is whether “mediation” of the saints amounts to shirk.9 However, the Sufi orders maintain that since all prayer is directed to Allah, the saint being seen merely as a messenger, the practice is therefore not un-Islamic. Noting the limitations of an exclusively textual understanding of such phenomena, studies on Islam point to the importance of the “folk” religion of Muslims.10 Ahmad, for instance, points out that saint worship is essentially a Hindu institution absorbed by Indian Islam. He argues that Islam in India is “heavily underlined by elements which are accretions from the local environment and contradict the fundamentalist views of the belief and practices to which Muslims must adhere”.11 Among other things, Ahmad emphasises the uniqueness of syncretic aspects of Indian Islam.12 Robinson, on the other hand, attempts to show the gradual marginalisation of syncretic practices, and how Muslim societies have moved towards a greater realisation of what he calls a “pattern of perfection”,13 which is readily discernable in the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet. For Robinson, the course of Islamic history is clear. As knowledge of this perfect Islamic pattern spreads in countries like India, the process of Islamisation will sweep away the various “du-
9
10 11 12
13
even some form of religious synthesis as the specific mode of interaction between the two. In much of the extant scholarship, the categories of “Hindu” and “Muslim” remain internally singular and absolutely exclusive. Sufism has generally been perceived as a system of thought that goes beyond the premises of Islamic Shariah, a view that has always been contested by the votaries of Sufism since early times. For the orthodoxy, the system has always failed to measure up to the orthodox yardstick of rational thinking, and a preponderance of mystic thought in society has been taken as an index of this decline. Cf. Ahmad 1973; 1976; 1981. Ahmad 1981: 81. Ahmad’s observations, writes Roy, were very largely grounded in the empirical studies of a number of other sociologists and social anthropologists, covering Islamic beliefs and practices in various parts of South Asia. For instance, Mattison Mines (1981) on Tamil Muslims, Ismail Lambat (1976) on the Sunni Surati Vohras (Bohras), Pratap Aggarwal (1976) on the Meos of Rajasthan and Harayana, Lina Fruzzetti (1981) on the Rites of Passage and Rituals of the Muslims of Bishnupur in West Bengal, amongst others. The realities of living and practising Islam emerging from these studies constitute a significant challenge indeed to some long-standing assumptions concerning Islamisation at ground level (Roy 2005: 41). Van der Veer, on the other hand, criticises Ahmad for “collapsing Hindu participation with the influence of Hinduism into a single phenomenon” (1992: 548). Robinson 2000: 52.
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bious” practices that have crept into local Islamic cultures.14 Behind the apparent divergences between the views of these scholars, there is a remarkable similarity, wherein Ahmad and Robinson come to identify “tradition” as an unchanging set of cultural prescriptions (elite) that stand in contrast to what is changing, contemporary or modern. Departing from the dichotomies15 of “elite”/“folk”, “orthodoxy”/“heterodoxy”, “tradition”/“modern”, “purist”/“syncretic” Islam, and in taking exception to the claim “of collapsing Hindu participation with the influence of Hinduism into a single phenomenon”,16 van der Veer offers an ethnographic solution through an analysis of rituals in his study of a Sufi shrine of the Rifa’i in Surat (Gujarat).17 Van der Veer shows that Ahmad’s notions of “syncretism” and the “Hindu” character of saint worship do not figure in the debate on shrine-worship here. He writes that neither the “participation” of Hindus, nor the “influence” on Muslim practices, nor even “syncretism”, is an issue of contention among the Muslims in Surat. Further, he asserts that the debate on Muslim ritual practice is largely an “internal” one (within the Muslim community) and concludes that they avoid discussions on “religious nationalism or communalism”.18 The debate on “true” practices remaining internal is itself debatable. When and why a particular religious custom is deemed as syncretic and therefore is to be replaced by something authentic and true would reveal the work of socio-cultural contexts.19 If Islam is not to be considered as a single unified tradition,20 then what needs attention is how the historicity of religious experience contributes vitally to our 14 Das 1984: 294. 15 Madan has recently argued that Islam as lived anywhere may be, in significant respects, not only different from scriptural Islam, but also even opposed to it. It could yet be argued that Islam as lived is included in, or (to use Dumontian phraseology) encompassed by, scriptural Islam, not as an alien entity by itself, but in a dialectical relation to it as a contrary. Viewed from such a perspective, “lived” Islams emerge as varieties of integral religious experience, not as so many cases of incomplete Islamisation or degeneration and, therefore, of imperfection (Madan 2007: 1–25). Also see Roy (2005: 29–61) for a discussion on “incomplete conversion and degeneration” concerning Islamisation. 16 Van der Veer 1992: 548. 17 For an interesting discussion on how the engagement with the founding texts of Islam should not be limited to scholarly commentaries alone, but entail the practical context through which foundational texts gain their specific meaning, see Das (1984) and Asad (1986). By emphasising the practical context through which foundational texts gain their specific meaning, Asad shifts from an understanding of scripture as a corpus of authoritatively inscribed scholarly opinions that stand for religious truth, to one in which divine texts are one of the central elements in a discursive field of relations of power through which truth is established. 18 Ibid.: 545–564. 19 Cf. Stewart and Shaw 1994. 20 Sufi Islam is often perceived and understood in juxtaposition with what is commonly constructed as “Orthodox Islam”. This understanding emanates from the notion that the Sufi way
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understanding of it. Writing on how Islamic interaction with other religio-intellectual traditions in India paved the way for syncretism and synthesis in religion and culture since at least the thirteenth century, Aquil states that many a time Islamic orthodoxy was unsure enough of its own yardstick to judge the standard norms of behaviour, and occasionally refrained from passing judgements on certain objectionable acts of saintly persons.21 He further argues that in different periods of medieval history in India, Sufi saints popularised Hindu mystical practices through translations, drawing attention to the similarities in the mystical terminology of Muslims and Hindus. The influence of yogic elements in the religious teachings and practices of Sufi saints, the evolution of new forms of devotion in sufiyanah music and poetry, propagated a unique way of approaching God.22 Perhaps, instead of viewing “Sufi saints” as constituting a single undifferentiated category, we could do well to historicise the interactions, disputes, and tensions that have arisen between non-Muslims and the Sufi saints, ulama’ (Islamic religious scholars) and Sufi saints, kings and Sufi orders, to bring out the variations in emphasis on the arrangement of ideas, as well as in the social roles played. Instead of dismissing the engagement of medieval Muslim scholars with Hindu symbols as mere guises by which they attracted Hindus to the Islamic faith, we need to treat them as issues requiring a more serious engagement with questions of faith and religion23 itself. In of life went beyond the tenets of Shariah. However, recent studies connect Sufi literature to the greater vehicle of Muslim piety, reminding us of the danger that often lies in talking about Sufism in a different breath from Islamic law or the study of the Hadith. Green, recounting Sufi writing in Persian, cites a work by al-Hujwiri titled Kashf al-mahjub composed in the mid-eleventh century, and its emphasis on morality and etiquette (akhlaq and adab), to argue that Sufism was a path to perfecting one’s adherence to normative Islam, rather than an alternative to it (Green 2004: 125). 21 Aquil 2007: 223. 22 Ibid. 220–230. Sufi literature from the Delhi Sultanate records a large number of cases of miraculous encounters between the Sufi shaykhs and the non-Muslim miracle-workers or mystic power-holders such as yogin, sanyasin, gurus, or Brahmans. The arrival of a Sufi shaykh in a non-Muslim environment and his decision to settle there was considered in certain cases to be an encroachment on the authority of the incumbent priest, or the ruler of that territory. The shaykh’s authority in such cases was established only after his victory in combat. While due recognition was given to the supernatural power of the non-Muslim religious leader, the shaykh’s victory in the duel with his opponent proved his superior spiritual stature and thus convinced the local challengers, the yogi, or the ruler of the finality of his faith. The yogi became a waliullah (friend of God), and the ruler a pious badshah. The conversion of the yogi and ruler was also sometimes followed by mass conversion in the territory (Aquil 2007: 215–216). 23 Scholars such as Asad, Balagangadhara, among others, have questioned the applicability of the concept of “religion” from differing perspectives when discussing non-Western cultures. They show how the concept of religion is the product of the culturally specific discursive processes of Christian history in the West and has been forged in the crucible of interreligious conflict and interaction. Balagangadhara makes this point by suggesting that “reli-
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different periods of history, the attitudes of Muslim communities to orthodoxy have varied, as have the boundaries of the communities of believers. Instead of positing oppositions between fundamentalism and secularism, (false) cults and (true) religion, syncretic and purist, this paper would instead attempt to argue that such debates and controversies are over-determined by the political assertion of Hindu and Muslim communities in contemporary India. I argue that the discussions and debates over syncretism within Islam in Karnataka today has not remained internal to the Muslims, and can no longer be confined within the reformist/orthodoxy paradigm. With the contemporary salience of politico-religious movements, such as Hindu nationalism, religio-political Islam, and other assertively public religions in the modern world, the debates now take on a new and urgent intensity. Subsequently, albeit paradoxically, the modern state, too, does not remain separate from religion.24 It is the secular state’s law that has time and again defined what constitutes genuine religion in the Bababudhan shrine and what its boundaries ought to be.25 As pointed out by Asad, if the secularisation thesis no longer carries the conviction it once did, this is because the categories of “politics” and “religion” turn out to implicate each other more profoundly than we thought, a discovery that has accompanied a certain outgrowing of the understanding of the powers of the modern state.26 By its interventions in the imbroglio, the state has demonstrated that it functions to define the acceptable face of “religion”. The “definition” of the shrine under the modern classificatory representa-
gion” is a pre-theoretical category. The a priori (and therefore largely uncontested) status of the category “religion” is reflected in the fact that, in the West, it is thought to be simply common sense that all cultures have religions and that religion is a constitutive factor in the development of culture. He seeks to answer the question, “Why have the Western intellectuals believed that religion is a cultural universal?” (Balagangadhara 2005: 340). Similarly, although from a different point of entry, Asad questions the possibility of a universal definition of religion, “not only because its constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes” (Asad 1993: 29). Religion as a category is constantly being defined within social and historical contexts, and people have specific reasons for defining it in one way rather than another. For an interesting discussion on the theme, also see Asad (1992). 24 The contemporaneous expansion of state power into the vast domains of social life previously outside its purview need to be further explored. See Asad (2003) for a discussion on this. Also, see Hirschkind, who points out how this ongoing process (expansion of state power) is central to modern nation building, and how such institutions as education, worship, social welfare, and family have been incorporated to varying degrees within the regulatory apparatus of the modernising state. (Hirschkind 1997: 13). 25 For various and contrasting imbrications of religion and politics within secular liberal polities see Asad 2003; Comaroff & Comaroff 1997; van der Veer 2001. 26 Asad 2003: 200.
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tional scheme of the nation-state – initially, as property of the waqf,27 i.e. Islamic, in 1965 and later of the muzrai,28 i.e. as Hindu in 1975, and then again as a devastanam or temple in February 2007 – is a case in point. With the emergence of the modern nation-state, which seeks to regulate all aspects of individual life, a variety of social relations stand refracted – such as those between the custodian of the shrine, his deputies and his followers; between those who accept dargah ritual practices and those who oppose them; between the custodian and the state and its legal system; and among the “Hindu” and “Muslim” devotees and pilgrims. Further, the emergence of different kinds of Hindu organisations, with a mission to liberate the shrine, makes it necessary to locate the debates within the entrenched identity politics and altered equations of Hindu and Muslim relations in Karnataka. In an attempt to enquire into how rituals get refracted by the changing context, the paper endeavours, first, to map the ritual practices in the shrine and, second, focuses on these rituals as an arena in which multiple interpretations are offered and debated by different participants and observers. The emphasis here is on how the ritual practices have been transformed in recent times, where the acts of worship have increasingly acquired the status of custom and convention denoting a religious identity. However, religiosity, understood as a realm in which rituals are performed as a necessary means to train the self to become a Sufi, remains outside the purview of discussion here.29
Ritual Cycle at the Dargah In a wildly beautiful location set midway up the Dada Pahad stands the khanqah (hospice) of Dada Hayat Meer Qalandar, with a waterfall called Manikyadhara about four kilometres to the east and Galikere30 (a lake) about three kilometres to 27 Waqf constitutes the endowments or charities given by people or institutions of Islamic faith for the propagation of Islam. 28 Muzrai is the general overseer of Hindu religious and charitable endowments in the state that came into being through the Muzrai Act of 1927. However, it was only in 1930 that a muzrai manual was drafted. 29 For a critical understanding of the genealogy of the anthropological category of ritual, see Asad (1993: 55–82) and Bell (1992). Asad here examines how ritual as action came to be marginalised within anthropological theories. Later, with the decline of structural functionalism, he argues, anthropologists increasingly interpreted ritual as an expressive and communicative act, the meaning of which was to be deciphered by the analyst. To this conception of ritual as symbolic action, Asad opposes an understanding of “rites as apt performance” and “disciplinary practices”, a view he argues can be seen in medieval Christian conceptions of the monastic life. Through an analysis of aspects of medieval monasticism, Asad argues that injunctions for the monastic life prescribe actions and rites “directed at forming and reforming Christian dispositions”. (Hollywood 2002: 110–111). 30 Muslims call it Pallang Talab.
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the north of the dargah. Dada Hayat Qalandar, the founder of the Qalandar order,31 it is believed, was one of the three and a half qalandar masters who visited South Asia, the other two being Lal Shahbaz Qalandar of Sehwan (Sind) and Bu Ali Shah Qalandar of Panipat (Harayana); the half qalandar is Rabi’a of Basra, who was denied full membership in the Qalandar order because of her gender.32 Muslims, as well as many non-Muslims, participate in some form of saint worship, a model that is centred on the belief that the divine blessing of the saint did not disappear after his death33 but was transferred to his dargah and his living descendants of the silsilah (spiritual pedigree). For Muslims saint worship is an integral part of their orthodoxy, which holds that the barakat (spiritual blessing) of the saint was transferred to his living descendants and concentrated in certain individuals, the custodians of the shrines, who were also the representatives of the saint on earth, the sajjadah nashins. Many of the Sufis were reported to have attained higher states (maqamat) in the mystic path (tariqat). Accordingly, the practice of placing amulets, and the curing of diseases, remain at the centre of ritual and religious mediations. The power of spirituality (barakat) and devotion to God bestowed the Sufi saints with powers to perform miracles. “Karamat constituted an important aspect of the beliefs and practices of the Sufis and was a significant source of their authority. The word karamat denotes the marvels displayed by the ‘friends of God’ or auliya (sing. wali)”.34 Miracle stories usually relate to the curing of diseases, levitation, and prayers for rain, bountiful crops, controlling demons, as well as the presence of a saint in more than one place simultaneously.35 Although there are some tombs of Sufis, and dervishes at the khanqah, the place is not a mortuary shrine (dargah), but a hermitage, a place of saintly visitation and mystical meditation.36 At the entrance of the khanqah, is the building wherein saj31 Among the diverse spiritual traditions within the Sufi order, qalandars constitute one of the branches, the other three being Chistia, Suhrawardia, and Naqshabandia. 32 Sikand 2003: 60. 33 Many believe that these dead individuals act as animated agents who can affect, for good and ill, the health of the living. Alluding to the arguments of Blackburn, Gottschalk writes that death plays a central role in much of Indian religious thought and behaviour, partly as a milestone in an individual’s life. This milestone marks the appropriation, for some, of remarkable powers that can influence the lives of others in the community in which they formerly resided (Gottschalk 2001: 138). 34 Aquil 2007: 200. 35 Scholarly arguments in the past few decades have called into question the often-presented freestanding and socially two-dimensional figure of the Sufi who promised visions or elevated mystical states, if certain techniques were performed. Sufis had all kinds of other social roles and were also part of myriad social functions, ties, and allegiances, which are often difficult to reconcile (see Nizami 1979; Aquil 2007). 36 The custodians of at least two other Sufi shrines in South India – the dargah of Mardan-e Gha’ib at Shivanasamudra, not far from Bangalore, and the dargah of Hazrat Tabal-e ‘Alam at Tiruchirapalli, in Tamil Nadu – claim that Dada Hayat lies buried in their respective shrine
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jadah resides and carries his spiritual activities. In this building complex, one finds the gaddi or throne of the sajjadah nashin, where he presides over the proceedings of the Darbar, preaches to the fakirs and addresses their grievances. The chillahkhana, bhandarkhana, dhunni, office, and storeroom are all part of this building complex. The place of the sajjadah nashin is called chillahkhana. Beside his room are the bhandarkhana and the langarkhana, where food prepared and served to the pilgrims and devotees. Then there is the dhunni, or eternal fire, that is kept ablaze at all times. There is a cave located three hundred steps below to the left of the entrance of the khanqah. On either side of the stairway between the khanqah and the cave there are many tombs of the sajjadah nashins of the dargah and their families, and of Sufi saints who came and stayed here. The faqirchowk comprises of four separate halls and is located to the left of the stairway before the cave. Faqirs of four sects Rifai, Jalali, Banwa and Ahle-Tabkhat camp, pray and meditate here. The cave, which is the main centre, has two portions to the left and right of the entrance. On the right of the cave on a mud pedestal stand four tombs. It is said that they are the tombs of Dada Hayat’s closest disciples – Jan Pak Shahid, Malik Tijar Faruqi, Malik Wazir Isfahani, and Abu Turab Shirazi. A few feet away from the four tombs is a door with a grille; behind it is another raised platform on which it is believed that Dada meditated. To the right of this side of the cave is a pair of holy clog (paduke) and a sacred lamp (nandadeepa). At this end of the cave is a tunnel, through which it is said Dada Hayat left for Mecca. Hindus believe that Dattatreya will emerge from this cave in kaliyuga (according to the Hindu calendar this is a mythological era corresponding to the present). At the other end of the chillah is a spring, which according to popular belief, does not go dry. Water from the spring is given to devotees as holy water (tabarruk/tirtha). On the western side of the cave a little mud plinth marks the place where Mama Jigani37 (whom Hindus venerate as Anasuya) meditated for many years while training on the Sufi path under the guidance of the Dada. There is a dark well, known as gandada-bavi (sandal well or complexes. Thus, when it comes to the location of Dada Hayat’s grave, different stories are in circulation. Perhaps the more interesting allusion, which may require further enquiry, would be that the shrines did not exist in isolation, but were part of a wider network of shrines, which may be local or regional, spreading through towns and villages of a given area, or part of larger networks, into which all of the lesser networks ultimately fed. Through the names of individuals and orders and their respective family trees, genealogy also invoked geography. 37 Mama Jigni, said to be of the royal family of Persia, meditated for many years while training for the Sufi path under the Dada. Many believe that she was the adopted daughter of Dada Hayat. It is also believed that a wandering mendicant once tried to molest Mama Jigni, and she was saved by Dada. People also believe that Mama Jigni had mystical powers to convert soil into bread and to cure a number of skin disorders. A little mud plinth to the left of the cave marks the place where Mama Jigni meditated.
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well of sandal fragrance), because the earth taken out of it has the colour and smell of sandal paste. Outside the cave is a flag-post, by the side of which is a platform on which stands a broken stone slab used for offering coconuts. A pillar in front of it has an inscription in Persian, which reads as follows: “‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate Allah; Muhammad; Ali; Fatimah; Hasan; Husain. Hazrat Mir Qalandar, May God hallow his grave. Whosoever recognizes his own self, recognizes god’, (a saying of the Prophet Mohammad). ‘Thou and I will live together in heaven’, (are the words of our Lord). ‘That which is the essence of revelation, miracle, the opening of heart, is on the hillock of Hayath Mir Qalander. The abode of God-seeking persons’…‘Privileged to enjoy Divine Grace’”.38 On the western side of the cave stand a mosque and other appurtenances where the Muslim devotees offer prayers. The early chronicles, as well as hagiographical writings, are wanting in details pertaining to the origin and evolution of numerous rituals and ceremonies performed at the shrine. However, what they do tell us is that the shrine attracted a large number of devotees, including prominent saints from different areas, and that it was guided by a priestly attendant known as the mujawar in the performance of ziyarat (visiting the graves of pious dead). It appears that Sayyed Shakhadri holding the title sajjadah nashin laid down rules and regulations, based on Sufi tradition39 and local custom. Thus, unwritten codes of behaviour for the devotee or casual visitor prescribed the manner and the style of performing rites, praying, and reciting the Fatiha within the shrine of Dada Hayat. The custom and practices observed at the shrine may broadly be divided into two main categories – rituals that are regularly performed on ordinary days and those that are performed annually, like the Urs ceremony. The core of ritual in the shrine – Surat al-Fatiha40 – consists of various rites of adoration directed at the saint and through him to Allah. Performance of Fatiha called khidmat, literally meaning service, is an exclusive privilege of the sajjadah nashin. Many times the khidmat is performed by his representative, the mujawar. 38 The University of Mysore has published this inscription in volume eleven of Epigraphica Carnatica (Rice 1998: 419). Also see Persian, Arabic and Urdu Inscriptions of Karnataka. (Quddusi and Jagirdar 2001: 139-140). 39 The origin of certain rituals and practices at the Sufi shrines is difficult to decipher. Some of the rituals at the Sufi centres, which were sanctified and made part of their celebrations, can be shown to have had an innocuous origin. An act or saying of the Sufi shaykh was given such importance by his followers that it acquired a religious “halo”. Continuous observance of the same in a prescribed manner created an “aura” around it (Jafri 2005: 219). 40 Al Fatiha is the first chapter of the Qur’an. Its seven verses are a prayer for God’s guidance and stress his lordship and mercy. This chapter has a special role in daily prayers (salat), being recited at the start of each unit of prayer, or rak’ah.
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Fatiha is performed three times a day – morning, afternoon, and evening. The mujawar unlocks the portal to the cave, offering salutations and seeking permission from the saint to enter the shrine. He carries loban (frankincense) from the khanqah after duly ascertaining that the dhunna or eternal fire is burning. On unlocking the chillah, he offers salutations or salam. He later removes the floral garlands called sej41 from the chillah of Dada and from the four mazars of the disciples of Dada Hayat, and these garlands are kept in a large basket covered with a cloth (jhab). He then removes the chador42 (tomb-cloth sheets). After the chador is removed, the chillah and the tombs are cleaned from all sides. The mujawar now recites the Fatiha and invokes the blessing of the great saint in the name of Allah. After reciting the Fatiha, he recites shajarah43 or the silsilah. He then covers the chillah, and later the tombs, with the chador, and decorates it afresh with floral sej while rose water is sprinkled. The paduke (holy clog) are then cleaned and the nandadeepa (sacred lamp) is lit. Once the cleaning of the shrine is complete, the doors of the cave are kept open for pilgrims and devotees. It may be noted that, during the course of the khidmat, no one except the sajjadah nashin is allowed inside the cave. A similar ritual is repeated at the chillah of Mama Jigni three times a day, and this performance is interspersed with namaz that is offered five times in the mosque. The pakati (cook) of the hospice prepares the free community meal in two large cauldrons. The community meal for the morning is porridge; rice and lentils are prepared for the afternoons, and in the evening again, sweet pudding is served along with rice and lentils as victuals (tabarruk/prasada). The food preparation is first offered to the deity and the trans-valued offering is subsequently distributed among pilgrims, devotees, and the staff of the hospice. Ordinary pilgrims and devotees visiting the dargah walk to the natural spring at Manikyadhara. After bathing there, each person discards one item of clothing (generally undergarments), supposedly signifying the purification of the self. Then, the devotees return to the shrine for supplication by either offering du’a (Muslim prayer form) or puja (Hindu prayer form). At the shrine devotees also offer coins, incense sticks, chadors, and food to the deity. Often these are given in fulfilment of a vow. The food offering is returned to the devotees, who identify the changed and charged substances as a blessing. All devotees and pilgrims are served water which is considered sacred, having been consecrated by Dada Hayat’s chillah, and which Dada himself is said to have produced by way of a miracle. Apart from these daily 41 The sej (garlands of flowers) are carried to the courtyard and later distributed among the pilgrims and devotees. 42 The chador is removed only once a week on Thursdays. 43 Sufi saints carried with them a genealogy that was a central part of their identity, of their and others’ sense of who they were. The shajarah begins with the Prophet, and then comes down to the four Khalifahs, the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah, the Prophet’s son-in-law Ali, grandsons Hasan and Husain, on to Shaikh Abdulqadir Jailani.
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rituals, a number of death anniversaries of great saints (i’ras) are also observed as holy days. The celebration of Id-i Milad an-Nabi, Shab-i Barat (the fourteenth day of Sha’ban), Shab-i Qadr, or Ramzan (lasting 29 days), and the mourning of Ashura (in the month of Moharram, lasting 10 days) are noteworthy.44 The Urs45 is an annual festival at the shrine commemorating the death and expanded empowerment of the healer, Dada Hayat. The Urs is a three-day celebration and attracts several thousand people from various parts of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. This festival is held generally in March. A significant feature of the Urs is the large participation of disciples belonging to the Qalandari46 and the fuqara of four orders,47 for whom Dada Hayat is of special importance. Many dargahs across South India send their representatives to participate in the Urs. On the morning of the first day of the Urs, fuqara visit the sajjadah nashin in Chickamagalur and carry the nishan (flag) for 32 kilometres, gathering at the faqirchowk at the hospice. When the fuqara have assembled, the sajjadah nashin declares open the congregation. The sajjadah nashin heads the procession to the entrance of the shrine. The green flag atop the flagpole, hoisted the previous year, is brought down and a new one installed in its place. The flags are hoisted at three different places – one at the entrance of the hospice, the second at the mazar of Sayyed Shah Jamaluddin Maghribi and the third at the entrance of the cave; after this du’a is offered. After the prayers, the fuqara begin a long procession bare-foot to the village of Attigunde, some eight kilometres away, carrying with them staffs, spears, and spiked maces (gurj). When the procession of the fuqara reaches Attigunde, they enter a house where a pot of sandalwood paste is kept wrapped up in a 44 As the present sajjadah nashin stated, “all through the year, one ceremony or another is taking place at the shrine”. 45 We learn that the Urs celebrations were performed at royal tombs, no less than at Sufi tombs. Accounts survive of annual Urs celebrations of the Bahmani Sultan Ahmad Shah Wali (see Sherwani 1985), and Aurangzeb (see Digby 2001), for example. Through an account given by Ernst & Lawrence (2002: 90–8), we learn that the etiquette of pilgrims to the shrines of the Sufi saints often closely reflected the etiquette (adab) expected of a visitor to the royal court. Further, the funerary architecture of the royal and Sufi dynasties had overlapped in South Asia. Indeed, borrowing earlier Iranian usages, the shrines of the Sufi saints were themselves termed a royal court (darbar), while the saint was titled a king (shah), and surrounded by a retinue of servants (khudam), who served him at a tomb that was decked out with all the insignia of kingship, including the crown (taj), the throne (gaddi), and the peacock-feather fan (morchhal) (cited in Green 2004: 135–136). The devotees in the shrine in Bababudhan often refer to the dargah as darbar (royal court). 46 Because of the significance of Dada Hayat in the founding of the order, qalandars from various parts of the country gather at his annual Urs. 47 Mendicants belonging to the Rifa‘i order, who trace their spiritual origins to Sayyed Ahmad Kabir Rifa‘i, nephew of the famous Sufi Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jailani, and who in many ways are similar to the qalandars, also come here in large numbers on the occasion of the Urs.
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green cloth. Incense is burnt and du’a is offered. A faqir then places the pot on his head, while another accompanies him, holding a richly embroidered protective umbrella to shade him. The procession steps out of the house, with the fuqara singing and playing their tambourines, and then returns to the cave of Dada Hayat. As the procession reaches the hospice, devotees and pilgrims gathered there reach out to touch the pot of sandalwood paste, some throwing coins over it seeking blessings. The sajjadah nashin then leads the procession into the cave. Inside the cave, the sacred seats and graves are washed after the silk sheets covering them have been removed. The sajjadah nashin recites the Fatiha and invokes the blessings of Dada Hayat and his disciples. He and the fuqara put some sandalwood paste on the new sheets that are to be used. After the sandal ceremony, as it is called, concludes, pilgrims enter the cave. They first approach the chillah of Dada Hayat, get a glimpse of the portal and the lamps that he used, as well as of a silver replica of his paduke (holy clog), and are then given holy water to drink by the sajjadah nashin or his representative. After this, they place flowers and sprinkle rose water on the tombs of the qalandars and the seat of Mama Jigni, while the mujawar recites the Fatiha. Pilgrims collect mud in little packets from a recess near Mama Jigni’s chillah, considered to have special medicinal properties. When they emerge from the cave, they break one or more coconuts on a black stone at the entrance to the shrine.48 This concludes the ritual ceremonies for the first day of the Urs. For the rest of the day, the fuqara gather at the faqirchowk and offer advice and counselling to the pilgrims converging on them. On the second day of the festival, after the morning prayers, the fuqara emerge from the faqirchowk in a procession, singing and playing their tambourines. They proceed to a room in the khanqah for a ceremony known as arbab-e majlis (ruler’s court).49 When the sajjadah nashin enters the room, he is offered the central position, as everyone sits on the ground in a circle. Apart from the fuqara and the khalifah (deputy), only those who have attained higher states on the mystic path can be part of this congregation. A faqir, a deputy of the sajjadah nashin, stands up and asks the assembly whether they have any disputes among themselves. Generally, such cases involve allegations of misdemeanour by one or more fuqara against other fuqara. The sajjadah nashin allows both parties to speak. The congregation 48 In a conversation with Yoginder Sikand, I was given to understand that this custom was introduced by a Hindu Wodeyar ruler of Mysore in gratitude for a wish that Dada Hayat had fulfilled. 49 Behind the gaddi on the wall are draped red and green sheets made of silk with the names of Allah and the five holy ones (panjatan pak) – the Prophet Muhammad, His daughter Fatimah, His son-in-law and His grandsons – embossed on it in gold. The description of the ritual in arbab-e majlis is based on the video footage that was recorded by Vijay and the Pedestrian pictures.
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has voting rights and the sajjadah nashin makes his judgement in consultation with everyone present. Justice is administered swiftly, since the word of the sajjadah nashin is law. As the majlis is concluded, the fuqara touch the feet of the sajjadah nashin and proceed back to the faqirchowk. On returning, they assemble for a collective meal that they themselves cook. The afternoon is usually reserved for the initiation of new disciples into the Faqir order or the appointment of a deputy (khalifah) from among the fuqara, with prior permission obtained from the sajjadah nashin. The initiate has to undergo an elaborate ceremony. He needs to have spent considerable time in the company of the person whom he wishes to take as his preceptor (murshid). At the gathering of the fuqara at the faqirchowk, the murshid announces that he wishes to initiate a new disciple. Then, a faqir gets up and asks the fuqara if he has their permission to go ahead with the initiation ceremony. This request is repeated three times, and each time, if the fuqara collectively agree, they answer, “alhamdulillah” (praise be to Allah). The initiation ceremony then begins. A pair of scissors placed on a clean white cloth is passed around the assembly. Each faqir picks up the scissors and, after turning them over, places them back on the cloth. Then a junior faqir clips some hair from the neophyte’s beard, moustache, and eyebrows and leads him by the ear to the village barber. The barber completely shaves off all his bodily hair, and this is interpreted as a new birth. The neophyte is then brought back to the faqirchowk, and he kneels down in front of the chosen faqir. A leather belt (tasmah) is tied around his waist and he is given new clothing to wear. This consists of a white shroud (gilaf), which must be used to wrap his corpse when he dies. It signifies his death to the world and worldly desires. The murshid recites the confession of faith (kalimah) which the neophyte repeats. Then the murshid gives him a new name. The neophyte prostrates himself in submission before the murshid. The murshid takes an earthen cup containing sweet lemon juice, and, taking a sip from it, gives it to the neophyte to drink. This constitutes transference of blessing and the cementing of a close bond between the two. The neophyte is now a full-fledged member of the faqir fraternity. The new faqir is now given his own tambourine and a gurj. A junior faqir places the sharp points of the gurj on the eyes, throat, and chest of the new faqir as a symbolic zarb.50 The new faqir then goes around the assembly, touching the feet of the fuqara present and seeking their blessings. Each of them puts his hand on his head and places some coins or tobacco in the folds of his cloak as a present (hadiyah). For the next three days, the new faqir must ob-
50 The spiked mace is an eternal symbol of the Faqir order. Some among the fuqara fall into a trance, and pierce their tongues, necks, throats, and heads with sharp iron spears after taking the name of Dada Hayat. This is regarded as a miracle, as no blood flows out nor is any pain felt. This practice is known as zarb. Fuqara trace the origin of zarb to Imam Ali and the early qalandars.
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serve strict austerities.51 He is allowed to eat only one meal a day, consisting of chapattis. He must also observe strict silence during this period. After this, all the various ceremonies associated with the deceased, such as the observances on the eleventh and the fortieth days after death, must be followed, for he is considered to have died to the world. A similar, though less elaborate ritual ceremony is followed in the case of the appointment of a khalifah. A new ochre silk cloak (khirqah) is placed in a black coconut shell (kashkul/kishtar) and given to the sajjadah nashin who is to appoint his deputy. He wears the cloak, while the would-be khalifah kneels before him. The sajjadah nashin then recites the kalimah and the would-be khalifah recites after him. Then the sajjadah gives him a new name, symbolising his new and transformed identity, and places the khirqah on him. The event concludes with a faqir playing a drum and another blowing a horn. On the third day, after the morning prayers are over, the fuqara begin a long march to the village of Jannat Nagar, about seven kilometres from the shrine. This village, now in ruins, contains the graves of some seventy faqir companions of Bababudhan who were killed in an attack by some palegars (chieftains). Most of these graves have disappeared in the thick jungle, and only five are still tended to. The route to Jannat Nagar passes through high mountains and dense forests. The faqir procession starts with collective du’a being made, and some fuqara piercing themselves with swords and flagellating themselves with whips.52 One faqir carries on his head a pot of sandalwood paste, and the rest accompany him. The fuqara carry green flags strung on long bamboo poles. On reaching the tombs, the sandal ceremony is performed for two martyrs (Hazrath Malik Kabir and Hazrath Malik Jaheez), as was done with Dada Hayat’s chillah. The sajjadah nashin officiates at this ceremony and prayers (namaz) are offered at a ruined mosque in the jungle, dating back to the times of Bababudhan, after which the fuqara walk back in a procession to the hospice. Sandalwood ash from the incense that is burned in the shrine of Dada Hayat is distributed in little packets, along with a sweet dish, as holy offerings to the fuqara. Coconuts, wrapped in green cloth, are also distributed to the pilgrims. In the evening, the fuqara are thanked for solemnising the Urs in a ceremony known as bandaga. Each group of fuqara is presented with a goat, money, and a gilaf. After the prayer, the fuqara are served a meal consisting of
51 Every faqir has a code of conduct to follow including abstinence, a life of total remembrance of the Lord, contentment, and total surrender. 52 An interesting parallel is the analysis of a Sufi saint cult in Surat by van der Veer (1992). He recounts how Hindus participate in some form as tomb worshippers (praying) in the Rifa‘i cult, but do not take part in the “playing” with swords (a self-immolation practice). However, for Muslim saint worshippers, apart from “praying”, “playing” is also significant and an integral part of orthodoxy.
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rice, lentils, meat, and salad. This is known as faqiron ka langar. The Urs then formally concludes.53 Apart from shrine visitation, there are also other more esoteric practices and meditational techniques, as well as prayers for summoning visions or practices that are more clearly magical in character. One of the many Sufi meditative practices (zikr) is a graveside meditation (zikr-e kashf-e qubur) that is capable of revealing to its practitioner the spiritual states of the “dead” beside whose tomb it is performed.
The Changing Context The dargah has emerged over time as a popular pilgrim centre where the rituals and practices in the shrine defy any exclusive identification of being either Islamic or Hindu, challenging our understanding of “Hindus” and “Muslims” as two monolithic and mutually opposed communities.54 Recorded evidence also suggests that there was no communal conflict in the area until recently. Clearly, there exists a lack of adequate language in modern scholarship to describe such religious practices. Interconnected with this is the role of the modern secular state. Religion in the modern world assumes certain established criteria for determining membership in the national community as either minority or majority. The marking of religious identity as a category of social composition is facilitated by administrative classifications such as census reports, which assign groups and identities to pre-determined categories, often overruling the indeterminate religiosity/beliefs and practices by which people may in actuality choose to live their lives. The “religious” practices falling outside such given categories are rendered “dangerous” and “threatening” by the contesting claimants of legitimation. The nation state recognises only the social components of religion – its hierarchical structures and organisational features. As a consequence, the institutions enabling the cultivation of 53 Qawwali (literally meaning to speak or give an opinion) is a form of Sufi devotional music practised and performed in the shrines of the Indian subcontinent for enabling self-annihilation of the listeners, and therefore forms a prime focus in the Urs. However, for reasons not made clear by the sajjadah nashin, Qawwali singing has no place in the Bababudhan dargah. 54 Historical records tell us that the shrine of Bababudhan was patronised by Hindu as well as Muslim kings, both of whom endowed it with large grants. In the edicts issued by the Hindu rulers of Mysore, the shrine was referred to as the Sri Dattatreya Swami Baba Budhan Peetha (The Monastery of the Revered Lord Dattatreya Baba Budhan), while the Muslim custodians of the shrine were granted the honorific title of jagadguru or “Teacher of the World” (Gazetteer of Mysore, cited in Sikand 2004: 171). The Supplement to the Mysore Muzrai Manual of 1940 issued by the Maharaja of Mysore states that the sajjadah nashin of Bababudhan was the only Muslim religious head to be exempted from personal appearance in the civil courts of the state (cited ibid.: 500–501), and this incorporates contrasting conceptions that have radically different implications for the organisation of political life within the public and private domains.
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religious virtue become subsumed within, and transformed by, legal and administrative structures linked to the state.55 Thus, attempts by the state to formalise definitions and determine practices in the dargah have not only prevented a deeper understanding of the poly-semantic nature of the shrine’s ritual practices, but also blocked insights into the imaginations of their worshippers.56 Subsequent to the Indian Government’s Central Waqf Act in 1954, the Waqf Board, in charge of Muslim-endowed properties, came into existence for maintaining the waqf. The enlisting of all the waqfs in Karnataka began in 1964, and in 1973, the Government of Karnataka issued an order stating that all the notified waqfs should come under the administration of a single entity – the Waqf Board. In 1975, the Deputy Commissioner of Chickamagalur consulted the government for guidance with regard to classifying the Bababudhan shrine. The dargah, which had so far been under the administration of a sajjadah nashin, was transferred to the Waqf Board in the same year. In effect, the shrine was unilaterally declared an Islamic institution.57 When the dargah was transferred to the Waqf Board, nonMuslims who visited the shrine became apprehensive, and on 13 December 1976, a case was filed in the civil court of Chickamagalur questioning the transfer.58 The 55 Hirschkind 1997: 13. 56 Balagangadhara & Roover argue how the Indian state, modelled after the liberal democracies in the West, is itself a harbinger of religious conflict, because of its concepts of tolerance and state neutrality. “The framers of the Indian constitution took over the theory of liberal state as it emerged in the West and tried to transplant it into the Indian soil. In the process, they also endorsed the theological claim that religion is an issue of truth. While such a stance makes sense in a culture where the problem of religious tolerance arises because of the competing truth claims of the Semitic religions, it does not do the same in another cultural milieu where the pagan traditions are a living force. Consequently, the Indian state is subject to contradictory demands. It must look at the Hindu traditions the way the Semitic religions do […] while simultaneously playing agnostic with respect to the issue of whether religion itself is a matter of truth. […] When the Indian state assumes the truth of a Semitic theological claim, and further accepts this claim as its own epistemological position, then it actively creates and promotes the religious rivalry between the majority […] and […] minority. […] As a matter of state policy, it creates and sustains opposition between religions and traditions. Consequently, it transforms conflict between different groups into a religious conflict. […] By forcing the framework of the Semitic religions on to the Hindu traditions, the ‘liberal’ state in India is also coercing the communities to solve their internal conflict in a religious manner. That is to say, it is forcing the pagan traditions in India to mould themselves along the lines of the Semitic religions” (2007: 67-92). 57 And ever since, the sajjadah nashins have been fighting legal battles in the courts of law contesting others’ (Waqf Board as well as Muzrai Department) claims to custodianship of the shrine on the grounds that the dargah was not exclusively either Muslim or Hindu. The legal dispute over the proprietarial status of the shrine has remained unresolved for more than forty years now, and has acquired momentous significance at this particular time in Indian politics. 58 On 13 December 1976, B. C. Nagaraj Rao and C. Chandrashekar filed a case in the civil court of Chickamagalur questioning the transfer of Sri Guru Dattatreya Bababudhan Swami
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objection was that such a transfer would hinder the Hindus from expressing their devotion and pursuing their ritual practices. An examination of the appeal59 shows that the petitioners did not have any problem with the forms of worship or the administrative arrangements existing at the time.60 In response, the Chickamagalur civil district court (OS 25/78) ruled that the syncretic character of the shrine be maintained,61 further, that religious rituals and practices prevailing before 1975 are continued, with the sajjadah nashin continuing as the custodian with administrative and religious rights, and that the shrine should not be included in the jurisdiction of the Waqf Board. Ever since, the Board has been questioning the order of the Chickamagalur court. Nevertheless, all courts, including the Supreme Court, have upheld the district court’s ruling. Datta Peetha Devasthana Samvardhana Samiti (Committee for the Development of Datta Peetha temple, hereafter Samiti), an offshoot of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), threatened that it would launch an agitation demanding an end to the sajjadah nashin’s administration, and instead secure the appointment of a Dharmadarshi Mandali (Council of Hindu Religious heads) and a Hindu priest. It also forcibly took a Hindu pontiff into the sanctum sanctorum of the shrine. In the backdrop of the VHP’s propaganda that the mujawar who takes care of the worship did not allow the Hindu pontiff to enter the sanctum, the EnDargah from Muzrai Department to the Waqf Board. The Government of Karnataka, the Waqf Board, the Endowment Commissioner, and the sajjadah nashin were made respondents. The nature of the case warranted its transfer to a bench of Judges at the Chickamagalur district court with the number OS 25/78. This case and the judgement now play an important role in the Bababudhan Dargah-Datta Peetha controversy today. 59 The appeal was that Hindus would be hindered from expressing their devotion if the shrine was handed over to the Waqf Board and that gradually the shrine would come under the unilateral rule of Muslims. Hence, in the petition the following appeals were made: 1) The institution in question should be declared as one where both Hindus and Muslims converge or as one which is a sacred centre of worship for both Hindus and Muslims. 2) To declare that this institution is not a waqf property and that the second respondent (the Waqf Board) should not have included it in the list of waqf properties and hence to declare it as an illegal act; also to declare that there would be no restrictions on the rights of Hindus over this institution. 3) Since the second respondent (Waqf Board) does not have any right over the maintenance and administration of the institution, the maintenance, regulation and administration of the institution should be transferred from the second respondent to the third respondent (Religious and Charitable Endowments of Karnataka) as it existed before June 1975. 4) To impose a permanent stay order on the second respondent (Waqf Board), ordering it not to hinder Hindus exercising their rights over this institution as stated above. 5) Extraction of costs of (litigation) from the respondents. 6) And any other relief that the respected court may deem suitable. 60 The plaintiffs nowhere question the fact that both Hindus and Muslims offer worship at the shrine, nor the fact of the custodianship of sajjadah nashin. 61 The court ordered, on 29 February 1980, that the status existing prior to 1975 must be restored.
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dowment Commissioner asked the Deputy Commissioner to submit a report on the status existing before 1975, concerning issues such as who was allowed to worship in the sanctum sanctorum; the ways of distributing the holy victuals, etc. It was then decided that only those rituals that had been in practice prior to 1975 be allowed to continue. A petition was then filed against the sajjadah nashin by the Samiti alleging that he had failed in providing facilities to the devotees and pilgrims and that he was involved in the embezzlement of funds. It asked the district administration not to allow the sajjadah nashin from collecting rents from shops during the Urs. The Assistant Commissioner of Chickamagalur accepted this petition, and on 22 March 1983, an order was issued that thereafter the government would collect the rents. The sajjadah nashin filed a case in the High Court in 1984 pleading for these orders to be quashed, as they went against the Chickamagalur district court order, which proclaimed that the status existing before 1975 be maintained. The High Court, keeping in mind the court order, stated that the administration of the institution be handed over to the sajjadah nashin and further directed the Endowment Commissioner to make a list of administrative and religious observances and practices that prevailed before 1975, after duly conducting a public hearing and scrutinising all the documents. In 1987, the process of conducting public hearing began. As per the direction of the Endowments Commission and in accordance with the order of the High Court, Deputy Commissioner submitted a report to Endowment Commissioner. Accordingly the Endowment Commissioner in his order dated 25.02.1989 restored the position as it existed prior to 1975 in respect of management of the institution. It included the rituals and practices as given below: “The following are the several customs and practices prevailing before 1975. 1) There is a Mujawar appointed by the Shakhadri to perform daily rites (pooja) inside the caves and he is the one permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the institution and distributes tabarrukh/theertha to the devotees of both communities; 2) He also puts flowers to the Paduka/Khadave/ lights the Nanda Deepa; 3) The recognised Hindu gurus of different Mutts are also taken inside the cave gate to offer their respects to the Paduka/Khadave; 4) Persons who do not take food prepared in the Langarkhana are given ‘padi’ i.e. the provisions like rice, dhal etc., for preparing food; 5) The Mujawar takes Lobana (Sambrani) and performs religious rituals in the main shrine between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily; 6) The above practices include certain practices which are found in Hindu temples also, such as i) Offering flowers to Padukas; ii) Lighting the Nanda Deepa; iii) Giving
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Theertha to the pilgrims; iv) Breaking of coconuts; v) Taking Hindu gurus of religious Mutts with respect; vi) Giving ‘padi’ to the pilgrims.”62 This report essentially upheld the syncretic nature of the shrine that had existed before 1975, and also recognised the sajjadah nashin’s right to administer. Despite this attempt at a resolution, the shrine has today become the site for self-identification, exclusion, and tensions among different groups in the state of Karnataka. For the first time, in 1987, the Samiti asked permission to celebrate Datta Jayanti. In December 1989, the Samiti requested the district administration to make suitable arrangements. Surprisingly, the district administration complied, thereby violating its own order, which had barred any new rituals. Then, in 1991, the Samiti submitted a memorandum to the Deputy Commissioner seeking permission to conduct Datta Jayanti and to be allowed to hoist a religious flag, bhagavadhwaja, at the “Dattatreya temple” i.e. the shrine, accompanied by the singing of devotional hymns, etc. A peace meeting was held by the district administration, and in answer to the memorandum, the Deputy Commissioner, citing the earlier order, requested that no new rituals be introduced. Despite this request, Datta Jayanti was allowed in a manner that “does not violate the law”, and other requests, such as hoisting the bhagavadhwaja by the side of the green flag on the flag-posts in the shrine, were honoured. In short, although the district administration maintained that new practices would not be allowed, Datta Jayanti was allowed to be celebrated for three consecutive years. In the following years, this was to become a “tradition” in itself. Every year in December, when an appeal was made to the district administration to permit Datta Jayanti, the 1989 Endowment Commissioner’s order was invoked, but Datta Jayanti, nonetheless, was allowed. The rituals that were non-existent before 1975 were added and performed. Instead of the green flag, which is the symbol of a Sufi dargah, a demand was now made for the permanent hoisting of the bhagavadhwaja, which was initially hoisted only for a day. The Datta Jayanti, which was previously celebrated for a day, was transformed into a three-day programme. In 1990, when the Samiti cadres, who brought the bhagavadhwaja, tore down the green flag, the district administration did not take any action. It merely requested in a meeting in 1991 that such a thing should not be repeated. In 1995, during the Datta Jayanti, there were inflammatory anti-Muslim speeches and much slogan shouting, yet the district administration took no action. The winter of 1997 saw five Rath Yatras (pilgrimages) organised by the Samiti, which was now claiming that below the seat (chillah) of Dada Hayat Qalandar was buried the idol of Lord Dattatreya. Subsequently the demand was made for the
62 Deputy Commissioner, Chickamagalur District order no. MS: DVS 80: 88–89 dated 25/2/1989: 35–36.
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chillah to be demolished, with the slogan “Bababudhan after Babri Masjid”63 being used. Further, it was demanded that agamic (Hindu) forms of worship needed to be introduced to replace those that were being held, and that a Hindu archaka (priest) be appointed instead of a mujawar. On 16 December 1998, the Guru Dattatreya Peetha Trust and the VHP wrote a letter to the district minister then in charge, indirectly declaring their forthcoming agenda. The letter stated that: “in the case OS 25/78 Hindus have been given open sanction to perform worship according to their tradition. The High Court too has upheld this right. However the Government has not been implementing these orders. Therefore, at least now, the Government must appoint a Hindu priest to facilitate worship of the nandadipa (holy lamp) and the paduke (holy foot-wear) according to Hindu agamas (code of worship) and arrange for special worship on Thursdays and full moon days. Besides on Datta Jayanti day and other auspicious days permission must be given to perform rituals according to Hindu convention. Hindu devotees must be allowed to conduct Bhajans (singing devotional songs) in the premises of the cave without any hindrance. Permanent installation of Hindu religious symbols must be allowed and an investigation and restoration of the donations made by kings to this Peetha need to be carried out. The tombs present here must be trans-located in order to maintain the sanctity of the surroundings. Animal sacrifice must be prohibited. The present sajjadah nashin has been running this institution as if it is his private property and has misappropriated lakhs of rupees. There must be an investigation into it. A council of Dharmadarshis (religious supervisors) should be formed by the Government to execute all the above arrangements.” While the dispute was that Hindus should be allowed to worship freely according to the religious practices that existed before 1975, the Samiti interpreted the judgement given in the case as permission for Hindus to perform worship according to their tradition. In a pamphlet entitled “Let the Peetha’s Protection Become Your Resolve” brought out by the Samiti, the following interpretation about the case and the court’s order pertaining to it was put forward: “In 1976, when the Government transferred the ownership of the Peetha to the Waqf Board and seized Datta’s footwear and the sacred lamp and denied the Hindus their right to worship, the devotees of Datta from Chickamagalur, on behalf of all the Hindu devotees, filed a representative case OS 25/78 at the Civil Court. The court upheld the rights of worship of Hindus and returned Dattatreya’s footwear and the sacred lamp to its original place and 63 Babri Masjid is a mosque located in Ayodhya (the state of Uttar Pradesh) that was demolished on 6 December 1992.
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ordered that Hindus must be allowed to carry on their forms of worship without any hindrance. The appeal filed by the Waqf Board against this judgment in the Karnataka High Court has been set aside and a judgment has been passed that Hindus can conduct their forms of worship without any obstruction. It is also said in the judgment that the assets of the Peetha belong to both Hindu and Muslim devotees and the ownership of the Peetha and its administration rest with the Hindu Religious Endowment Commissioner”. The sajjadah nashin has now been stripped of his authority to collect ground rent and manage the affairs at the shrine. In the year 2000, a nineteen-member committee under the chairmanship of the Deputy Commissioner was set up to administer the shrine, which included sajjadah, eight members each from the Hindu and the Muslim communities, and the Assistant Commissioner as member secretary. Having made inroads into the administration, the Samiti has been able to bring about changes to prevailing practices and to introduce new ones in the shrine, with the full support of the district administration. Initially, it was the demand for hoisting a saffron flag beside the green ones, to be subsequently followed by objections to cook, eat, or serve non-vegetarian food at the hill, and a refusal to allow the mazars to be covered by chador; it also objected to the increase in the number of mazars, followed by a refusal to permit the burial of the thirteenth sajjadah nashin in the shrine after he died in 1999. Following these developments, sajjadah and all the eight Muslim members of the committee proffered their resignations. Despite the order of the Endowment Commissioner of 1989, the subsequent court orders preventing the inclusion of new rituals and ways of worship, and the Parliamentary act of 1991,64 the district administration has been permitting the Samiti to introduce new practices in the shrine. Claiming that the shrine was originally a temple, the Samiti has not only demanded the introduction of two new annual festivals – Datta Mala Abhiyana (in October), and Datta Jayanthi (in December) which includes Shobha Yatre (procession) and Anasuya Yatre (a day commemorating Dattatreya’s mother) – but now demands that the district administration set aside for its use half of the total proceeds collected as ground rent and other revenues in the shrine at the time of Urs, as the shrine belongs to the Hindus, too. Meanwhile, the district administration has also played an active role in converting the mosque into an office, and proposes to remodel the tombs on either side of the stairway to the cave into a garden. The khanqah’s langarkhana, bhandarkhana, chillahkhana, and dhunna have all been razed to the ground by the district administration. The role these spaces played in the daily and annual ritual has therefore been completely altered. As the khanqah building complex has been de64 An Act of Parliament was passed in 1991 in the context of Babri Masjid imbroglio, to prohibit conversion of any place of worship and to provide for the maintenance of the religious character as it existed on the 15th day of August 1947.
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stroyed, the loban that was traditionally carried to the shrine is now being carried from the makeshift room adjacent to the courtyard; the victuals that were distributed as part of the daily ritual have been abandoned; the chador on the chillah of Dada Hayat has been permanently removed; the flag-post that kept the flag (nishani) stands empty. While the daily rituals at the shrine now take on an altered form, the weekly and monthly rituals are not being performed. However, Datta Jayanti and Datta Mala Abhiyana continue to be celebrated. The shrine now stands barricaded on all sides. The Datta Mala Abhiyana devotees enter the shrine in a queue through the railings. The Samiti is now interpreting Urs, which once brought in devotees and pilgrims of all communities, as an exclusively Islamic practice. As the state has withdrawn the administrative powers and custodianship of the shrine from the sajjadah nashin, he has refused to exercise his religious rights at the time of Urs and the annual festival has not taken place since 2005. The initiation ceremonies into khalifah and the resolutions of disputes that used to be brought before the arbab-e majlis are now being attended to in Chickamagalur in the sajjadah nashin’s residence. The initiation of faqirs into the order is taking place at another dargah of Hazrat Sayyed Mazhar Shakhadri in Chickamagalur. Countering the claims of the Samiti, the Waqf Board, and the State, nearly 132 organisations came together to form the Komu Souharda Vedike (Forum for Communal Harmony, hereafter Souharda Vedike) in 1998. They maintain that the “syncretic” character of the shrine be retained and that the practice of celebrating Urs continued and Datta Jayanti be stopped. Arguing against the proposed agamic mode of worship by the Samiti, the Souharda Vedike contests that Dattatreya of Bababudhan represents a synthesis of Shaivism and Sufi cult, and therefore that no exclusive mode of worship may claim the place of the existing practice. Upholding the plurality of traditions that have existed and proliferated at the shrine, Souharda Vedike has been challenging the introduction of agamic forms of worship, which, they claim, would be an attempt to introduce Brahmanical practices in place of early Dattatreya traditions that were purportedly anti-Brahmanical. However, the reactions of Souharda Vedike against Hindu revivalism have not been particularly successful in enabling a higher level of discourse to develop, for the counter-response makes an equally positivist claim that the shrine was built on an empty piece of land, that Islamic settlements predate Hindu presence in Bababudhan hills and so forth. Like all given histories, this too is subject to doubt and can never be fully authenticated. In either case, religiosity or religious practices – Hindu or Islamic – remain unplaced and unaccounted for.65 This is evident in the converging 65 No matter what evidence might exist for or against the existence of peetha before the chillah, the weight of the proof (or lack of it) does not seem to affect the authoritativeness with which Hindu devotees accept belief in Swami Dattatreya and Muslims in Dada Hayat.
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positions of the Samiti and the Vedike, which hark back to the origins of the shrine, or to what it once was, with the result that, in their narratives, “religion” becomes essentialised and hence hinders explanations of change. Further, this type of analysis impoverishes the agency of the believers or focuses only on their resistance, or both, without appreciating their efforts to manage the perceptual and dynamic processes that negotiate tradition and change.
Conclusion What has been attempted above is a division of the space of the dargah into four distinct sectors with their actors to highlight the dynamics ensuing between them. The Datta Peetha Devasthana Samvardhana Samiti, which claims that the shrine was originally a temple, asserts the need for agamic (Hindu) forms of worship to be introduced in place of those that are in practice. The Waqf Board, for its part, is attempting to obtain exclusively Muslim control. The secular state and its laws, embodied in the numerous Court Orders along with those of the Endowment Commission, have attempted to define what true religion is and where its boundaries should properly be laid. The Souharda Vedike maintains that the “syncretic” character of the shrine must be retained and that the practice of celebrating Urs must be continued. Finally, the legal dispute over the proprietary status of the shrine and what constitutes appropriate worship, remaining “unresolved”66 now for more than forty years, has acquired momentous significance. While a lot of space is devoted to the interventions of the State, this should not imply, however, that the other actors have been reduced to the role of passive recipients of state policy with no power to intervene or negotiate. Even so, despite the interventions of the four parties discussed above, that the State wields a disproportionate power in relation to the rest is to state the obvious. Furthermore, the conflict over worship in the dargah is situated at the intersection of debates on religiosity which concern the definition of customary and conventional, and whose raison d’être is to ascribe a distinct identity, thereby radically transforming the fluid role ritual practices have played historically in the realisation of pious life. Within these contexts, secularism has entailed the legal and administrative intervention in religious life so as to construct “religion” as a passive repository of beliefs and identities, as elucidated above.
66 As far as the secularists are concerned, it is a resolved issue requiring political will for its implementation, but for Datta Peetha Devasthana Samvardhana Samiti it remains unresolved.
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Acknowledgements Fieldwork was conducted in Bababudhan dargah, Chickamagalur, Karnataka, South India between April and May 2005. Occasional visits were made in December 2003, December 2005, and again in February 2007. The first note of thanks goes to Fairoz M. Khan, for offering to share the numerous court orders and other documents concerning the shrine. I am deeply indebted to G. K. Karanth, N. Manu Chakravarthy, Shiva Sundar, Ramesh Bairy, M. R. Rakshith, P. Sudarshan, Sushma, and G. S. R. Krishnan, for their comments on this article. I would like to thank Sayyed Ghouse Mohiuddin Shakhadri, Yoginder Sikand, and S. L. Peeran for their input. Suggestions made by Gita Dharampal-Frick and Robert Langer were used in writing this article. Thanks, too, to the numerous participants of the Panel on “Ritual Transfer”, in particular Torsten Tschacher, Tulsi Patel, and Subhadra Channa, and to Soumen Mukherjee, for their useful feedback. This article is part of a larger project that is financially supported by the Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi. The usual disclaimers apply.
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Donald S. Sutton
Transfers of Ritual at a Northern Sichuan Site: Tibetan and Han Chinese Pilgrims, and Han Chinese Tourists A sacred site offers excellent opportunities for ritual transfer. If such a site has attracted worship in the past, whether through its commanding location or some remarkable natural feature, it has become a ritual focus, a place of regular pilgrimage. For its pilgrims, it is an axis mundi that leads beyond the world as the senses know it, transcending time itself, and marking the values and perhaps territories they hold dear and that define membership in their social group. Since pilgrimage, broadly speaking, is a ritual, the arrival of a new category of worshippers amounts to a simple form of ritual transfer. As the new group draws efficacy from the site, a complex evolution of ritual practices may take place, taking on two forms: the elaboration of the group’s prior practices elsewhere, or the imitation and modification of rituals already practised by others at the site. This chapter examines the arrival, hundreds of years apart, of two successive groups of worshippers at a previously occupied site of pilgrimage, and the issue of their long-term coexistence. Along with ritual adaptation, I am especially interested in the development of mythic interpretations consistent with each group’s cultural traditions; and the effects of the modification of the site itself to suit new groups.1 We should start by noting that long-term dual worship is perhaps rare. After all, the object of worship and the narrative of origin attached to it may stand not just for the worshipper’s identity, but also for claims of sovereignty over neighbouring lands. At Jerusalem, the neighbouring Dome of the Rock and Wailing Wall coexist, but Jews and Muslims worship separately; just like in Ayodhya, in northern
1 This paper is based on collaborative fieldwork and research in libraries and archives with Xiaofei Kang, in a project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (2004– 7). Some parts draw from the following: Kang & Sutton (2008), Sutton & Kang (2009); Kang (2009); and other parts from unpublished papers written for the annual conferences of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, March 2005, and the Association for Social Anthropology, London Metropolitan University, April 2007; and the Critical Han Studies Conference at Stanford University, April 2008. I thank the editors for their contribution to this paper and Petra Rösch for her comments on an earlier draft.
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India, a place held sacred in colonial times by both Muslims and Hindus.2 Different religious calendars, as well as wider rivalries, limited mutual contact, and perhaps only the protection by the state made dual use possible. Rituals do not seem to have been transferred at either of the two places. By contrast, imagine a site of seasonal worship, where over many years different social groups celebrate annually, on the same day, rubbing shoulders as they arrive and conducting rituals within sight of each other. Mutual influence is to be expected under such conditions of co-use: the new group may adopt pre-existing rituals, invent new ones, and devise new mythic narratives to account for them. The activities of new users may force changes at the ritual site, and inspire emulation by established pilgrims. Let us assume that a sacred site in modern times is opened to tourism, so that tourists mix with local devotees, walk the same footpaths, and visit the same shrines. Whether or not tourism is a ritual, as MacCannell, Graburn, and other authors argue,3 is subject to debate, but certainly, among the features often ascribed to rituals are many that fit tourism as well: like pilgrims, tourists perform acts that are very significant, though their meaning is often left unexamined by participants, whose routine is outside the everyday acts that invoke and sustain unseen (though not necessarily religious) authority.4 Tourists can theoretically copy pilgrim rituals and vice versa; tourist presence might inspire pilgrims to modify their rituals for display to tourists; the tourist industry and the state might restrict pilgrims for the benefit of tourism; and new myths suited for tourists might be constructed. In such cases, the general location of ritual practices would not change (as in diasporic or synchronic ritual transfer5), but changes would occur with regard to the visitors to the site, their ritual practices, and their explanation of these. We can assume that the arrival of a new group at a sacred site is followed by a period of adjustment, in which the site itself plays an active role. A site is never a tabula rasa. Topographically, there are centres and peripheries, man-made paths and structures, way-stations, side-stops, and final destinations, and there are preexisting rituals available for imitation. A new group also brings with it its own cultural priorities, ritual styles, and mythic traditions. The site may be reconstructed to suit ritual traditions developed elsewhere, and if not physically altered, it will at least be transformed in the imagination; and the new group is forced to adapt its traditions to fit the site. Therefore, if the site is already in use, interaction 2 In 1992 the Babri Mosque was demolished by Hindu extremists wanting to reestablish a temple for Rama, who they believe was worshipped at the site before the Mughal conquest. Now there is no building at the site, though Hindu devotees have ritually deposited many bricks carried there from home, to build one. 3 MacCannell 1999; Graburn 1983. 4 Cf. Bell 1997. 5 Langer et al. 2006.
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with other groups will proceed in a sort of triangular fashion, with the site playing an active role in the developing relationship between the new and the established group, both transforming and being transformed by them. What is the experience of old and new groups in these ritualised visits? In their influential comparative study of pilgrimage, Victor and Edith Turner wrote about a state of communitas which transcends the group identity at sacred destinations.6 Other scholars, however, have argued that groups making pilgrimages may actually be fortified in their identity by the experience.7 Both scholarly positions correspond with the long-established view that rituals are a means of creating or reinforcing identities – producing states of mind that may have lasting effects. A tribal rite of passage makes an adult out of a child; a graduation ceremony turns a student into a potential member of the educated workforce; a wedding builds the basis of a new family. The issue thus emerging pertains to the question of how the two positions can be reconciled. Can rituals both unite and separate? Can pilgrimage simultaneously overcome divisions and harden them? Perhaps the problem lies in the functional understanding and focus on identity creation underlying both views. While these social rituals produce specific expectations, these will not always be fulfilled, not even at the psychological level.8 Elsewhere, setting aside the focus on identities, Victor Turner has suggested that rituals explore a “subjunctive” mood, allowing participants to imagine other states, “as if” worlds; in a recent study this perspective was also adopted, and along with the argument that rituals are about social and other boundaries.9 Such boundaries have always existed, and therefore rituals are as characteristic of and necessary in modern societies as they were for past societies. Seligman and his colleagues are more pessimistic than earlier writers. Rituals, they argue, do not resolve ambiguities or create a lasting order, but they do help us to live in a fractured world. They permit participants to set forth, test, explore, and perhaps cross problematic boundaries, whether mental, social, or cosmic, through the creation of a subjunctive world,10 and periodically make disharmony and instability tolerable. This interpretation permits a much more flexible analysis of pilgrimage and tourism. If the rituals practised by pilgrims and tourists, respectively, can draw, “traverse”, and generally play with boundaries, we do not have to evaluate how efficacious rituals are, or make statements presuming fixed identities. Our task will be, rather, to see what kinds of boundaries, real and imagined, a ritual site gives visitors the opportunity to explore. We can suggest how co-users can thereby frame “subjunctive” states for themselves, and establish momentary con6 7 8 9 10
Turner & Turner 1978. Eade & Sallnow 2000. Bell 1997. Seligman et al. 2008: 70–101. Cf. ibid.: 11.
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nections to each other through ritual practice. If ritual practice is a way of playing with boundaries, the boundaries between co-users need not block ritual transfer (as in the confrontational cases of Jerusalem/Ayodhya), but may facilitate it, especially where ethno-cultural and geographic boundaries coincide with religious liminality. The setting focused on in this paper, a pilgrimage site in western China, just outside the current Tibet Autonomous Region (T.A.R.), is indeed a place of boundaries. In this remote location below a permanently snow-capped mountain, Tibetans and local Han Chinese have long worshipped different deities in the middle of the sixth lunar month. In 1992, the site, called Huanglong (Yellow Dragon) by the Han Chinese, was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Since then it has become – from April to October – a destination for hundreds of thousands of tourists from urban China. At this place of boundaries – between gods and humans, earth and sky, mountain and water, civilisation and wilderness – and geographic, cultural, and ethnic divides, we can examine ritual transfer in at least two senses: the adaptation of a group and its rituals and myths to the site, and the mutual influence among several groups as they imagine and create worlds suited to the site and to themselves. My focus is on two periods: 1) when the Han Chinese started using what previously must have been a Tibetan site of worship, and 2) when tourists started coming to the site in large numbers. Before examining these two periods of ritual transfer and ritual borrowing, I will try to reconstruct what kind of Tibetan ritual site this was, ideologically as well as spatially.
Tibetans and Bön at Huanglong/Shar Dung ri Although Han Chinese have been co-users of the site at least since the seventeenth century, Tibetans have been inhabitants of the region long before the Chinese, and must have been the first to regard the place as sacred, because mountains have been “the most venerated and culturally significant feature of the Tibetan landscape throughout space and time”.11 The power of the most sacred mountains extends over a wide area. A German, travelling in the company of Tibetans in 1910 near the great bend of the Yellow River, observed them shouting out prayers to “Schar Dong re and several other great mountains”.12 In 2004, we asked a folklore expert where he worships Shar Dung ri, for he could not see the peak of the mountain from his house. He answered, “Anywhere I am, I ketou three times to Shar Dung ri, even at home.”
11 Huber 1999: 21. 12 Tafel 1914: 294.
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Shar Dung ri (Conch of the Eastern Sea, or Eastern Conch) marks roughly the eastern edge of Tibet (today of “cultural Tibet”).13 Tibetan political geography was thought of as an arrangement of sacred mountains, the more significant political centres linking their legitimacy to a lofty mountain. Shar Dung ri was sometimes paired with Mount Kailasa in western Tibet, or with other mountains to the north. In the past, regional power arrangements were likely expressed through such attachments – each sacred mountain and its local spirits and sanctified lamas receiving the worship of the nearby population. Each would have its own mythic history – not necessarily a single consistent story – tracing the source of its power to the acts of lamas. Like other great Tibetan mountains, Shar Dung ri is personified and it is believed that he oversees the surrounding landmarks. The lakes are also considered to be sacred and are believed to be female, vis-à-vis the mountains, which are regarded as male.14 The largest of the travertine lakes, cascading down the slope north of the mountain, is called the Golden Lake (Tibetian: Sercuo). “On good days she sometimes pays respect to [Shar Dungri and the other sacred mountains] by dancing”.15 Just as cups of pure water are offered to the gods, on a daily basis, in individual Tibetan homes, the Golden Lake, encompassing many colourful pools, is considered to be the water-oblation to the mountain god of Shar Dung ri. Reflecting a pastoral life, such myths focus on spring water for consumption by people and animals, on unpredictable mountain streams, and on torrents that have to be forded. The magical power of water is strongly associated with several grottoes at the site.16 Today as in the past, Tibetans visiting the travertine pools pay little attention to the Chinese-built temples along the paths, but focus on the mountain Shar Dung ri. Together with the pools, the mountain is of important ritual significance in local Tibetan history, and has been a holy mountain for both Bön and Tibetan Buddhists for centuries. It has attracted pilgrims from all over the southern Amdo region, hosted many mountain retreats in its grottoes, and has served as a protector deity for the surrounding Tibetan communities. As elsewhere in Tibet, myths show the lama and the mountain god in a productive relationship, both having acquired holiness.17 A sacred mountain may be the site of the search for transcendence or nirvana for a lama, and may supply precious objects to assist him in his search. But a 13 “Cultural Tibet” is the region including the T.A.R. and regions in China proper with predominantly Tibetan population. 14 “Paired and gendered mountain and lake form the ideal Tibetan sacred landscape, and here [at Pure Crystal Mountain] the mountain represented the male deity and the lake the female one[…]” (Huber 1999: 19). 15 Anon. 1993. 16 Kang & Sutton 2008. 17 Huber 1999; Loseries-Leick 1998.
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great lama contributes to the sacredness of the mountain, leaving traces of his acts in particular rocks, a cave, a spring. In local lore it is claimed that it was the Skyang ‘phags Lama (b. 1126), a reincarnation of the Bön founder Tönpa Shenrap, who initiated the mountain god of Shar Dung ri into Bön and made the mountain a site of pilgrimage. Circumambulation is a popular and longstanding form of Tibetan worship, so that the particular rituals involving circumambulation at Shar Dung ri may have been transferred there from another place. Early in the sixth month, every year, Tibetans from near and far came to Shar Dung ri to circumambulate the mountain. As with other sacred mountains, they followed any one of three circuits, with the inner and most dangerous one immediately around the mountain, the middle one in Songpan and nearby counties, and the outer one past Mt. Emei near the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu. No matter which circuit they decided on, all pilgrims had to go in a counterclockwise direction – the Bön requirement that distinguished locals from other Tibetan Buddhist sects – and arrive at the Golden Lakes on the fourteenth of the sixth month. On the fifteenth day various religious ceremonies, including the fumigation offerings and the scattering of rlung-rta (Tibetan square prints of horses, dragons, or other objects used for blessings), were held in the gorge and, especially, next to the Golden Lakes, in order to celebrate the anniversary of Shar Dung ri’s conversion into Bön. The annual pilgrimage was also an occasion of social gatherings and celebration. In addition to the scattering of rlung rta and the fumigating with cypress twigs, the pilgrims, their families, and their friends set up tents, ate, drank, sang, and danced around campfires in the valley.18 For Bön Tibetans sanctity is immanent in nature, not the work of humans. The role of religious buildings as destination and locus of sanctity is downplayed, though monasteries are sacred places and are themselves subject to circumambulation, and the Shar Dung ri circumambulation used to begin at a monastery, at least for a part of its history. Divinity does not need to be vested in (or sanctified by) temples or other religious buildings on these mountains. A Bön abbot told us that, on his twenty visits to Huanglong, he had always worshipped at the spring, the lake, and in the grotto, never at the Han (Huanglong) temple. Sacred loci exist, but are distributed widely across the mountain – in the shape of a spring, a great rock with mysterious scratches on it, an old tree, a pass with a vista of mountain and valley. The most enlightened seekers can locate and decipher these traces, but even ordinary Tibetan devotees, who are illiterate in Tibetan, will point to sites of spiritual significance and trace out patterns on a rock face, claiming these to be sacred writings. It is ritual circumambulation that permits access to these remote signs; at such places, usually far from buildings of any kind, one throws rlung-rta in the air shouting a prayer, burns aromatic cypress twigs, hangs up small triangular prayer 18 Anon. 1993; Huber 2006: 5–14.
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flags, and strings cotton scripture sheets in thickets alongside mountain paths. These simple rituals restate and reinforce the sacred power attributed to certain mountains and scattered around them. Sanctity is reinforced by taboos, like the prohibition against women to walk on certain paths, and strict limits on where people can relieve themselves. Other essential Bön rituals also focus on mountains. The meditative retreats are in mountain caves. In some of them a lama can seek enlightenment, and lesser mortals, spiritual improvement. Today, some are equipped with blankets and rudimentary couches, as well as altars, and are much used by Tibetan lamas, monks and scholars. Even lesser mountains may be places of ritual, for it is on mountains that communication with transcendent powers is considered to be easiest. Many Tibetan communities have an annual New Year ritual at a nearby hilltop, where they lean together poles, like a wigwam – the “spears” representing present or deceased male members of the group – and build a bonfire and circle around it. Whatever the historical truth, myths like those about the Skyang ‘phags Lama are means of appropriation, used to legitimise the interests of their creators. By using as an example the lama who combated evil spirits and controlled lesser gods, his story, engraved on the landscape, has affirmed the hierarchy of the Tibetan priesthood up to the present, and has validated its ongoing rituals. The myths also explain the rituals for those Tibetans who know them. It is said that the Skyang ‘phags lama created the mountain’s sanctity and thereby the reason for its worship; he opened the three roads around the mountain, and thus made possible circumambulation. He left traces of his acts in particular rocks, caves, and springs that the most enlightened seekers (future Tibetan holy men) could identify. His own search laid the precedent for later people to seek sanctity in this beautiful natural site. It is claimed that he acquired enlightenment on the date still recognised for the 6/15 festival. The Skyang ‘phags Lama’s story has, thus, legitimated Tibetan ritual practice on the mountain. While in Tibetan eyes it was a form of appropriation, the myth complex did not pose insuperable obstacles to subsequent ritual transfer to non-Tibetan groups. After all, as modern scholars of ritual insist, the essence and weight of rituals do not lie in specific meanings19; rituals focused on the same deity can be done in parallel by rival social groups claiming the gods’ patronage, even if holding different concepts of divine origin.20 In this case, the Han Chinese immigrants to the region accepted the 6/15 date for the festival, which therefore became a joint festival. But they worship neither the mountain nor Skyang ‘phags lama. Instead, they emulated local Tibetan devotional tradition by creating their own holy man as a focus of worship.
19 Bell 1997. 20 Watson 1985.
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Ritual Transfer I: Tibetans to Chinese There were several aspects to Han Chinese appropriation of the site, which perhaps began no longer than three or four centuries ago: discovery or invention of a deity associated with the site; renaming of the site and its parts; the building of religious structures (not a feature of the original Tibetan site); and the creation of specifically Chinese historical myths. These measures accompanied the site’s ritualisation because the place of ritual had to be identified, its creation explained, and the ritual acts accommodated in familiar Chinese buildings. Only then could rituals Chinesestyle be truly efficacious. Together, these measures are attributes of ritual transfer, making a Tibetan sacred site Chinese, at least in Chinese eyes. Generally speaking, both the local ritual and related mythology are, of course, drawn from general ideas in the Chinese cultural repertoire, but the site and its Tibetan visitors determine their specific forms. It is uncertain when Han Chinese first made use of the site, but the more trustworthy evidence is suggestive of a date. The history of the building of the temples is part of the Chinese myth. According to it, the building of the temples became increasingly more complex, as stated by three sources, dated 1915, 1924, and 1999, the last of which claims that a Ming military commissioner, called Ma Chaojun, built all three main temples (two are still extant) in 1403. No early source exists to corroborate this account, or the existence of Ma Chaojun, and taking into account the relatively small Chinese population in the region, the date seems implausibly early. Songpan, at that time, was an embattled, fortified city with walls protecting its Han and Muslim inhabitants from a large population of various Tibetan groups surrounding it. Huanglong was extremely remote, lying across two mountain ranges, a day and a half away. An undoubtedly Chinese presence at the site is a submerged funerary pile, three metres high, in the form of a rooftop and two pillars. This has recently been attributed to a Tang or Ming general, but the thickness of calciferous deposits suggest it may have been constructed only 300 years ago, a date which is roughly matched by a reference in a couplet at the middle temple dated 1700, to the recent “opening up” of the site. It was in the seventeenth century that the Han Chinese came in large numbers to the upper Min River valley, and very likely, this was the time when the temples began to be built at the site, though probably on a modest scale: neither the spectacular natural location nor any temples were mentioned in the local gazetteers of 1812 or 1873. By 1873, a Daoist priest occupied the rear temple. In 1895, the traveller’s account of a literatus confirmed the existence of three main temples and an annual pilgrimage for Tibetans (fan) and Han Chinese alike. Even the name Huanglong (Yellow Dragon), which today is associated indelibly with the twentieth-century site, the presiding god, the rear temple, the cave below it, and the Chinese pilgrimage, appeared quite late. Its use is first verified in a couplet in the rear temple, dated to the Daoguang period (1821–1850). “White Deer Temple” and “Snow Mountain Temple” are given as
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alternative names as late as in the 1924 Songpan gazetteer. The exaggerations pertaining to the long existence of the Huanglong Temple seem very much part of an effort at ritual transfer, being consistent not only with the general tendency of dignifying a holy place, but also with a Han Chinese effort to appropriate a Tibetan ritual site.21 The introduction of the term Huanglong was the key means of appropriation by the Han Chinese. Huanglong refers to a figure in which humanity and divinity are in a state of fusion, or rather dynamic tension, between the Yellow Dragon (Huanglong), who nourishes and controls the streams with the assistance of Yu the Great, the Chinese water-controlling cultural hero, and Huanglong the Perfected Man (Huanglong zhenren), who reached transcendence in the grotto. Huanglong the dragon is thus both the focus of a fertility cult and a perfected Daoist. Thus, local symbols are integrated both with China-wide folk beliefs in dragons and concepts from the Daoist written tradition. The great claw-like extrusions of the golden travertine make the term Yellow Dragon so apt that one might believe, as many Chinese do, that this has always been a Chinese sacred site. The contrast to Tibetan sanctity is prominent. For Han Chinese, the whole travertine slope and the forested mountains around it are subordinate to the rear temple dedicated to Huanglong. Rather than being distributed across a mountain site in Tibetan fashion, Chinese divinity is focused more narrowly in the carved image of Huanglong, on the temple where it is installed, as well as in the natural grotto below, where Huanglong is said to have “cultivated” himself. Unlike the Tibetans already frequenting the site, local Chinese were indifferent to other sacred mountains – this one was not one of China’s Five Sacred Mountains, nor one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism. They were only concerned about their communities further down the stream, whose agricultural prosperity depended on the rainbringing power of the Yellow Dragon. It is to these communities that a series of oral myths establish ties, constantly referring to settlements, whether linked underground to the grotto beneath the temple, or the wanderings of the Daoist Huanglong, before he reached the state of perfection, or in the stories pertaining to Yu the Great, to the great Sichuan plain. In short, nature is being harnessed for civilisation: Huanglong matters because of his use for Chinese communities near and far. As is true of many gods elsewhere in China, Huanglong is a tutelary deity able and willing to serve human society, in return for a statue, a temple as dwelling place, and offerings to sustain him. In order to co-use the site, Chinese names were required. These were developed over a long period of time and some were still not fixed in the 1990s. New and fancier terms for the Snow Mountain have appeared: “Snow Treasure Mountain” (a pun on “Snow Preserved Mountain”, Xuebaoshan), and “Snow Treasure Pinnacle” 21 For sources, see Kang & Sutton (in preparation).
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or “Tripod” (Xuebaoding). The Golden Lake only recently got its current Chinese name, the “Multicoloured Pool”. What Tibetans just call the spring, the main well of the lake, has become known among the Chinese as the “Revolving Flower Pool”. The “Nine Dragon Grotto” used to be called the Huanglong Grotto, and its three stalagmites, the Buddhas of the Three Ages (Sanshifo), became Huanglong’s priestly companions in meditation. Other names often refer to fragmentary or imagined narratives. The Retreat of Biruzala who cultivated the Way there during the Tubo dynasty (seventh to nineth centuries) is now called the “Transcendents’ Grotto” (Shenxiandong). The damp retreat where the holy man Dalanienba cultivated the Way is now known as the “Cave for Bathing” (Xishendong), promising a cure for infertile couples.22 The fact that these Chinese names were developed rather late (none figures in the 1924 gazetteer) testifies to the slow rate of Chinese appropriation. None of the Chinese names are translated from Tibetan, and Tibetan names go unmentioned in Chinese sources. The Chinese do not acknowledge appropriation and leave no traces. To admit Tibetan priority might weaken the ritual efficacy for Han Chinese, and undermine their claim for Huanglong’s special protection. These rival Tibetan/Chinese interpretations have not, it seems, produced conflict. As is the case today in Huanglong, and as has been the case concerning other shared divinities,23 we can assume that the two sides talked past each other, ignoring the stories, names, and interpretations of the other. Both live in their own constructed mythic worlds and adapted the local terrain to their native cultural wisdom, Tibetan and Chinese respectively. The various way-stations were different, or inspired different reactions. The existence of separate geographic-cosmological conceptions thus facilitated co-use of the site. As the number of Chinese annual pilgrims grew, the three main temples were eventually constructed. Each housed Buddhist, Daoist and indeterminate folk deities that were transferred to the site from the wider repertoire of Chinese culture. The middle and rear temples have survived in spite of numerous rebuildings, while the front temple was already in ruins early in the last century. By late Qing times, several smaller shrines lined the approach up the gorge to the middle and rear temples, including one for the God of Wealth, and one for Yu the Great (sometimes called the dragon king’s shrine) stood beside the lake at the top. Tibetan worship adapted itself to the Chinese presence without altering its basic form and content. At the rear temple a pile of stones over the cave had a stone platform for Tibetans to worship in front of, and lamas came every year to pray and read sutras to pacify Shar Dung ri. A room in the upper court, facing the mountain, was reserved for their use, with images of Tonpa Shenrap, the Bön Buddha. As in the past, during 22 For sources see Sutton & Kang 2009. 23 Watson 1985; Sutton 1990.
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these days, among the warmest of the year, the green meadow east of the rear temple was used for picnicking by all groups. The rituals observed by the devotees show clearly examples of a two-way transfer. Han pilgrims recognise the Cave of Transcendents (Shenxiandong) high on the mountain as a place of Tibetan retreat, but remember climbing up in younger years to taste its sweet and inexhaustible spring water. Like Tibetans, Han Chinese visit the grotto below the rear temple, the lake, and the spring behind it and take home its water. At Bird Cemetery Mountain, near the Byang bya dur monastery, which, today, is the chief site of circumambulation, many local Han join Tibetans in doing the six-to-eight-hour walk one or two days before the festival. The spring continues to be a site where Tibetans hang sutra sheets in the low trees, and scatter rlung-rta; and there is a stele of the shortest sutra, Om Mane padme hum, on the path just beyond it. But the Han Chinese have developed a divination ritual which has given the spring its Han name, the “Flower-Turning” pool (zhuanhuachi): they first pick flowers from nearby shrubs, then bundle them with a small stone or lump of earth, and drop them carefully into the water. The underwater springs in the pool will turn the flowers round and round: some will finally stay straight up, as if growing from the bottom of the pool; others will disintegrate or float away downstream. The elderly couples who annually come to do this silent ritual are usually divining their children’s future. Will they leave Songpan (float away), or come back to re-root themselves at home, to take care of their parents in old age?24 Tibetans do not practise this, but only scatter rlung-rta on a hillock in the undergrowth next to the pool. The Han Chinese, frequenting a Tibetan ritual site, have extemporised a distinctive ritual tradition of their own – a case of invention on a transferred site. Ritual transfer has happened in the other direction, from Chinese to Tibetan, as well. Lamas and others well informed of Tibetan tradition refrain from visiting the “Han Huanglong Temple”, as some call it, but many Tibetans do. We know a Tibetan in his thirties whose father took him to the temple as a child to pray for a cure. Today, Tibetans can be seen praying before the image of Huanglong, saying he is Tönpa Shenrap – the Tibetan Sakyamuni. When asked whom they are worshipping, some say simply Buddha (many Chinese ritual objects are so identified, for after all Buddha takes many forms), or else confess that they don’t know. Others recall that the former image, destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, had a goiter in the fashion of many formerly diet-deficient Tibetans of the region. One way or another, Tibetans copy the ritual practice of Han Chinese worshippers, reinterpreting the image and object of worship; but they tend to utilise the more prolonged Tibetan ketou – full-length prostration, three times in succession, facing the altar.
24 For details see Kang & Sutton 2008.
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Again, this transfer must have long predated the age of tourism, to which we will turn below. Some Han communities in the Songpan region, within the sphere of the old Huanglong festival, have adopted many more Tibetan practices. The collection of sacred water, and its use for curative purposes, is common among Tibetans as well as among Han Chinese. In villages with a history of mutual contact with Tibetan hamlets, some have adopted the burning of cypress leaves (baixiang) and the scattering of rlung-rta, (Tibetan) paper charms, with a wish shouted in Tibetan. (In one case, I witnessed a local Han Chinese imitating a Tibetan shout as he threw a rlung-rta. Afterwards he explained to me that he did not know Tibetan – a good example of using ritual to play with boundaries.) Many local Han women and men do throat-singing at festivals (though in their own distinctive way). The great Huanglong fair, where all ethnic groups stayed overnight, exemplified the Songpan ritualised tradition of changba, open air gatherings where people talk, carouse, and sleep under tents for several days and nights, enjoying the seasonal warmth of the sixth lunar month. Horse-racing on the Huanglong route outside Songpan city offered ritualised competition, accompanied by a horse market. Some Tibetans today join Han (and Muslim Hui) at the festival for the City God, and young males from all ethnicities take part in the New Year ward-and-village dragon competitions at Songpan city. So ritual transfer among groups has occurred. Not all of this hybridisation is ritualised, for example the widespread local Han and Muslim habit of having for breakfast fermented milk tea (Mandarin Chinese: suyoucha), made with coarse ground barley. Everyone is a Songpan, in the sense that all speak the local dialect, and can perceive Chinese from the outside, even outsiders of the same ethno-religious group, as disconcertingly different at first meeting. These local adaptations likely reflect Han indigenisation of local Tibetan customs, since Chinese elsewhere do not practice them, and since Tibetans (styled fan) were the earliest and by far the most dominant population in the area, through the centuries of intermittent Han “in-migration”. Shared ritual sites and common or overlapping rituals must have fostered both a sense of ethnic or cultural distinction and Songpan regional culture and consciousness.25 Concerning pilgrimage on a national level in India, a similar effect has been suggested – pilgrimage producing both diversity and unity.26 Following Seligman et al.,27 I have suggested that rituals do not serve to reify identity, but to play with boundaries, and allow individuals (and groups) to define the way they imagine themselves to be and the way they sometimes are. Annual contacts among diverse peoples on neutral ground, such as Huanglong (as distinct from the Han Chinese 25 Schrempf 2006; Kang & Sutton (in preparation). 26 Singh 2004: 47 citing Bose 1967. 27 Seligman et al. 2008.
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city of Songpan, where Tibetans were not permitted to live), suggested all kinds of boundaries that ritualisation could play with. It is no surprise that ritual transfer and invention took place with the results I have noted.
Ritual Transfer II: From Ethno-Religious Pilgrimage to Tourist Mecca As far as ritual transfer between pilgrims and tourists is concerned, the state has become a central player. Huanglong was “discovered” by the local government as a national tourist destination in 1982. In 1992, UNESCO recognised its unique karst topography and made it a World Heritage site. Local organisers of tourism had petitioned recognition as a natural site, not a “cultural” site, the usual classification for those claiming religious significance, yet underlined cultural elements to broaden its appeal for tourism. As tourists arrived in growing numbers, exceeding one million by 2004, on a new network of roads connected to an airport, they were encouraged to appreciate Tibetan culture as an aspect of the local environment, and to visit neighbouring sites: Jiuzhaigou (Nine Hamlets Gorge), another World Heritage natural site; Songpan, renovated with walls to “restore” the old Tang frontier city,28 and the Red Army monument at the mid-point of these three sites, celebrating the triple crossing of the grasslands near Songpan, part of the party’s Long March sixty years earlier.29 Tourism rituals are, broadly speaking, transferred from the mass tourism industry, but have particular features in western China. Tourists mostly belong to the middle-class from China’s economically developed eastern cities. From interviews with them, several perspectives can be deduced: that of patriots proud of China’s beauties (few have time to visit the revolutionary shrine); that of majority Han Chinese observing the minorities with the confident gaze of an older brother; and that of the satisfied products of the modern economy visiting a backward area; at the same time they have something of the environmentalist, conscious of the effects of unrestrained industrial growth, and of traditionalists, sensing the cultural and religious depletion of the urban East after the Maoist years. My argument is that tourist rituals help to express, fortify, indeed create these patriotic, ethnically superior, environmentally sensitive, and culturally nostalgic sensibilities. Their rituals show them playing with the boundaries implicit in these sensibilities. Two questions are of interest for the purpose of this paper. How did the opening up of the site to tourists, and the transfer of rituals to the site by tourists, affect pilgrimage ritual? And what ritual borrowing took place between tourists and pilgrims during the rather brief and one-time exposure of tourists to the site? Before turning to these issues, let us ponder again in what sense tourists can be said to practice 28 Sutton & Kang 2010. 29 Huber 2006.
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rituals. “Ritual” is commonly defined as a sort of routinised and required practice separate from the everyday; it is a practice that is felt to have special significance and efficacy, and that reaffirms (though rarely explicitly) some wider authoritative view of the world; or in the more flexible definition, which I have drawn from Seligman et al.,30 ritual presents an “as if” world, creating a temporary order, both building and crossing boundaries; ritual transfer then may take place across some of these boundaries. Using a camera (or video camera) is the main ritual of tourists. Putting the visitor front and centre, this is the kind of ritual that fixes a momentary relationship between site and visitor. The camera, combining subject with view, is an instrument of appropriation, transferring symbolic ownership of a site or parts of it to the permanent possession of the tourist, in the form of snapshots or video discs and the fading memories they stir up. Chinese tourists take, perhaps, more pictures than tourists from other countries, but their subjects are especially notable. Rather than capturing nature or history in the raw, they prefer to insert themselves and family members into the landscape, as if to appropriate it. And they like to add ethnic representatives too, placing nature and culture in the same frame.31 Characteristic of the Songpan region is the photo mock-up, an exotic background of painted cardboard you stick your head through, or the paid-for pose with a costumed “native” (member of a non-Han ethnic group) (as at Jiuzhai) against the blue waters of a lake – tourist family, “native”, and scenery captured in a single frame. Notwithstanding the individualised nature of tourist pictures, the organisation of the tourist industry guarantees that they are remarkably standardised, as Davis and Marvin have pointed out in the case of Venice.32 Advertising, in the form of wallsized pictures in tourist agencies in Chengdu and the big cities of eastern China, or as documentary films shown on television, lures visitors to the exotic beauties of sites like Huanglong. This branding by the industry in turn conditions the tourist arriving at the destination to look for the established views that set it apart from other sites, and to make sure to capture the beauty of the sights, digitally or on film. Consequently, the snapshots printed, savoured, and shown off to others are remarkably similar to those familiar from tourist films and billboards, with almost identical background settings. At Huanglong, an army of park guards and scavengers prevents people from straying from the fifteen kilometres of paths, up and down, so that there are not many possibilities for shots to be taken, and the ever moving, densely packed crowds (over 10,000 a day) further limit angle and direction. Personal web pages featuring Huanglong’s turquoise pools, rocky yellow outcrops, conifer-covered slopes, and mountain peaks are also quite standardised, for 30 Seligman et al. 2008. 31 Cf. Oakes 1998; Schein 2000. 32 Davis & Marvin 2004: 263–265, 268.
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similar reasons. Thus the pictures seen, imagined, bought, recaptured, and displayed at home are no more than branded images. The difference to the brochures and billboards, as I have noted, is that smiling portraits of the tourist and family members are very often superimposed upon these images. Despite the standardisation, these holiday snaps have to be regarded as individual acts of social differentiation and communication, both drawing and traversing boundaries. Tourists are different from locals and pilgrims, not only in dress, complexion, and in their discomfort with the thin air, but also due to their cameras and video equipment, marks of urban middle-class and cosmopolitan superiority. Pictures of tourists and pilgrims differ. The tourist smile, if not strained by exhaustion, belongs to a satisfied customer; it is directed at the self or the family, or others of the same social group. In snapshot albums, it accentuates the individuality of the photographer’s family, magnified in adventurous and flattering contexts that imply high levels of consumption. The ethnic smile, by contrast, is directed at the unmarked majority. It represents the group to others, and re-inscribes its minority status, rarely designating a particular individual or moment. Members of ethnic groups are objects of the tourist gaze, especially if they are dressed in ethnic attire. Commercial transaction is the second most important tourist ritual after picture taking. It is another way of setting forth boundaries between locals and visitors and then crossing them, another way of appropriating ethno-religious realities. The haggling over sedan chair rides, or bargaining for souvenirs (yak horns, Tibetan headdresses, fur jackets, hunting knives, embroidered or woven material, provocative paintings of minority women) – only intensifies the same sense of acquiring tokens of the “Other”. Notice the parallels with photography. These objects are all essentially visual (souvenirs are not for use but for show), and their purchase resembles picture-taking: while the pictures put oneself into the others’ ethnic or ethnicised space, the souvenirs make it possible to put ethnic things in one’s personal space at home – another act of appropriation and identification. A third kind of tourist ritual exploring ethnic boundaries is a sort of reality show, involving tourists attending stage performances of local culture at two of the hotel towns near Huanglong. A high point of these performances in ethnic couture, is the invitation on stage of a young Han male volunteer from the audience, who is then put through a lengthy encounter with local custom, usually via a “marriage” in which he is supposed to select a Tibetan bride from three candidates by answering a question correctly. Teased at length by the compère with a microphone, he fails to get the (“invented”) rituals right, to the delight of the Han tourist audience. The volunteer, being in ordinary dress, doesn’t fit amid the colourfully attired ethnic performers, and then has to accept caricatured symbols of local ethnicity like an immense sword or outlandish hat. What better way to underline the normality of the Han! If these tourist performances are unreliable venues for learning about local minority-culture, they are persuasive sites for producing, satirising, and rein-
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forcing boundaries between the Han and the Tibetans, between rural locals and urban strangers. Rediscovering their Han culture, Han tourists seek the “understandable other”, familiar from theme parks and colourful TV shows watched at home. They play with locally experienced boundaries in imaginative ways. As consumers of ethnic exotica, the Han Chinese imagine themselves as citizens of a visibly (if not politically) multiethnic China, the same image as is portrayed in the state-run media.33 By simplifying the identity of Tibetans and fitting them into a vision of China as a capacious country incorporating diverse societies at different stages of development, the tourist experience reinforces the sense of being at the top of the wave, the vanguard of China’s future. This is a vision of ethnic progress. Tibetans will eventually catch up, but for the moment, the Han tourists are more impressed by picturesque backwardness. Almost invariably making their first visit, they tend to overlook the changes that tourism is bringing to local society, changes that are ignored in idealised representations in the tourist industry. There is an element of transposed nostalgia. Feeling that they have lost their own history in the urbanised East as a result of Maoist campaigns in the 1960s, they are under the impression that the minority Tibetans still retain much of theirs in the form of monasteries, their own language, and a distinctive dress. Moreover, the landscape of which they seem so much a part has escaped the grimy seaboard industrialisation of the past 30 years. Thus, nostalgia and sentimentality mix with self-satisfaction as Han tourists are reminded of their own relative material success, and their satisfaction is reinforced by an unmistakable sense of ethnic condescension towards their younger-brother-and-sister national minorities. In short, tourists are never present long enough to pick up local rituals, except for some experimentation; instead, ritual transfer since the early 1990s has taken on the form of introducing widely practised Han Chinese tourist rituals to this site. This is not a passive act. Tourists travelling to the western periphery for the first time are experiencing their nation in a new way, and perhaps changing themselves in the process. Rather than following the Turnerian trope and seeking communitas or its counterpart, community cohesion, I regard their encounter with local culture and landscape as an imaginative and indeterminate exploration of difference, setting forth boundaries familiar from the media, and playing with them. The boundary between being a consumer, and being, as it were, consumed, is an important one here. The sense of being a privileged consumer is communicated not just in photographic and store rituals, but in the pride with which many tourists catalogue their past journeys across China. One of the most common questions asked of a foreigner on the road is, “Where have you been in China?” A litany of holiday destinations they have enjoyed usually follows one’s response.
33 Cf. Schein 2000; Oakes 1998; 2000; Gladney 1994.
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Just as Tibetan and Han pilgrims earlier developed their own culturally suitable mythology about the site, tourists need their own myths. They seem little interested these days in the didactic heroism of the Long March memorial, not far from the airport, and, partly because of shortage of time, only a few tourist buses stop there. But the management at Huanglong has found them a more accessible symbol: a pattern of mountain peaks to the north of the travertine slope identified as the “sleeping beauty,” resembling a turbaned Tibetan girl lying on her side. First noticed by a Han journalist in 1992, the Sleeping Beauty figures heavily in the publicity of the Huanglong management bureau: e.g. in a bas-relief at the tourist centre (long-haired, upright, smiling, and awake), in a dance at the 2004 stage pageant, and as the new name of the mountain on the website map. Her passive figure, one might say, is an exotic and unthreatening image of frontier ethnicity.34 A series of stories identify her as a half-Chinese, divine heroine – in one version a Tibetan adopted by Huanglong. In such myths, as in the rituals, boundaries are again sported with, ethnic boundaries suggested, and then traversed. With official help, new myths for the site, suited to the new age of tourism, have proliferated.35 How did its makeover as a tourist site, and the arrival of mass tourism, affect Huanglong’s old role as a centre of pilgrimage? The main gorge is now a fenced park, in which the official Management Bureau has banned the burning of spirit money offerings and incense, as well as camping, horse-riding, and the lighting of fires, all of which was part of the pilgrim experience. It has also prohibited the side activities pursued by the pilgrims in the past: hunting, picking herbs and flowers, cutting staves for walking, and selling local products. It has built a 7-kilometrelong wooden path to which visitors are restricted, a shorter downhill path through the trees, and a side extension to the head of a cable car in the next gorge. It has established a remote digital camera system and a force of guards to keep visitors off the pools with their delicate tufa rims, and out of the orchid grounds and undergrowth. It has constructed a large service centre, midway, not far from the top, but permits no private building within the park. And it has reorganised the temple fair into an occasional carnival event below the valley entrance, consisting of staged ethnic dancing, singing, political speeches, and tourist promotion involving national pop stars, international folk dancers, and regional and local politicians. For the benefit of the tourists, the managers of the site have continued the lengthy process of making this originally Tibetan site Chinese. In guidebooks, Huanglong’s topography is imagined as a giant flying dragon, the yellow calciferous stone his bones and paws, the blue-green pools his shining scales, and tourists and other modern readers now identify the dragon, or long, not just with water, but as a symbol of the Chinese nation. Since the 1980s, many scenic spots at Huang34 Cf. Schein 2000. 35 Sutton & Kang 2009.
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long have been selected and renamed; these are mostly secular names. The latest poetic names are “Guest-Greeting Pond” (yingbinchi), “Flowing Splendour Pools” (liuhui chiqu), “Moon Reflecting Pond” (mingjing daoying chi), “Scattered Golden Sand” (jinsha pudi), etc. The new names, far more numerous than earlier superscriptions with Chinese names, link Chineseness to Huanglong’s unspoiled natural beauty, assisted by references to Li Bo (701–762) and other writers of the Tang dynasty writing about snowy mountains, as if to distract the tourist from the highly managed and crowded environment.36 The religious policy of the management bureau considers religion an aspect of local ethnic culture to be presented for consumption along with the beauties of the landscape. The rear temple is now the largest temple, and is the destination for most pilgrims and tourists alike. The state owns all land in China, and in the park the state builds and demolishes as it pleases. Until 1997, it allowed locals to run the rear and middle temples (the latter having been partly rebuilt through the efforts of several Songpan women pilgrims, who collected incense donations from tourists). But the management bureau took over the management of the rear temple, employing a Daoist priest to preside over it, and in 2004 rebuilt the middle temple, previously a place of worship for Chinese Buddhists, in Tibetan Bön style. It did not allow the Daoist priest to perform religious rituals on his own initiative, and turned down a proposal that Tibetan monks live in the Bön-style middle temple. Instead it converted both temples into commercial enterprises selling incense to tourists, initially under contract to a Han Chinese businessman, but then under its own direction.37 A handful of local Han pilgrims, mostly middle-aged and retired men and women, continues to come. The women are dressed more simply than the tourists and wear a distinctive flat head cloth in pale colours. Staying for several days at festival time in the rear temple, they cook their own food and sing folk songs. They continue to pursue ritual activities as in the past, burning incense, and chanting from Buddhist scriptures. They resent the new rules, are unenthusiastic about the stage show and other festivities outside the gorge entrance, and are disappointed at the reduced number of pilgrims. They feel swamped by the sea of wandering and picture-taking tourists. While they see the arrival of so many tourists at the temple as a mark of the Yellow Dragon’s power, they are concerned about their pollution of the sacred precincts, for example due to their failure to observe the traditional ban on menstruating women at the temples.38 As for the Tibetans, they are also much fewer in number than in the past. Rockfalls and lack of maintenance have made the inner circuit impassable. The monas36 Kang & Sutton 2008. 37 Kang 2009. 38 For further details see Kang & Sutton (in prepraration); Kang 2009.
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tery once marking the starting point of the circumambulation has not been reconstructed, and now the Bird Cemetery Mountain has replaced it as the principal place of circumambulation.39 Like the Han women, Tibetans find the middle temple anomalous, with its Tibetan exterior decorations, its Chinese gods inside, and the complete absence of Bön officiants and rituals. The better informed among them remember that the old up-and-down paths and the path round what the Chinese now call the Multicoloured Lake, used to run counterclockwise, respecting Bön practice. Now both have been reversed. They too are concerned about pollution – not believing that the modern-style toilets and garbage collectors could possibly clean the site to Shar Dung ri’s satisfaction, and worry at the diminishing supply of life-giving water. One Tibetan high school teacher attributed the abundant water on Shar Dung ri in the past to the ritual.40 In considering ritual transfer between tourists and pilgrims at Huanglong, we should first recognise that they are not exclusive categories: “A tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist”.41 Some pilgrims, too, indulge in sightseeing, and tourists can feel and act like believers. There is perhaps an ideal-typical continuum with pilgrims at one pole, and tourists at the other. These days in Songpan, the two converge in some respects, ritual transfer occurring in each direction. Pilgrims of the past were not blind to the beauties of the scenery or deaf to the hawkers of local products, and today local Han Chinese pilgrims, whether they like it or not, are becoming more and more like tourists. Although improved roads make visits easier for locals, and though they are exempted from park entry fees, they are not permitted to stay overnight in the gorge and cannot afford the pricey hotels at its foot. As a result, their experience in recent annual visits is often as cursory as that of the tourists who arrive by coach and leave two hours later. In terms of space and distance, the old sense of a local community with its protective deities has given way to wider concerns. Even if they have never left the region, pilgrims cannot but be conscious of the party-state and its modernising economy impinging on the region, for the familiar and local in the Songpan region have been thoroughly transformed by the regional and national influence. The families of the pilgrims are often involved in some aspect of the tourist trade. They now include tourists in their prayers for peace and physical safety, and are gratified that Huanglong is receiving so many visitors, in spite of their apprehensions about the pollution, damage, and interference with the sacred site. Pilgrims and tourists, who now rub shoulders at Huanglong, have become part of the same interdependent global economy. Ritual transfer has assisted their communication. Shared or overlapping rituals create imaginative, play-like worlds that help draw up and collapse the social 39 Huber 2002. 40 Kang & Sutton 2008. 41 Turner & Turner 1978.
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boundaries between them. While the pilgrims can’t afford cameras, they may ask for their pictures to be taken. There is also a tendency, though not a marked one, for tourists to become more like pilgrims. Arriving after their hour-long climb in front of the image of Huanglong, they wonder what they should do. As if to acknowledge the continuing need, under China’s market socialism, for some kind of religious expression, some will first watch the local pilgrims and overseas Chinese at their obeisances in the rear temple, and then ask the current Daoist priest to show them how they can light their own incense and ketou to the life-sized image of Huanglong the Perfected, and where they should place their offerings. They even ask him to tell their fortune. He will give them a strip of red cloth for good luck, to take back on their journey home. By performing these rituals, and thus assuming the existence of the god, these tourists momentarily cross the boundary separating them from local believers and their god, and thus become more than half pilgrims. And some, like the pilgrims, may take home a bottle of holy water for its healing qualities. Ritual transfer has thus taken place.
Conclusion Shar Dung ri/Huanglong has gone through two phases as a shared ritual centre: the mixed Tibetan-Han pilgrimage phase, and the mixed pilgrim-tourist phase. What facilitated the gradual entry of Han pilgrims – the first ritual transfer of this pilgrimage – was not so much the sharing of rituals, as the development of different loci of sanctity at the site, and of different practices and conceptions associated with them. Even though ethnic relations in Songpan county were at arm’s length and often extremely tense during the rest of the year, Huanglong was a place of multi-ethnic annual festivity around the fifteenth day of the sixth month. The strength of this local tradition made co-use sustainable: it was along parallel lines, each group declaring its bounds in front of the other through distinct ritual practices and mythology. Over time, however, a significant degree of sharing did happen when Han Chinese adopted certain Tibetan ritual sites (producing, for example, the new rituals of the Flower Revolving Pool), and as a Songpan culture and identity connected Han and other groups after long ethnic co-habitation in parts of the county. The annual ritual of changba, of which the open-air celebrations at Huanglong around 6/15 were the most famous expression, was a ritual that simultaneously defined ethnic difference and Songpan regional commonality and togetherness. But as I have suggested, ritual sharing demands a certain facility of co-use. The transition between the second and third phases has been more problematic, for at least three reasons: the overwhelming number of tourists, their brief contact with pilgrims, and the official management bureau’s restrictive policies towards reli-
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gious practice at the site. It is true that pilgrims have adapted to national and global markets and perceptions, and for their part some tourists are curious about local religion and have started copying pilgrim rituals. The ritual site has, however, been so heavily modified for tourist use and environmental protection under state control that sustained co-use is problematic and ritual borrowing less likely than in the past, when Tibetans and Chinese worked out a modus vivendi over centuries without state interference. The limited transfer of ritual practices in recent years results, no doubt, from the vast disproportion in the number of tourists as distinct from pilgrims, and the fact that they come only once, and rarely return. Ritual transfer, in the form of the adoption and appropriation of Huanglong by successive groups of co-users, is interesting, in this case, for its illustration of how new arrivals have twice transformed the ritual site, and how separate myths and ideologies have facilitated its co-use.
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References anon. 1993. Shenshan zhiyi: Xuebaoding jianshi (A sacred mountain: a brief history of the Snow Treasure Tripod). Compiled in Tibetan by the Songpan County Religious Administrative Bureau and orally translated by our interpreters. Bell, Catherine. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University Press. Bose, Nirmal Kumar 1967. Culture and Society in India. Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Collins-Kreiner, Noga & Nurit Kliot 2000. “Pilgrimage Tourism in the Holy Land: The Behavioural Characteristics of Christian Pilgrims”. GeoJournal 50/1: 55–67. Davis, Robert C. & Garry Marvin 2004. Venice, the Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World’s Most Touristed City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Digance, Justine 2003. “Pilgrimage at Contested Sites”. Annals of Tourism Research 30: 143–159. Eade, John & Michael J. Sallnow 2000. “Introduction”. In: John Eade & Michael J. Sallnow (eds.). Contesting the Sacred, the Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage. London, New York: Routledge. Fu Chongju & Zhang Dian (comp.) 1924. Songpan xianzhi (Songpan county gazetteer). Gladney, Dru C. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority / Minority Identities”. Journal of Asian Studies 53/1: 92–123. Graburn, Nelson H.H. 1983. The Anthropology of Tourism. New York: Pergamon. Huber, Toni 1999. The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet. New York: Oxford University Press. — 2002. “Ritual Revival and Innovation at Bird Cemetery Mountain”. In: Toni Huber (ed.). Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture During the Post-Mao Era. Leiden et al.: Brill: 113–145 (Brill’s Tibetan Studies Library 2,5). — 2006. “The Skor lam and the Long March: Notes on the Transformation of Tibetan Ritual Territory in Southern Amdo in the Context of Chinese Developments”. Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2: 1–42. Kang, Xiaofei & Donald S. Sutton 2008. “Purity and Pollution: From Pilgrimage Center to World Heritage Park”. In: Stephen Brockmann & Judith Schachter (eds.). (Im)permanence: In/out of Time. University Park: Penn State University Press: 197–223. Kang, Xiaofei 2009. “Tourism, Two Temples and Three Religions: A Three-Way Contest on the Sino-Tibetan Border”. Modern China 35: 227–255. — & Donald S. Sutton (in preparation). “Contesting the Yellow Dragon”. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Loseries-Leick, Andrea 1998. “On the Sacredness of Mount Kailasa in the Indian and Tibetan Sources”. In: Alex McKay (ed.). Pilgrimage in Tibet. Surrey: Curzon: 143– 164. MacCannell, Dean 1999 [1976]. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley, London: University of California Press.
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Oakes, Tim 1998. Tourism and Modernity in China. New York: Routledge. —“China’s Provincial Identities: Reviving Regionalism and Reinventing ‘Chineseness’”. Journal of Asian Studies 59:3 (2000), 667–692 Schein, Louisa 2000. Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. Schrempf, Mona 2006. “Hwa shang at the Border: Transformations of History and Reconstructions of Identity in Modern Amdo”. Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 2: 1–32. Seligman, Adam B., Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett & Bennett Simon 2008. Ritual and its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. New York: Oxford University Press. Singh, Sagar 2004. “Religion, Heritage and Travel: Case References from the Indian Himalayas”. Current Issues in Tourism 7/1: 44–65. Songpan xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui (comp.) 1999. Songpan xianzhi (Songpan county gazetteer) Beijing: Minzu chubanshe. Sutton, Donald S. 2000 “Myth Making on an Ethnic Frontier: The Cult of the Heavenly Kings of West Hunan, 1715–1996.” Modern China 26/4: 448–500. — & Xiaofei Kang 2009. “Recasting Religion and Ethnicity: Tourism and Socialism in Northern Sichuan, 1992–2005”. In: Thomas DuBois (ed.). Casting Faiths: The Construction of Religion in East and Southeast Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 190–214. — 2010. “Making Tourists and Remaking Locals: Religion, Ethnicity and Patriotism on Display in Northern Sichuan.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton (eds.). Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism and the Chinese State. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield. Tafel, Albert 1914. Meine Tibetreise: Eine Studienfahrt durch das nordwestliche China und durch die innere Mongolei in das östliche Tibet. Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft. Turner, Victor & Edith Turner 1978. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Watson, James L. 1985. “Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of T’ien-hou (‘Empress of Heaven’) along the South China Coast, 960–1960”. In: David Johnson & Andrew Nathan & Evelyn Rawski (eds.). Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press: 292–324. Zeng Guowei 1996. Songpan lansheng (Sightseeing in Songpan). Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe.
Ahmet Taşğın
The Eastern Church in Sweden: The Transfer of Syrian Orthodox Rituals from Turkey to Europe The Syrian1 Orthodox community, a member of the Eastern Church, was noticed in Western countries only after their large-scale migration from their homeland Turkey to Europe. The migration was caused by a variety of factors such as the urbanisation policy of Turkey, economic conditions, as well as intolerance towards ethnoreligious minorities in the Turkish Republic. Starting from the 1960s, many Syrian Orthodox Christians left their homelands in south-eastern Turkey and migrated to European countries, mainly to Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland, as labour migrants and later as refugees. The flow of migration accelerated in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, with the beginning of the military conflict between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces, the exodus of the Syrian Orthodox communities reached its peak. Starting from the year 2000, Syrian Orthodox Christians started re-visiting their villages and acting to regain rights over their property. They began to rebuild their villages with a view to the long-term possibility of returning to Turkey. It is significant to highlight that this coincided with the political process leading to the implementation of the increasingly discriminatory and excluding migration policies of the European Union member countries. This paper aims to describe the social conditions of the Syrian Orthodox Christians in Sweden and to point out the changes in their life-style, with a focus on the social and political functions of the churches and metropolitan sees. These are treated not only as sacred sites, but also as political and religious centres in the diaspora. This paper will also try to give evidence for the alterations of the form and function of sacred spaces, as well as the presence of discourses and organisations as they are created as a result of the struggle over identity politics. The matter presented here is based on three weeks’ field research, conducted in Stockholm, Vestaros, and Örebro between the years 2006 and 2008. The research 1 Ethnically and linguistically, the Syrian Orthodox are an endogenous ethnic group differentiated from their neighbors (Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Persians) through both religious and linguistic boundaries. The historical distinction between eastern and western Syrians is a result of the development of the states in which they live, Iran and Turkey, respectively.
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included interviews with representatives of Syrian broadcast networks, founders of migrant associations, priests and bishops in churches and metropolitan sees, as well as with prominent figures involved in central discourses of identity, for example, the naming issue. In 1977, two metropolitanates were founded, a Central European bishopric based in Hengelo, the Netherlands, and another metropolitanate for Great Britain and Sweden, based in Södertälje (Sweden). Currently, the total number of metropolitanates is eight, and the total number of the churches governed by these is 150. Out of these 150 churches, 50 are in Sweden and 44 are in Germany.2 The locations and the numbers of the metropolitanates in all “Western” countries are as follows: The Netherlands Germany Sweden – Scandinavia3 United Kingdom Belgium and France Switzerland and Austria Total of metropolitanates
1 2 2 1 1 1 8
founded in 1977 founded in 2007 founded in 1977 founded in 2006 founded in 2006 founded in 1996
On the other hand, in Turkey, there are four metropolitanates in Turabdin, Mardin, Adıyaman, and İstanbul. The Syrian Orthodox population in Turkey is very low compared to the diasporic Syrian community. For Turabdin, it numbers about 3,000 people.4
Syrian Orthodox Community in Sweden: The Transfer of Eastern Rituals There are 85,000 Syrian Orthodox people living in Sweden at present. The first Syrian Orthodox migrants to Sweden, 250 people, had come from Lebanon with the status of stateless persons. In 1973, following the political restriction of migration to Germany, many Syrians started to migrate from Germany to Sweden. Most of these settled in the town of Södertälje, an established centre of migration near Stockholm. The settlement patterns differed, depending upon various factors. Many people preferred to settle around a Syrian Orthodox church, the first of which was founded in Södertälje. Alternatively, some people chose to live in towns and cities with others from their former villages. For example, people from the village of Anhel (officially Yemişli) settled in Goslaved, whereas those from the village of 2 Rabo 2007a; 2007b. 3 Including Great Britain in 1977 4 Taşğın 2006.
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Bote settled in Örebro or Göteborg. Similarly, Borås was populated with migrants from the village of Habsinas, Märsta was populated with people from Kelleth.5 There is also a considerable Syrian Orthodox Christian population in Stockholm, Botkyrka, Västerås, Eskilstuna, Norrköping, Motala, Jönköping, Landskrona, and Göteborg.6 The first Syrian priest to arrive in Sweden, in 1970, had still been ordained in Midyat, Turkey. In the early 1970s, the ordination of a priest in Europe was not considered an acceptable act within the Syrian Orthodox Church. In the following years, however, this not only became acceptable, but also a common practice for many Syrian Orthodox Churches in Europe. Because of the large immigration of Syrian Orthodox Christians from Turkey, Syrians founded new churches and monasteries where many of the priests and bishops were ordained in these diasporic contexts. In 1977, the metropolitanate of Great Britain and Sweden was founded (lately it was divided into two Great Britain, and Sweden and Scandinavia, in 2006). Additionally, in 1994 a vicariate patriarchate was established. Currently, there are 44 churches under the guidance of the metropolitan of Sweden. In the first years, Syrian Orthodox communities used Catholic and Protestant churches for their religious practices. Later on, they started buying buildings, mainly big halls or factory buildings, which they repaired and used as churches. Alternatively, they bought the buildings of Catholic or Protestant churches. Apart from that, new churches were also constructed. The Mor Efrem Church, the centre of the metropolitanate in Sweden, is an example of this latter type. At the same time, this place is the centre of the vicariate patriarchate. However, the style of church architecture differs. Neither the buildings of Catholic and Protestant churches, nor other buildings, which were later transformed into churches, have the architectural character of the eastern style. Even so, it is possible to observe echoes of the eastern style architecture in different parts of the recently built churches, such as the shapes of the domes or the interior decorations. Moreover, these church buildings have additional rooms for different purposes, such as to accommodate guests, to host weddings, etc. As mentioned above, there are two metropolitanates in Sweden, with one patriarch and one vicariate patriarch. The centre for both metropolitanates is in Södertälje. The division of roles and territories of these two metropolitanates is as follows: A. Sweden and Scandinavian Metropolitanate: The central church is known as Mor Yakup and is located in Södertälje. The churches in Botkyrka, Stockholm, Västerås, Örebro, Linköping, Mjölby/Motala, Jönköping, Trollhättan, Boras, 5 Brock & Witakowski 2001: 72–89. 6 Svanberg & Klich 1992: 46.
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B. Vicariate Patriarchate in Sweden: The central church is Mor Efrem, located in Södertälje. Churches in Stockholm, Flemingsberg, Linköping, Motala, Skövde, Växjö, Malmö, Enköping, Landskrona, Mjölby, Göteborg, Jönköping, Norrköping, Norsborg, Örebro, Södertälje, Spånga, Trollhättan, and Västerås are run under the leadership of Mor Dioskoros Benyamin Ataş.
Language Education The Syrian Orthodox Church was one of the most influential institutions seriously pursuing language education in the diaspora. After the 1970s, language was taught in the churches and monasteries. In 1976, the children of the Syrian community in Sweden started to receive Syrian classes in schools. The teaching of the respective mother tongues of migrant populations was part of the integration policy in Sweden. This increased the use of their language, Western Syrian (also known as Western Syriac or Central Neo-Aramaic), which, in turn, led to a gradually diminished use of other languages such as Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish that were previously spoken in Turkey. The spoken dialect known as “Turoyo” became a commonly used language in the diaspora even for the Syrians who did not know or speak it back in their villages. The written language – known as ktobono – is still taught in churches and monasteries.
Religious Education In addition to the mother-tongue education, the Syrian Christian community in the diaspora was given the opportunity to give and receive religious education, which is taught in Syrian. This in turn served to highlight and perpetuate the significance of learning Syrian.
Naming Issue The process of migration led to the introduction of different categories in naming migrants. The naming issue was very much related to discussions about the politics of identity. While the first migrants were generically classified as guest workers, the next generation of Syrian Orthodox Christians, arriving as asylum seekers, was
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assigned mainly ethnic and religious signifiers. The issue of naming thus became important to understand the ways in which official discourses and practices about the issues of migrants are produced within the political context of European countries. This process perpetuated the already existing divisions among the communities of migrants from Turkey. The categories of ethnic and religious differences became key signifiers in naming and expressing the parameters of belonging among and between the migrant communities. In other words, as mentioned above, the ethnic and religious divisions, which mainly originated from Turkey, are redefined and used as political categories for the construction of a distinction between self and other. This process created political and social cleavages, not only between the communities but also within the communities themselves. The Syrian Orthodox Christian community provides a very vivid example of such political and social divisions. The divisions within the community found expression, for example, through the political struggle over different appellations such as Assyrians, Arameans, Chaldeans, Nestorians, etc. The naming issue constitutes a multifaceted struggle, revealing not only the internal conflicts of power within the community, but also conflicts around the politics of identity, which are experienced through the encounter with the other, such as neighbours, other ethnic and religious communities, political associations, or institutions of the hosting state. At the beginning of the 1970s, the category of “Suryoyo”, as a native term to refer to Syrians, was completely unknown and unfamiliar for the host countries, particularly Sweden and Germany. Many of the immigrants, labour migrants or asylum seekers, were registered as Turks, or Christians from Turkey, or both. The country of origin was a more significant and meaningful category of distinction for the host countries. Moreover, the category of “Syrian” as an ethnic and religious category was conflated with “Syria” as a regional term in the European languages, which made it difficult to differentiate the ethnic and religious connotation of the term, as well as the name of the community. Having acknowledged all the discussions around the naming issue, I suggest the use of the term Suryoyo as the most inclusive term to refer to the Syrian or Syriac community. Suryoyo is a term with both religious and ethnic connotations; hence, it can potentially be used inclusively. As such, it can be taken to address people from different ethnic communities, for example Arabs and Indians, as Syrians, by constructing a consensus about a common future within the ethnic identity of Suryoyo.
Organisations The “Assyrian Association in Sweden” was established in 1977. It provided political ground for the Suryoyo communities in the diaspora to develop a consciousness
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of an Assyrian nationalism.7 The association organised many activities to circulate its discourses and practices among the Suryoyo people, who were dispersed all over Europe. In addition, it provided advice and legal support for the newly arrived migrants and asylum seekers in Sweden. The association is composed of 27 member associations, and publishes a journal called “Huyodo” (Hujådå).8 The “Syrian (Aramaic) Federation in Sweden” was founded in 1978. The federation is well known for its cultural activities, and for social services provided to the members of the community. This organisation is composed of 24 member associations and publishes a journal called Bahro Suryoyo.9
Conclusions The Syrians migrated to Sweden from 1970 onwards. In accordance with the migration policies of the Swedish government, they were settled in government-designated areas. These workers’ families were separated families, as other members of the family were brought to Sweden only later. They came in batches and in the end made up a large population. For them, migration ensured work and social security. The Syrians, besides their economic and social needs, also brought their religious and cultural customs to their host countries. The church, which was the most influential among all of the religious, political, economic, and cultural institutions, moved to Sweden to continue functioning in the same fields. This way, the church had a massive influence concerning the problems of life in the diaspora, because of its authority to define all types of conflicts and to cope with them. Most importantly, discussions surrounding the self-definition of the Syrians even caused a schism in the church. Aramaic, Syrian or Syriac, and Assyrian are some of the terms that continue to bolster discussions up to this day. The church is the single place where religious rituals are practised.
7 The references to Syrian, Syriac, Assyrian are actually references to communities who are Christian, all belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church (that is the official title in English) and all speaking one or the other dialect of Neo-Aramaic. The modern nationalism that emerged from this group in Europe constructs an alleged “Assyrian” past to root the nation. 8 Hujådå (Huyada / Huyudu) = Union: Assyrisk månatlig, kulturell, nyhets- och informationstidning (Assyriska Riksförbundet i Sverige 1978–). For other publications, see “Assyrian Publications” in Assyrian Information Media Exchange. 9 Bahro Suryoyo: Månatlig sport-, kulturell, nyhets- och informationstidning (A monthly, cultural, social and informative magazine of the Syriac (Aramaic) Federation in Sweden: Swedish, Syriac and Arabic) (Syrianska Riksförbundet i Sverige 1979–). For other Assyrian organizations, see “Assyrian Groups” in Assyria Online.
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The language used in the church is Syriac-Aramaic.10 The church is the single place where the ritual language was preserved for centuries. From this perspective, the church in the diaspora gained importance as a shelter that protected the Syrians, and it was where Syriac-Aramaic was taught. This way the teaching of Syriac-Aramaic caused the community to use the language among themselves and it became a unifying factor. Daily life required the use of the language in order to sustain Eastern traditions, in particular the reconstructed tradition of Eastern Christianity. Thus, the Syrians in the diaspora have begun to create a new tradition surrounding their name, identity, and language. This way, bilingualism became a new field of contestation between the high language of the church (Syriac-Aramaic) and the daily vernacular (Turoyo). The time that the Syrians spent in Sweden passed by largely in the conflict of living with a religious and traditional identity in a largely secular country. Their customs of daily life were predominantly determined by religion. However, new discourses such as nationalism played a key role in maintaining and developing their tradition. In this way, they also approached a modern, secular form of daily life, employing cultural resources from their historical heritage and traditional structures. The architecture of the church, its internal design, furniture, and rituals became completely dominated by the outlook of a Western church. This way, as Christians, they came closer to the Swedish Christians. However, they are still alienated from them in terms of culture because of their Oriental background. The place where the rituals were performed was, at the same time, the place where they were Easterners. The church based its traditional references on those who were born in their motherland and moved to Sweden after a certain age. Conversely, it did not pay attention to the modern secular references of the new generation, who were born and educated in Sweden. This situation increasingly caused a decrease in youth participation in church affairs. To counter this decrease, the form, look, and language of the rituals were changed and the church turned to new social activities. Trips, picnics, competitions, evening festivities, or sports were organised either directly by the church or with its support. The numbers of those who know the Syriac-Aramaic ktobono and who speak Turoyo is decreasing. In many churches, the services are held in Swedish. Moreover, books published by the church are also translated into Swedish, if they are not published in Swedish in the original. Swedish was added to the spoken languages, and now serves as an additional language for liturgy.
10 The liturgical language Syrian-Aramaic needs to be distinguished from the vernacular neoAramaic. In the church, both are used, for different ends.
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The church took sides in naming and identity issues. Identity formation and determination of ethnic roots became some of the new problems in the diaspora. Whereas identity formation and the search for roots among the Syrians became the harbinger of new conflicts, these discussions also caused a cleavage in the church.
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References Assyria Online (http://www.aina.org/aol/link3.htm). Assyrian Information Media Exchange (http://www.edessa.com/assypubs.htm). Assyriska Riksförbundet i Sverige (http://www.hujada.com/). Brock, Sebastian P. & Witold Witakowski 2001. At the Turn of the Third Millennium: The Syrian Orthodox Witness. Vol. 3 of: Sebastian P. Brock & David G.K. Taylor (eds.). The Hidden Pearl: The Syrian Orthodox Church and its Ancient Aramaic Heritage. Rome: Trans World Film Italia. Rabo, Gabriel 2007a. “Süryani Diasporasında Kiliseler ve Kuruluşlar: Bölüm I”. Mardutho d-Suryoye 57: 36–40. — 2007b. “Süryani Diasporasında Kiliseler ve Kuruluşlar: Bölüm II”. Mardutho dSuryoye 58: 34–39. Svanberg, Ingvar & Nadja Klich 1992. “İsveç’te Asuriler-Süryaniler”. In: Jan BethŞawoce (ed.). Mezopotamyalı Mülteciler / Sığınmacılar. Södertälje: 33–49. Syrianska Riksförbundet i Sverige (http://www.syrianska-riks.org/). Taşğın, Ahmet 2006. “Son Süryani Göçü”. In: Ahmet Taşğın & Eyyüp Tanriverdi & Canan Seyfeli (eds). Süryaniler ve Süryanilik. Ankara: Orient Yayınları: 73–92.
Ali Yaman
Ritual Transfer within the Anatolian Alevis: A Comparative Approach to the Cem Ritual The primary ritual of Alevism, the socalled cem, underwent significant changes after the rural-to-urban mass-migration since 1960. By comparing rural and urban Alevism, this article aims to illustrate the transformation of the cems. Like the other Alevi traditional practices, cem is as conceptualised based upon the Kırklar Cemi, which was a ritual practised by an assembly of approximately forty people consisting of the Prophet Muhammad, the Ehl-i Beyt (family of Muhammad) and others close to them. Cems are mostly led after the harvest period, usually on a Thursday night, which is referred to as “Friday night” among Alevis (i.e. “the night before friday”). When Alevi dedes (spiritual guides) visit their talips (disciples), the peyik (the person who invites people to the cem) announces the oncoming cem ceremony. The people who participate in the ceremony bring food called niyaz or lokma. Cems take place in big houses called cemevi. The dede sits on the seat of honour of the cemevi and leads the ceremony. There are twelve types of service carried out in a cem: dede (mürşid, pir, “spiritual guide”) leads the cem ritual; rehber (guide) helps people whose görgü cem (the initiation rite of integration) will be led; gözcü (“one who keeps watch”) ensures the order of the ritual; çerağcı (delilci, “candle-lighter”) lights the candle and makes the meydan (the central area in the cemevi) bright; zakir (aşık, “bard, minstrel”) plays saz (long-necked and fretted stringed lute) and reads poems; ferraş (süpürgeci, “sweeper”) cleans the meydan after each service; sakka (ibriktar, “one who pours water from the pitcher”) distributes water and brings pitcher, wash-tub and towel for cleaning after lokma (“meal”); kurbancı (sofracı, “one who sets the table”) is occupied with the meal and sacrifice; pervane (“one ready for any service”) is occupied with the people coming and going; peyik (davetçi, “one who invites”) informs everybody about the cem; iznikçi (meydancı, “one who is in charge of cleaning the cemevi”) is occupied with cleaning the cemevi after, and kapıcı (bekçi, “guard”) waits in front of the house of gathering. The cem ritual starts with the reciprocal consent (razılık) of dede and community. Otherwise, cem cannot be started. During the cem ritual, the poems of Pir Sultan, Şah İsmail Hatayi, and Kul Himmet are read, semah (ritual dance) is per-
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formed, lokma is distributed, and the Martyrs of Kerbela are commemorated. Apart from these religious aspects, cems have judicial aspects as well. Acting as judges, dedes exercise jurisdiction over those who have committed grievous transgressions against Alevi norms. It is compulsory to obey the dede’s punishment; otherwise, it would lead to the imposition of düşkünlük, the Alevi equivalent of excommunication. As stated above, cem is not just a religious practice, but has also been an institution performing educational, social, and judicial functions for Alevis for centuries. Unfortunately, these further functions disappeared in time after the urbanisation of the Alevis; however, its religious functions are still alive. At the present day, in Turkey and abroad, cem rituals are carried out either once a week, or irregularly. Thus far, dedes have led cem rituals only with the Alevis from their own ocak (traditional, kinship based community), but currently cems are also participated in by Alevis from different ocaks. Although cems are generally closed to outsiders in traditional life, they turn out to be open even to non-Alevis in cities nowadays.1
Changes in Terms of Concepts First, it is essential to mention the impacts of the weakening of traditional Alevi beliefs and traditions which have occurred during urbanisation. Recently, the meaning and the importance of Alevi beliefs and traditions have been going through radical changes for Alevis living in the city. Some Alevis, who were acquainted with Alevi tradition beforehand, might feel the absence of it in urban life, since institutions like dedelik (religious leadership), musahiblik (“companionship” of two families), düşkünlük (to be ostracised), and the cem ritual cannot be properly carried on in cities. For the generations who grew up in the cities, the meaning of Alevism is therefore much vaguer. For many of them, Alevism merely functions as a reference point which shows one’s lineage and religious origin. A significant change following urbanisation occurred in terms of terminology. Upon mutual interaction between Alevi groups from different regions, there followed an exchange of the names of their rites, instead of using the traditional ones. To illustrate this, some Babagan Bektashi terms adopted by the Alevis, such as nefes (hymns concerning the mystical experience) instead of the traditional deyiş (songs of mystical love), and erkanname, instead of buyruk,2 can be given as examples. Another important change in Alevism after urbanisation is in terms of commitment. At the time Alevis were living in rural areas, there was a strong spiritual and 1 Yaman & Erdemir 2006: 75–77; for more details, see M. Yaman 1998. 2 Buyruk books (religious manuscripts) contain the principles of the Alevi faith, which are attributed to İmam Cafer and Şeyh Safi.
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social bond between the dedes and the community. However, this bond seems to have become considerably weaker at the moment, considering that the focus of the cem rituals are no longer that strong with regard to the spiritual aspects, and the dedes are losing their function in regulating social affairs, such as imposing disciplinary sanctions. Another change is the depreciation of religious symbols and concepts. The ritual halls were regarded as being far more sacred than they are today; the threshold, for instance, was considered sacred and therefore was not stepped on. In addition, more people used to say “Ya Allah Ya Muhammed Ya Ali” – as a sort of supplication for aid – in front of the entrance door to show deep commitment. This tradition is not carried on by the youth, some are not even aware of the holiness of the threshold. In the past, more people remembered the Ehl-i Beyt, the twelve Imams, with gratitude whenever their names were mentioned. However, these traditions are now still practised only by the older generation. Some concepts relevant in the past do not even exist anymore. Ritual objects such as Tarik, also known as erkan, zülfikar,3 serdeste etc., kuşak, süpürge, and meydan postu would be examples of the elements that are no longer used in cems. A further change of the cem ritual is in terms of prestige. Recently, Alevis have shown more care about the location of the cemevi, its size, the exterior appearance of the building, and the overall appearance of the cem. They try to provide a better visual experience for the participants by means of new technological devices, showing slide shows and pictures. Moreover, they perform the semah dance, as a part of the cem ritual, with highly ornamented costumes instead of wearing casual clothes as they used to in rural life. All these aspects are criticised by many people in consideration of Alevi norms, which clearly state that a cem ritual has to be performed for religious purposes, not for entertainment.
Spatial Changes The main changes in cems after urbanisation are in spatial and structural senses. In rural areas, Alevis usually conducted the cem ritual in the biggest house in the village, or in specific places designated exclusively for cems. The cemevis in the Onar village of Arapgir, Malatya, and the village of Hacılı in Pülümür, Tunceli, can be given as examples of such traditional cemevis. However, in the cities there are particular meeting halls solely in use for this purpose. Besides newly-built cemevis, old dervish lodges (tekke), rented meeting halls, or even sport halls are typical places where the cems are held. A lot of the cemevis are built in the precincts of Alevi-Bektashi saints and run by Alevi associations or foundations. The scope of the activities in cemevis differs widely. Some cemevis offer various services such 3 Zülfikar is the legendary sword of İmam Ali.
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as semah dance courses, several religious services, or they are used for different occasions, when public space is needed, such as festivals, weddings, or conferences. From the architectural perspective, the newly-built cemevis do not have much in common with each other, since they differ in architectural design and structure. One of the reasons for this diversification is the fact that the cemevis are not officially recognised. Therefore, there is no common structural or architectural planning. On the other hand, considering the internal design and decoration, the urban cemevis seem to have a lot in common. The walls of the cemevis are decorated with Alevi sayings and quotations, as well as paintings of historical personages such as İmam Ali and İmam Husayn, Mevlana Celaluddin Rumi, Yunus Emre, Ahmed Yesevi, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Contrary to the urban cemevis, the ones in the rural areas are either decorated simply or not decorated at all. A further change is the implementation of new technological developments in the cemevis. Dedes lead the cem ritual over a microphone, so that those at some distance in the hall – and in case the hall is overfilled, the people outside – can follow the ritual. The music performed with the bağlama4 as part of the ritual, is streamed through loudspeakers as well. Traditionally, in a cem the dede sings personally, however, nowadays they tend to play sacred repertoires – such as deyiş, düvazimam, mersiye, and miraclama – from cassettes or CDs. The replacement of candles, which are used in a cem ritual in rural areas, with an electric lamp, could also be shown as another notable example. Furthermore, the rituals are recorded by cameras and regularly broadcast live on television or on radio.5
Changes in the Scheduling of Cems Traditionally, cems in the rural areas were carried out irregularly on Thursday evenings. Usually there was a dede in every village; but if this was not the case, a dede from another village was invited to perform a cem. Under such circumstances, the frequency of cems varied, depending on the relationship between the dede and talips, as well as the distance between the two villages. In urban life, cems are performed regularly, either traditionally on Thursday evenings, or on Sundays at noon.6 This shift in the scheduling of cems is a result of what urban living entails. Many people work full-time during the week, and it is 4 Bağlama/saz is a stringed musical instrument which is sacred to the Alevis. 5 For example, the programme “Şaha Doğru Giden Kervan”, broadcast on “Cem TV” in the first period of Muharrem and presented by me, was performed in the ritual hall of Yenibosna Cemevi. 6 In Yenibosna and Garip Dede Cemevis cems are performed in the evening, while in Şahkulu and Karaca Ahmet Sultan Cemevis, they are performed at noon in connection with lokma on Sundays.
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more convenient to attend cems on Sundays. Therefore, participation in the cems on Sundays is higher than in those on Thursday evenings. Another change after urbanisation occurred in terms of duration of the cem. Whilst in different regions of Anatolia cems lasted a long time, from Thursday evenings until early Friday mornings, in cities cems last a comparatively short period of time – about two or three hours. No doubt, people in cities are caught up in the whirl of modern life and have too little time for religious duties. Thus, this shortening of time can be considered as a necessary adaptation, which makes participation in the cems in urban life possible.
Changes in Terms of Participation Everyone in rural regions was welcome to attend the cem rituals – except those who were permanently or temporarily expelled from society (düşkün) – and participation in the cems was high. When it comes to urban life, participation is lower and it is even assumed that fewer and fewer Alevis will attend cems in the cities. The fact that the number of cemevis is not growing proportionally with the number of Alevis can be shown as evidence for this assumption. Another change is the range of participants attending cems. Before the emigration to cities, every Alevi group participated in cems conducted by dedes from their own ocak.7 Nowadays, dedes and talips from different ocaks participate in cems together; even non-Alevis are allowed to participate in cems.
Changes in the Twelve Services and the Function of Dedes As mentioned before, the holy cem ritual is comprised of twelve services. Although the concept of twelve services still exists, there are some slight changes in modern Alevism. Traditionally, one person is appointed for each post. However, in different regions of Anatolia, it is either possible that one person is responsible for more than one post, or their duties are restricted and partially performed by the dedes. These twelve services were, in the past, descent-based; only the people who belonged to distinguished families and were raised with particular values could be appointed to these posts. However, in the present day, it is possible for everyone to receive such an education. The CEM Vakfı (“CEM Foundation”) and the “AABK” (“European Confederation of Alevi Unions”) offer courses on dedelik, the twelve services, as well as courses on semah dances and zakirlik, which provide more trained staff for the cems. Another change is significant in the candle-lighting service, one of the twelve services. In rural areas, the çerağcı (“candle lighter”) lit only one candle – or in 7 For detailed information see A. Yaman 2006b.
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some cases an oil lamp – however, today three candles are used and lit in memory of Allah, Muhammad, and Ali. The authority of the dedes has also changed in urban life. As previously mentioned, dedes have lost their social and judicial functions. In modern life, their role is restricted solely to religious functions during a cem. Unlike in rural areas, in urban life the authority of the dedes is not much recognised in public. Today, the dedes are under the influence – one might even say, under the pressure and control – of particular foundations, some of which are dependent upon the Turkish state. This situation can be considered as a restriction of the authority and freedom of dedes as well. Nowadays it is possible to perform cems only with the approval of particular foundations. Today, too, it is common that a chairman of an Alevi Society – regardless of being a dede or not – gives a speech at the beginning of a cem, shadowing the dede’s authority.
Changes in Functions of Cem There have been some considerable changes in functions of cems after urbanisation. In rural areas, cems served religious, socio-educational, and judicial functions. The religious functions of cems are still alive; however, functions such as social and educational functions have changed in different ways. Cem ritual functions as a common ground for those who attend cems and fulfils social functions. In addition, it still functions as a centre of education, especially for those who have been far away from Alevi beliefs and traditions for some time. The judicial function of cem has totally disappeared. In modern life, there is no imposition of düşkünlük, since law courts have taken over this function.
Problems in Adapting to Urban Life and Standardisation of Cems Following the rural-to-urban mass-migration, Alevis encountered more problems in adapting to modern urban life than did Sunnis. Since Alevism was only practised in rural areas, in the cities Alevis felt themselves to be outsiders in a religious-cultural sense. Contrary to Alevis, Sunnis did not face difficulties in religious aspects, as Sunnism was widely accepted in the cities. In addition, the fact that the public schools teach only the Sunni denomination of Islam has influenced – one might say “deformed” –Alevi beliefs and traditions. Moreover, political developments – especially the clash between the Left and the Right, and the coup d’etat in 1980 – had negative effects on Alevism as well. However, since the end of the 1980s Alevis have put a special emphasis on religious matters, building more cemevis, conducting more cem rituals, and organising other activities.
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Traditionally, Alevi teachings on the cem rituals were passed down from the elder to the younger generation. Today, courses, books, CDs, as well as TV and radio programmes about the cem ritual, are also sources of information. However, this causes a standardisation of cems, which varied drastically in Anatolia. A further significant point is that Alevism is affected by Sunnism in cities. For example, just like a hutbe (public preaching in Sunni tradition), in the Yenibosna cemevi an Alevi hoca initiates the cem ritual by reading verses from the Qur’an, and a dede gives a speech on various subjects every week. In addition, in some cemevis suras of the Qur’an are read as part of the cems.
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References Bell, Catherine 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Birge, John Kingsley 1937. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes. London: Luzac & Co. Clarke, Gloria L. 1999. The World of the Alevis: Issues of Culture and Identity. New York & Istanbul: AVC Publications. Hefner, Robert W. 1983. “Ritual and Cultural Reproduction in Non-Islamic Java”. American Ethnologist 10/4: 665–683. Kreyenbroek, Philip G. 2005. “Religious Minorities in the Middle East and Transformation of Rituals in the Context of Migration”. In: Robert Langer & Raoul Motika & Michael Ursinus (eds). Migration und Ritualtransfer: Religiöse Praxis der Aleviten, Jesiden und Nusairier zwischen Vorderem Orient und Westeuropa. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Langer, Robert & Raoul Motika & Michael Ursinus 2005. Migration und Ritualtransfer: Religiöse Praxis der Aleviten, Jesiden und Nusairier zwischen Vorderem Orient und Westeuropa. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Pohl, Mary 1981. “Ritual Continuity and Transformation in Mesoamerica: Reconstructing the Ancient Maya Cuch Ritual”. American Antiquity 46/3: 513–529. Popovic, Alexandre & Gilles Veinstein 1995. Bektachiyya: Etudes sur l’ordre mystique des Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach. Istanbul: Editions ISIS. Yaman, Ali 2004. Alevilik’te Dedelik ve Ocaklar. Istanbul: Karacaahmet Sultan Derneği Yayınları. — & Aykan Erdemir 2006. Alevism-Bektashism: A Brief Introduction. London: England Alevi Cultural Centre and Cemevi Publications. — 2006a. Orta Asya’dan Anadolu’ya Yesevilik, Alevilik, Bektaşilik. Ankara: Elips Kitap. — 2006b. Kızılbaş Alevi Ocakları = Kizilbash Alevi Ocaks. Ankara: Elips Kitap. Yaman, Mehmet 1998. Alevilikte Cem: İnanç – İbadet – Erkân. İstanbul: Yaman.
Anne Mocko
Rewriting Ritual: Community and Ethnicity in a San Francisco Performance of American Origins On 12 October 1492, a Genoese man landed a trio of Spanish boats on an island off North America, thus sparking the European exploration and imperial conquests of the “New World”. For centuries, however, discoverer Christopher Columbus languished in relative obscurity; although well known in his lifetime, he did not immediately obtain a central place in the historical imagination of inhabitants of the lands he discovered: European settlers and colonists in the “New World” continued, by and large, to consider themselves communities of English or Spanish, Dutch or French, and so were inclined to define themselves based on European histories and heroes. Columbus only began to take on ideological significance towards the end of the eighteenth century, as patriots in the newly independent United States began working to craft a specifically American identity, distinct from that of England.1 Once he achieved ideological significance, however, his role in the public imagination became extraordinary. As the nineteenth century progressed, Columbus joined Washington and then Lincoln as one of the heroes of American identity – ancestor and embodiment of the founding principles of the country. In the second half of the nineteenth century, though, Columbus the national hero was increasingly claimed as Columbus the ethnic hero, a figure of identity and pride specifically for Italian immigrant communities across the nation. Thus, Columbus Day became the focus of ethnic celebrations in various urban centres, first in New York City in 1866,2 and then later “in Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, and New Orleans”.3 With one of the largest Italian communities in North America (and not incidentally, disproportionately from Columbus’s home city of Genoa), a Columbus Day tradition soon developed in the city of San Francisco. 1 Summerhill & Williams 2000: 13–14. 2 Speroni 1948: 328. New York’s very first celebration of Columbus’s discovery was a onetime-only dinner and ceremony sponsored by the Tammany Society in 1782; 1866 is when the public parade tradition commenced (ibid.: 327–328). 3 Ibid.: 328.
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San Francisco celebrated Columbus Day for the first time in 1869, with a parade that featured bands, floats, and a horse-drawn replica of the Santa Maria.4 In 1913, four years after Columbus Day became a California state holiday, San Francisco added a rather novel aspect to their celebrations: a waterfront landing, where “Christopher Columbus” would re-enact the discovery of America from a rowingboat in San Francisco Bay.5 San Francisco’s Columbus Day pageantry, particularly with its rowing-boat reenactment, became a popular and enduring feature of the annual local calendar. From the moment of its inception, however, it also became a site at which ethnicity and American identity were not merely represented, but contested: the Italiansponsored celebrations vied for attendance and attention with Latino celebrations of the Columbus expedition’s Spanish roots,6 while simultaneously endeavouring to eclipse Norwegian efforts to elevate Leif Ericsson rather than Columbus as America’s original discoverer.7 Perhaps the most dramatic point of contest and revision, though, has been the Columbus Day pageant’s depiction of Native Americans. Early versions of the pageant featured Indians that were amalgamations of characters from Thanksgiving pilgrim stories and wild-west cowboy movies – feathered and teepee-dwelling people, happily welcoming the Europeans to their land. This depiction lasted until the early 1960s, when local Indian activist movements began to change the perceptions of the San Francisco pageants’ organisers and audience. This new activism ushered in a prolonged period of discomfort with, and various negotiations concerning, the existing Columbus narrative. By 1990, Columbus had been reinterpreted (in San Francisco and beyond) as the initiator of Indian genocide,8 and the narrative of the San Francisco pageant became untenable. It will be the task of this paper to examine the ways in which the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant altered its depiction of Native Americans from the 1940s to the early 1990s, to engage the shifts in the pageant as an instance of ritual transfer.9 4 Ibid.: 329. 5 The waterfront landing had been attempted once in 1885, but then abandoned. The return to the waterfront landing appears to have been inspired by the popularity of a similar pageant in the nearby city of Oakland, which had been landing its Columbus on the shore of Lake Merritt since 1909 (Speroni 1948: 331). 6 Ibid.: 333–334. There additionally seems to have been, in early years, a competing AngloAmerican pageant, though Speroni is somewhat unclear on this point. 7 The Leif Ericsson event seems to have been a one-time effort by the Norwegians to challenge the Italian-sponsored Columbus events. In 1954, a small group apparently gathered near Golden Gate Park on the same day the Italians were gathering for Columbus’s landing at North Beach, and listened to a speech by the Consul General of Norway, Bjarne Borde (Perkins 2004). 8 See for example Zinn 1999. 9 Langer et al. 2006.
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In taking this focus, the paper will highlight the ways in which the pageant responded to shifts in its local ideological context, as American ethnic sensibilities altered over the course of time. At the same time, though, the pageant was not merely responsive to external pressures: in so far as ideology does not exist in total abstraction, but is rather perpetually created, recreated, and retooled in concrete practices such as annual rituals, the Columbus Day pageant was in fact one of many specific ways in which the local context changed. As the pageant altered its depiction of Columbus and the people he encountered, it altered the public configuration of the community, shifting who can participate in Columbus’s legacy and how. Looking at the Columbus Day pageant as an instance of ritual transfer thus enables this paper to explore the political potential of ritual to affect and be affected by broader shifts in society. Ritual in this case serves as a concrete point of social focus, a place to consider and represent more diffuse cultural ideas and processes, and transfer those diffuse cultural realities across different spatial and temporal contexts. A ritual rewritten can help rewrite a social world.
1. Pageant as Ritual, Pageant as Authority Before considering the history of the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant, it will be useful to clarify the purposes of considering the pageant a ritual. After all, ritual is generally understood to be a feature of religion, and the costumed boat-landing of historical re-enactors may not at first glance seem to belong in this category. The story of Christopher Columbus is not a religious narrative, nor has the pageant been church-affiliated or been understood by its planners and audience to possess salvific or supernatural import. Yet a lack of religious content and significance need not preclude a practice from being considered “ritual”. Scholars have had no difficulty in classing as rituals life-cycle and fertility practices (not all of which make reference to divinities), not to mention more clearly “secular” practices such as bridge opening ceremonies10 or hospital responses to infant mortality.11 In fact, looking at the Columbus Day pageant as a ritual helps draw out some of the social and ideological significances of the annual re-enactment that might otherwise be missed. There are two features of the Columbus Day pageant that can fairly straightforwardly be construed as ritual: it is periodic and it is formalised. The inhabitants of San Francisco perform the Columbus Day pageant on (or close to) a date that bears mnemonic significance12; it thus serves as something of an anchor point in the 10 Gluckman 1958, for example. 11 Naraindas 2008. 12 The pageant has generally been scheduled for the Sunday closest to the October 12 anniversary of Columbus’s landing.
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community’s calendar, and in that capacity it has been in a position to help shape the community’s sense of itself and the shared time it inhabits. Secondly, the Columbus Day pageant is formalised as a “marked practice” in which people perform, in an unusual way, the more or less everyday activity of landing a rowing-boat; it involves the participants dressing in peculiar clothes that set them aside from the audience and mark them as participating in “the past”.13 Thus, the Columbus Day pageant periodically marks off a ritual place and time, where ordinary citizens can take on extraordinary personas. The identification of the Columbus Day pageant as ritual can be further developed by turning to the theory of ritual set out in Roy Rappaport’s Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. In this text, Rappaport identifies ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers”14; that is to say, ritual reuses or recombines existing narratives and formulas, which, although they might be presented in a variety of ways and with a good deal of creativity in an individual performance, reflect a stable cultural “canon” of visual and verbal symbols. Moreover, Rappaport ascribes to ritual a number of social purposes: It establishes conventions, it sets out paradigms for understanding the world, and it constructs orders of meaning beyond simple semantics. To this, however, he adds that ritual “evokes a numinous experience of the Holy”,15 and here the present consideration of Columbus would appear to run into some difficulty. Christopher Columbus’s historical voyage would, after all, hardly seem to qualify as Holy; it was squarely a part of mundane, human realities, having been enacted by human agents, in datable time, across concrete geographies. Yet, although not transcendent, Christopher Columbus has taken on symbolic and ideological significance far beyond the mundane realities of his voyage. Since the time of the American Revolution, Columbus has been at the centre of one of the primary myths of American origins, and has become Americans’ ideological (though not necessarily biological) ancestor. Thus, while Christopher Columbus the man was a real historical actor, “Christopher Columbus” the mythic ancestor has become an enduring symbol, if not of the “Holy”, then of America’s “Ultimate Sacred Postulates” – those principles that, although unverifiable and unfalsifiable, are considered by the community to be foundational and above question.16
13 In a photo provided by Speroni, for example, Columbus is shown in a floppy hat, tunic, leggings, and boots, while his entourage is dressed in a mixture of monks’ robes and medieval Spanish military gear. 14 Rappaport 1999: 24. This phrase is italicised in the original to mark it as a definition; I have opted to remove the italics for present purposes. 15 Ibid.: 27. 16 Ibid.: 281.
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If, in fact, Columbus can be considered the representative of certain “Ultimate Sacred Postulates”,17 then the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant can be construed in terms of the social feedback mechanism Rappaport envisions for ritual.18 In Rappaport’s scheme, Ultimate Sacred Postulates authorise rituals (along with other “regulatory hierarchies”, including taboos, cultural sources of authority, and so forth); the rituals are then accepted by the populace, which acceptance in turn legitimises and renders persuasive the Ultimate Sacred Postulates. Conversely, if ritual comes to seem inadequate to the community’s material or social conditions, either the rituals or “in extreme cases the Ultimate Sacred Postulates sanctifying them will, sooner or later, be stripped of their sanctity.”19 Thus, culturally-held ideas and values both underwrite and are underwritten by ritual processes; the repetition of ritual thus helps to create the sense of reality and persuasiveness of the ideologies underlying the ritual in the first place. By considering the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant as a ritual, we are thus able to see the way in which it has served as a forum for cultural authority: by being formal and periodic; it has set aside a clearly delineated space and time in which it can dramatise and re-enforce core ideas and values of the community. The pageant is thus not a simple reference to a mundane historical event, but an opportunity to articulate the identities of people within the community that celebrates Columbus. The story that is framed by each pageant is predicated upon existing ideas about who that community is and what they share, and the story told in each pageant also has the opportunity to reconfirm or to modify the community. And indeed, in the course of a few decades, the pageant served as a key opportunity to re-narrate the community and its values – to rewrite local ideology and identity.
2. In the Beginning: Columbus Triumphant The first point at which this paper takes up the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant is its performance in the early 1940s – specifically the period of 1942-1944, when the pageant was organised around a script prepared by lawyer and Columbusenactor Joseph Mazza. While this set of wartime pageants is somewhat irregular (insofar as the traditional boat landing had to be suspended for as long as the Army had taken over the Aquatic Park landing site), they nevertheless provide a useful 17 Bellah (1967) would support the possibility of non-religious American “sacred postulates”, insofar as he suggests several ways in which America celebrates “secular” values in ritual and quasi-religious fashions. 18 Rappaport himself uses the rather unfortunate neologism “cybernetics of the Holy” to describe this process; I will not be following this terminology, as I find it unnecessarily complicated, and too dependent on Rappaport’s idiosyncratic mixing of mechanical and phenomenological terms. 19 Rappaport 1999: 430.
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starting point for the present discussion. First, this is the only time at which a full formal script was both produced and preserved, and thus there is superior source material to work with; second, fragments of the Mazza script appear to have been utilised in pageants through the 1980s, making it in a sense the ritual’s canonical text. Finally, the fact that the script was prepared during wartime instills the script with a heightened sense of patriotism, and the Columbus narrative it presents is maximally confident and triumphalist. In this regard, the 1940s depictions of the Indians can be taken as a benchmark, an indication of the extended period in which Indians could be depicted unproblematically, as moving set-pieces in the background of Columbus’s heroic actions. The Mazza script consists of four scenes: 1) Columbus pitches his voyage to Queen Isabella, 2) Columbus lands in America and interacts with the friendly natives, 3) Columbus returns to Spain, and presents the Indian Princess to Queen Isabella, and 4) Columbus steps forward to the front of the stage to “prophesy” the rest of American history, accompanied by a Boy Scout colour guard and the Indian Princess, who leads the crowd in singing the national anthem. Over the course of the pageant, the centre of the action and dialogue is always the magisterial Columbus; any other characters enter merely as foils or instruments of Columbus’s heroism. The Indians enter the pageant in two guises, first as a group, and second in the more specific forms of the Chief and the Princess. The group of Indians makes its debut in the very first scene, in an offhand comment by Columbus to Queen Isabella: “Perhaps the venture may also lead to the discovery of lands and people hitherto unknown. Such discoveries would greatly increase the power and influence of Spain and enable your Majesty to send these new people the teachings and blessings of Christianity.”20 This reference establishes for the first time Columbus’s supra-historical consciousness, his magical ability to “predict” what the contemporary audience of 1942–4 would already have known; it establishes at the same time a paternalistic attitude toward the Indians who are to be discovered and subsequently be brought the inestimable gift of Christianity. The Indians are thus imagined to benefit – along with Columbus, Isabella, and Europe – from their colonisation. The group of Indians does not appear in person, however, until the following scene, when it becomes far clearer who they are imagined to be. For decades, the roles of the Indians had been filled in the annual pageant by Italians belonging to two standing fraternal orders (the Independent Order of Red Men and the Degree 20 Mazza 1945: Scene 1. Mazza’s script lacks pagination, making citation slightly difficult. However, as the full script is under twenty pages long, readers able to consult the original should have little difficulty locating any references of mine.
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of Pocahontas),21 and Mazza continues in this tradition. Thus, far from being the descendents of the Caribbean peoples who likely encountered the historical Columbus, or descendents of the various peoples who encountered European settlers all across North America, the “Indians” of the pageant were European-Americans acting out their cultural imagination of natives. This depiction quite clearly reflects the powerful Indian-imaginaire, evident in poetry, songs, and cowboy movies of the era. Far from any east-coast specific traditions of dress or housing, for example, Mazza’s Indians are accorded the stereotypical tepees and fringed tunics of Plains tribes. As Columbus’s ship lands at the beginning of this scene, the Indians are “generally alarmed”, but when Columbus approaches them, the Chief steps forward and with apparent composure declaims, “O Master of that great Ship with Wings, I know not whence you come, or who sent you here. But if you come in peace, you are welcome to our land and to trade with our people.” Columbus in turn assures the Chief that he “welcomes [the Indian] people into the noble realm of Ferdinand and Isabella” and “brings peace, not war.”22 What is notable is the total lack of conflict in the scene. The Indians are not hostile, or even wary, and they do not even experience a language barrier; the Chief’s speech is stilted, but grammatical and fluent, unlike many Indian denizens of movie Westerns. The Indians are trusting, and the Chief takes Columbus at his word: “You say you bring peace and not war, so we receive you as brothers and invite you to smoke with us the Pipe of Peace.”23 The Indians are depicted as exotic but perfect hosts – polite, welcoming, compliant. As Columbus and the Chief retreat offstage for the peace-pipe smoking, the script then stipulates that the Indian Princess – no rank and file member of the Degree of Pocahontas, but rather “a fine coloratura soprano” – should step to the front of the stage and sing “an Indian melody”. Mazza notes for this that “[a]ny Indian selection such as ‘The Indian Love Call’, ‘The Waters of Minnetonka’, or ‘Pale Moon’ is appropriate to this number”.24 The inclusion of this song seems to be calculated to cement the “Indian-ness” of the scene and the Princess, but what Mazza actually includes is a choice between a number of Euro-American cultural products labelled and recognised as “Indian” – songs given typically “Indian” titles and presumably dealing with “Indian” themes in “Indian” musical motifs. This set of songs attests not to anything about North American tribal traditions so much as to a free-floating, generalised “Indian” trope of White cultural imagination. 21 Mazza refers in his script notes to the “Independent” Order of Red Men, while Speroni refers to the “Improved” Order of Red Men (Speroni 1948: 327). I here follow Mazza, but am uncertain of the source of the variation. 22 Mazza 1945: Scene 2. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.: notes to Scene 2.
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Mazza’s suggestion that “any Indian selection is appropriate” points to a full genre of “typically Indian music”, the individual examples of which – by virtue of the unifying imagination underlying them – are wholly interchangeable and each equally relevant to the pageant. The Princess’s role is not complete, however, in merely evoking the audience’s imagination of the Indian, for her character is also responsible for two more songs that cement the ethnic argument of the pageant. In the very next scene, the Princess reappears as one of Columbus’s gifts to Queen Isabella, and performs before the court “a short classic Italian aria”.25 Although the explanation that the sailors taught the Princess the aria during the boat ride to England seems both flimsy and totally foreign to the historical Columbus voyages, the performance of the aria allows Mazza to draw attention to Columbus’s own Italian-ness and to make a dual statement about Italian heritage: first that it is something to be celebrated and brought as a treasure to a queen, and second that this tradition is at once portable and teachable, that a cultural product of Italy can be brought to Spain through the person of a Native American. Thus, the script suggests a subtle argument for ethnic integration: if the Indian Princess (who can already speak fluent English) can learn Italian culture, and if Columbus can voyage for Spain, then the predominantly Italian immigrant audience of the period can become American and still celebrate their native culture. This integrationist message is cemented by the Princess’s final song, “The Star Spangled Banner”.26 As the Princess leads the audience in the national anthem, she sets aside her prior identifications with both Indian and Italian culture and invokes (together with the audience) the overarching identity “American”. This triumphal final anthem suggests that Princess and audience can lay aside their historical, geographical, and ethnic particularity and embrace an American-ness that at once includes and suspends all other identities. The Princess thus serves as a vehicle to contest the hostility toward Italian-Americans prevalent in the 1940s, and one of the reasons she makes a suitable figure for this rhetorical manipulation is precisely that her own heritage and ethnicity are presumed by Mazza (as by most other Americans at the time) to be neutral, static, and idealised. She and her people are blank and harmlessly friendly, just waiting to be written into Columbus’s story. The Princess, the Chief, and the rest of the Indians are easily recognised as the safe and known properties and products of White American literature, art, and imagination. No questions need be asked.
25 Ibid.: notes to Scene 3. 26 Ibid.: Scene 4.
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3. Indian Contestation In the decades that followed, however, questions would begin to be asked about the neutrality and stability of the character “Indian”, and the idealised, aestheticised public imagination of the American Indian would begin to be challenged, in the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant and far beyond. As native peoples throughout the nation began to speak out against stereotypes and systemic historical oppression, the simple and stylised White imagination of the “Indian” began to seem problematic, and along with it, the triumphant narratives of Columbus’s voyages. In the 1940s, when Mazza was putting on his pageant in San Francisco, there were still plenty of people who understood themselves to be members of North America’s tribes – Creeks, Cherokees, Ojibwas, Tlingits – yet there was very little public awareness of their existence.27 As far as most Americans knew, Indians had vanished with the great herds of wild buffalo; Indians were generally regarded with nostalgia, part of the wildness of the Wild West that had been “tamed” decades earlier. The American government itself seemed often perplexed by the continuing existence of Indian peoples, and attempted a variety of devices to “solve” this problem. In the nineteenth century, the dominant government strategy for dealing with Indians had been to place them on “reservations”, land that was generally remote and undesirable, unwanted by the government or by white settlers; this allowed Anglo-Americans to appropriate vast tracts of land previously inhabited by various tribes. By the early twentieth century, however, these reservations began to seem like problems themselves, obstructions to the cultural integration of their inhabitants. Thus, the government embarked on a variety of small-scale education and relocation programmes, designed at ending any residual Indian culture and bringing young Indians into the workforce.28 In 1953, the various government attempts at integration culminated in the legislation of House Concurrent Resolution 108, which attempted to terminate the unique legal status of Indian tribes as semi-autonomous units. House Concurrent Resolution 108 listed the tribes to be freed “from federal supervision and control and from all the disabilities and limitations applicable to Indians”. Under this policy, called “termination”, tribes would lose all privileges related to treaties with the federal government. Tribal lands, once held in trust by the government, would be opened for sale to non-Indians, and Indians would become subject to the same laws as Anglos.29 What was phrased as an attempt to extend “equal rights to all Americans” was recognised by most Indians as the newest government attempt to integrate them into Anglo society – a suspicion that seemed quite justified when the policy of le27 Fortunate Eagle 2002: 14–15. 28 Johnson 1996: 6–8. 29 Kotlowski 2003: 202.
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gal termination was combined with a formalised version of earlier relocation programmes in the 1956 Congressional act, Public Law 959.30 It was this combination of policies (legal termination and relocation) that led to an Indian population in San Francisco in the first place. With reservations predominantly in the rural western states, most relocated Indians were sent to the major urban centres of the west coast. Many ended up in California, either in Los Angeles to the south or in the Bay Area of San Francisco to the north.31 A significant number of Indian veterans of World War II also “migrated to Bay Area … in order to work in the defense industries.”32 By the early 1960s, the Indian population of the San Francisco area had swelled from virtually nothing to upwards of 20,000.33 At first, there were few social networks, organisations, or any other type of community support; not only did most Indians identify themselves based on tribes, rather than as “Indian”, the relocated workers had very little professional or domestic stability. Most ended up working semi- or non-skilled jobs that were often temporary, leading families to move “at least three or four times after their arrival” in the city;34 many lost jobs that might have been permanent because “[t]raditionally valued personality characteristics such as noncompetitiveness, passivity, and withdrawal in the face of unpleasant situations were often unfamiliar traits in mainstream culture.”35 Many Indians were having tremendous difficulty simply adjusting to urban life, and were not receiving the support from the government that they had been promised.36 Gradually, though, the Indians of the Bay Area began to organise into a community; they began to develop a sense of pan-Indian identity over and above any particular tribal identity – a new political concept largely made possible by the social dislocation under the government’s haphazard relocation efforts. In the early 1960s, the San Francisco area Indians began to mobilise as a community, forming dozens of “social, religious, and political Indian organisations … such as the Intertribal Friendship House, the Four Winds Club, the San Jose Dance Club, the American Indian Baptist Church, the Haskell Institute Alumni, the Navaho Club, the Chippewa Club, and the Tlingit-Haida Club”.37 Despite this new sense of identity and organisation, however, the local Indian population made relatively little 30 Fortunate Eagle 2002: 17. 31 Officially, the four relocation centres were Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland (Fortunate Eagle 1992: 21). San Jose and Oakland are sufficiently near to San Francisco that all three are considered part of the Bay Area. 32 Johnson 1996: 9. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.: 10. 35 Ibid.: 11. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.: 13.
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impact on public awareness in San Francisco – at least until a rather creative political demonstration was launched in 1964.38 At the mouth of San Francisco Bay sits Alcatraz Island, made famous by the maximum-security federal prison at the top of its rocky promontory. In 1963, when the US government constructed Marion Prison, the decision was made to close Alcatraz Prison and reduce the use of the island to its single lighthouse. Upon observing these events, a handful of local Native Americans recalled the federal government’s 1868 treaty with the Sioux nation, which granted Indian rights to any land abandoned or unwanted by the United States government. Accordingly, five Sioux from the San Francisco area dressed up in full tribal regalia, chartered a boat, and on March 8, 1964, landed on Alcatraz Island – accompanied by a lawyer and a dozen or so supporters from other tribes. This “invasion party” planted a series of “claims sticks” (reminiscent of the Lewis and Clark expedition),39 read a prepared statement of their legal entitlement to the island (witnessed only by the dumbfounded island superintendent A.L. Aylworth)40, and performed a series of tribal dances to celebrate their conquest. Though initially planning to camp out on their newly claimed land, once the superintendent began to threaten government force, the group returned to their boat and sailed back to file their petition in the courts.41 The court case over the ownership of Alcatraz Island was ultimately dismissed, but in the course of the “claiming” and the ensuing legal battles, the Native Americans received a substantial amount of local press coverage. This was perhaps the first time that many residents realised that native peoples had been displaced and disenfranchised, but had never disappeared, and certainly the first time that most white residents of San Francisco realised that there were Indians in their midst. The new public awareness of the local Indian population meant that, when a group of American Indian businessmen contacted the planning committee of the Columbus Day pageant, the committee was delighted to edit the pageant’s casting to take advantage of an “authentic” Indian presence. Sometime between 1945 and 38 1964 in particular turned out to be something of a watershed moment in the development of a San Francisco Indian community. In that year alone, nearly 40 new Indian organisations, clubs, and service centres were formed. (Johnson 1996: 13) The year 1964 was also notable for the passing of the Civil Rights Act, which granted legal rights to Blacks but excluded Indians (Fortunate Eagle 2002: 37); Indians were, however, to benefit from Johnson’s 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, which adjusted the administration of funds set aside for Indians to be administered by Indians themselves. This combination of legislation (both the success of the Black Civil Rights Movement and the continuing legal ambiguity of Native American populations) helped galvanise Indian activism. Activists in New York coined the term “Red Power” in conscious imitation of the slogan “Black Power” (Josephy 1999: 13–14). 39 Johnson 1996: 18. 40 Ibid.: 4. 41 Ibid.: 18.
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1960, the Independent Order of Red Men and the Degree of Pocahontas appear to have been disbanded, only to be replaced in the pageant by local Boy Scouts dressed in feathers and bedroom slippers.42 It was not difficult to persuade the committee that a group of “real” Indians would lend much more to the pageant proceedings. The new Indians took pride in their roles representing their people. While all were well integrated into Anglo-American culture – holding down respectable jobs, dressing in suits or blue jeans, joining country clubs and bowling leagues – they all were also working in their spare time towards the new effort to build a pan-tribal Native American ethnic identity. Their new responsibilities in the pageant enabled them to assert an identity quite separate from their workday Anglo personas, and they took these roles quite seriously. For starters, they put great effort into their costuming: determined that people should stop thinking that moccasins sufficed to represent their heritage, they created feather headdresses, bead necklaces, and other costuming, such that they would be “authentic in dress and dance for [their] own tribes even if [they] looked nothing at all like what the Taino had in 1492”.43 Secondly, they endeavoured to increase the Indians’ agency; as one re-enactor reported, “we actually greeted Columbus in a more ceremonial way, striding out to meet him rather than just standing in awe as the Boy Scouts had done.”44 This, then, marked a significant change in the narrative coded in the Columbus Day pageant: no longer were White Americans the sole agents and custodians of the national origin. So, for the next several years, when Columbus (now played by Joseph Cervetto) stepped out of his rowing-boat, he was greeted by a group of people who may have included Sioux and Choctaw and Ojibwa, but who were emphatically “real” Indians. A constant member of the group (and the person responsible for getting the Indians into the pageant)45 was Adam Fortunate Eagle – an Ojibwa, a member of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and a participant in the 1964 “claiming” of Alcatraz Island. Fortunate Eagle was becoming more and more dissatisfied with his role as an upstanding member of White society, and was becoming more and more concerned with carving out a meaningful Native American ethnic identity.46 While his group’s acceptance into the annual Columbus Day pageant at first seemed like a victory, after a few years of dressing up and dancing on the beach every October, Adam Fortunate Eagle concluded that the casting change had not sufficiently altered the pageant’s narrative – that the pageant still assumed native peoples to have been submissive and welcoming to the Europeans who displaced 42 Fortunate Eagle 2002: 45. 43 Ibid.: 53. 44 Ibid. 45 McManis 2002. 46 Fortunate Eagle 2002: 30–38.
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them. He felt that it was time to challenge this narrative, and so he decided to rewrite the ritual. For the Columbus Day pageant of 1968, Adam Fortunate Eagle conspired with the other Indians and the emcee47 to depart rather dramatically from the scripted plan. Years later, Fortunate Eagle described his actions as follows: “Cervetto in his knee-knocking tights and bulbous apricot short pants climbed from the boat and began his ceremonious wade to shore. I strode out to meet him at the beach, carrying a coup stick cradled in one arm … I let him make his symbolic stab in the sand and then put my coup stick on his shoulder as I spoke to him in a stage whisper the crowd behind me couldn’t hear. ‘Bend down a second, Joe, just bend down on one knee.’ Joe grinned at me, thinking, I suppose that he was about to receive some kind of blessing. As he bent down, I brushed aside his floppy hat and lifted the toupee from his head, waving it in the air.”48 This dramatic “scalping” was the emcee’s “cue to read a statement about the disastrous historical effects on Indians and their current presence in the Bay Area”.49 Fortunate Eagle reports that the audience responded with a mixture of shocked gasps and cheering, while Cervetto himself seemed amused – “Joe, who had fallen down on all fours, grinned back up at me, as good natured and as bald as ever.”50 The planning committee, however, was not amused. Fortunate Eagle and the rest of the local Indians were not asked back for the following year.51 The “scalping” of Joseph Cervetto was not merely an amusing departure from the usual plan, but an overtly political act. While the de-privileged perspectives of Indians would perhaps always have conflicted with the privileged or official perspective of the pageant’s organisers, the access the Indians gained to the pageant presented the opportunity for them to publicise the discrepancy and to challenge the dignity and obviousness of the dominant discourse. Adam Fortunate Eagle did 47 The emcee was named Joe Cimino – a radio host, and an Anglo American friend of Fortunate Eagle’s (Fortunate Eagle 2002: 54). 48 Ibid.: 53–54. 49 Ibid.: 54. 50 Ibid. 51 Years later, when Joseph Cervetto retired from his thirty years of portraying Columbus, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about a further incident. According to the article, one year a Sioux man ran up to Cervetto as he waded ashore and punched him, knocking him backward into the water. “Cut the Columbus crap,” the Sioux man is said to have yelled, “We were here first!” Cervetto is supposed to have replied, “Listen, maybe you WAS here first but you didn’t know where you was!” (Caen 1987). It is possible that poor Mr. Cervetto was indeed assaulted by Indian activists on multiple occasions; however, as I have been unable to find any confirmation of this story, I suspect that this is merely a garbled version of the Fortunate Eagle “scalping”.
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not just embarrass Joe Cervetto; he embarrassed Joe Cervetto in his persona as Christopher Columbus. This gesture would thus seem to belong to the type usefully designated by Bruce Lincoln as “corrosive discourse”: “gossip, rumor, jokes, invective; curses, catcalls, nicknames, taunts; caricatures, graffiti, lampoon, satire; sarcasm, mockery, rude noises, obscene gestures, and everything else that deflates puffery and degrades the exalted. … corrosive discourse restores to the level of the human those frail and fallible individuals who would prefer to represent themselves as the embodiment of some incontestable office or some transcendent ideal.”52 Through the “scalping”, Fortunate Eagle pointed out graphically to the audience that they were not in the presence of Christopher Columbus (plucky adventurer and embodiment of American ideals) but merely in the presence of Joe Cervetto (bald local plumber). By knocking off the fancy hat and wig, Fortunate Eagle disrupted the Columbus persona to reveal the faulty man underneath; by treating casually the trappings of the office of “Columbus”, Fortunate Eagle corroded the dignity and authority of the office itself. Two years later, Adam Fortunate Eagle and the other pageant participants attempted to rejoin the pageant. On the appointed day, they showed up at the site in their official regalia. The pageant’s organisers, though, were prepared for any further attempts to corrode their pageant – they had made arrangements for riot police to be on hand in case any activists turned up.53 Fortunate Eagle and his group left peacefully, and the Columbus Day pageant of 1970 proceeded without further incident.
4. Authenticity undone The “scalping” of Joseph Cervetto presented a tremendous problem to pageant organisers. They were no longer enthusiastic about the participation of local Indians, who had turned out to be political activists instead of exotic, moving setpieces. Moreover, as Native American political activism increased, particularly along the Pacific coast, having anything to do with Indian political activists had begun to seem more and more dangerous. At the same time, however, the organisers were unwilling simply to revert to the Boy Scouts or the Independent Order of Red Men, who had been exposed as White people in moccasins and feather dusters. Now that it was acknowledged that there were “real Indians” around, the facsimiles could no longer seem quite authentic.
52 Lincoln 1994: 78–79. 53 McManis 2002.
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The solution they hit upon: get better Indians – authentic ones that could be relied upon not to cause problems. By the 1980s, the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant was hiring Yaquis Indians all the way from Mexico, who dutifully showed up on pageant days in very impressive, semi-Aztec regalia.54 Still somewhat eccentric stand-ins for the Caribs or Tainos who greeted the historical Columbus, the hired Yaquis at least had the good grace to stay in character and leave everyone’s toupees in place. However, as Indian activism became ever more public and vocal during the late 1960s and into the 1970s, the more reliable casting choice did not solve the community’s growing discomfort with the general portrayal of native peoples. In 1969, a renewed “invasion” of Alcatraz Island caught national attention, as Indian activists and college students took control and inhabited the island for nearly a year and a half.55 In 1970, similar protests attempted to take control of federal land at Fort Lawton, Ellis Island, and a number of other locations.56 There was a series of fishing rights demonstrations in Washington State in 1970–71, and a protest at the 1972 Thanksgiving Day celebrations held at the Pilgrims’ original landing site at Plymouth, Massachusetts.57 In 1975, the FBI engaged in a shootout with Indian activists in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, that left three people dead.58 While many of these political protests were simply directed at the US government and its systematic disenfranchisement of native tribes, in the late 1980s Native American activism turned quite specifically toward the Columbus narrative itself. As many cities in the country began making plans for celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s expedition in 1992, people across the nation began to re-narrate Columbus as an instigator of genocide. A number of books were written around this time, challenging the normally triumphant Columbus history, and suggesting instead that America was founded on oppression and violence.59 Activist Russell Means60 dramatised the argument in Denver by pouring blood over a statue of Christopher Columbus outside the city’s Civic Center.61 In Columbus, Ohio, school children produced a play in which Columbus was portrayed hacking down 54 55 56 57 58
Summerhill & Williams 2000: 112. See further Fortunate Eagle 1992. Johnson 1996: 224–225. Bonney 1977: 215. Johnson 1996: 238. For an excellent chronology and summary of post-Alcatraz Indian political demonstrations, see Johnson’s Appendix (“Summary of Major Occupations”), ibid.: 223– 238. 59 Such as David Stannard’s 1992 American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. 60 Russell Means was also one of the participants at the 1964 demonstration on Alcatraz; together with his father, Walter Means, Russell hammered a mop handle into the ground as the first “claims stick” (Fortunate Eagle 2002: 10). 61 Summerhill & Williams 2000: 103.
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every living thing in his path with a sword, until Mother Earth could capture him and restore dead flowers, birds and Indians to life.62 Perhaps inevitably, San Francisco, boasting one of the country’s most elaborate Columbus Day celebrations, became one of the centres for contention. In addition to the waterfront pageant, “[b]y 1992, San Francisco’s Columbus Day had expanded over a two week period, embracing no fewer than eight separate events”.63 Besides the boat landing, the celebrations in the late 1980s included a parade, a street fair, a Catholic processional from the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul down Columbus Avenue to the Bay, a “Renaissance football game”, and a beauty contest to select Queen Isabella; the parade now featured Chinese dragons and the Gay Freedom Day marching band, and had become a broader statement about local San Francisco community and identity.64 Leading up to 1992, the first controversy about the quincentennial concerned the proposal to bring an international nautical parade to the city. A venture was being planned wherein Italian-built replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria would sail from Europe to New York to the Bahamas (the probable site of Columbus’s actual landing), and then on through the Panama Canal in order to participate in festivities in California.65 In spite of support for this plan from San Francisco’s mayor, as well as emeritus Columbus re-enactor Joseph Cervetto (who had retired in 1989, handing over the role to his son66), two difficulties arose almost immediately. First, on a practical level, the city of San Francisco was asked to front USD two million to help fund the construction and transport of the historical boats. Second, the local Indian community announced in May 1991 that, should the recreated boats be brought to San Francisco Bay, they would be met with dozens or perhaps hundreds of canoes full of protestors, who would try to block the boats’ entry into the harbour.67 It is not clear which of these difficulties may have held more weight (the finances or the prospect of yet another high-profile political demonstration), but San Francisco ultimately declined to take part in the international boat tour. But the difficulties were not over for San Francisco’s Columbus Day pageantry of 1992, and activists were dedicated to preventing Columbus’s boat landing entirely. While the planning committee had made all the arrangements for the 1992 celebrations to proceed as usual, some two thousand people showed up in Aquatic Park
62 Ibid.: 2. 63 Ibid.: 111. 64 Ibid. 65 Doyle 1988. 66 Anon. 1989 (“New Generation in Columbus Role”); 1987 (“‘Columbus’ Tires of Discovering SF”). 67 Anon. 1991 (“Indians Plan to Protest Celebration”).
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(the usual site of the boat-landing) on 11 October 1992 to protest the pageant.68 While the protest appears to have been planned by local Indian organisations, participation was by no means limited to ethnic Indians, and photos of the protest indicate that the gathering also attracted sympathetic White Americans, as well as a variety of “oppressed” people. (One photo, for example, shows some protestors waving a gay pride flag, while others nearby hold up a placard printed in Spanish.)69 The protest engendered by the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery reveals fully the social change that began in the 1960s. By 1992, Columbus’s authenticity, his worthiness to be annually ritually consecrated as America’s founder, was questioned not by a small pocket of re-enactors (activists that had infiltrated the pageant’s cast), but rather by a substantial segment of the San Francisco populace. This time, it was not a renegade cast member who acted out, but rather the pageant’s audience. At the last minute, the planning committee cancelled the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant of 1992.
5. Conclusion: Ritual Rewritten The story of San Francisco’s Columbus Day pageant over the course of the twentieth century is a story about ritual change and social change, and how the two inflect and create each other. In depicting the events of the past, the pageant made annual statements about the people in the present, who organised it, acted in it, and observed it. As those people changed their minds about who they were, they needed to change the pageant; as the pageant changed, it helped alter people’s sense of who they were. In contesting and altering the details of the pageant’s scripting, casting, costuming, the San Francisco organisers, actors, and activists helped change the meaning of Columbus and the place of his voyages in public imagination. In rewriting the ritual, they rewrote the meaning of their history. The change in the meaning of Columbus can hardly be overestimated. In 1942, Mazza’s pageant seems to have been well-received; one observer wrote with great approval of the pageant as a whole, specifically remarking that “Mazza makes a very good Columbus indeed.”70 Mazza’s portrayal of Columbus – from his grandiose speech-making to his acceptance of the Pipe of Peace and his friendship with the Indian Princess – appears to have fitted just fine into the prevailing public sense of who Americans were and what the country was about. But in 1992, Christopher Columbus was castigated as a villain of the first order, and the annual pageant was 68 Anon. 1992b (“Re-enactment of Columbus’ Landing Foiled”); 1992a (“40 Arrested Protesting Columbus”). 69 Summerhill & Williams 2000: 105. 70 Speroni 1948: 334.
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blocked entirely. Fifty years was sufficient to undermine the local and national authority of one of the quintessential American origin myths. After 1992, though, San Francisco recommenced celebrating Columbus Day, but it never seems to have recaptured any sort of seriousness for the proceedings; in fact, the celebration stopped being called “Columbus Day”, and started being called “Italian Heritage Day”.71 The boat landing and parade seem instead to have passed into the realm of “local color” – events that are tacky, but fun. In 2006, the Columbus Day festivities received the following write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Why do we love this Columbus Day parade? Let us count the ways: the giant Moretti Beer bottle, the [San Francisco] District Garbage Can Drill Team; … the accordion players and the tarantella dancers; the free samples of Columbus salame; the grand climax when Isabella’s ladies-in-waiting pile into the cab of the firetruck. The city’s Italian Americans have been celebrating their rich heritage in more or less this fashion since 1869, making this the oldest such extravaganza in the country. After ‘Christopher Columbus’ steps ashore at Fisherman’s Wharf (not exactly San Salvador, but close enough), the parade makes its way down Columbus Avenue and up around Washington Square for a final review by the queen herself. … Four hundred thousand people turn out each year to bask in the October sunshine, sip and nosh at the restaurants along the route, and enjoy the atmosphere of celebrazione.”72 The ritual forum that had been a battle-front for ethnic identity politics has now become an apparently harmless “ethnic flavour” of the city, a gathering point for absurdities of all kinds, from the garbage can musicians to the boat landing of Columbus. The Christopher Columbus narrative would thus seem to have passed into local kitsch. The story no longer seems to hold much significance, and its re-enactment now seems somewhat humorous. Yet what does it mean that any version of the Columbus narrative nevertheless continues to be performed?73 If the Columbus story was indeed wholly overturned, why should its ritual enactment have been resurrected after the 1992 cancellation? My own conjecture is that the 1992 cancellation in effect rendered the pageant “safe”. In part, the cancellation would have accomplished this by disrupting pageant’s periodicity, the periodicity that marked off a special authoritative time and place in which to speak about the community. Moreover, once the community began to actively question and oppose the pageant, they would have also disrupted the ritual feed-back mechanism described by Rappaport (whereby ritual and cul71 See the parade’s website: http://www.sfcolumbusday.org/ (last accessed 10. 3. 2010). 72 Anon. 2005 (“Best Parade”). 73 Many thanks to Anne Mossner of Heidelberg University for raising this question.
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tural ideas/values authorise and re-enforce one another); as the pageant’s credibility crumbled, and it no longer was a viable forum for representing the community’s deep sense of itself, it needed no longer pose a danger to those who disagreed with its narrative. The pageant could thus return as a de-legitimised shadow of its former self. The story of the San Francisco Columbus Day pageant is thus a story of the end of a ritual’s legitimacy and the end of a narrative’s legitimacy, based on a shifting sense of who Americans were and who the local San Francisco community was. In a sense, the broader social change of the 1960s–1980s undermined the authority of San Francisco’s Columbus Day pageant, but in just as clear a sense, the pageant was one local event that, taken together with other protests and rewritings, helped create the broader scale social change. As a ritual, it provided the opportunity to abstract and clarify diffuse changes that were occurring in public sensibility. Public imagination and local event fed each other in a dialectic that eroded the authority of the Christopher Columbus story, and in the end, what was left was a ritual rewritten by a rewritten community.
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References Anon. 1987. “‘Columbus’ Tires of Discovering S.F.” San Francisco Chronicle 3 October 1987: A5. — 1989. “New Generation in Columbus Role”. San Francisco Chronicle 9 October 1989: A3. — 1991. “Indians Plan to Protest Celebration”. San Jose Mercury News 5 May 1991. — 1992a. “40 Arrested Protesting Columbus: 2,000 Thwart a Planned Waterfront Reenactment”. San Jose Mercury News 12 October 1992. — 1992b. “Re-Enactment of Columbus’ Landing Foiled: Marchers Decry Oppression of the Indians Since 1492”. San Jose Mercury News 12 October 1992. — 2005. “Best Parade”. San Francisco Weekly. http://www.sfweekly.com/bestof/2005/ award/best-parade-66969/ (10. 3. 2010). — 2007. “Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving”. San Francisco Chronicle 23 November 2007. Bellah, Robert N. 1967. “Civil Religion in America”. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 91/1: 1–21. Bonney, Rachel A. 1977. “The Role of AIM Leaders in Indian Nationalism”. American Indian Quarterly 3/3: 209–224. Caen, Herb 1987. “Nothing But the Best”. San Francisco Chronicle 12 October 1987: B1. Cinel, Dino 1982. From Italy to San Francisco: The Immigrant Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Doyle, Jim 1988. “S.F. Hopes to Land Columbus Day Fete.” San Francisco Chronicle 5 September 1988: A8. Fortunate Eagle, Adam 1992. Alcatraz! Alcatraz! The Indian Occupation of 1969– 1971. Berkeley: Heyday Books. — 2002. Heart of the Rock: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Gluckman, Max 1958. Analysis of a Social Situation in Zululand. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnson, Troy R. 1996. The Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Indian Self-Determination & the Rise of Indian Activism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Josephy, Alvin M. 1999. Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Power. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kotlowski, Dean J. 2003. “Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and Beyond: The Nixon and Ford Administrations Respond to Native American Protest”. Pacific Historical Review 74/2: 201–227. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–20. Larner, John P. 1993. “North American Hero? Christopher Columbus 1702–2002”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 137/1: 46–63. Lincoln, Bruce 1994. Authority: Construction and Corrosion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Mazza, John J. 1945. The Discovery of America: The Columbus Day Pageant. San Francisco: Recorder-Sunset Press. McManis, Sam 2002. “Profile: Adam Fortunate Eagle Nordwall: Bay Area’s Trickster Grandfather of the Radical Indian Movement”. San Francisco Chronicle 21 October 2002: A1. Naraindas, Harish 2008. “Sacraments for the Dead? Stillbirths and the Science of Grieving in an American Hospital”. Conference paper presented at Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual conference 29 September–2 October 2008. Perkins, Laura 2004. “Thousands in San Francisco Watch Columbus Parade’s Annual Voyage”. San Francisco Chronicle 8 October 2004: F12. Phillips, Carla Rahn & William D. Philips 1992. “Christopher Columbus in United States Historiography: Biography as Projection”. The History Teacher 25/2: 119– 135. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Paul Chaat & Robert Allen Warrior 1996. Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. New York: The New Press. Speroni, Charles 1948. “The Development of the Columbus Day Pageant of San Francisco”. Western Folklore 7/4: 325–335. Stannard, David 1992. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press. Summerhill, Stephen J. & John Alexander Williams 2000. Sinking Columbus: Contested History, Cultural Politics, and Mythmaking during the Quincentenary. Orlando: University Press of Florida. Zinn, Howard 1999. A People’s History of the United States: 1492–Present. New York: HarperCollins.
Section II: Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity Edited by Nils Holger Petersen
Nils Holger Petersen
Il Doge and Easter Processions at San Marco in Early Modern Venice1 Considering the prominence of Venice and its ducal traditions, it is surprising that the practice of the quem quaeritis – or visitatio sepulchri, the ceremonial representation of the biblical account of the visit of the women to the sepulchre of Jesus and the Angelic pronouncement of the Resurrection – as well as the Good Friday depositio hostiae − the burial of the host, thus of Christ – in the ducal basilica of San Marco, Venice, have only become known in “liturgical drama” scholarship at a fairly late date. Indeed, the two traditional authorities are Karl Young’s classic account of medieval dramatic ceremonies in the Latin Church from 1933, and the texts printed and commented on by Walther Lipphardt and published in the 1970s and up to 1990 in his volumes of sources for the so-called dramatic Easter ceremonies (the final volumes containing the commentary published only after his death). Both of these only referred to the Venice Good Friday and Easter ceremonies, containing the depositio hostiae and the visitatio sepulchri from the eighteenth century, except for the ceremonies printed in Alberto Castellani’s Liber sacerdotalis (Venice 1523), without the specification of any provenance, ceremonies which may have been proposed rather than actually performed.2 In other branches of studies of Venetian ritual, however, local San Marco ceremonies from the sixteenth century for both liturgical occasions have been described and discussed.3 In recent publications, new liturgical sources have been brought to scholarly attention, mainly through the work of Giulio Cattin, extending the knowledge of the above-mentioned ceremonies much further back in time.4
1 Research for this paper was carried out at the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals, sponsored by The Danish National Research Foundation, which is gratefully acknowledged. 2 Young 1933: vol. 1, 554, 573, 622–625; Lipphardt 1975–1990: vol. 2, 593−607 (numbers 429, 429a, and 430), see also the commentary in VII: 347−350. Castellani’s quem quaeritis may well have been closely related to the Venetian traditions, as discussed in different ways by Susan Rankin and myself; see the publications cited in note 5 below. 3 See especially Sinding-Larsen 1974: 215–217 and Muir 1981: 219–221. 4 See Cattin 1990–1992.
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During the 1990s, new studies of the quem quaeritis at San Marco appeared in the context of “liturgical drama” scholarship, partly by myself in 1995 and partly – with musical transcriptions of the sources – by Susan Rankin in 1997.5 In his Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, Edward Muir has described the “Myth of Venice” and the ritual practices which publicly displayed this myth in Early Modern Venice.6 This myth of la serenissima repubblica also envisaged a religious figure − or role − for the Duke of Venice, the doge, in addition to his function as the (symbolic) leader of the city-state. The special status of Venice as a fief of the evangelist St Mark, for instance, came to the fore in the ducal coronation ceremony which − as Staale Sinding-Larsen has argued − may be understood as a ceremony of fealty in which the doge received his power from St Mark and Christ.7 Since the thirteenth century and throughout the history of the republic, the doge was elected (for life) by the Great Council, and even before the establishment of the Great Council, some electoral procedure for his office was followed.8 Ducal power was thus curbed, albeit in various degrees, during these centuries by a − relatively − democratic electoral procedure which, since the sixteenth century, in the promissioni ducale, increasingly underlined the symbolic nature of the power of the doge, while the “real” political power stayed with the Council.9 Also, the religious symbolism connected to the office of the doge made the limitations of ducal power surprisingly clear, since the distinction between the person who − temporarily − was taking on the role of the doge and the official role was always kept clearer than in most European traditions of rulership. The signet ring of the doge – to a high degree a symbol of his power – was taken off his finger when he died, so that no doge was buried as the doge of the city state, but as a private person.10 Similarly, the ceremony of the burial of the host on Good Friday may be understood to have expressed the notion that the doge symbolically had lost his basis of power through the death of Christ: the ducal signet ring was removed temporarily to be used to seal the ciborium in which the host was buried (although given back afterwards, according to the sixteenth-century Ceremoniale of Bonifacio).11 I have argued that this may provide a symbolic understanding of the 5 See Petersen 1995 and Rankin 1997. The first mainly discusses the sixteenth-century situation from the perspective of the religious and political significance of the ducal role in the ceremonial, the latter gives a history of the quem quaeritis at San Marco from the thirteenth century to the end of the republic in 1797. See also the brief discussion in Petersen 2004: 629. 6 Muir 1981; see esp. part one “Myth and Ritual” (13–61), and part three “Government by Ritual” (185–297). 7 Staale Sinding-Larsen 1974: 166, 213−217. 8 Muir 1981: 279–289, 299. 9 Ibid.: esp. 251−296. 10 Ibid.: 264–265, 270–271. 11 See ibid.: 219; Sinding-Larsen 1974: 217.
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conspicuous role of the doge in the quem quaeritis ceremonies on Easter morning, as they evolved in connection with the ducal procession on Easter morning in San Marco, apparently from the time of the doge Andrea Gritti (ruled from 1523− 1538). The doge was specified as the prime receiver of the message of the Resurrection: having had to acknowledge the loss of the basis for his (symbolic) power on Good Friday afternoon, it would have been ceremonially and symbolically of the utmost importance for the office of the doge that he received the “news” of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.12 In contrast, the earlier preserved sources from the thirteenth century show no trace of a specific ducal involvement in these ceremonies. The ceremonies of the depositio hostiae and the quem quaeritis as recorded in the preserved eighteenth-century liturgical books from San Marco appear as having remained largely unaltered since the mid-sixteenth century.13 According to the Ceremoniale of Bonifacio, copied before 1564,14 the deposition ceremony took place on the afternoon of Good Friday.15 “Post prandium” a procession was formed in the sacristy by members of the grande scuole and the clergy, with detailed specifications of the order of the procession, the vestments, and the candles. The doge and his suite, too, followed the bier with the corpus Domini. As it left the sacristy, all genuflected, and the verse Venite et ploremus was sung. After the main part of the procession, the bier with the host was brought into San Marco (through the main door), and the traditional burial ceremony of the deposition took place at an erected sepulchre, with its specially added meaning through the symbolic use of the ducal signet ring. On Easter morning, the officiating priest, the master of ceremonies, deacons, and subdeacons proceeded into the ducal palace. The doge was presented with a large candle; a similar one was given to the main procurator of San Marco, and a third reserved for the celebrant. If it was not raining, the procession, including the doge and his suite, would leave the ducal palace by the porta sancti Clementis. Bells were rung and standards placed outside the church early in the morning. The procession was headed by heralds and flute players, before the crucifer, after which the clerics from the lowest to the highest in rank followed. At the inner door of the main entrance to San Marco, the Quem quaeritis dialogue took place. First, the celebrant knocked three times on the door with three knocks each time, using a 12 See Petersen 1995: esp. 12−14 and 20. 13 So also Rankin 1997: 175–179. Rankin also discusses a drawing by Canaletto from 1766, adding visual support to the liturgical documents. 14 Rituum ecclesiasticorum ceremoniale, iuxta ducalis ecclesiæ sancti Marci Venetiarum consuetudinem preserved – possibly in Bonifacio’s own hand (see Rankin 1997: 156) – in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Cod. lat. III 172. The quem quaeritis ceremony from this manuscript is discussed in Rankin 1997, as well as in Petersen 1995. The description of the Easter morning ceremonial is edited in an appendix in Canal 1972. 15 See also the brief descriptions in Sinding-Larsen 1974: 215–216 and Muir 1981: 219.
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copper ring hanging from the door as a knocker. Then the singers inside sang “Quem quaeritis? etc.” As the singers inside continued with “Venite et videte”, the door was opened and all entered the church. The doge stopped before the sepulchre from which the host had been removed previously, and the celebrant ascended to it. Having put his head into the sepulchre from both sides, the celebrant sang to the choir: “Surrexit Christus”. He was answered by the choir: “Deo gratias”. The celebrant then moved closer to the doge – keeping a debita distantia – in the end, however, giving the kiss of peace to the doge and to the procurator, repeating the Surrexit Christus to which both answered “Deo gratias”. Thereafter, the priest gave the kiss of peace to the deacons and subdeacons with the same exchange of dialogue. They, in turn, repeated this procedure with those standing nearby, so that the kiss of peace passed down in the order of rank, ending with the lowest. What took place in this ceremony was, in one way, a straightforward quem quaeritis dialogue, basically as known, musically as well as textually, from Venetian thirteenth-century sources, and from hundreds of visitationes sepulchri at other places since the tenth century. And, for instance, similarly in the summarising description (without musical notation) in Francesco Sansovini’s Venetia città nobilissima et singolare (originally published in 1581, but the description of the quem quaeritis only found in additions provided by Giovanni Stringa for the edition of 1604), here indicated schematically: At the main entrance to the basilica: Vicarius knocks on the door (3 x 3) Singers from the inside: Quem quaeritis etc. (ut in ordinario) Those on the outside: Iesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o Celicole And those inside: Non est hic; surrexit, sicut prædixerat. Ite, nunciate, quia surrexit, dicentes: They continue: Venite, & videte locum, ubi positus erat Dominus. Alleluia, alleluia. Procession enters the basilica. At the sepulchre: Vicarius (con molta allegrezza): Surrexit Christus Choir: Deo gratias (repeated while approaching the doge). Kiss of peace (in the order of rank).16
16 Further details and references in Petersen 1995: 13–16.
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The complex of these solemn processions on Good Friday and Easter mornings around the San Marco piazza and into the basilica clearly emphasised political hierarchy, providing at the same time a unique ceremonial which can be read as ritually manifesting several – intertwined yet different – kinds of sacrosanctity: sacred church spaces and objects, among them the temporarily erected Easter sepulchre, the office of the doge, ultimately dependent on the victory of Christ, as well as an appropriation of traditional musico-liturgical elements, highlighting the weightiness of the ritual. Susan Rankin has remarked that the QQ dialogue at the entrance to San Marco “marks out the whole of the basilica as the sepulchre of Christ”.17 The ceremony, I would add, places the doge in the role of the Marys from the New Testament accounts, not only through the performance of the dialogue, in which the doge forms part of the group standing outside the main doors of the San Marco, but primarily by virtue of the specific instructions to announce the Resurrection first to him (and to the procurator). Altogether, a ritual encounter with the biblical account of the Resurrection through its first witnesses, the Marys, is formed, in which the city of Venice takes part, being represented by a sacrosanct person given the special privilege of receiving the important divine message. At this point, I shall bring in the concept of cultural memory, as this has been defined and discussed by Jan (and Aleida) Assmann, before returning to the Venetian ceremonies. Cultural memory as presented by the Assmanns is not, strictly speaking, a memory: “Through the concept of cultural memory we take a large step beyond the individual who – after all – alone has a memory in a proper sense. Neither the group nor the culture ‘has’ a memory in this sense. To speak in such terms would be a flagrant mystification. Persons continue to be the sole carriers of memory. What this is about is the question to what extent this individual memory is determined socially and culturally.”18 In a society, various physical as well as mental repositories are established and, to some extent, institutionalised for what it has accepted as its most indispensable 17 Rankin 1997: 169. 18 Assmann 2004: 19, my translation (as everywhere if nothing else is indicated). Original German text: “Mit dem Begriff des kulturellen Gedächtnisses gehen wir noch einmal einen großen Schritt hinaus über das Individuum, das doch allein ein Gedächtnis im eigentlichen Sinne hat. Weder die Gruppe, noch gar die Kultur ‘hat’ in diesem Sinne ein Gedächtnis. So zu reden, wäre eine unzulässige Mystifikation. Nach wie vor ist der Mensch der einzige Träger des Gedächtnisses. Worum es geht, ist die Frage, in welchem Umfang dieses einzelne Gedächtnis sozial und kulturell determiniert ist.”
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historical, cultural, political, and religious objects and features. In a modern society, libraries and archives, museums, theatres, concert halls, the media, and, not least, educational institutions and their curricula, as well as religious communities and institutions, perform such functions. Cultural memory as understood in such a way obviously reaches far into cultural as well as individual practices, including circulating ideas and beliefs, manifested also through imaginative creations. Even though no medieval or modern individual could have or has any personal recollections of the main biblical narratives, collectively regulated receptions of a fundamental Christian pool of narratives and their foreground, their later interpretations and responses, have been and still are important, not the least in Western cultures, providing, although no longer universally so, a framework for understanding history, politics, and individual morality in societies and groups along various dividing lines. These dividing lines depend on denominations and, of course, individual receptions, influencing also individual persons’ frameworks for fantasising or imagining. For Jan Assmann, the concept of cultural memory is combined with a historiographical construction in which the functions of ritual and writing are particularly important. In early oral cultures, Assmann sees rituals as constituting primary organisational forms of a cultural memory which were gradually substituted by interpretation and re-interpretation of texts in written cultures as they developed: “In connection with the writing down of traditions, a gradual transition takes place from the dominance of repetition to the dominance of realisation, from a ‘ritual’ to a ‘textual coherence.’ In that way a new connective structure has been established. Its connective power is not imitation and conservation, but interpretation and memory. Hermeneutics replaces liturgy.”19 However, this compact historical model does not leave much space for the complexity of medieval or renaissance liturgy, where ritual function and hermeneutics in no way exclude each other, but have worked hand in hand for centuries. A historical narrative connecting rituals with clear elements of repetition, imitation, and conservation, based on beliefs in sacred numinous presence in the ritual, to hermeneutics, interpretation, and memory does, however, seem to fit in well with a generally accepted historical understanding of religion in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, as based on ideas of sacred presence in sacraments, saints, and holy persons and relics, and as opposed to modern abstract theological ideas and interpretations. 19 Assmann 2005: 18. Original German text: “Im Zusammenhang mit dem Schriftlichwerden von Überlieferungen vollzieht sich ein allmählicher Übergang von der Dominanz der Wiederholung zur Dominanz der Vergegenwärtigung, von ‘ritueller’ zu ‘textueller Kohärenz’. Damit ist eine neue konnektive Struktur entstanden. Ihre Bindekräfte heißen nicht Nachahmung und Bewahrung, sondern Auslegung und Erinnerung. An die Stelle der Liturgie tritt die Hermeneutik.”
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Paul Ricoeur has pointed to the general tendencies of de-mythologisation, especially in modern Protestant theologies – the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann provides an important example – to annihilate the sacred in order to focus on what is considered the main “message”, a message, however, which for Ricoeur obviously presupposes the existence of “the sacred”.20 However, in spite of the importance of notions of the sacred or holy in early and medieval Christian devotional practices, textual creation and interpretation was also of high importance and influence, as is obvious from the simultaneity of the growth of a Christian Bible with the establishment of a Christian cult: interpretation of the traditional scriptures of Judaism in what became the New Testament, and the establishing of ideas of sacredness in actual devotional assemblies, as, for instance, strongly manifested in the universal Western use of the antiphon “Terribilis est locus iste” – taken from the narrative of Jacob at Beth-el21 for the introit to the Dedication Mass for a church during the Middle Ages.22 As I have argued elsewhere, it seems likely that the small ceremonial changes involving the doge during the reign of Andrea Gritti, to which the sixteenth-century Ceremoniale points, may have been part of a larger rearrangement of the Easter morning and even the Good Friday liturgy.23 Edward Muir has pointed to the reform activities of Gritti, among other things in modifying civic rituals to conform to the mythic serenity of Venice. It is possible, then, to see the ducal processions for the depositio hostiae and the visitatio sepulchri from the sixteenth century onwards (to the end of the Republic) as part of a deliberate attempt at creating a new cultural memory, in which the symbolic role of the doge is further emphasised by traditional medieval liturgy. Cultural memory does not only consist in the selection and preservation of existing or previously existing objects and ideas, but also in the construction of ideas – and sometimes objects – to be perceived as being part of a long-standing tradition. By inserting the doge as well into such solemn old liturgical traditions, a serene perception of the ducal office was further reinforced and made a part of a general cultural memory of the city-state. Here, hermeneutics did not replace liturgy; on the contrary: liturgy was appropriated to reinforce politico-religious hermeneutics. The notion of performativity, as discussed by Erika Fischer-Lichte, may be helpful in describing this process of establishing a new cultural memory. She distinguishes between the concepts of Inszenierung and Performativität.24 For Fischer-Lichte, performativity is defined by its event-character. In contrast, the staging – Inszenierung or mise-en-scène – concerns that which is planned, maybe 20 21 22 23 24
Ricoeur 1995. Genesis 28. 17. Hiley 1993: 45. Petersen 1995. Fischer-Lichte 2001.
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notated, but in any case aspects of an event which can be rehearsed and, basically, controlled before the event: as examples one can think of a play written by a dramatist, the score of the composer, prescriptive liturgical manuscripts, or other rules, instructions, or traditions which indicate what must be done for some specific event. “Concerning the event character of a performance, the emergence of that which happens is more important than that which happens and than the meanings that one may attribute to the event later, that is after it is over. That something happens and that which happens both affect all who participate in the event also, if in completely different ways and in different degrees. […] In order to prevent misunderstanding: what is meant here by the idea of an event being unique and not repeatable does not contradict the practice – characteristic for many performances – of rehearsing individual sequences, as well as the complete course of action, thoroughly, and of predetermining this in the smallest detail. This, after all, is the task of the Inszenierung, which in its turn creates quite specific conditions for the experience of the public. Each time the actors will – as far as possible – carry out their movements in the same manner and form, and with the same timing, although not necessarily with the same intensity or force. Apart from this, the constellation arising from the confrontation between actors and public will be a different one each time. Therefore, each performance will be a different one – […] In sum, performativity and event-character are constitutive for performances, and determine, or at least co-determine, the concept of a performance in important ways. […].”25 25 Fischer-Lichte 2001: 327–328. Original German text: “Für die Ereignishaftigkeit der Aufführung ist die Emergenz dessen, was geschieht, wichtiger als das, was geschieht, und als die Bedeutungen, die man ihm später, d.h. nachdem das Ereignis vorbei ist, beilegen mag. Dass etwas geschieht und das, was geschieht, beides affiziert alle am Ereignis Beteiligten, wenn auch durchaus auf unterschiedliche Weise und in unterschiedlichem Maße. […] Um einen Missverständnis vorzubeugen: Was hier mit Einmaligkeit und Unwiederholbarkeit gemeint ist, widerspricht nicht der für viele Arten von Aufführungen charakteristischen Praxis, einzelne Sequenzen der Aufführung sowie ihren Gesamtverlauf sorgfältig zu proben und bis ins kleinste Detail hinein festzulegen. Dies eben ist die Aufgabe der Inszenierung, die ihrerseits für die Wahrnehmung der Zuschauer ganz bestimmte Bedingungen schafft. Abgesehen davon, dass die Akteure ihre Bewegungen zwar womöglich jedesmal in derselben Form bzw. Gestaltung und mit demselben Timing, jedoch durchaus nicht unbedingt mit derselben Intensität und Kraft vollziehen werden, ist die Konstellation, die sich aus der Konfrontation der Akteure mit den Zuschauern ergibt, jedesmal eine andere. Damit wird auch die Aufführung eine andere – […] Es sind also Performativität und Ereignishaftigkeit, welche für die Aufführungen konstitutiv sind und insofern den Begriff der Aufführung wesentlich (mit-)bestimmen.”
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Fischer-Lichte’s understanding of Performativität and Inszenierung have obvious applications within a liturgical framework. There are agents carrying out an Inszenierung which is partly written down in – more or less – prescriptive documents or defined by tradition, or decided on by persons with authoritative offices. The Inszenierung is what is usually discussed by liturgical scholarship, since this is what sources seem to give at least some evidence about. On the other hand, it is undeniable that what actually takes place in a particular office, a particular mass, a particular procession, on one particular day and at one particular time, cannot be completely reproduced by such sources, even if they were sufficient to give all details of the Inszenierung – which, of course, is never the case. Things may occur differently from one time to another in a liturgical, as in any performance. But most importantly, the particular “atmosphere” – another notion in Fischer-Lichte’s terminology, having to do with the embodiment of “roles” – brings unique aspects to each individual realisation of a particular Inszenierung. Each liturgical agent is not just an abstraction, having left behind his (or her) personal existence before carrying out his (or her) role in the ceremony. The physical embodiment of the presence of the figure foreseen in the ritual will, in a very concrete form, be different for different agents in the “same” role, carrying out the same ceremonial part, and, at least potentially, different for the same agent in repetitions of the event, and in some measure differently perceived by individual participants or onlookers at the event.26 In other words, this is not just about things being carried out with slight variations from time to time, but more importantly about the embodiment of the Inszenierung and the perception of the congregation. The main problem here – as with any historical performance in principle – is that we, generally speaking, have no sources for this aspect of a medieval liturgical performance. Even so, it is important to realise that the sources we have, the liturgical manuscripts, are only sources of the Inszenierung, and, in fact, usually only of certain aspects of this. Although the manuscripts cannot tell us anything directly about these performative aspects, there may be ways to indirectly approximate the evasive event character, for instance through comparative analyses of more than one manuscript taken together, so that we might at least construct scenarios for the event character of the liturgy to supplement the Inszenierung aspect, or through splits or “windows” of some kind in individual manuscripts. A group of liturgical books taken as a body of sources may constitute an indirect witness to the performative aspects, in the sense that they provide an overall framework, within which it may be seen where different embodiments might influence the perception, and thus the interpretation, of particular ceremonies.
26 Concerning Atmosphäre, see Fischer-Lichte 2001: 330ff., concerning actor, role, play, and embodiment: 301–309.
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What can be seen, for instance, is how changes in liturgical books may bring new aspects of a ceremony into the notated Inszenierung. This is precisely what can be seen in the case of the changes in the overall ceremonial for the depositio hostiae and the visitatio sepulchri at San Marco in the sixteenth century. What happened was not, in the first place, a change of text or music. The preserved melodies do not in any way give rise to a suspicion of any substantial changes. Yet everything points to a very different – politically and mythologically burdened – overall atmosphere of these traditional liturgical ceremonies. Since we cannot say anything about the individual atmosphere of the performances of any of these ceremonies at any particular time, all we can do is to note that the sixteenth-century versions (and onwards) have added aspects of Inszenierung. Possibly the thirteenth-century ceremonies were staged differently, but perhaps elements which previously were not specified to the same degree, and thus had somewhat more room for performative aspects, were now drawn into the staging in order to try to control, not only what happened, but also the perception of what happened. What can be seen from the documentation we have seems to suggest that the creation of a new cultural memory of the mythico-religious role of the doge as the first witness to the Resurrection was effectuated also through a much tighter control over the staging of these events. Staging is, and was, the way to control the general perception of the atmosphere of an event. The sixteenth-century Good Friday and Easter morning processions were not the only means for staging Venetian ducal mythology, but they seem to have been important parts of it. Not least, I propose, because of the ancient authority of those ceremonies in general, they were well-suited to being appropriated for a renewed Venetian cultural memory.
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References Assmann, Jan 2004 [2000]. Religion und kulturelles Gedächtnis. Munich: C.H. Beck. — 2005 [1992]. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: C.H. Beck. Canal, Martin da 1972. “Les Estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275”. In: Alberto Limentani (ed.). Martin da Canal. Les Estoires de Venise: Cronaca veneziana in lingua francese dalle origini al 1275. Florence: Leo S. Olschki: cccxviii–cccxxii (Civiltà veneziana. Fonti e testi 12). Cattin, Giulio 1990–1992. Musica e Liturgia a San Marco: testi e melodie per la liturgia delle ore dal XII al XVII secolo. 3 vols. and Indices. Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi. Fischer-Lichte, Erika 2001. Ästhetische Erfahrung: Das Semiotische und das Performative. Tübingen, Basel: A. Francke. Hiley, David 1993. Western Plainchant: A Handbook. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lipphardt, Walther (ed.) 1975–1990. Lateinische Osterfeiern und Osterspiele. 9 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Muir, Edward 1981. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Petersen, Nils H. 1995. “Il Doge and the Liturgical Drama in late Medieval Venice”. The Early Drama and Music Review 18: 8−24. — 2004. “Liturgical Drama: New Approaches”. In: Jacqueline Hamesse (ed.). Bilan et perspectives des etudes médiévales (1993–1998): Actes du IIe Congrès Européen d’Études Médiévales. Turnhout: Brepols: 625–644. Rankin, Susan 1997. “From Liturgical Ceremony to Public Ritual: ‘Quem queritis’ at St. Mark’s, Venice”. In: Giulio Cattin (ed.). Da Bisanzio a San Marco: Musica e Liturgia. Venice: Società Editrice il Mulino: 137–179 (and appendix 180–191). Ricoeur, Paul 1995. “Manifestation and Proclamation”. In: Paul Ricoeur. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Edited by Mark I. Wallace and translated by David Pellauer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press: 49–67. Sinding-Larsen, Staale 1974. Christ in the Council Hall. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider (Acta ad archaelogiam et atrium historiam pertinentia). Young, Karl 1933. The Drama of the Medieval Church. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Reprint 1967]
Jens Fleischer
The Cornerstone and Its Ritual Power On 3 June 1997, The University of Chicago News Office announced that “Portions of an ancient Assyrian ceremony that has not been enacted for 2,000 years will be performed at 11 a.m. Thursday, June 12, as the cornerstone for the new wing of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St., is dedicated.”1 One might have expected a modern and secular ritual for such an occasion. Quite the reverse, in fact, as the museum director, Karen Wilson, had declared: “We thought it particularly appropriate to use this ancient ritual to commemorate cornerstone laying”.2 Nowadays, the transformation of any important building project into a material structure is marked by a ceremony where the cornerstone can be a metal box which contains a newspaper, coins, etc. Basically, it is a message supposed to be read by a future generation, and at the same time it signifies the official beginning of the construction of the building. Every ritualised cornerstone-laying is a particular, structured repetition, or in Victor Turner’s phrasing as quoted by Bell: “I like to think of ritual essentially as performance, as enactment, and not primarily as rules or rubrics. The rules frame the ritual process, and the ritual process transcends the frame.”3 The focus of the present paper is the cornerstone of the Christian temple, how the ritual of its placement emerged, and how it was performed during the Late Middle Ages. Kostof’s summary of the act assumes a rich and structured event: “[...] and on this bed the foundation stones would be lowered after an impressive cornerlaying ceremony attended by the church and political dignitaries and huge crowds from the town.”4 However, there is a noticeable difference between the cornerstone-laying ceremony itself and the subsequent dedication of the church building. As an essential part of the initial building process, it was only after the twelfth century that the ritual of cornerstone-laying gained a stable and detailed structure. Karl Josef Benz has established this fact in his article Ecclesiae pura simplicitas, which was published in 1980.5 Contrary to what we may think, the Stand der For1 2 3 4 5
University of Chicago News Office 2007. Ibid. Bell 2008: 129. Kostof 2000: 91. Benz 1980: 9–25.
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schung is in a far better position when it comes to the dedication of the church. The final process of making the medieval church building sacred and functional from a liturgical point of view is firmly rooted in a long-term tradition and has been well documented. With regard to the consecration of the high altar during the Romanesque period, there are examples of tables with inscriptions and related documents that underline the importance of the act. When the former high altar of St Sernin in Toulouse was consecrated on 24 May 1096, nobody less than Pope Urban II performed the ritual. As to the tabletop itself, it carried (and still does) a long inscription in Latin, which mentions St Sernin and ends with the name of the sculptor.6 Moreover, a study of similar examples in Western Europe leads Benz and other scholars to the conclusion that table altars can be traced back to the Carolingian period.7 As for the laying of the foundation stone, we have less documentary material if we look at the period of time prior to the thirteenth century (as mentioned above). Obviously, I cannot give an adequate explanation for this discrepancy. It could be argued that the cornerstone is not, en principe, visible once the construction of the building is complete. Hence we can only refer to it, and accept it as part of a spiritual building. At least, this might have compensated for the sluggish pace of change. The question remains open. However, the symbolic meaning leads us momentarily from the physical building to the spiritual one. The Venerable Bede explains in De Templo, which dates from the early eighth century (c.729–731), how “The foundation of the temple is to be understood mystically as none other than that which the Apostle points out”, and he proceeds “For there is no other foundation anyone can lay than the one which has been laid, namely Jesus Christ.”8 Bede’s interpretation was based on 1 Cor. 3:11, and he concludes: “Consequently, he [Christ] can rightly be called the foundation of the house of the Lord.” In addition to I Corinthians, the First Epistle General of Peter states that God is the master builder of the spiritual house and Christ is the living stone: “Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious.”9 Through various interpretations of the “living stone” and the “spiritual house”, the theme was repeated again and again as an ongoing process from Early Christian writings until the period of Bede. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, which dates from the early years of the second century, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch compares the congregation to living stones: “Yes, stones for the Father’s Temple, stones trimmed ready for God to build with, hoisted up by the derrick of Jesus Christ [the cross] with the Holy Spirit for a cable; your faith being the winch that draws you to God, 6 7 8 9
For more examples, see: Gerke 1958: 461–462. Ibid.: 461. Connolly 1995: 14. King James Version.
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up the ramp of love.”10 The allegorical interpretation might vary, but would always stick to the basic scheme. For example, Clement of Alexandria (c.150–c.215) wrote that Christ is called “the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, fitly joined together, groweth into a holy temple of God.”11 Following this line, Charlemagne had an inscription affixed to his chapel: “As the living stones are bonded in a fabric of peace, and all come together in matching numbers, the work of the lord who built the entire palace shines forth brightly.”12
Descriptions of a Growing Ritual Needless to say, the Biblical reference must be regarded as the very core of the emerging ritual, cf. Leo of Ostia’s Chronicle of Monte Cassino, which was written before 1099. “Then he levelled with great difficulty the space for the entire basilica, except for the sanctuary, procured all the necessary materials, hired highly experienced workmen, and laid the foundations in the name of Jesus Christ, and started the construction of the basilica.”13 The arrival of Christianity in Northern Europe had a marked impact on the regional architecture, likewise the ritual of laying foundations occasionally adopted new elements. When we read the Icelandic Saga named Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), of which the earliest manuscript sources can be dated to the twelfth century, the first wooden church is said to have been erected in Kjósars´ysla. A certain Örlygur came from the Hebrides and brought consecrated earth, which had to be placed underneath the corner posts.14 One of the oldest churches in Denmark is located on the outskirts of Roskilde. It was built on a hill called Sankt Jørgensbjerg (St George’s Hill), and judging by stylistic elements and archaeological details the construction took place about 1000. In 1953 The Danish National Museum carried out an excavation beneath its floor in order to establish whether or not it had a forerunner of wood. The archaeologists did not find any traces of a wooden church. However, the project had an unexpected and positive conclusion. The remains of a tiny, but complete stone church appeared. At the bottom of its foundations lay a foundation offering, which was composed of one hundred and ten shiny silver coins. They could be dated to the closing phase of the Viking period, and they had presumably been deposited about the year 1040, or perhaps a few years earlier.15 10 11 12 13 14 15
Staniforth 1986: 78. Stromateis, VI, 17. For the translation, see: Hiscock 2000: 119. For the translation, see: Contreni 2002: 51. Davis-Weyer 1971: 135. Ahrens 1981: 579. Glob 1980: pl. 38.
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Among the largest building projects of the thirteenth century, the Cathedral of Cologne plays an important role as a source of information. The Archbishop who began the work of the Gothic nave was Conrad of Hochstaden, and the new construction started in 1248. According to one of the documents, Notae Colonienses, “Conrad, archbishop too, placed the first stone on the day of the Virgin Mary’s assumption.”16 The laying of the foundations for the new choir of Saint Denis belongs among the most spectacular examples of a pre-ritual phase. The aim of the plan was to improve the access to the crypt, one of the most sacrosanct places of Medieval France, where some of its early kings were buried – and St Denis, too. The spectacular event took place one month after the completion of the narthex. Abbot Suger, who was the dynamic personality behind the whole building process, does not describe a ritual as such, rather a festive ceremony, which contained some elements of the later and normative structure.17 Suger’s description forms a part of Libellus alter De consecratione S. Dionysii. On 14 July 1140, a festive procession set out and arrived at the foundation excavation. The procession included King Louis VII (1137–1180), princes, abbots, and numerous bishops. Some of the participants carried the most venerated relics (a nail from the Holy Cross and the Crown of Thorns), and other less important ones, which belonged to the Church of Saint Denis.18 Having invoked the Holy Ghost for a successful completion of building, the bishops prepared some mortar, adding holy water to it. Finally, the same ecclesiastical persons laid the first foundation stones while singing the first verse of Psalm 87: “His foundation is in the holy mountains.”19 In addition to this act, the king placed his own stone, and afterwards Abbot Suger, the other abbots, and pious men made their contribution. Some participants even deposited precious stones.20 Taking into account these case stories, John Beleth, a theologian who died after 1165, was evidently familiar with a rite of this kind and brings us a step forward in the process of clarifying the structure of the ritual. “When the foundations have been dug”, he writes, “it is necessary that the bishop sprinkles the place with holy water, and he himself, or some priest at his bidding, should lay the first stone of the foundation, which ought to have a cross engraved upon it. And it is absolutely necessary that the church should be built towards the east.”21 William Durandus (c.1270–1334), Bishop of Mende, is also more informative if we consult the first 16 Conradus autem archiepiscopus […] in die asumptionis beate Marie virginis primarium lapidem ponit. See, Clemen 1980: 53. 17 Benz 1980: 10. 18 Now being reconstructed. 19 Fundamenta eius in montibus sanctis. See also Sauer 1924: 114–115. Also: ErlandeBrandenburg 2003: 17. 20 Benz 1980: 10. 21 Migne CCXII: 10. For the translation, see Catholic Encyclopedia.
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book of his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, which dates from about 1280. It deals with the symbolism of churches and church ornaments, and Christiania Whitehead describes it as “the encyclopaedic culmination of liturgical practice.”22 According to Durandus, Christ is envisaged as the foundation stone, lapis primarius.23 Its privileged status is emphasised as the bishop has to engrave a cross on its surface, and this act takes place before the stone is lowered into the foundation excavation. Furthermore, the bishop must recite the first verse of Psalm 87: “His foundation is in the holy mountains.”24 Hereby, the fundamentum of all foundations was rooted in the Old Testament. We can see behind these examples the concept of fundamentum and lapis primarius as a longue durée phenomenon, in the light of Fernand Braudel’s distinction between enduring and short-lived societal structures.25 This is a helpful model to bear in mind when discussing the respective roles of performance and ritual.
Construction and Archaeology The earliest archaeological sources are few and differ considerably. When Bishop Bernward laid the foundations of St Michael’s Church in Hildesheim in 1010, special stones were inserted in various places. One of these stones was discovered in 1908. It was incorporated in the foundation of the former southwest tower and carried a Latin inscription in capital letters.26 In the upper part of the ashlar stone one could identify the names of St Benjamin and Matthew the apostle. In the lower part of the same surface the year 1010 and the initial letters of Bernward’s name and title have been inscribed. The whole inscription ran as follows: Sanctus Beniamin/sanctus Matheus apostulus, Bernwardus (B for Bernward), cross, Episcopus (Ep for episcopus) 1010 (MX for 1010).27 In 1908, another foundation stone was discovered. It bears the capital letters MIAS, apparently an abbreviation of St Jeremiah. On the basis of these discoveries, Konrad Algermissen concluded that Bernward of Hildesheim had chosen 12 different places for the different locations of foundation stones. As a symbolic number this would correspond with the number of the apostles.28 A limited number of Pontificals dated to the Late Middle Ages throw some light on the forms of the rite and the variations which can be observed. A rite entitled 22 Whitehead 2003: 50. 23 Sauer 1924: 114. 24 Vulgate, Psalm 87: Fundamenta eius in montibus sanctis. For the English translation, see King James Version. 25 See Braudel 1958: 725–753. 26 Algermissen 1960: 152. 27 Beseler & Roggenkamp 1979: 169. 28 Algermissen: 152.
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“De benedictione et impositione Primarii Lapidis pro ecclesia aedificandi” occurs in Archbishop Chichele’s Pontifical, which no doubt represents the use of the Sarum Rite in the early fifteenth century. The English version contains the same key sentence as the Roman type of office: “Bless, O Lord, this creature of stone (creaturam istam lapidis) and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name that all who with a pure mind shall lend aid to the building of this church may obtain soundness of body and the healing of their souls. Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.”29 After the Reformation, English reformers spoke with contempt of the act of consecration, and they summarised the core of the rituals, for example, as follows “A church is hallowed or consecrated, or made an holy place, not by superstitious words of magical enchantment; not by making of signs and characters in stones; but by the will of God, and the godly use.”30
How to Begin a Beginning? It is immediately apparent from these examples, however, that they all point at a far deeper and more productive question, that of the everlasting desire for solving the basic problem of the “beginning”, the privilege of being the first element in the row of succeeding series, which constitute a ritual of initiation. Or, again, could there be other elements of architecture, which had enough power to substitute for the cornerstone before the ritual had gained its firm structure? Or could there be other aspects, for example spatial and topographical factors to consider? As to the construction of early Christian temples, one should also take into consideration that the main axis of the ground plan did not always constitute an east-west orientation. The apse facing east was contrary to Constantinian church plans, where the apse might face west, east, or north. This phenomenon was subject to regional custom or local topographical conditions.31 One of the most impressive exceptions is the basilica of St Peter in Rome, where the apse faces the west, not the east. Bearing this in mind, a hierarchy among the four corners of the world may well be implied. In a very early phase of Christianity Christ was associated with the eastern corner of the world and the sunrise, a perspective founded for instance, in Luke, 1, 78: “Through the tender mercy of God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us.”As to the practice of prayer in the Early Church, Erik Peterson has underlined the importance of the eastern direction. In the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles there is a story about St John. As relayed by Peterson, St John during his journey to Ephesus
29 Catholic Encyclopedia. 30 Legg 1911: xvi. 31 Krautheimer 1975: 99.
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“took a cross of wood and put it up towards the east and kneeled and was praying.”32 If we follow this discourse of “the beginning” and its nature, let me draw your attention to the Carolingian Renaissance, specifically to the crypt of St Michael’s Church in Fulda. In the centre, a column with a short, thick trunk and a most sturdy Ionic capital supports the low barrel-vaults. This has been interpreted as a symbol of Christ carrying the universe.33 When the construction of the entire building was finished, Abbot Eigil wrote a poem, presumably in the 820s. One of the sentences runs: “To Eigil the Christians were God’s living temple, its greatness rests on a column, which is Christ, inasmuch as we are living stones, we are chiselled and trimmed by the faith.”34 My last example is a Carolingian manuscript, which dates from the closing years of the ninth century. Probably it was produced in Rheims, and it contains a drawing from the same period, but it may also be of a later date.35 Drawn on the parchment is a symbolic cross-section of a roof truss, which looks like a triangular construction made of beams. In fact, the very decorative execution is an elaboration of the Greek letter A (alpha). To the left of the roof ridge the name Adam is written artistically: with a capital “Δ” and a capital “Μ”. So, what is the meaning? Apparently, the scribe wants the beholder to associate alpha – the first letter – with Adam – the first human being. The idea of the “first” is once again an element in the symbolic construction of the church building and a forthcoming ritual.
32 Peterson 1959: 16–17. 33 Backe 1969: 85. 34 My translation from Schalkenbach 1950: 4. 35 Stiegemann & Wemhoff 1999: vol. 1, cat. II.39: 77–78, fig. II.39.
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References Ahrens, Claus (ed.) 1981. Frühe Holzkirchen im nördlichen Europa. Veröffentlichung des Helms-Museums 39. Hamburg-Altona: Helms-Museum & Hamburgisches Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Algermissen, Konrad 1960. Bernward und Godehard von Hildesheim. Ihr Leben und Wirken. Hildesheim: Verlagsbuchhandlung August Lax. Backe, Magnus & Regine Dölling 1969. Art of the Dark Ages. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Bell, Elisabeth 2008. Theories of Performance. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. Benz, Karl J. 1980. “Ecclesiae pura simplicitas. Zu Geschichte und Deutung des Ritus der Grundsteinlegung im Hohen Mittelalter”. Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte 32: 9–25. Beseler, Hartwig & Hans Roggenkamp 1979 [1954]. Die Michaelskirche in Hildesheim. Hildesheim: Selbstverlag der Evangelisch-lutherischen Michaelisgemeinde zu Hildesheim. Braudel, Fernand 1958. “Histoire et sciences sociales: la longue durée” Annales E.S.C. 13: 725–753. Catholic Encyclopedia, The. “Corner Stone”. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14303 a.htm. [accessed 4 June 2009] Clemen, Paul & Heinrich Neu & Fritz Witte 1980 [1938]. Der Dom zu Köln. Düsseldorf: Verlag von L. Schwann. Connolly, Seán (transl.) 1995. Bede: On the Temple. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (Translated Texts for Historians 21). Contreni, John J. 2002. “Counting, Calendars, and Cosmology”. In: John J.Contreni & Santa Casciani (eds.). Word, Image, Number. Communication in the Middle Ages. Sismel: Galluzzo. Davis-Weyer, Caecilia (ed.) 1971. Early Medieval Art 300–1150. Sources and Documents. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Erlande-Brandenburg, Alain 2003. “La sanctuarisation du chevet”. In: Agnès Bos & Xavier Dectot (eds.). L’architecture gothique au service de la liturgie. Turnhout: Brepols (Rencontre Médiévales Européennes 3). Gerke, Friedrich 1958. “Der Tischalter des Bernard Gilduin in Saint Sernin in Toulouse”. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Abhandlungen der Geistesund Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 8: 453–513. Glob, Peter V. (ed.) 1980. Danefæ: til Hendes Majestæt Dronning Margrethe II., 16. April 1980. Copenhagen: Det kgl. Nordiske Oldskriftselskab & Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab. Hiscock, Nigel 2000. The Wise Master Builder. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kostof, Spiro 2000 [1977]. “The Architect in the Middle Ages, East and West”. In: Spiro Kostof (ed.). The Architect. Chapters in the History of the Profession. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press.
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Krautheimer, Richard 1975. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Legg, J. Wickham (ed.) 1911. English Orders for Consecrating Churches in the Seventeenth Century, together with Forms for the Consecration of Churchyards, the First Stone of the Church, the Reconciliation of a Church and the Consecration of Altar Plate. London: Harrison and Sons (Henry Bradshaw Society 41). Migne, Jacques P. Patrologiae Latinae. Vol. 212. Paris: Migne 1855. Peterson 1959. Frühe Kirche, Judentum und Gnosis. Freibrug im Breisgau: Herder. Sauer, Joseph 19242. Symbolik des Kirchengebäudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Auffassung des Mittelalter. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder & Co. Schalkenbach, Josef 19502. Die Michaelskirche zu Fulda. Fulda: Parzeller & Co. (Kleiner Fuldaer Kunstführer). Staniforth, Maxwell (transl.) 1986 [1968]. Early Christian Writings. The Apostolic Fathers. New York: Dorset Press. Stiegemann, Christoph & Matthias Wemhoff (eds.) 1999. 799. Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit. 3 vols. Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern [Catalogue of Exhibitions]. University of Chicago News Office, The 2007. “Ancient Assyrian Rituals Re-enacted for Laying Oriental Institute Cornerstone”. http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/ 97/970603.oriental.cstone.shtml. [accessed 4 June 2009] Whitehead, Christiania 2003. Castles of the Mind. A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen
In the Sphere of Sacrosanctity: Altars as Generators of Space in the Late Middle Ages1 The following will address some aspects of late medieval church architecture and some thoughts concerning the way rituals can divide and join communal spaces. These thoughts will be exemplified by looking at the interior of medieval churches, mainly smaller village churches found within the borders of medieval Denmark. It would unquestionably have been easier to illustrate these points by using large churches or cathedrals as a reference, but this I will not do. Instead a small parish church shall be used as part of the argument, and by this I attempt to show how the problem presented here is relevant on a very general level when discussing medieval church interiors. To some extent this paper can be seen as part of the still ongoing discussion of whether to perceive late medieval devotional culture as a movement towards a still stronger interiorisation and personalisation of religious experience, or as a continuation of an earlier medieval tradition of shared, communal devotional experience.2 Both views have reasonable arguments in their favour; what I propose in this paper is a bit of bridge-building. The basic argument of the following is that the increase of altars, the use of prayer books or Books of Hours, as well as the use of devotional imagery, were part of an ever increasing inwardness and privatisation of the church interior in the Late Middle Ages: an internalisation that fragmented the interior space of the church building into several small islands of altars housed under the same roof. But at the same time, no matter how strong the movements away from the shared experience were, the Church as an institution established and maintained a unifying coherence. This was accomplished, first and foremost, by means of the ritual of the Mass celebrated from the high altar and, as shall be argued, the visual contact with the Host as manifested especially at the Elevation during Mass, because no matter how many altars were founded, the status of the 1 Research for this paper was carried out at the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals sponsored by The Danish National Research Foundation, which is gratefully acknowledged. This work is a work-in-progress which will be further developed in my forthcoming dissertation Changing Interiors: Danish village churches c. 1450 to 1600. 2 See for example Duffy 1992.
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high altar as the liturgical heart of the church remained untouched. The Mass celebrated from the high altar was perhaps the strongest unifying force, but there were other rituals and actions besides this that can be interpreted as establishing a sense of unity. This could, for example, be the old use of processional visits to all parts of the interior space of the building on certain feast days.3 Another example that can be seen as a unifying action, which in a sense tied the church spaces together, are the depictions of the so-called Stations of the Cross, painted or placed strategically throughout the building. These images depict central scenes from the biblical Passion narrative, encouraging beholders to follow the pictures in a route along the walls of the church, commemorating the suffering of Christ while doing so.4 To express the point more directly: although the late medieval church building developed into a multi-spatial interior that housed, or at least could house, several altars that each functioned as units on their own, almost as small private churches in themselves, the Church as a communal institution kept the internal space unified through different means of ritual use. This was accomplished, first and foremost, by means of the Mass celebrated from the high altar. These points will, I hope, become clearer in the following.
Two Types of Medieval Church Interiors Traditionally, when analysing medieval church architecture the church interior is treated as one space, oriented east-west and usually separated into two major compartments – the choir and the nave. This structure had already been formed and refined in early, pre-Romanesque sacral buildings, and was retained throughout the period (Fig. 1). Architectonically, the compartmentalisation of the interior would often be emphasised through the choir area being elevated from the nave by stairs, or through the entire choir being constructed like a separate architectural addition to the nave under a roof of its own. A screen – a so-called rood screen – or a lectorium might also mark the boundary between the two generic segments of the building, limiting the direct view from one part to the other. In this structuring of the church building the attention was centred on the high altar found at the east end, which can be said to be the natural climax of the interior. This most easterly altar was the liturgical or ritual heart of the church, and continued to be so throughout the Middle Ages. It was here that the “Holy” was addressed most prominently, and it was the part of the church that received the greatest reverence. But as the spiritual climate of the period changed, side altars gained in popularity as well as importance, thereby contesting the exclusive status of the high altar. Two very
3 As a general reference to the role of processions in the Middle Ages see Bailey 1971. 4 Lexikon, s.v. Kreuzweg.
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Image 1: A representative small Romanesque village church with two major compartments – the choir and the nave. A small apse embellishes the eastend. Sigerslevvester on Zealand, Denmark. Photo by the author
Fig. 1:
Stereotypical ground plan of a Romanesque village church. Arrows indicate the front of the altars. Drawing by the author
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simplified models of church interiors can therefore be presented, in the following called the “Romanesque” and the “Gothic” types. When dealing with Romanesque architecture, a simple east-west oriented model of the parish church interior can be used (Fig. 1). The high altar, as well as the side altars, were usually all placed facing east, allowing for the celebration of the Mass towards the west. In doing so, it borrowed a profound light symbolism that paralleled Christ, God, and the Heavenly Jerusalem with the rising sun. But this strict liturgical east-west orientation of the church interior did not last. As the cult of saints and relics grew rapidly in popularity, along with the concept of purgatory, there was soon a demand for more altars, which could not all face east. It was necessary to accept a break-away from the east-west bound orientation that had defined the liturgy of Mass since early Christianity, simply to make room for new altar space.5 As a result, it became possible in the late Middle Ages to celebrate the Mass facing north, the direction traditionally interpreted as symbolising all evil. However, it required some profound changes for that to happen.6 A large number of scholars have discussed the growing importance attached to the idea of seeing the Elevation of the Host in late medieval culture. Miri Rubin’s work, in particular, has stimulated new research into the subject, and by now there seems little doubt that the idea of participating in the Eucharist through vision alone created an enormous impact on the way church interiors were structured from the late thirteenth century onward.7 At the same time, the research carried out by the art historian Michael Camille on Gothic art stresses a different development of visuality in the late Middle Ages.8 He points toward a rising individualisation of the devotional relationship between the beholder and the focal point of the beholders’ gaze, as have Sixten Ringbom and Hans Belting, be that an altarpiece, the altar itself, or any given image for that matter.9 Also lay people’s increasing use of devotional literature during Mass – prayer books and such – seems to be part of the same phenomenon, in that the gaze and focus of the beholder shifted to a self-contained relation between book, reader, and altar, so that, although this took place in the church – a collective space as such – it excluded everyone apart from the reader in practice. These two trends appear to have existed side by side, influencing each other. The steadily growing visual veneration of the Eucharist and the internalisation of 5 This process was long and can in this context only be presented in simplified terms. Thus, the radiating chapels added to the choirs of early medieval pilgrim churches and cathedrals as, for example, could be seen in Chartres Cathedral from 858, must have added to the acceptance of altars not facing strictly east. See Conant 1993: 139–140. 6 Concerning the allegorical interpretation of the corners of the world, see Sauer 1924. 7 Rubin 1991; Jørgensen 2004. 8 Camille 1991. 9 Ringbom 1983; Belting 2000.
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devotional imagery in the late Middle Ages created a basis for a new layout of the church interior, not based on the old symbolic east-west axis, but a layout that was carried by the idea of a link between altar and beholder. And as the relationship between devotional images, or rather what the images represented, and their congregation, users, or audience steadily became more privatised, the need for private altars also became more urgent and spread to all parts of society. Whereas, in the early Middle Ages, the ability to finance and maintain an altar in a church had primarily been restricted to the highest-ranking members of society, it now became possible for almost everyone to participate in the establishment of a private altar, through joint ventures in the shape of guilds and confraternities.10 Even peasants could join together and finance their own altar in their local parish church, and thus establish a direct link between themselves, as part of a group or as individuals, and their altar.11 When speaking in broad terms, there was no difference between the high altar at the east end of the church and the smaller side altars found elsewhere in the churches. The smaller altars had to be consecrated in exactly the same way as the high altar, and the Mass was probably celebrated in more or less the same way in front of the smaller altars when they were used.12 This created the possibility for a series of smaller focal points in the church interior which were almost interchangeable with the high altar. The situation described above is what contributed to the creation of what we might call the Gothic type. A specific example to illustrate this could be St Olaf’s church in Scania, the southern part of Sweden that was part of Denmark in the Middle Ages (Image 2). Here a small thirteenth-century village church rapidly became a renowned point of pilgrimage because of a miraculous silver axe (the attribute of St Olaf, the Norwegian saint to whom the place was dedicated) kept in the church, and a sacred spring that suddenly started to flow next to the graveyard. This resulted in a massive rebuilding during the first part of the fifteenth century, thanks to pilgrim donations, and several side altars were erected.13 Seven out of nine known altars still exist in the church today (Images 4–7). Although the church of St Olaf might be an extreme example owing to its great popularity, it still gives us a first-hand impression of how the growing number of altars inside a late medieval church could be placed, a placing that could almost appear random, 10 In the Eastern Church it had been common for wealthy families already from the ninth century to establish private chapels or shrines housing the graves of deceased family members. Such chapels would almost always be attached as small houses of their own to the church, and function as separate ecclesiastical buildings. Earlier parallels to the developments proposed in this paper can therefore be found, and should be taken into account when considering altars in the late medieval Western Church. On this see, for example, Jungmann 1952: 281. 11 See for instance Oexle 1982. 12 For a general introduction to altars in the Middle Ages see the seminal study of Braun 1924. 13 Bringéus 1997.
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creating a disorganised overall structure of the liturgical celebration of Mass that had been unthinkable in the early Middle Ages (Fig. 2).
Image 2: St Olof’s Church in Scania seen from south-east. Photo by the author
Image 3: The high altar in St Olof’s church with a partially renewed altar piece from the first part of the fifteenth century. In the background on the left and right are two partly preserved side altars visible. Photo by the author
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Image 4: Altar in the southern side of the nave in St Olof’s church. On the altar is a retable showing St Anne sitting with Mary and Christ on the knee dating from the first part of the fifteenth century. Photo by the author
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Image 5: Altar at the eastern pillar in the nave of St Olof decorated by an altar piece depicting the Seat of Mercy or the Trinity from the first part of the fifteenth century. The baldachin above the sculptures is dating from the 1520’s. Photo by the author
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Image 6: Altar facing north in the nave of St Olof. The retable on the altar showing an enthroned Mary with child is dating from the first part of the fifteenth century. Photo by the author
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Ground plan of St Olof’s Church in Scania. Arrows indicate the front of the altars. Drawing by the author
Altars as Generators of Space As has been argued at the beginning of this paper, side altars were physically, spiritually, and financially perceived as small spaces or rooms inside the church building. Some altars, of course, were placed in separate chapel buildings attached to the church, which in a very tangible way demonstrates the space-generating effects of the side altars.14 But more often altars were simple stone blocks, perhaps elaborated by superstructures such as baldachins or flanked by walls or grills, placed where there was space available in the church, and they still functioned as private spaces partitioning the church interior. This can be illustrated by three points: firstly written sources, secondly the images related to the altars, and finally the ritualistic behaviour practised in front of and around the objects of devotion. Through late medieval written sources, the private status of side altars quickly becomes apparent. As a concrete example, we can note that, in connection with the 14 As a general study on chapels and altars see Grewolls 1999.
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Lutheran Reformation in Northern Germany and Scandinavia, there was a conflict at a local level between the protestant clergy and the founders of altars. The families, guilds, and confraternities that had paid dearly for establishing a shrine, whether it was in a separate chapel or existed as a small altar somewhere in the church, were reluctant to remove what they thought of as “their altar” – Catholic or not. In practice, their attitude meant that they de facto claimed private ownership of a small part of the inside of the church. In the town of Malmö – again in Scania – this resulted in a time-consuming legal dispute between the owners and the clergy of St Peter’s church, based on the question of whether the Lutheran priest had the right to use the private chapel or not.15 A similar example from the Danish island of Funen can illustrate the same. Here the Lutheran superintendent Jacob Madsen visited the parish church of Sønder Nærå in 1588, and after his visit he noted the following in his visitation journal: “1 altar in it [in the southern chapel of the church]; spoke with Lauris Strole; it is to be taken down. He said that he neither had established the altar nor was he willing to remove it, although he is the church warden.”16 A different category of source material is constituted by the contemporary descriptions of churches, of which there are not many. But, especially in relation to burials in the interior of churches, we get glimpses of the fact that the inside layout was very much perceived as a building housing several smaller units of space – or, what this comes down to in practice, altars. Thus, for instance, a will might require that the deceased should be buried next to St Lawrence in the nave – meaning in front of the altar dedicated to this saint. In this manner, the altars contributed to the definition of the internal geography of the church. This brings us, finally, to the images. Of course, all pictures in the churches should, in accordance with most leading medieval theologians, primarily be seen as didactic help for the illiterate or unlearned. But some images received a special status, either through indulgences connected with them or by way of popular beliefs. Such images could be large portraits of the face of Christ, as known, for example, from the Veil of St Veronica. Sculptures, in particular, seem to have been prone to taking on a cultic character, conveying first-hand experience to the congregation of being close to a given saint, Mary, or even Christ himself, in flesh and blood, so to speak.17 What is meant by this is that certain images had a presence inside the churches that promoted them as something special. Such devotional images would usually be found on altars or have altars close by. In other words, decorations could – especially through sculptures – reinforce the presence of the altar. 15 Rosborn 1978. 16 Madsen 1929: 49. 17 Jürgensen 2009.
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Indeed, this space-generating effect seems strengthened when one looks at fifteenth-century sculpture, which was almost always placed inside small niches, indicating a room for the saint or holy person depicted. But apart from the liturgy of Mass, several other rituals relating especially to venerated depictions of saints or images of Christ created an atmosphere around the devotional object that must have blurred the lines, for instance, between the veneration of a depiction of the Virgin Mary and Mary herself. I am referring here to the care and handling of pictures and sculptures on the feast days, and the processional carrying of the cross into the fields and streets of the towns as part of the communal blessing, all of which must have formed a very strong bond between community, image, and the individual viewer when the object was exhibited on the altar.18 It can furthermore be argued that the chanting and singing of psalms in front of altars contributed to the trends that have been discussed here. When chanting and singing at altars, or even in front of devotional objects, the idea of the celestial choir praising the saint or scene was of course present. Along the same lines, we very often find angels with musical instruments placed in the wall paintings around altars, ultimately evoking the idea of the hundred-fiftieth psalm and its Hallelujah. It can thus cautiously be assumed that the liturgy of feast days and the texts sung and chanted very likely will reveal a quite distinct sense of spatiality that has to be considered in much the same way as the visual arts. Side or private altars thus became of such importance in late medieval devotional culture that at times they could almost seem to overshadow the status of the high altar, but we still find plenty of evidence demonstrating their subordinate status. To be able to see the high altar from the side altars appears to have been of some priority among the founders of altars. In the Scandinavian material we find little or no architectural evidence for this, except for the very regular widening of the arcade opening between chancel and nave. But in English parish churches, the so-called “squints” – peepholes in the walls that create visual contact between chapels, chantries, or side altars and the high altar – are a relatively common phenomenon. The idea here is to emphasise the necessity of contact between the altars.19 This illustrates very clearly that, although there was a wish for a personal or more direct contact between beholder and altar, the high altar remained a unifying element that kept the individual units of altars, chapels, and so on connected.
18 For rituals that involved both civic and theological elements, as well as objects from the church that were carried out into the surroundings, see, for example, Muir 1981. 19 See, for example, the study on this subject by Roffey 2008.
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Spaces Tied Together To sum up what has been stated, Romanesque church interiors were very much bound to an east-west axis, with the focal point at the east end of the church. The church interior was almost exclusively constructed in a one-way direction pointing towards the main altar, which at a certain level makes it possible to perceive the entire Romanesque interior as one singular space, with no difference between the individual and the communal celebration of the Mass, since these occurred facing the same direction. Although what we might call cult images in the shape of icons and statues were already widespread in early medieval Europe, the idea of private altars and private devotion in itself was only slowly developing on a wider scale. But this it did, and by the end of the Middle Ages, church interiors had changed very much. The cohesive Romanesque church room no longer existed. Gothic interiors, no matter how harmonious and unified they may seem to us today when cleansed of all medieval visual signs of piety, have to be regarded as eclectic spaces compiled under a single roof. The example from Scania, the church of St Olaf, illustrates this. The unified sense of common direction was now solely reserved for the main altar and the high Mass. Everything else could be placed and directed where there was room for it, although east was still the preferred direction for altars whenever possible. The trend for private devotion made this shift possible and it very much illustrates the need in the Late Middle Ages for the laity to be closer to the holy and personalise their devotion – a closeness that the high altar apparently was unable to provide. The growing number of private altars can therefore be interpreted as a turn towards the individualisation of devotion, and one could point out that the actual breaking away from the east-west axis of worship linked to the high altar perhaps created an even stronger feeling of personal closeness between devotee and altar. For us today, when looking at medieval churches, these spatial, liturgical, or ritual compartmentalisations of church interiors are no longer evident, but by contemplating the complicated spatial use of the church, it perhaps also becomes a bit easier to understand the rising demand for processions and rituals embracing the church building in its entirety. Thus, exactly as civic authorities and citizens in general could use processions through towns and the countryside to demonstrate ownership, authority, attachment, or belonging, the Catholic Church as an institution did the same inside its ecclesiastical buildings. The High Mass celebrated from the high altar surpassed all other masses sung in the church, and the processions of clergy visiting the altars of the church during the Sunday procession and on feast days tied a space together that on the inside, exactly as the society that surrounded it, was separated by divisions of status, ownership, gender, and profession.
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References Bailey, Terence 1971. The Processions of Sarum and the Western Church. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Belting, Hans 20003. Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion. Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag & Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Braun, Joseph 1924. Der christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung. 2 vols. Munich: Alte Meister Guenther Koch & co. Bringéus, Nils-Arvid 1997. Vallfärder till S:t Olof. Lund: Föreningen för Fornminnesoch Hembygdsvård i Sydöstra Skåne. Camille, Michael 19912. The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Conant, Kenneth J. 19934. Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800–1200. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Duffy, Eamon 1992. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Grewolls, Antje 1999. Die Kapellen der norddeutschen Kirchen im Mittelalter. Kiel: Verlag Ludwig. Jungmann, Josef A. 19523. Missarum Sollemnia: Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe. 2 vols. Vienna: Verlag Herder. Jürgensen, Martin W. 2009. “Altering the Sacred Face”. In: Nils H. Petersen & Eyolf Østrem & Andreas Bücker (eds.). Resonances. Turnhout: Brepols (Ritus et Artes. Traditions and Transformations). Jørgensen, Hans H.L. 2004. “Cultic Vision – Seeing as Ritual: Visual and Liturgical Experience in the Early Christian and Medieval Church”. In: Nils H. Petersen & Mette B. Bruun & Jeremy Llewellyn & Eyolf Østrem (eds.). The Appearances of Medieval Rituals. Turnhout: Brepols: 173–197. Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie 1968–1976. Edited by Engelbert Kirschbaum. Rome et al.: Herder. Madsen, Jacob 1929. Visitatsbog. Edited by A.R. Idum. Odense: Historisk Samfund for Odense og Assens Amter. Muir, Edward 1981. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ringbom, Sixten 19832. Icon to Narrative. The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting. Åbo: Åbo akademi (Acta Academiae Aboensis. Ser. A: Humaniora: Humanistiska vetenskaper, socialvetenskaper, teologi 31/2). Oexle, Otto G. 1982. “Liturgische Memoria und historische Erinnerung. Zur Frage nach dem Gruppenbewusstsein und dem Wissen der einigen Geschichte in den mittelalterlichen Gilden”. In: Norbert Kamp & Joachim Wollasch (eds.). Tradition als historische Kraft. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter: 323–340.
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Roffey, Simon 2008. Chantry Chapels and Medieval Strategies for the Afterlife. Chalford: Tempus Press. Rosborn, Sven 1978. “Krämarnas kapell i S:t Petri kyrka”. Elbogen: Medlemsblad för Malmö Fornminnesförening 4: 21–48. Rubin, Miri 1991. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Sauer, Joseph 19242. Symbolik des Kirchengebäudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Auffassung des Mittelalters. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder & co.
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Foundation Rituals in Renaissance Italy: The Case of the Bentivoglio Tower in Bologna1 Across all times and cultures, mankind has invested the act of founding buildings and cities with particular meaning and rituals, associating it with the very foundation of human society itself. To reinforce the identity of a community, be it of a city, a state, or a monastery, it was considered of vital importance to keep the memory of foundation acts alive, adjusting them perhaps to the needs of a specific time, privileging certain aspects at the cost of others.2 Since the oaths pronounced at the foundation of ancient Greek colonies had legal consequences, they were remembered in inscriptions on bronze or marble slabs, conspicuously placed in the city centre. Annually recurring celebrations are, of course, also a proven method to engage the population actively in the preservation of memory: in late Republican Rome, the archaic festival of the “Parilia” became associated with the very foundation of Rome, as famously documented in Ovid’s Fasti.3 Studied from an anthropological perspective, each ritual recalls a divine model, or archetype, which then is repeated over and over again by human beings. Consequently, the laying of a foundation stone may be interpreted as a re-enactment of the creation of the universe itself.4 This mythical dimension has, of course, provided an aura of sacrosanctity for founders across the ages. Although foundation ceremonies of buildings and cities obviously differ from culture to culture, there are also striking similarities. By far the most characteristic act is the laying of the first stone, which is encountered from the earliest civilisations onwards. Likewise, there is a strong continuous tradition of depositing objects within the building’s foundations and walls, the so-called building deposits. This paper focuses on foundation rituals of the Italian renaissance and its use of ritual objects, in this case foundation stones and building deposits. In this period, there is clearly a renewed interest in foundation ceremonies, documented in trea1 This paper is part of a larger research project concerning foundation rituals in the Italian renaissance, funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research and Leiden University. 2 Delbeke & Schraven (forthcoming); Greco 2005; Detienne 1990. 3 Rykwert 1976: 39–40. 4 Eliade 2005; Rykwert 1976: 90–91.
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tises, diaries, and chronicles. As we will see in the particularly well documented case of the foundation of the Torre Bentivoglio in Bologna, renaissance patrons staged lavish foundation ceremonies to mark the start of the construction of churches, city walls, fortresses, palaces, and town halls alike. Astrologers were asked to calculate the most propitious moment to lay the first stone. Masses were celebrated to implore divine assistance for the undertaking, and bishops blessed the future building site and the foundation stone. The entire city gathered to see the spectacular ceremonies, thus actively making visible the consent of the entire community. While operating in a strong continuous tradition, ambitious patrons of this period also deliberately incorporated classical elements into foundation rituals, elements about which they had read in ancient authors. The incorporation of these classical elements contributed to the enhancement of the foundation rituals, while also serving as a marker of social distinction and self-promotion.
The Foundation Ceremonies of the Torre Bentivoglio (1490) The festivities surrounding the laying of the first stone of the Bentivoglio tower in Bologna may serve as a typical example of late fifteenth-century foundation practices, for they contain all the ingredients mentioned above. Until the violent earthquakes of 1505, Bologna supposedly had as many as 80 to 100 defence towers, most of them owned by aristocratic families. No wonder that the most prominent family, the Bentivoglio, wanted one as well. Built between 1490 and 1497, their tower was a show-case of dynastic pride. Since the Bentivoglio tower was demolished, we do not know its height, only that it was the second-largest tower in the city. It was only surpassed by the Torre Asinelli (97 metres), owned by the Comune and still standing today as one of the hallmarks of the city.5 Among the most prominent families, the Bentivoglio managed to establish themselves as the signori of Bologna, technically a papal fief. Although they lacked an aristocratic title, their emblem, the saw, or sega, was ubiquitous in the streets of fifteenth-century Bologna. Shortly after his appointment as head of the City Council, Annibale Bentivoglio was assassinated in 1445. Since his son Giovanni was only two years old, a nephew, Sante Bentivoglio, was asked to step in. The rulership of “first citizen” Sante Bentivoglio (1445–1462) brought stability to the city, and even a degree of autonomy within the Papal states.6 At the heart of his ancestral neighbourhood in Via S. Donato (in the part now called Via Zamboni), Sante laid the first stone of a family palace. The foundation ceremony took place on 24 April 1460, following a solemn mass in S. Giacomo Maggiore, the nearby
5 Roversi 1989. 6 Ady 1937.
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church, also on Via S. Donato. Annibale had founded the Bentivoglio family chapel there, one of the few Bentivoglio monuments still surviving in the city.7 At the death of Sante in 1462, his nephew Giovanni II Bentivoglio (d. 1508) stepped in, marrying Sante’s widow Ginevra Sforza, who would eventually bear him four sons and seven daughters. Over the next decades, Bologna prospered under Giovanni, who embarked on a programme of urban renewal, attracting leading artists and humanists to the city. Meanwhile, his activities as a condottiere gained prestige for the city, and the city’s patriciate benefited from the relative independence of papal dominion.8 Giovanni Bentivoglio carefully fashioned his image after prestigious models, such as Emperor Augustus, adopting the title of “Pater Patriae” and “Divus Augustus Pater”. A festival “apparato” for the marriage of his son Alessandro to Ippolita Sforza in 1492 stated that “Bologna shines under Giovanni Bentivoglio, as Rome once shone under Caesar Augustus.”9 Meanwhile, the family palace developed into one of the most prestigious in Italy, acclaimed for its beauty, symmetry, and splendour. Consisting of three stories, it had a portico running along Via S. Donato, with a square in front. Built in local red brick, its crenellated façade had elegant decorations in terracotta and stone, while its interior rooms were decorated by renowned painters, such as Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa. The vast complex extended over the entire block, comprising stalls, storehouses, and shops. One of the inner courtyards was an enclosed garden with a fountain, nourished by a newly built aqueduct from S. Michele in Bosco.10 Yet the rapid ascension of the Bentivoglios created dissatisfaction among the other prominent families. In November 1488, Giovanni discovered a conspiracy against his family. The conspirators were hanged and their property was confiscated. This event was the reason Giovanni decided to build a defensive tower in Via Castagnoli, on a site opposite his family palace, accessible only by means of a drawbridge, as an undisputed sign of Bentivoglio dominion over Bologna. Rising for over seven stories, the exterior of the tower was proudly decorated with the coats of arms of the prominent families to which the Bentivoglio were tied by marriage, among them the Visconti, Sforza, Malatesta, Gonzaga, and Este. In 1497, the tower’s magnificent bronze bell of 4 tons was tolled for the first time, which may be taken as the conclusion of the construction works.
7 The foundation ceremony of the palace is briefly recorded in the diary of Gaspare Nadi, a Bolognese stonemason (see Nadi 1886: 50, as cited by Wallace 1979). On the chapel, see Nieuwenhuis 1996. For the documents, see recently Antonelli & Poli 2006. 8 Clarke 1999; 2004. 9 Gherardacci 1915–1932: 266 (“Felsinea Bentivolo nitet illustrata Ioanne | ut quondam nitui sub Cesare Roma”, as cited in Clarke 1999: 401 along with many more examples). 10 Wallace 1979; James 1997; Antonelli & Poli: 57–96.
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Unfortunately, the magnificent Bentivoglio tower did not last long. Hit by lightning and then severely damaged in the earthquakes of 1505, the tower had to be torn down by Giovanni. This was generally taken as an omen of the far more disastrous events that were to develop in 1507. That winter, Pope Julius II (d. 1513) successfully reclaimed Bologna as part of the Papal States, and such it would remain until well into the eighteenth century. The Bentivoglio were forced into exile, and their properties, including the family palace, were razed to the ground.11 As is visible on maps of the city, the former site of the family palace, called Il Guasto, remained devoid of building for over two centuries, as a forceful reminder to anyone who might oppose papal dominion (Image 1).12
Image 1: The “Guasto”, former location of Palazzo Bentivoglio, used as a dressage for horses. Source: Detail of the map of Bologna by Matteo Borboni, 1637.
11 Gherardacci 1915–1932: 370–383. 12 The “Guasto” was partially built over again only in 1758, with the construction of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna. Behind it, there is still a public park, known as the “Giardini del Guasto”.
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But this malevolent turn of events was still in a distant future when the tower was built. Understandably, the foundation ceremonies for this magnificent structure were a carefully staged event, documented in various chronicles and diaries of the period.13 The foundation ceremonies were divided into two parts: first, the actual digging of the foundations, and then the laying of the first stones. Astrologers opted for the obvious, proposing the first anniversary of the failed conspiracy against the Bentivoglios as the most appropriate date. So, on 26 November 1489, the crowds gathered at the building site to witness Giovanni Bentivoglio scooping out the first shovelful of earth. After him, his sons Antonio Galeazzo, Alessandro, and Ermes followed suit; their eldest brother Annibale was out of town. Then many noblemen and citizens took up shovels as well, as it was considered a good omen (“augurio”) to do so. By this act, the community plainly demonstrated its support and consent for the undertaking.14 The following day, a thanksgiving mass was celebrated in S. Giacomo Maggiore to celebrate the good outcome of the failed conspiracy. At the conclusion of the service, lavish offerings were bestowed upon the church by the Bentivoglio family, the civic authorities, noblemen, and guilds. Afterwards, there was a “lauto pranso” in a nearby tavern for over two hundred Bentivoglio supporters, who burst into cheers when they found out that Giovanni would pay the expenses. This “spontaneous” outburst of loyalty to the Bentivoglios was then repeated annually, that is, until the family was expelled from the city a few years later.15 That winter, the foundations of the tower were laid, reportedly reaching down into the soil for about 8 metres. Finally, on 10 March 1490, Giovanni Bentivoglio laid the first stone of the tower. His four sons followed his example, each of them laying a stone as well. And after them, the noblemen and citizens followed their gesture, showing off their loyalty to the ruling family. Then, Giovanni’s secretary came forward with four terracotta vessels, containing bronze, silver, and gold medals with the effigy and arms of the patron on them. The vessels were deposited in the four corners of the structure’s base, together with two lead tablets with inscriptions, recalling the act of foundation, and establishing with great precision the identity of the patron Giovanni II Bentivoglio, his wife, and his four sons.16 13 Antonelli & Poli 2006: 114–121. 14 Leandro Alberti, Historie di Bologna divise in cinque deche (1253–1543), Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria MS. 97, III, fols. 161–162, as cited in Antonelli & Poli 2006: 115: “Poi quelli pigliando la zappa molti cavalieri et gentilhuomini et cittadini parimenti fecero. Il che fatto per augurio, pigliando poi gli strumenti gli operai et artefici seguitarono il cavamento dei fondamenti.” 15 Ibid. 16 One of them read “Anno salutatis MCCCLXXX Johannes Bentivolus secundus reipublicae bononiensis princeps ac columen, mediolanensisque militiae ductor, turrim hanc extruxit annum agens aetatis duo et quinquagesimo in matrimonio habens decus matronarum Ginevram Sfortiam, et ex ea liberos numero undecim, feminas septem, mares quatuor: Annibalem
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Both the digging of the foundations and the laying of the first stone and building deposits were carefully staged events. Highly successful in bringing together the supporters of the family, the ceremonies were even the start of new annual celebrations of Bentivoglio power. The active involvement of noblemen and citizens in the foundation rituals demonstrated their allegiance to the family and their support for the undertaking. Now we will examine both the foundation stone and the building deposits in their broader historical and anthropological perspectives, while also looking at the deliberate incorporation of classicising elements in the foundation rituals.
Foundation Stones The act of laying foundation stones was a well-known ritual in renaissance Italy, both for secular and religious buildings. In the case of dynastic building projects, such as family palaces, the foundation stone was often laid by the pater familias, sometimes assisted by his sons as a sign of dynastic continuity, as we have just seen in the case of the Torre Bentivoglio.17 For churches, there existed of course a long continuous tradition of laying foundation stones. Of fundamental importance for their meaning was a passage in the Scriptures, where Christ identified himself as the corner-stone mentioned in the Old Testament (Psalm 117: 22; Matthew 21: 42). Furthermore, a passage in Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians (II: 12–22) named Christ as the corner-stone which united both Jews and Gentiles into a single spiritual edifice of the Church. This way, the corner-stone of any church became directly associated with Christ himself, as the literal and figurative support for the church and its community.18 Codified for the first time in the Liber Pontificalis of William Durandus (d. 1296), the ceremony was performed by a bishop, who would bless the square stone and the site of the future altar. The stone, inscribed with crosses and often the name of the bishop and the year, was then placed within the confinement of two walls. Well before Durandus, however, there existed a welldocumented tradition of laying foundation stones in churches.19
equitem auratum primogenitum, Antonium Galatium prothonotarium apostolicum, Alexandrum et ipsum equesti dignitate, novissimum Hermen.” And the second tablet read: “Memoriae apud posteros diuturnioris erga monumentum hoc conditum a Ioanne Bentivolo secundo patriae rectore, cui virtus et fortuna et cuncta quae optari possunt bona affatim parestiterunt”; Gherardacci 1915–1932: 255–256. 17 Other examples are the foundation ceremonies of the Certosa in Pavia, of August 1396, when Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti and his three sons laid the first stones, blessed by the bishop. Beltrami 1895. 18 Ladner 1942; Staubach 2008. 19 Untermann 2003; Bindung & Linscheid 2002: 157–178.
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But, of course, the practice of laying foundation stones is much older than the Christian tradition. As we mentioned earlier, the laying of a foundation stone recalled the very creation of the cosmological order. No wonder that cosmogenical myths of various civilisations present the same pattern over and over again: the overcoming of chaos and the primordial waters, the creation of the cosmos, and the laying of a foundation stone for either a temple or a city.20 The foundation stone par excellence is, of course, the Foundation Rock at the heart of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, venerated by both Jews and Muslims as the Centre of the World. As recounted in Isaiah, God would have trapped the primordial waters of the abyss under this stone, which rabbinic sages of the Tannaim (70–200 A.D.) called “Even ha-Shetijah”.21 Because of its location, the stone was said by some rabbis to be shetiyah, “drinking” the source of all the springs, wells, and fountains of this world. According to the teachings of the Kabbalah, the world was created from this stone. From here, God would have gathered the earth from which Adam was created, and the patriarchs would have used this stone as an altar to bring sacrifices to God. Eventually, Solomon would build the Temple, placing the Ark of the Covenant on top of this stone.22 Given that the Old Testament draws heavily on ancient Mesopotamian cosmology, we should not be surprised to find there an equally strong connection between the creation of the universe, the mastering of waters, and the foundation of cities and temples. The most ancient cosmogonic myth, the Sumerian Eridu Genesis (composed 1800 B.C.), recounts the foundation of Eridu, the oldest city of Sumer (5400 B.C.). Near the river, the god Enki reputedly built a lavishly decorated temple called E-Apsû, or E-Engurra (“the House of the Subterranean Waters”). Its foundations reached deep into the underground fertilising waters, called the “apsû”, the centre of the world.23 Similarly, the Enuma Elish (1250 B.C.) recounts how the god Marduk (or Assur) killed and dismembered his mother, the Dragon of Chaos. From her corpse, he rebuilt the cosmos, including the dwelling of the gods named Ésagila, or the centre of the world.24
20 21 22 23 24
Eliade 2005. Lachower & Tishby 1989: 570–572. Eliav 2005. Greene 1975. Enuma Elish, Book IV, as translated in Forster 1993: 376-377: “He (Marduk) divided the monstrous shape (Timatsu) and created marvels (from it). He split her into two, like a fish for drying; half of her he set up and made as a cover (like) heaven. He stretched out the hide, and assigned watchmen and ordered them not to let her escape. He crossed heaven and inspected its sacred places. He made a counterpart of Apsû, the dwelling of Nudimmud (the god of fresh waters). The Lord measured the dimensions of Apsû, and the great Sanctuary (Eshgalla), its likeness, he founded, Esharra: in the great shrine Esharra, which he had built is heaven. He created Ea, Enlil and Anu dwells in their holy places.”
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When building temples, the kings in Mesopotamia, time and time again, re-enacted this mythical archetype. Claiming to act on the command of Marduk, King Nabopolassar (d. 605 B.C.), founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, built the ziggurat E-temen-anki [“Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth”]. In a dream, the god supposedly had indicated to the King both the precise location and measurements of the Temple, ordering him also “to consolidate its foundations in the heart of the underworld.”25 These data were usually carved onto sacred foundation stones (temenu) for the service of future royal patrons wishing to rebuild the temple. These temenu were placed within the foundations of the temple, fixed with terracotta nails or figurines with tapered hats, believed to pin down the malefic powers of the Underworld and to protect the users of the building.26 Often, precious gifts, such as jewels, tablets, and figurines, were deposited to appease the chthonic powers that might be disturbed during construction. In the specific case of the foundation of Nabopolassar’s E-temen-anki, gold and silver had been scattered lavishly over the foundations.27 While it remains far-fetched to reconcile Neo-Assyrian foundation practices with concepts and ideas relevant to fifteenth-century Italy, humanists at that time did have a vivid interest in foundation ceremonies of another civilisation of the past, that of the Romans. One of the best-known accounts was that of Tacitus on the foundation ceremonies of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on 21 June 70 A.D., during the reign of Vespasian. Following directions from the augurs, it was decided to build the temple anew on the location of a previous one. The foundation ceremony was well orchestrated and well attended. First there were rituals of purification. Aided by children, the Vestals performed libation rituals, pouring fresh water from the rivers and fountains. There were the customary sacrifices of the sow, sheep, and bull; and those to Jupiter, Juno, and the tutelary gods of the place. As the high priest then touched the garlands of the massive foundation stone (“saxum ingens”), a large crowd of city officials, priests, and knights started to drag it “with zeal and joy” to its place. At the end of the ceremony, “contributions of gold and silver and virgin coins, never melted in a furnace, but still in their natural
25 Bruce 1900: esp. No. 1, Col. 1, v. 30–38: “At that time, as for Etemen-anki, the temple tower of Babylon, which before my time had become weakened and had fallen in, Marduk the Lord commanded me to lay its foundation in the heart of the earth (and) to raise its turret to heaven.” 26 Dhorme 1945: 181–192; Seppilli 1990: 233–234. 27 “By means of exorcism, in the wisdom of Ea and Marduk, I cleared away that place, (and) on the original site, I laid its platform foundation; gold, silver, stones from mountain and sea, in its foundation I set […] goodly oil, sweet-smelling herbs and […] I placed underneath the bricks an image of my royalty carrying a dupšikku [basket with bricks and clay] I constructed, in the platform foundation I placed it”; Bruce 1900: esp. No. 2, Col. II, vv. 42–61; Schmid 1995.
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state,” were showered on the foundations.28 The showering of gold and silver coins on the foundations of the Capitoline Temple recalls the practices performed at the Ziggurat in Babylon, as described above. This particular passage in Tacitus is likely to have been of great interest to Italian humanists of the fifteenth century, as we will see in the following paragraph.
Building Deposits: Coins and Medals There is a long and continuous tradition of depositing objects in the foundations of buildings. Documented from Minoan Crete to Mesopotamia, from pre-Columbian Mexico to Roman cities, one might indeed speak of a universal phenomenon. While the deposits of both the Ziggurat and the Capitoline Temple consisted of gold and silver coins, building deposits could indeed take on virtually any form, ranging from beads, terracotta figurines, and ostrich eggs to animals and – the ultimate sacrifice – that of a human being. Despite this diversity, their main purpose seems to have been apotropaic, that is, to ward off evil and seek health and safety for the future occupants of the architectural structure.29 The description of the foundation ceremonies of the Capitoline Temple in Tacitus was well known to Italian humanists. And although they never explicitly mention this passage of Tacitus, some mid-fifteenth-century descriptions of foundation rituals included the ritual gesture of throwing coins into foundations. For instance, at the conclusion of the foundation ceremonies of the fortification walls of Rimini in 1431, the patron Galeotto Roberto Malatesta was said to have thrown many coins (“molti danari”) into the foundations.30 Similarly, in 1449, Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga is said to have thrown gold and silver coins into the foundations of a city wall in Mantua.31 In the case of the foundation ceremonies of the Bentivoglio tower, great numbers of portrait medals of the patron Giovanni Bentivoglio were deposited. As we have seen earlier, the “medaglie” were placed inside four terracotta vessels, one at 28 Tacitus, Histories 4.53. 29 Klusemann 1919. More recently, Herva 2005; Woodward & Woodward 2004. For more recent literature, see Schraven 2009. 30 Again the entire family participated in the laying of the foundation stone. “Galeotto Roberto diede principio a fondar il muro della fortezza alla porta di S. Andrea dal Gattolo, dopo haver il vicario del vescovo dato la beneditione e cantate le litanie. E prima di tutti, Domenico Malatesta gittò la prima pietra, e Giovanni Rossi portò la calcina, con la quale fu murata detta pietra, e il vescovo con l’acqua santa e con le solite e ordinarie cerimonie della Chiesa, la benedì e nei fondamenti Galeotto Roberto gettò molti denari;” (Clementini 1969: 259– 260). 31 Andrea Da Schivenoglia (d. 1467), “Famiglie mantovane e Cronaca di Mantova”. Biblioteca Comunale di Mantova, MS. 1019 (II, 2), as cited by Restani 1997: esp. 335–336.
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each corner of the tower.32 The term “medaglia” is somewhat problematic, for in this period it was used indiscriminately for either portrait medals or coins. In this case, however, coins may be excluded, for Emperor Maximilian I would grant Giovanni the right of minting only in 1494. Judging from the description by Leandro Alberti, “medaglie […] con la immagine et arma di messer Giovanni”, we may identify them with the small portrait medals which have come down to us in silver and bronze (Image 2). Generally attributed to Francesco Francia, the medal design represents a young Giovanni with long loose hair, and the inscription “IOANNES. SECUNDUS. BENTIVOLUS”. The reverse shows the coat of arms with the saw, and the title “PRINCEPS”, the title he was awarded in 1462, having been elected princeps of the Bologna senate. Around the reverse runs the legend “HANNIBALUS. FI(LIUS) R(EI). P(UBLICAE). BONON(IENSIS).” Giovanni clearly identified himself here as son and legitimate heir of Annibale Bentivoglio, who had been assassinated in 1445.33 The medal might well commemorate Giovanni’s accession to power in 1462. The small size of the portrait medal (1.9 mm.) clearly mimics the Roman denarius and is therefore a direct reference to and “quotation” of classical coins, so eagerly collected by humanists in this period.34 Image 2: Portrait medal of Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Silver, diam. 19 mm. Hill 607.
Kind permission Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna, inv. NUM– 14144.
32 Leandro Alberti III, cc. 161–162: “Poi Ser Bartholomeo De Russi, segretario di Messer Giovanni vi portò quattro vasi di terra cotta pieni di medaglie d’oro, di arzento et di metallo con la imaggine del arma di messer Giovanni et ne pose uno di detti vasi per ciascun cantone […]”, as cited in Antonelli & Poli 2006: 116. 33 Hill 1930: No. 607. Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, inv. No. MCA-NUM-14144. There is no documentation or stylistic evidence for the authorship of Francesco Francia. 34 Despite their obvious likeness to the silver denarius, portrait medals of this size were rather rare. Pope Paul II (d. 1472) issued a portrait medal of this size (Hill 1930: No. 774, diam. 19 mm.), generally connected to his all’antica habit of disbursing coins during Carnival celebrations in Rome, from 1468 onwards. In Mantua, Francesco Gonzaga issued a medal of himself and his wife Lucrezia d’Este, on the occasion of their wedding in 1490 (Hill 1930: No. 239, diam. 16.5 mm).
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By depositing portrait medals, Giovanni Bentivoglio demonstrated that he was perfectly informed with regard to contemporary practices in foundation ceremonies. Very soon after their invention by the artist Pisanello (d. 1455), portrait medals had become the most prestigious building deposit. The appeal of portrait medals to the humanist courts of renaissance Italy stemmed from an insatiable appetite for Roman coins, classical learning, and the need for self-promotion. Renaissance patrons greatly appreciated the freedom involved in tailoring the portrait medal to their needs, combining their portrait with appropriate emblems and inscriptions on the reverse. Being small and relatively easy to reproduce, portrait medals were commissioned in large numbers by some patrons, making the most of their propagandistic potential. What is more, patrons did not need the right of minting to have their own portrait medal commissioned.35 For all these reasons, the portrait medal became the absolute “must have” for humanist patrons, whether emperors, kings, condottieri, humanists, artists, or aristocratic women.36 Not used as day-to-day currency, portrait medals were instead distributed and exchanged among networks of friends and allies as signs of friendship. Because of their classicising form, their precious material, and their small format, portrait medals were also collected, earning pride of place in the renaissance studiolo, along with classical coins.37
Sigismondo Malatesta Besides these functions, the renaissance portrait medal assumed yet another role, that of becoming a building deposit within either the foundations or walls of a building. The invention of this specific use of portrait medals is credited to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (d. 1468), the infamous warlord of Rimini. Like the Bentivoglio, the Malatesta had ruled for centuries over Rimini as vassals of the pope. Eager to establish his position in Rimini for himself and his descendants, Sigismondo embarked on an ambitious programme of urban renewal in the city. Like many of his contemporaries, he had a deep interest in classical learning, attracting to his court in Rimini famous humanists such as Basinio da Parma and Leon Battista Alberti.38 During his lifetime, Sigismondo would commission over thirty portrait medals of himself: two of them were designed by Pisanello, but the others were all prod35 In 1495, the Mint in Bologna started to issue beautiful gold “doppio ducato” with the effigy of Giovanni Bentivoglio and the coats of arms surmounted by the imperial eagle on their reverse: Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, inv. No. MCA-NUM-59654. My warm thanks to Paola Giovetti of the Numismatic Department of the Museo Civico Archeologico and Dr Michele Chimienti for answering all my questions about Bentivoglio coinage and medals. 36 Syson & Gordon 2000: especially the section on portrait medals, 109–130; Syson 2003. 37 Scher 2000. 38 Woods-Marsden 1989; Jones 1974.
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ucts of Sigismondo’s court artist, Matteo De’ Pasti (d. 1468). One of the most celebrated portrait medals was issued in commemoration of the completion of the Castel Sismondo, the magnificent city fortress that Sigismondo had built to consolidate his dominion over the city (Image 3). The obverse portrays Sigismondo as a self-conscious warlord, identifying him as the son of Pandolfo: “SIGISMUNDUS PANDULFUS MALATESTA PAN[DULFI] FILIUS”. On its reverse is represented the Castel Sismondo, with its crenellated walls and massive defence towers: “CASTELLUM SISMUNDUM ARIMINENSE M CCCC XLVI”. Bearing the date 1446, the portrait medal was the first to have a building on its reverse, clearly in emulation of classical imperial coins with edifices on them, much appreciated by humanist collectors.
Image 3: Portrait medal of Sigismondo Malatesta, with the Castel Sismondo. Bronze, diam. 84 mm. Photo with kind permission of Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Münzkabinett.
Sigismondo had laid the first stone of this fortress during a festive ceremony on Wednesday 20 March 1437, “a hore 18 e minuti 48 in circa”, obviously after consultation with an astrologer.39 Today, only the central nucleus of the fortress is still standing. Originally it was much larger, surrounded by an impressive moat, four drawbridges, six large towers, and an entrance gate with the Malatesta coat of arms. Deemed impregnable and able to withstand artillery attacks, the castle’s design was attributed by contemporaries to the military genius of Sigismondo himself. In an extraordinary gesture, Sigismondo decided to name the castle after himself, “Castel Sismondo”. He also organised a contest for a poem celebrating the
39 Clementini 1969: 309, who by mistake has the date of 20 May, instead of 20 March.
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castle and its founder; the winning epigram was proudly inscribed on the façade, as a sign of the close relationship between the building and its patron.40 Over the centuries, many portrait medals of Sigismondo have been found in the walls of this fortress. During works in 1624, for example, “large numbers of bronze portrait medals”, of the type described above, were found underneath the main entrance, the Porta del Soccorso, at the level of the ground water, along with smaller bronze portrait medals of Sigismondo.41 During the restoration works in the 1970s and 1980s, eight niches in the large reception room on the ground floor were discovered, evenly distributed along the walls, each containing a group of three bronze portrait medals of Sigismondo. Moreover, at the base of an arch supporting the vault was found a gold portrait medal – the only one we know of – as if it were its literal support.42 Clearly, these portrait medals had been deposited either at the beginning or the conclusion of distinct construction phases. Great numbers of portrait medals were also found in the funeral church of the Malatesta, San Francesco, better known as the “Tempio Malatestiano”, which was completely remodelled during Sigismondo’s lifetime.43 But they have also been found outside Rimini, scattered over city walls and fortresses built in Malatesta territory, which reached from Fano on the Adriatic coast, some 60 km from Rimini, to Verucchio and S. Giovanni in Galilea in the Apennines. From the late 1440s onwards, Sigismondo had initiated a massive fortification campaign, to defend his territory from continuous warfare and pressing claims from both the popes and his arch-rival, the Duke of Urbino. In many of these newly-built fortresses portrait medals of Sigismondo were deposited, mostly specimens with the castle in Rimini on the reverse, but also other types. A tower in Senigallia for instance, part of the city walls and demolished in the eighteenth century, was known as the Torre Isotteo, or Isotta’s tower, since the portrait medals deposited in its foundations all bore the effigy of Isotta, Sigismondo’s third wife.44 Indeed, there seems to have been a deliberate policy to deposit portrait medals in as many buildings as possible. There is a well-known letter from Matteo De’ Pasti to Sigismondo of December 1454, stating that he had just sent twenty medals to be deposited in the fortress of Senigallia, now the Rocca Roveresca, of which he was supervising the construction at that time. In that same letter, De’ Pasti also 40 Maffeo Vegio, the author of the winnning poem, introduced Castel Sismondo as speaking in the first person: “Aspice quam mole ingenti cultuque superbo | Quae sim, quam miris machina structa modis | Sismondo nomen mihi, Sigismundus et auctor | Quantus ab exemplo disce sit ipse meo. | Quem Malatestorum magno de sanguine natum | mirare, et laudes effer ad astras suas.” See also Parroni 2003. 41 Clementini 1969: Vol. 2, 723–724. 42 Turchini 1985. 43 Hope 1992. 44 Pasini 1973: esp. 66.
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underwrites the intention that medals will be deposited in all construction sites (“a ciò ne sia in tutti li luochi che ora si lavora”).45
Building Remembrance There was not one specific method used for depositing Sigismondo’s portrait medals; sometimes, they were just walled in, as we have seen in the niches of Castel Sismondo. The medals could also be stored in boxes, as has been documented in the case of the Torre Isotteo in Senigallia. In other cases, such as at the Monastery in Fano, the fortifications of Montescudo, and the Porta Galliana in Rimini, the portrait medals had been placed in terracotta vessels, similar to the Bentivoglio case.46 The use of terracotta vessels was also the preferred method of Pope Paul II (d. 1472). An avid collector of classical coins himself, the pope deposited hundreds of portrait medals in the foundations and walls of his residence, the Palazzo di S. Marco, now better known as Palazzo Venezia in Rome (fig. 4). Its construction started in 1455 while he was still a cardinal, but once he was elected to the papacy in 1464 the plans were adjusted accordingly.47 The ritual gesture of depositing medals was associated with classical models; Bartolomeo Platina, a prominent humanist and biographer of Pope Paul II, called it “more veterum”, “according to the customs of the ancients.” Another biographer of the pope, Michele Canensi, stated that the medals had been deposited within the buildings with “optimis auspitiis,” borrowing terminology from Roman divinatory practices. From him we also know that the deposition ceremonies at the Palazzo di S. Marco were performed along with a benediction and some other kind of ceremony.48
45 “Io mandai venti de le facende [medaglie] a Senigaglia per ser Baptista e Sagramoro, che le metesse in lo revelino di sopra dal cordone, come scrissi alla S. V. a ciò ne sia in tutti li luochi che ora si lavora. Si che non so al presente que me abia a fare. Scrivete a chi par a la S. V. che me dia argento per gettar la medaglia picola che conzio, a cio che ne possa gettare per far quanto volete se faccia”; Siena, Archivio di Stato, Carte Malatestiane, as cited by Pasini 1973: 48–49. 46 Pasini 1973: 66. 47 On the palace, see Frommel 1984. 48 “Domum insuper iuxta ipsam ecclesiam magnis impensis testudineoque aedificio funditus construxit; cuius quidem fundamenta cerimoniali cum benedictione atque aliquanta auri argentique numismatici depositione, ut saepe in magnis dignisque aedificiis fieri assolet, optimis auspitiis iecit.” Zippel 1904: 82.
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Image 4: Terracotta vessel found in the foundations of Palazzo Venezia, Rome, with three portrait medals of Pope Paul II (d. 1472).
Photo: Kind permission of the Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Venezia.
Over the years, great numbers of terracotta vases with papal portrait medals have been found in the walls and foundations of the Palazzo di S. Marco. Interestingly enough, these medals had all been carefully covered in wax to protect them from humidity: a clear indication of an awareness that these medals would be found by future generations.49 To understand the motivation of renaissance humanists, we may well turn to a passage in the Libro Architettonico of Filarete. Written at the court of Francesco Sforza, the treatise is actually a dialogue in twenty-five books about the ideal city, named Sforzinda, a dialogue between the patron and his architect. When asked by his patron, the architect demonstrates a state-of-the-art knowledge of foundation procedures. On a date established by an astrologer, the patron and his family, the bishop, and the architect come to the site, which is marked off with cords. The patron then lays the first stone, inscribed with his name 49 Clarke 2003, with all relevant literature.
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and that of the architect, along with some building deposits, in this specific case grain and vessels with five different liquids: wine, oil, honey, milk, and water. And when the patron asks him why, the architect explains: “The reason I put these things in this foundation is because, as every man knows, things that have a beginning must have an end. When the time comes, they will find these things, and know our names, and remember us because of them, just as we remember when we find something noble in a ruin or in an excavation. We are happy and pleased to find a thing that represents antiquity and gives the name of him who had it done.” This passage anticipates the moment in some far future when people will retrieve the building deposits, remembering the patron for his past acts of magnificence. It reflects the enthusiasm of the humanists of this period, eager to reconstruct the glorious Roman past by means of coins and other objects retrieved from the soil. While Bentivoglio rule had come to an end by force, Bologna continued to cherish the memory of the foundation ceremonies of the Bentivoglio tower, and particularly the treasure of gold and silver medals deposited within its foundation. Therefore, in 1929, an archaeological expedition was set up with the explicit goal of retrieving the “terracotta vessels crammed with medals, placed at the four corners of the tower.” However, the initial enthusiasm soon changed to disillusion, for nothing was found but rubble. After ten long days, on 15 June the works were called off, and the pit was closed again.50 Probably, Giovanni Bentivoglio had taken the portrait medals himself when the tower was demolished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, rightfully disabused of their alleged auspicious effects.
50 I am grateful to Dr Giancarlo Benevolo of the “Archivio Storico dei Musei Civici d’Arte Antica di Bologna”, who retrieved the documents in the museum’s archive, filed under Museo Civico, Attività museale, 1903–1929.
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Schmid, Hansjörg 1995. Der Tempelturm Etemenanki in Babylon. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern (Baghdader Forschungen 17). Schraven, Minou 2009. “Out of Sight, Yet Still in Place. On the Use of Italian Renaissance Portrait Medals as Building Deposits”. Res 55/56: 182–193. Seppilli, Anita 1990. Sacralità dell’acqua e sacrilegio dei ponti. Palermo: Sellerio. Staubach, Nikolaus 2008. “Der ritus der impositio primarii lapidis und die Grundsteinlegung von Neu-Sankt Peter”. In: Georg Satzinger & Sebastian Schütze (eds.). Sankt Peter in Rom 1506–2006. Munich: Hirmer: 29–40. Syson, Luke S. & Dillian Gordon (eds.) 2000. Pisanello. Painter to the Renaissance Court. London: The National Gallery. Syson, Luke S. 2003. “Holes and Loops. The Display and Collection of Medals in Renaissance Italy”. Journal of Design History 15: 229–244. Turchini, Angelo 1985. “Medaglie malatestiane rinvenute in Castel Sismondo, con una relazione sul ritrovamento di Giovanni Giuccioli Menghi”. In: Carla Tomasini Pietramellara & Angelo Turchini (eds.). Castel Sismondo e Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. Rimini: Ghigi: 129–148. Untermann, Matthias 2003. “Primus Lapis in fundamentum deponitur. Kunsthistorische Belegungen zur Funktion der Grundsteinlegung im Mittelalter”. Brandenburgische Zeitschrift rund um das Zisterziensische Erbe 6: 5–18. Wallace, William E. 1979. “The Bentivoglio Palace Lost and Reconstructed”. Sixteenth Century Journal 10: 97–114. Woods-Marsden, Joanna 1989. “How Quattrocento Princes Used Art: Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta of Rimini and ‘Cose Militari’”. Renaissance Studies 3: 387– 413. Woodward, Peter & Ann Woodward 2004. “Dedicating the Town. Urban Foundation Deposits in Roman Britain”. World Archaeology 36: 68–86. Zippel, Giuseppe (ed.) 1904. Le vite di Paolo II di Gaspare da Verona e di Michele Canensi. Città di Castello: Lapi (Rerum Italicorum Scriptores 3/16).
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Religion That is Heard in Public Spaces: Sound Production in Ancient Egypt in a Ritual Context The aim of this article is to investigate the production of sound that is heard and reacted to in open spaces, especially its use for the creation and the extension of a ritual environment in Ancient Egypt. In contrast to modern societies, where means of communication bring the environment in, ancient cultures were forced to go out. In order to communicate religious and non-religious ideas to the people, music and other sounds were produced and perceived both outside the temple and outside the private sphere of the house. This renders the Ancient Egyptian culture a suitable test case for studying strategies for the ritually performed creation of public spaces, and the values attributed to them. I shall concentrate on the production of sound in religious rituals that were performed in areas open to the general public, or where rules of exclusion were less comprehensive than in the temple area proper. I shall start by briefly mentioning how to understand the two key terms public space and ritual. I shall proceed to sound production, addressing questions concerning acoustics as ritual strategies. Then, I shall show some culture-specific parameters for acoustic behaviour in Ancient Egypt. After that, the interaction between sound and ritual environment will be explained. Special attention will be paid to symbolic music and other sounds, by which religious ritual generates mixed public spaces. “Mixed public spaces” refer to public arenas where the sacred and the profane exist at the same time, side by side, both maintaining their qualities. Finally, the operation of the Durkheimian categories “sacred” and “profane” will be questioned.
Public Space and Ritual Public space is to be understood as the space that geographically lies outside the temenos. In her work The Localization of Religion, Kim Knott defines a social space for contemporary Western societies as “the sum of the things, activities, ideas, processes, relations that are brought together within it. It simultaneously envelops and contains various spaces, and exists alongside and in relation to others. It extends backwards and forwards in time. It is infused with power, and is dyna-
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mic”.1 According to this definition, the notions mentioned first – things, activities, ideas, processes, relations – concern the substance which public spaces are made of. The key criteria of public spaces are their heterogeneity, historicity, power, and dynamics. These standards can be ascribed to public spaces in ancient societies, too, like the Egyptian one, that owe their complexity to production, war, and settlement politics. As defined by Knott, public space exists alongside and in relation to others. Clearly discernible as not being open to the general public, the Egyptian temple is the secluded place per se. Only the king, priests, and priestesses were allowed to enter it. Two key concepts are important here, the first in regard to spatial, the second in regard to acoustic concepts, upon which practices are based. 1. The spatial concept: the direction for spatial practices in Ancient Egypt follows, in Mark Johnson’s terminology, the image-scheme in-out orientation.2 In ritual texts, the extensive use of an in-out orientation supports the understanding that going out is a dominant, historically constructed concept for spatial practices. It is imagined as engendering creative processes and interacting with the environment.3 The ritual production of space outside the temple appropriates the same pattern for gods and people. The architecture and decorations of the Egyptian temple show that it was conceived of as a building for a god who leaves his sanctuary and goes out. This happened on the occasion of frequently performed processions. 2. The acoustic concept: publicly performed rituals took place as an open-air event in open places. Ritualisation, as Catherine Bell understands it, can be described as a bodily activity that transforms those open places and spaces into a symbolically structured environment.4 In her treatment of ritual logic, Bell is emphasising physical movements that “generate homologies and hierarchies among diverse levels and areas of experience, setting up relations among symbols, values, and social categories”.5 Extending Bell’s theory, the use of the human voice, e.g. speaking, whispering, shouting, laughing, singing, rejoicing, silence, and other acoustic devices, can be studied in ritualisation processes as “a strategic act with which to define the present”.6
1 2 3 4 5 6
Knott 2005: 170. Johnson 1987: 29–30. Meyer-Dietrich 2006: 240–244. Bell 1992: 93. Ibid.: 104. Ibid.: 101.
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Acoustics as Ritual Strategies Four points are relevant for sound that is produced by human beings in order to configure the ritual environment and to communicate its religious and non-religious values to the public: 1.The production of sound is a strategy for the creation and the extension of a ritual environment. To send out sound waves that are heard is a social and spatial practice. An essential factor in practice-oriented approaches is the centrality of the body. With regard to sound production, it is the acoustic body that is acting. Voices, weeping, hand-clapping, and other physically produced sounds extend the body into its environment. The sounds that people make stimulate their own ears; this process is a feed-back circuit that maintains the self-image, keeping people coordinated and rhythmical.7 The production of sound – and likewise its intended avoidance – determines the dimension, as well as the nature of space. Whispering causes people to move closer together, thereby enabling them to communicate, and creates intimacy. In Egyptian biographies, the expression “I heard what no other ear heard” denotes a relationship based on trust between a higher official and the king. Farreaching shouting and lamentation expands the acoustic space, viz. sound-filled space, and calls for attention. 2. The goal is to create an imagined sound-filled space. Ritual practice is goal-oriented. Sound-filled space is the imagined space that lies within reach of the ear. It is this symbolic space that is aimed at by the use of sounds in ritual – their variety, changes, timing, intensity, rhythm, and so forth. “Musical meanings are arbitrary in the specific sense that, as in language, the same sounds can have different meanings, and that different meanings may be attached to similar sounds”.8 The meaning of acoustic devices, the range and kind of sound that are produced in publicly performed rituals, are dependent on their performance context, the physical conditions of open-air spaces, and the acoustic order of space and time. An example for an acoustic order that determines our behaviour is that we automatically lower our voices when talking in a dark room. 3. Sound production as a ritual practice attaches certain values to space. Sound patterns are culture-specific. Normative values are provided for sound patterns before they are employed in ritual. The performance of sound and the ritu7 Ostwald 1973: 39. 8 Martin 1995: 72.
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al environment interact. “Musical sound will vary with variation in the context of its performance”.9 That means, for the analytical procedure, that the ritual environment attains a double role of being created by sound, as well as providing its performance context. To start with, their production in a specific ritual context attaches certain values to sound in regard to a symbolic space. 4. Ritualisation is regarded as a practice that produces meaning by using or modifying sound patterns. The interpretation of sound, as well as the acceptance of cultural sound patterns, is bound to an interpretive community.10 To be employed as a ritual strategy, acoustic competence has to include the know-how of ritualisation in the sense of what a performer can do. To produce meaning in a successful ritual act, the performer experiences the interactive mechanisms of sound-production and performancecontext. He responds to them by playing on everyday acoustic practice. Therefore, to proceed to sound production in ritual, everyday acoustic behaviour has to be examined first.
Acoustic Behaviour in Ancient Egypt Social institutions educate members of a community to an acoustic behaviour that is appropriate for the situation in question. Biographies and didactic literature testify to the normative acoustic practice of Ancient Egyptian society. A few examples will do. In Kemit, which was perhaps used as a schoolbook during the Middle Kingdom, we can read: “I am excellent in silence Cooling down the heat of the talkative (I am) free from excessive talk”11 The chamberlain Intef boasts on his cenotaph in Abydos: “I was a speaker in occasions of wrath, who knew the phrases about which there is anger”12 and Mentuhotep mentions in his biography: “I was a children’s tutor by talking calmly”.13 9 Burckhardt Qureshi 2006: 251. 10 Martin 1995: 71. 11 Kemit, 8–10. For sources and the possible use of Kemit see Parkinson 2002: 322. Translation after Brunner 1991: 368. 12 Stela of Intef, British Museum EA 581, London. Translation Parkinson 1991: 62.
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All these passages demonstrate that the Egyptian ideal is a well-balanced, calm, moderate way of talking. Through juridical documents one can get a glimpse of the circumstances in which noisemaking was sanctioned or prosecuted. They offer important information about the social background of the noisy person, and the time and the place of the violation of rules for acoustic conduct. A good example is to be found in one of the Elephantine papyri that states a judgement on a priest’s blasphemy: “You know what you have done. You drank the wine from the arbour by the quay, which is poured in libation for Pharaoh and Osiris-Onnophris. You did the abomination of Isis. You drank wine at night, while the goddesses were in mourning-garb. You called out to your wife, saying, ‘Tefnut, there is no goddess like her,’ while the widow was in the sacred grove. You caused the singers to sing so that you might pass the time. You awoke the Ba of Osiris from its sleep.”14 The text demonstrates the weight that circumstances put on the violation of acoustic rules. In the example quoted, night, as the mourning period of the goddesses and the sleeping time of the god Osiris, is an important factor in the accusation. In tandem with the ideal of sound production is the evaluation of sound perception. The Eloquent Peasant15 and other Egyptian literature gives evidence to the art of speech and its power to persuade the listener. Tales, myths and cosmologies reveal certain aspects of listening. The imagined function of hearing with regard to space illustrates the first part of the Demotic tale about the two birds: “Listen to the story about the one who sees and the one who hears, Iirif and Irisnef, two female vultures on the horns of the mountain. Iirif (seer) was the name of the one, Irisnef (hearer) was the name of the other one. It happened one day that Iirif said to Irisnef: ‘My eyes are more perfect than yours. My glances are better than yours. That which happens to me happens to no other flying bird but me.’ Irisnef said to her: ‘What is this?’ Iirif said: ‘I see to the end of the darkness and I know the primeval waters of the abyss.’ Irisnef said to her: ‘Why does this come about for you?’
13 Stela of Mentuhotep, 34. University College London No. 14333. Translation after Brunner 1991: 372. 14 Papyrus Dodgson, recto 12–19. Translation Porten 1996: 341–342. 15 Lichtheim 1973: 169–184.
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Erika Meyer-Dietrich She (Iirif) said to her: ‘It happens because I reside in the silver-house, and select my food myself […] I eat nothing after sunset.’ Irisnef said to her: ‘Your eyes are more perfect than mine. Your glances are also better than mine. That which happens to me happens to no other flying bird but me. Lo, I traverse the heaven so that I hear what is in it, and I hear what Re, the light, the retaliation of the gods, decides concerning the earth daily in the horizon.’ Iirif said to her: ‘Why does this come about for you?’ She (Irisnef) said to her: ‘It happens to me because I don’t sleep during the day. I eat nothing after sunset. That is, I sleep in the evening while my crop is empty.’ Iirif took these words to her heart.”16
According to the tale, hearing is a highly valued ability. Through hearing, one can gain knowledge about the will of a god, and information about the world to come. The same idea is reflected in didactic literature. In the instruction of Ptahhotep, the vizier speaks to his son: “Don’t be proud of your knowledge; consult the ignorant and the wise; the limits of art are not reached, no artist’s skills are perfect; good speech is more hidden than greenstone, yet may be found among maids at the grindstones.”17 The idea of listening as a means to gain knowledge is well known from many cultures. But the fact that this is mentioned with respect to class and gender differences deserves attention. The qualities of the imagined perception of sound that can be traced in the dialogue between the two birds and the importance of sound production in a religious ritual context are supported by the names of gods, e.g. “The big shouter”, “The big cackling one”, and “The one who hears”, and by archaeological remains. Places for prayer on the outside of the temenos wall, the official recording of dreams and oracles through which a god mediates his will to people, and texts in which the tomb owner addresses people that are passing by, indicate that the Ancient Egyptians were familiar with the idea of words as overcoming borders between different ontological realms. The evaluation of listening is symbolically materialised in ritual objects that are adorned with large ears, or one or several pairs of ears. Moreover, texts point to ritual acts that are performed acoustically: hearing is made an indicator that the act is successfully accomplished. Penetrating spaces, sound is 16 Papyrus Leiden I 384, 13,25–14,9. Translation after Hoffmann and Quack 2007: 217. 17 Papyrus Prisse 5, 10. Translation Lichtheim 1973: 63.
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able to cross the threshold to spaces that are different in character. Words transgress social, gender, and ontological borders. The idea of the bridging function of sound implicates the production of dissimilar spaces that are related and brought together.
Sound and Ritual Environment In Ancient Egypt, religion was dominant in controlling power and knowledge. Public space becomes the cultural arena where religious and non-religious discourse is put into practice. The following questions can be answered by the source material: 1. How is the ritual environment configured? 2. What is the role of sound in communicating the religious and non-religious ideas about space to the general public? 3. How does sound influence the public space and the notion of it? 4. Which possibilities does public space offer social groups? I shall deal with them in this order. 1. How is the ritual environment configured? Especially with regard to ancient cultures, researchers have concentrated on the movements and gestures that are executed to configure and structure the ritual environment. Processions produce ritual places by their sheer physical actions. The enshrined god or goddess is lifted up by priests, and carried in procession to the river, from where they travel by boat to other places. Proceeding, stopping, continuation, circulating, or entering and leaving buildings, and in boat processions the change from land to water, together establish and mediate a pattern of movement. This pattern has attracted the most interest within ritual studies. The kinaesthetic, structured, ritual environment functions as the performance context for words that are uttered, songs that are sung, drums that are beaten, bells that are rung, and trumpets that are blown. These sounds interact with the movement pattern of the performance. It is therefore necessary to investigate the place of musicians within the performance, the direction in which instruments are held, and the time of their entry. Just to mention one example: the sound of a horn blown by a musician who is standing on a border that indicates liminality has a different ritual function from the same sound when it is played as a triumphal fanfare at the end of the ritual. In addition to the symbolism that sounds owe to their position within the ritualisation process, social factors contribute to the effect of music performed in a ritual context. It is within the sociology of music that questions regarding sound production as social practice have been investigated. One has to take into account the social status of musicians (ethnicity, gender, age, temple or military personnel, etc.), the kind of sound that is socially accepted, and the occasion on which the musi-
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cians are allowed to play. A good example for these factors’ impact is the modern history of jazz, where we can follow soloists who heard their music in black communities, learned it in church, played it in the streets, and finally made their way to concert halls; not to mention the challenges black and white jazz musicians met. In public spaces, sounds, voices, and noises may synchronise, emphasise, or dominate other sounds in the open-air environment, such as running water, singing birds, or the wind. They may create dialogues, dominate, or integrate existing natural sounds by reproducing them ritually. For example, a kind of rattle, called a sistrum, imitates the noise of wind in papyrus thickets. This instrument is connected to the goddess Hathor and the marshy environment as a creative environment. The objects and musical instruments used have multiple functions. Valued objects have several layers of meaning. Musical instruments might embody their hidden meanings in terms of commissioning (the instruments were owned by the temple), production, materials and design, use and experience.18 To sum up: acoustic practice operates through the localisation of the musicians in the ritual performance context, their entry within the performance, the social status of the performers, the symbolism that is tied to certain music and instruments, and the meaning of words sung. To illustrate the non-religious and religious connotations of public spaces that music creates in a ritual context, I will take sound production in processions as an example. 2. What is the role of sound in communicating the religious and non-religious ideas about space to the general public? Frequently performed religious festivals and processions were common opportunities for presenting religious ideas and other social values to the public. How much common people had access to processions of the gods and the royal family is a debated question. Even when people were denied closeness to gods and royal figures, they could listen to the procession in accordance with the following recommendation in the calendar for good and bad days: “Hurry and spend the day in a festive mood with spells”.19 The meaningfulness of sounds depends on the immediate context in which any given pattern is heard or made. During temple festivals, it is in the religious-ritual context that specific sounds attribute their symbolic quality to certain public places and spaces. Prayers, the daily temple ritual, and other cultic activities demonstrate that the human voice – talking or singing – is the appropriate way of approaching a god. This principle is followed in processions, where singing priestesses and chironomists create the environment for the divinity that is carried in procession. On the
18 Hackett 1996: 2–3. 19 Tagewählerei, 1 prt 27. Translation after Leitz 1994: 223.
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same occasion, shouting “Victory for the ruler” is intended for the king’s military escort. The use of instruments that suggest religious connotations (such as the sistrum) has an impact on the dimension, as well as on the symbolic nature of space. In the context of a religious ritual, the musical instruments played might, by their symbolism and their orientation (a person, a divinity, or a space to which the instrument is directed), create the ontological status of the environment. Through the gender of the player, they produce “gendered” space (e.g. they are played by priestesses), and shape the aspect of an imagined listener (e.g. they are played for a goddess, or for a god who is addressed as “the one who hears”). Within one ritual, several different groups of performers represent different spaces, and together they comprise a mixed heterogenic space. That is the case in the Opet procession, where members of the clergy, soldiers, boatmen, and the crowd partake in the ritualisation of the public space. Together they structure space and provide it with an acoustic order. Space that is connoted as divine is created by the following song. It is written above and beside the priestesses shown shaking sistra and heavy necklaces made of beads, and priests setting the beat with movements of their hands. The procession is on its way southward from the temple of Amun in Karnak to Luxor. The musicians are accompanying the sacred bark of the god Amun along the riverbank. Both the sound of the instruments and the words of the hymn in this ritual produce an imagined space: “‘O Amun-Re, lord of the thrones of the two lands, may you live forever! A drinking place is hewn out, the sky is folded back to the south; A drinking place is hewn out, the sky is folded back to the north, That the sailors of (the king) Djeserkheperure-Setepenre, beloved of AmunRe-Kamutef, Praised of the Gods, may drink.’ utterance by (the goddess) Neith.”20 In its performance context, the song interacts with the ritual environment. The construction for providing people with refreshments is reproduced. It is ritualised through the other half of the hymn by coupling the construction to the sky as an enlarged place, thus giving it two cardinal points on a south-north axis. It is important to notice that the building and the sky are not made equivalent and that the building is not ritually sanctified. The drinking place and the sky are put side by side. The pairing of a cultural site (the drinking station) with an imaginary site (the extended sky) is repeated in the pairing of a group of persons whose drink is offered by a goddess. The salutation of one divine speaker to the group of sailors follows the asymmetrical pattern of the one creator that differentiates him into the 20 Relief of the Opet-Procession in the Great Colonnade of Luxor Temple, western wall. Translation The Epigraphic Survey 1994: 12.
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many, and the idea of creation by words that are pronounced by a god. Employing traditional ideas of creation, the song produces public space in which people and the goddess are brought together. Space that is connoted as non-divine is created by the following song, written above the vanguard of the army: “How flourishing is the perfect ruler! He has conveyed Amun so that he decrees for him valour against the south and victory against the north. Amun is the god who decrees it: Victory for the ruler!”21 The song praises the king. Although following the do ut des principle, and thus being rewarded by a god, areas to the south and north of Egypt are connoted as spaces that are subjected to the king’s activity as a military leader. After having taken into consideration the meaning of sung texts, it is now time to answer the question: what does sound do in its pure form to public space? 3. How does sound influence the public space and the notion of it? Sound production in open air has to meet the requirements of the physical space. The following factors extend, reduce, or end the existence of sound-filled spaces in an outdoor environment: the distance of the sound wave from its point of origin; different amounts of sound energy put into the production of sound; the rise and fall of melodies; walls, trees, and other obstacles to the spreading of the soundwaves in an urban or rural environment; climate, and distance.22 Because sound waves are not reflected in open air, tunes sound dryer and weaker. Music requires accessory noise-makers, like tambourines and other musical instruments. Sound travels quickly in hot weather. As distance decreases, sound becomes louder. As distance increases, sound diminishes. Sound in processions defines space as being within reach of the ear. Several effects are conceivable: 1. The sound-filled space is always limited in time. Its duration is defined by the audible range of sounds actually produced. Amplitude, intensity, and volume bestow the properties on space that is produced by sound. 2. In an outdoor environment, the place where the sound is produced always lies at the centre of the space it defines. When produced in processions, this acoustically defined space moves as long as the procession moves. It defines acoustic space and its borders not as fixed, but pushed forward. 3. The borders of spaces that are defined by the reach of sound are temporarily produced. They are not clear-cut. They are extendable, shifting, and dynamic. 21 Relief of the Opet-Procession in the Great Colonnade of Luxor Temple, eastern wall. Translation The Epigraphic Survey 1994: 35. 22 Hall 2003: 78–86.
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Sound defines the expansion of acoustic space. Loud sounds enlarge space; whispers and silence diminish it. These musical parameters make us aware of the need to investigate the culturespecific ideas about acoustic space, its properties, and its borders. Sound that is produced during processions gives the outdoor environment the character of an open and flexible space. The notion of space that is neither fixed in size nor position is supported by language. The Ancient Egyptians had two different expressions for border: one, Djer, signifies the utmost cosmic border that is fixed and finite; the other word, Tash, signifies a borderline that is extendable. Sound signalises the god’s going out, his closeness, and his presence in public space. Being far away, sound marks a low activity level as a precondition for the appearance of the god. This is in line with the cosmological idea of inertness. The perception of sounds that are produced by the entourage of the deity puts the listener in relation to the approaching god. By rejoicing, the crowd confirms his appearance. Synchronising the appearance of the enshrined god and the jubilation of the crowd influences people’s social identity at a time-space level. The audience becomes incorporated into the ritual environment. The listeners’ acoustic reaction integrates them into the performance context, makes them embody its rhythm and recognise its specific sound patterns. People attain their social identity in public spaces where they are occasionally in the presence of the god, and are united in a joyful mood. 4. Which possibilities does public space offer social groups? Public space is qualified as space that people can identify with, who on a daily basis are excluded from closeness to their city god. Religious festivals encourage people to react in a way that stands in sharp contrast to their everyday rules of acoustic behaviour. “The entire town” or “the whole country is rejoicing for him” is a widely used epithet in songs of praise and biographies. When performed in public and mixed arenas, rejoicing extends the social space of the rewarded god or person – at least idealistically – to encompass the entire town. “Shouting for joy” produces the notion of space where people of different genders, ages, professions, social backgrounds, are together with the gods. The range of performers of different genders, ethnicities, and social status in the Opet procession produces a multifarious public space. A pluralistic society and a variety of forms are supported by the cosmology of Ancient Egyptian religion.23 Together with the above-mentioned function of an in-out orientation as engendering creative processes, it can be suggested that it was the ritual production of a varied space that was intended. How-
23 Hornung 1971: 179.
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ever, rejoicing defines public venues as a space of unity, if not solidarity: they are confirmed and reconfirmed as a heterogeneous social space.
“Sacred” and “Profane”? Durkheim’s categories of “sacred” and “profane” furthered the concepts of religious space as homogeneous, exclusive, different, and set apart. Material from Ancient Egypt testifies to the ritual construction of public space, where sacred and profane relate to each other. Thus, religion is located in consecrated and in mixed spaces. “Mixed space” is public space that is neither exclusively profane nor altogether lacking religious appearances. The classification of sacred and profane is not appropriate for the analysis of spaces that are a composite of different qualities; nor is the classification applicable for the dynamics of ritual practice. It is reductionist, in that it denotes the two ends of a spectrum at the expense of the variety that lies in between. Through ritualisation, such as that in our example, places attain their qualities while these are being produced, and without being reduced to being either sacred or profane. Public space does not undergo a change from profane to sacred. Instead, it is produced by reproduction and an additional dimension without losing one of its qualities. Therefore, for contemporary and for ancient cultures like the Egyptian one, more dynamic concepts need to be designed for the notion of public spaces, where rules of exclusion are limited. Its semi-openness, and, as a result of this, its multifarious character, must be recognised as a quality of space that is desired. It determines its tension, its power, and in respect of sound, its acoustic order. This transfers the possibilities of varied spaces to certain groups, and its representational capacity enables change.
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References Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brunner, Hellmut 1991. Die Weisheitsbücher der Ägypter. Lehren für das Leben. Zürich, Munich: Artemis. Burckhardt Qureshi, Regula 2006. “Musical Sound and Contextual Input. A Performance Model for Music Analysis”. Ethnomusicology 31/1 [1987]: 56–86 [Reprint in: Christian Kaden & Karsten Mackensen (eds.). Soziale Horizonte von Musik. Ein kommentiertes Lesebuch zur Musiksoziologie. Kassel: Bärenreiter: 250–269]. The Epigraphic Survey 1994. Reliefs and Inscriptions at Luxor Temple I. The Festival Procession of Opet in the Colonnade Hall. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Oriental Institute Publications 112). Hackett, Rosalind I.J. 1996. Art and Religion in Africa. London: Cassell. Hall, Donald E. 2003. Musikalische Akustik. Ein Handbuch. Mainz: Schott. Hoffmann, Friedhelm & Joachim F. Quack 2007. Anthologie der demotischen Literatur. Berlin: LIT Verlag (Einführungen und Quellentexte zur Ägyptologie 4). Hornung, Erik 1971. Der Eine und die Vielen. Ägyptische Gottesvorstellungen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Johnson, Mark 1987. The Body in the Mind. The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Knott, Kim 2005. The Location of Religion. A Spatial Analysis. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd. Leitz, Christian 1994. Tagewählerei. Das Buch HAt nHH pH.wy Dt und verwandte Texte. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 55). Lichtheim, Miriam 1973. Ancient Egyptian Literature I. The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Berkeley: University of California Press. Martin, Peter J. 1995. Sounds and Society. Themes in the Sociology of Music. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Meyer-Dietrich, Erika 2006. Senebi und Selbst. Personenkonstituenten zur rituellen Wiedergeburt in einem Frauensarg des Mittleren Reiches. Fribourg, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 216). Ostwald, Peter F. 1973. The Semiotics of Human Sound. The Hague, Paris: Mouton. Porten, Bezalel & J. Joel Farber 1996. The Elephantine Papyri in English. Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change. Leiden: Brill (Documenta et monumenta Orientis antiqui 22). Parkinson, Richard B. 1991. Voices from Ancient Egypt. An Anthology of Middle Kingdom Writings. London: British Museum Press. — 2002 Poetry and Culture in Middle Kingdom Egypt. A Dark Side to Perfection. London: Continuum.
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Altars and the Sacred Space: An Investigation into the Missionary Use of Portable Altars Ritual behaviour often involves complex concepts, and the notion of sacredness is certainly a concept of considerable complexity, perhaps even a concept containing counterintuitive elements. For example, how can specific objects, words, places, or performances be conceived of as belonging to a different and sacred realm compared to the ordinary things that surround us, or how are ordinary entities transformed into sacred articles of a particular ideological conviction? Since all known cultures, contemporary as well as historic, seem to employ some concept of sacredness, a universal human propensity may be posited for a dichotomy between objects, places, and actions belonging to an ordinary life-world on the one side, and, on the other, something beyond: the sacred. Of course, the particular formulations of the sacred differ, but the general notion that some matters are regarded as inviolable seems panhuman, and follows a trend in which ritual behaviour systematically incorporates social conventions and existential explanations in order to function at the collective level beyond the individual.1 Furthermore, a clear tendency to make manifest the different sacred concepts through material crystallisations, such as statues, relics, amulets, buildings, etc. is likewise a recurring feature, which presumably can be identified with the human talent for constructing environmental niches which correspond with the ideological chart for ritual behaviour. Therefore, the concept of sacredness cannot solely be viewed as belonging to a specific cultural area or time, but must be understood as an underlying premise for ritual behaviour in the more general sense. For that reason, inviolable sacred entities, which form the fabric of ritual actions, are the anchor points around which the ritual environment can be defined and understood, for outsiders as well as for insiders. In this way, sacred articles become cardinal for understanding the workings of sacredness as a religious concept, and also how they are believed to be bestowed with a sense of divine agency.
1 Bulbulia 2008: 84ff.; Durkheim 1912: 160–161; Mithen 1996: 201–202; Shore 1996: 61ff.
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The Artefact in Question: Context, Content and Composition Material crystallisation of sacred concepts can take and has taken many forms, from the gigantic Buddha statues at Bamiyan to the minuscule splinters from the true cross, or more composite formulations such as the palimpsest of ritual buildings found beneath the Dome of the Rock Mosque. In the present paper I will concentrate on the more manageable, but no less intriguing, Catholic portable altars, and in particular how they can be conceived of as the material grounding of a sacred ritual space. By investigating the actual use of the portable altars, the paper will take up the fundamental questions of how a concept such as sacredness is constructed and will also investigate how a particular material crystallisation of a sacred space might be organised and applied during missionary work. Specifically, the use of portable altars in the course of Christianising the Scandinavian peoples will be taken as a case in point; also, the contemporaneous alteration of existing semi-ritual, traditional spaces (i.e. the Norse Hall building) into suitable consecrated Catholic environments will figure prominently. Portable altars can, in fact, be classified as a genuine category of altars, which differ only in size from the ordinary, stationary types. They are constructed following exactly the same procedures as in the case of their larger counterparts, thereby exhibiting the required small reliquary, the mensa containing an “unbreakable” stone covering the reliquary, and they are, of course, consecrated by the appropriate personnel using the liturgy required to transform them into sacrosanct objects.2 Being of a smaller and portable class, and mainly built from perishable materials such as wood, only a few examples of these altars have survived the passing of time. Even so, the earliest traces of these altars are found parallel to the earliest missionary activities. St. Cuthbert’s altar, found in his grave next to his remains, is believed to be the oldest extant example of its kind, and can be dated to the latter half of the sixth century,3 at the time when Cuthbert himself was gaining a reputation as a very successful and persistent missionary.4 Another prominent missionary too, Willibrord, who evangelised in Friesland, made use of a portable altar, which is now to be found in the Trier Cathedral, but in a much altered state. Presumably only the altar stone and its wooden frame are original; the additional furnishing must have been added later, the original design being small, light, and handy, something which would have fitted perfectly with the requirements of a travelling priest.5
2 3 4 5
Kleinschmidt 1903; see Jessen (forthcoming) for a more thorough description. Coatsworth 1989: 300–301; Budde 1998: 16; Oman 1957: 63–65; Radford 1956: 326–329. Marner 2007. Braun 1924: 461; Budde 1998:159–169.
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Evidently, the small altars, in combination with the concomitant miniature chalice and paten, were manufactured to accompany travelling priests, such as Cuthbert and Willibrord, during their missionary travels, but might also have been used by priests to give sermons or the Eucharist to members of the congregation not well enough to come to church.6 In any case, the altars were conceived of, theologically as well as pragmatically, as fully accepted substitutes for the stationary altars, and could be used in the Catholic rituals in situations where a church building was not available to the priest.7 The usage of portable altars is a rather overlooked subject in the study of the Christianisation of the Scandinavian peoples. This omission is to a large extent, of course, based on the scarce source material, which consists of only a few objects, sometimes of uncertain function, because the consecrated mensa stones are the only components to have survived several hundred years of decomposition. Still, there are several indices pointing towards the portable altar as an integrated part of the missionary practices used in the spreading of the Catholic gospel in the Scandinavian areas. These are, firstly, the geographical distribution of the archaeological findings, secondly, the stratigraphic and contextual circumstances, and finally, the written source material, all of which indicate a deliberate introduction at the time of the northern mission. When the geographical positions of the excavated stones, which have been interpreted as mensa stones, are compared, a clear pattern emerges; all finds can be closely connected to places which have, at some point in time, functioned as either mainstays for missionary groups, or which figure prominently in the establishment of the ecclesiastical centres in Scandinavia. For the former group, the several finds from Hedeby (present day Schleswig) and Sigtuna refer directly to the Catholic Church’s endeavours to Christianise the North,8 while the latter group is characterised by single finds in places such as Roskilde or Varnhem, where we also find the earliest traces of church buildings.9 The contexts at several of these sites, Sigtuna in particular, but also the find near Roskilde, indicate that the portable altars were indeed used outside the churches, in view of the fact that the excavated areas either predate the periods of intense church building, or can be connected to areas where there are no traces of churches at all.10 Consequently, the situation must be interpreted in a way which favours the idea of missionary activity, or at least as an indication of provisionally constructed ritual spaces, in the different situations where access to a stationary altar was not possible. 6 7 8 9 10
Ibid.: 71–74. Stolt 2001: 28. Bracker-Wester 1989; Sanmark 2004: 78ff.; Tesch 2001; 2007. Andersen & Høj & Sørensen 1986; Vretemark 2007. Andersen & Høj & Sørensen 1986; Tesch 2007.
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The written sources from the times before and during the Northern mission are equally as scarce as the archaeological material. Still, an interesting description is provided by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica. It concerns the two English preachers, Hewald the Black and Hewald the White, who were evangelising in Frisia in the late seventh century. Bede writes: “[…] for they had with them sacred vessels and a consecrated table for an altar […]”11 evidently referring to a portable altar of the type known from other contemporaneous sources, such as the tomb of Cuthbert. Another indirect reference can be found in Vita Bonifacius where it is said that, after sleeping in a tent by the river Oraha, Bonifacius celebrated mass under the rising sun, which of course was impossible without a portable altar.12 Also, in Scandinavia we find an early Christian reference to portable altars. In the will of the first known Bishop of Uppsala, Siwardus, altar equipment and portable altar stones are listed, which are to be used “for mass in locations other than a consecrated church”.13 To my knowledge, these are the only written references to portable altars for this time period, and all underline the establishment of a consecrated space outside the church, thus emphasising the importance of the material crystallisation in itself for a proper sacred environment for the priestly functions. Another historical source suggesting the use of portable altars during the Scandinavian mission is related to Ansgar, who did missionary work in Scandinavia. His monastic upbringing followed the Irish-Frankish line of conduct, primarily the modified Benedictine rules promoted by Columba, who was the founding father of Luxeuil Abbey, whence the founders of the Corbie/New Corvey tradition, to which Ansgar belonged, originated.14 In essence, the Columban-Benedictine school combined the Irish idea of ascetic travelling among the people with the Continental (and prophetic) tradition for evangelising into a powerful main channel for converting pagans to the Catholic faith.15 This tradition for travelling, which had also inspired the insular monks such as the Hewalds or Cuthbert, therefore indirectly implies that Ansgar, too, in travelling to foreign countries, carried the church with him, perhaps in the form of a miniature chalice and paten together with a portable altar, which was given to him so that he could perform the ministeria ecclesiastica as Rimbert writes in Vita Anskarii (ch. VII).16 This possibility is supported by the several 11 Beda 1903: ch. X. 12 Kleinschmidt 1903: 301. Another more questionable reference to a portable altar consecrated by Gregory the Great himself and given to Augustine before his departure to England testifies to the widespread ecclesiastical acknowledgement of portable altars as a natural part of the missionary equipment (Rock 1905: 252). 13 Helander 2001: 56; Sanmark 2004: 270. 14 Müller-Wille 2004: 433. 15 Lawrence 1984: 46–51. 16 Rimbert 1961.
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porphyrite slabs, presumably coming from small altars, found in Hedeby, which was Ansgar’s primary port and place of mission.17 The evidence taken together thus raises the clear possibility that portable altars were used during the Scandinavian mission. In fact, it is very unlikely that the priests would have journeyed into uncharted territory for longer periods of time without such ritual equipment, owing to the rigidity of the liturgical programme as defined by the papal legislation, which did not permit “unconsecrated” rituals,18 as well as owing to their own private, clerical obligations to attend mass on a regular basis, which had to be upheld in order to maintain their pious and dutiful attitude.
The Altar as Sacred Space Apparently, the use of the portable altar can be regarded as a more or less common phenomenon in the early Middle Ages, and could most likely have been connected to the rather intense missionary agenda of this period. As the majority of the small altars preserved can be dated to the Romanesque period,19 the argument of missionary use is strengthened, because the contemporaneous Catholic investments in evangelising would benefit from the possibilities exhibited by the altars – i.e. a mobile consecrated space.20 But how this piece of ritual paraphernalia could actually be conceived of as the generator of a consecrated space is a more complex matter. The more straightforward explanation would simply be that it is a representation of a genuine historical artefact, namely the tomb of Christ. Still, such religious doctrines require a metonymic relation (i.e. the placing of a relic inside the altar), and an iconographic relation (i.e. it has to be built after certain design principles, which guarantee physical resemblance), before the altar could be instantiated as a sacred article, resulting in a series of semiotic definitions administered by the religious authori17 18 19 20
Bracker-Wester 1989. Kleinschmidt 1903. Ibid.: 338. In the later Middle Ages a growing liberality regarding the use of portable altars developed, causing an increase in papal or episcopal concessions for the use of private portable altars. It would commonly result in private chapels, where the owners arranged “[…] a table for the portable altar and other liturgical furnishings. Here, temporarily at least, the altar created an open sacral space functioning as a chapel in the home” (Mattox 2006: 661). Clearly, both the lay people obtaining these portable altars, as well as the clergy, must have regarded the altars themselves as the prerequisite for the construction of a private sacred space. This is supported by the fact that Church authorities in the sixteenth century raised an alarm concerning the ability of the laity to control and create unregulated and unsupervised sacrosanct environments, due to the movability of the altars (ibid. 665), which in a peculiar way resembles the ideas of the portable altar’s sacred agency promoted in this article, albeit from a later perspective, in a different setting, and for different reasons.
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ties, which imply more overarching principles of concept construction. I am here referring to the introductory remarks about the universal use of inviolable religious concepts such as sacredness. From a cognitive point of view, this raises a couple of interesting scenarios. First of all, there seems to exist a fundamental requirement that the concept of sacredness be defined through material entities; secondly, that the materials in themselves were thought to have been bestowed with certain otherworldly powers, for example, in the case of the portable altars, where they truly became ars sacra, as they shifted from being merely compositions of ordinary materials into materials generating a communication channel between this world and the heavenly realm. The altars became epistemic artefacts – tools for (religious) thinking – because they were perceived as material crystallisations of abstract theological concepts, in this case the notion of sacredness.21 I will therefore try to analyse the way in which the physical crystallisation of a sacrosanct environment can be established. That is, how a piece of normally produced artefact – a portable altar – comes to embody the material extension of an otherworldly force.
How Matter Anchors Concepts The most obvious function of the altars is the way in which they stabilise and concretise, in the real physical world, the theological concepts which the clergy utilise during mass. This type of material crystallisation of abstract concepts, where the material components play an indispensable and constituting role in the human understanding of the concepts, has been analysed by a number of cognitive scientists, with Edwin Hutchins, Gilles Fauconnier, and Mark Turner as the most prominent figures.22 They regard the main operation of the so-called material anchors to be blendings or combinations of several conceptual categories which do not normally occur together, but which can benefit from mutual comparison and crossmapping. The benefit will often be a better organisation of thought and a further way of stabilising ephemeral and abstract content in the physical world, thereby also creating the possibility of manipulating conceptual content in the material world.23 A very practical material anchor is, for example, a ruler; the abstract concept of length is here combined with the concept of numerical counting and concretised through the equal distances of the digits on an elongated artefact, the ruler. Two conceptual categories have been blended and made tangible, and thus applicable to situations occurring in people’s life-world, and the material anchor can
21 Sterelny 2004: 240–241. 22 Fauconnier & Turner 2002; Hutchins 1995; 2005; see also Coulson & Oakley 2000. 23 Hutchins 2005: 1568–1569, 1574.
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even be used in continuously higher levels of understanding such as the measuring of an area or of angles, or to calculate mass. With regard to the material anchor embodied by the portable altar, the conceptual content is of course not nearly as practical as in the case of the ruler, but the structuring principles are the same: the initial elements are characterised by stemming from two different ontological domains (see fig. 1). The first is the tangible part, in this case the soon-to-be altar, the other an abstract part, in this case the concept of a sacred essence. The former is basically a wooden box with a piece of polished stone placed on its top surface. To begin with, it is an ordinary physical object, which at the initial stage does not possess any special qualities, besides perhaps aesthetic qualities or a certain commodity value. To ultimately relocate the object from a profane to an explicit, Catholic sacred realm, it has to be consecrated in order to obtain its proper function in the ritual modus operandi. Transferring an “essence of ritual agency” to the object guarantees this change, and the second element – an abstract theological concept – is therefore introduced. A lengthy and elaborate ritual process undertaken by the bishop, which among other things entails placing a reliquary inside the altar, usually under the porphyrite mensa stone, warrants the transference of a ritual essence to the wooden box. In effect it is a material anchoring of the same sort as with the ruler; the “essence” cannot have an effect in the world if it does not become manifest, just as measuring is impossible without the aid of an artefact. Furthermore, the ascription of essence to material objects defies folk psychological understandings of the difference between the two ontological categories of animate and inanimate entities, the former containing a “natural” essence,24 and thus providing the small altar with an almost magical ritual status. As the actual theological formulation of “essence” involves a rather composite and abstract category, it might be wise to take a closer look at the theological reasoning behind the occurrence and transference of essence. The closest definition would be something like the following thirteenth-century statement, i.e. of a somewhat later period: “That matter alone is not the essence of the thing is clear, for it is through its essence that a thing is knowable and is placed in a species or genus. But matter is not a principle of cognition; nor is anything determined to a genus or species according to its matter but rather according to what something is in act. Nor is form alone the essence of a composite thing, however much certain people may try to assert this. From what has been said, it is clear that the essence is that which is signified by the definition of the thing.”25
24 Sørensen 2007: 35, 56–57. 25 Thomas Aquinas 1997: ch. II.
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Accordingly, Aquinas’ theological understanding involves a formulation which finds a curious parallel in the principles behind the blending schematic presented here; both matter and essence are necessary components in the “acting” of the essence, but at the same time the thing can only take its intended place in the act (i.e. the ritual) if the correct essence (theological idea of divine agency) is incorporated into the definition of the qualities pertaining to the thing itself (the altar). The material crystallisation of the altar, therefore, embodies the physical existence of the “essence” concept quite literally; through the act of the consecration the ordinary wooden box is now an altered object, in which an abstract, mental concept, i.e. the theological concept of divine agency, and a physical object in space have merged, thus creating a sacred object guaranteeing the required negotiation with the divine powers. In this sense, the portable altar will function as a material anchor for the priest’s ritual performance, or as a probe between two separate worlds, through this new definition that has been attached to it through consecration. At the same time, the altar has concretised a counterintuitive concept through the tangible and stabilising effects provided by the materiality of the object itself, its form and matter. This twofold and dialectic fulfilment of a sacred entity already seems encapsulated in Aquinas’ understanding, as made clear in the following words belonging to his discussion just cited: “Therefore, the essence clearly comprises both matter and form”.26 This, in a way, testifies to the general applicability of the idea behind the notion of material anchoring, because it follows an intuitive understanding of how physical objects and a conceptual content can interact and blend. An interesting outcome of the material anchoring is that changed possibilities occur which have consequences both with regard to the material form, as well as to the underlying concept. If the latter, the concept of divine agency, is supposed to have an effect in the phenomenal world, it necessitates a concrete instantiation of the concept. Otherwise, it can only be a philosophical topic without any real effect in a worldly setting. Material anchoring overcomes this hindrance by assigning divine agency to a physical form, a physical form which can be manipulated in space and can thus affect the immediate environment. The former, the altar, on the other hand, comes to posit certain properties which give rise to a changed range of functions, such as the realisation and execution of the Catholic Mass. Through its consecration, the altar seems to have been enabled to emit a sort of “divine” ambience, which will overrule conflicting environmental backgrounds, this even to such a degree that it touches upon the basic dogmatic requirements for a proper ritual environment, or what one might call the minimal acceptable ritual space.
26 Ibid. Even though Aquinas implicitly refers to the matter and form of the Catholic sacraments, he discusses a universal characterisation of essence, form, and matter in De Ente et Essentia, one more reason why it has been cited here.
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Before I turn to this important effect, another function of the altar needs to be clarified, namely the second part of the blending schema, the manipulability of the altar. In the next level of conceptual integration, centred on the manipulation of the material anchor, I have tried to illustrate the ritual power which the portable altar presents to the missionary simply because it is a movable object. An ordinary altar is, of course, firmly situated in the church, and for that reason not suitable as an artefact to be used during missionary activities. This entails that the sacredness of the altar, with all its involvement in the main part of the Catholic sacraments, will not accompany the missionary on his ideologically conditioned travels, thus causing severe impairment to his own personal ritual obligations, as well as to his taking care of the different ritual performances, the Eucharist for example, which figure prominently in the missionary endeavours of ecclesiastical expansion. Because the altars are so small and convenient, they complete the missing piece in the puzzle,, and the missionary can then take with him the focal point of the Catholic, cultic environment, the consecrated altar. The usefulness of the material anchor is therefore grounded in a design feature of the artefact (its portability), as well as in the extension of divine agency to the artefact (the consecration), and in combination this gives rise to novel operations: because of this blending, the anchoring of the divine exchange can be applied to unsuitable environments, due to the fact that the movable object is now regarded as a genuine sacrosanct article. This means that the introduction of the altar into, for example, a Viking Age hall will cause a conversion of the pagan environment. Even though the traditional rituals performed in such halls were connected to the sacral kingship characterising the pre-Christian era in Scandinavia, the ritual agency embedded in the portable altar will take precedence over such opposing ritual concepts usually connected to the hall building. In effect, the presence of the altar warrants a ritual environment in the entire building, because the sacred agency of the object is thought to diffuse into space. The priest’s introduction of the portable altar into a profane or heathen space extends the theologically defined, required Catholic environmental setting into basically any milieu. So, simple manipulation of a consecrated wooden box creates an authentic sacred space, and a movable place of worship has been formed. Importantly, the entity which permits this plasticity of ritual space is not the conventional ritual agent, the priest, but an extrasomatic entity, the altar. This means that the priest’s capacity to communicate between the divine powers and the collective of believers is dependent upon an artefact, and the constellation of the ritual environment must be regarded as a phenomenon distributed across different media, both mental and material. Clearly, the church in this way had formed a very powerful formula for a nonfixed ritual space, granting the priest the opportunity to transform the places he
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visited into appropriate consecrated environments, without necessitating any drastic physical modifications, a small artefact with a very practical effect.
Ritual Niche Construction What we are witnessing in this example is in fact a “cultural dispute” between two types of ideological systems, taking place within a material context. The traditional Norse, as well as the Catholic, ritual materialities are in a contest for the same spatial distribution, i.e. the Viking Age hall. Each tries to define matter and form as belonging to the more correct version of a ritualised environment, and to establish an appropriate material niche for the required cultic actions. Such material manipulation of the cultural setting fits very well with the idea of human environmental niche construction, as it has been used and described mainly within biology, which basically analyses the way animals engineer their immediate surroundings.27 Niche construction is an obvious process, due to the fact that several animals apply a behavioural strategy where the active manipulation of the environment is used to improve the conditions attractive to the agent, such as in the oft-cited example of the beaver’s dam, where the beaver actively alters the environment into a favourable habitat. Niche construction often has the result that it influences the natural selection pressure of the species involved, with an increase in the rate of survival as a consequence. Importantly, such environmental alterations can last over several generations, as is also the case with beaver dams, thus providing a system of inheritance that runs parallel to normal genetic inheritance.28 Humans have, compared to most other animals, a very sophisticated and elaborate system of structured behaviour (regularly designated “culture”), which commonly evolves around the manipulation of social as well as physical environments.29 If the biological (i.e. fitness-enhancing) definition of niche constructing is extended into including cultural parameters, such as ideology, power structures, economic interest, etc., it would appear that a more refined and accurate account of human niche construction may be generated,30 for example, the ideas promoted by Kim Sterelny on the importance of interaction between artefact and user, and the way these interactions influence individual as well as social behaviour.31 In particular, his ideas of portable representational resources should be mentioned, in which resources are understood as extrasomatic (or epigenetic) entities that an agent can employ as a means to overcome particular challenges by manipulation of the im27 28 29 30 31
Odling-Smee & Laland & Feldman 2003. Sterelny 2005: 22–23. Laland & Odling-Smee & Feldman 2001. Bardone & Magnani 2007. Sterelny 2004; 2005.
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mediate environment.32 These challenges need not be exclusively related to continued physical existence, but may equally be so related to the fulfilment of spiritual requirements, or indeed the creation of spiritual requirements.33 Therefore, by expanding the classical notion of niche construction into containing more cognitively defined operations characteristic of human behaviour, it becomes possible to discuss matters which only implicitly affect standard evolutionary terms such as natural selection. The thing is that “niche construction resulting from culture is more likely to cause dramatic changes in the frequency of the key resource […] than niche construction resulting from genes”.34 This implies that the rapid transmissions and changes occurring through cultural transmission are likely to speed up the effect of the niche construction processes in which cultural formulations are involved, or even to counteract or overwhelm natural selection. Therefore, it might be useful to take a closer look at the processes occurring when two opposed cultural niche constructions are in operation at the same time. That is, a situation where it is not biological survival which is at stake, but rather ideological survival, during which the different social orders might be altered. Clearly, the tools that the missionaries have at their disposal are fully integrated into a conceptual programme defined by the Catholic Church. At the same time, the pious obligations of the priests are defined by an abstract theological logic that cannot be acted out without support from the diverse range of ritual artefacts. This is the dialectic system between ritual mind and ritual matter which I have tried to sketch out above. So, when moving into pagan territory, the conceptual part of the ecclesiastical doctrines needs constantly to be anchored through the material setting. In effect, the missionaries must constantly organise their material surroundings and construct a Catholic ritual niche that will fulfil the theological (i.e. cultural) needs to which they subscribe. At the same time, evangelising is not so much about taking care of the missionaries, but rather an endeavour to overrule the already existing religious practices, which can be found abundantly in, for example, the milieu around the Viking Age hall. Therefore, in the case of the portable altar (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the portable ritual space), the ideas regarding cultural niche construction provide a way of better describing the social effects of the “anchoring” scenario described above. Blending and material anchoring can be understood as the cognitive mechanism that governs the Catholic Church’s wish to establish a functional epistemic artefact to be used by the travelling priests, whereas niche construction, on the other hand, is the more intentional and enveloping process through which the two former concepts come to have a lasting effect in the socio-material world 32 Sterelny 2004: 253. 33 Bulbulia 2008: 87ff. 34 Laland & Odling-Smee & Feldman 2001: 31.
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of the ideological patient (fig. 2). This effect is based on two principles: firstly, it generates a spiritual requirement (i.e. Catholicism) not already in existence in the areas where the missionaries engage the local communities. Secondly, niche construction establishes a long-lasting environment, which can be experienced by a number of individuals, and which will possibly even span generations, as has been the case with, for example, the Northern Catholic mission; even to this day we have many of the very earliest Catholic ritual niches preserved, such as the South Scandinavian Romanesque churches, which are all intentionally planted in the environment for there to be an appropriate niche within which to maintain the proper Catholic ritual functions. In fact, the earliest papal directives on how to correct the pagan ritual environments into which the missionaries ventured follow a line of conduct fully compatible with cultural niche construction. Gregory the Great’s response to Augustine’s frustrations about the conversion of the English, just after 600 A.D., explicitly mentions the manipulation of the ritual setting as a means to promote Catholicism.35 Pope Gregory advises that “the temples of the idols in that nation ought not be destroyed; but let the idols themselves that are in them be destroyed. Let water be consecrated and sprinkled in the same temples: let altars be constructed and relics deposited”.36 In other words, these papal guidelines were centred on constructing a salient connection between the perceived environment of those they wished to convert, and the abstract, theological content the priests tried to distribute, which meant an incorporation and transformation of the pagan temples into places of worship devoted to the one true god. Conceptualisations of a Christian ritual space could, for that reason, be based on a redefinition of existing traditions, and this way build upon – literally – religious milieus already present. In time, the pagan society would therefore begin acknowledging the once heathen localities as places of the Christian God. Hence, the missionaries would have directed a change of the cultural niche.
Concluding Remarks What we have witnessed in the case of the portable altars are the initial stages in an environmental adjustment, which is orchestrated to fit a particular cultural niche. The evangelising journeys of the priests do not just “repair” certain biological needs, but likewise create an epistemic hunger – a hunger to follow the doctrinary 35 Friesen 2006: 157; Jeffreys 1956. 36 Beda 1903: Bk. I, ch. XXX. It has been debated who the actual recipient was of the directions Gregory provided, as Archbishop Augustine, Bishop Mellitus, and King Ethelbert are mentioned in Beda’s writings. This confusion rests on the fact that Book I of Beda’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation is to a large extent a reworking of the Libellus Responsionum (Howe 2004: 152–153).
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teachings of the Church, much like the aforementioned spiritual fulfilment. Furthermore, by bringing with them the necessary material environment, this process worked within a recurring system, because it manipulated the environment in which the priests performed. The process could be understood as a kind of Catholic dam-building, for the reason that the priests manipulated the cultural environment they visited by changing the material composition. This way, the priests engineered a conceptual habitat which fitted their theological requirements, creating a sacred space where reconciliation between an ideological niche and a physical niche could take place. The effect was a reliable, non-conflicting, and stable ritual habitat, in which a particular type of sacredness could materialise. Fig. 1:
Fig. 1:
The figure exemplifies the two-step conceptual integration between abstract concept (circles) and material anchor (squares). Chart by the author
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Fig. 2:
Fig. 2:
The figure illustrates the relationship between the process of blending, the material anchoring, and the physical stabilisation of the ideological concepts in the constructed niche. Chart by the author
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References Primary Sources Aquinas, Thomas 1997. On Being and Essence. [English Translation of De Ente et Essentia]. Translated by Robert T. Miller. Internet Medieval Sourcebook. http:/www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/aquinas-esse.html Beda 1903. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. [English Translation of Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum]. Translated by L.C. Jane & A.M. Sellar. London: J.M. Dent. Rimbert 1961. “Vita Anskarii”. [Translated by Werner Trillmich]. In: Werner Trillmich & Rudolf Buchner (eds.). Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches. Berlin: Rütten & Loening: 6–133 (Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 11).
Secondary Sources Andersen, Michael & Mette Høj & Søren A. Sørensen 1986. “Et vikingetidshus fra Bredgade i Roskilde”. ROMU, Årsskrift for Roskilde Museum: 33–50. Bardone, Emanuele & Lorenzo Magnani 2007. “Sharing Representations through Cognitive Niche Construction. The Role of Affordances and Abduction”. Data Science Journal 6, suppl. 9: 87–91. Bracker-Wester, Ursula 1989. “Porphyrfunde aus Haithabu und Sleswig”. Ausgrabungen in Schleswig 7: 9–18. Braun, Joseph 1924. Das christliche Altar in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Vol. 1. Munich: Alte Meister Guenther Koch & Co. Bubbe, Michael 1998. Altare Portatile. Kompendium der Tragaltäre des Mittelalters 600–1600. Werne a.d. Lippe. [Private Publication of the author] Bulbulia, Joseph 2008. “Meme Infection or Religious Niche Construction? An Adaptationist Alternative to The Cultural Maladaptationist Hypothesis”. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20: 67–107. Coatsworth. Elizabeth 1989. “The pectoral cross and portable altar from the tomb of St Cuthbert”. In: Bonner, Rollason and Stancliffe (eds.). St. Cuthbert, his cult and his community to AD 1200. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press: 287–301. Coulson, Seane & Todd Oakley 2000. “Blending Basics”. Cognitive Linguistics 11: 175–196. Durkheim, Émile 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner 2002. The way we think: conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Friesen, Bill 2006. “Answers and Echoes. The Libellus responsionum and the Hagiography of North-Western European Mission”. Early Medieval Europe 14: 153–172.
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Helander, Sven 2001. Den Medeltida Uppsalaliturgin. Studier i helgonlängd, tidegärd och mässa. Lund: Arcus Förlag. Howe, Nicholas 2004. “Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England”. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34: 147–172. Hutchins, Edwin 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge: MIT Press. — 2005. “Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends. Journal of Pragmatics 37: 1555– 1577. Jeffreys, M.D.W. 1956. “Some Rules of Directed Culture Chance under Roman Catholicism”. American Anthropologist: 58: 721–731. Jessen, Mads (forthcoming). “Material Culture, Embodiment and the Construction of Religious Knowledge”. In: Lise Bender Jørgensen et al. (eds.). Embodied Knowledge: Technology and Beliefs. Cambridge: Oxbow. Kleinschmidt, Beda 1903. “Der mittelalterliche Tragaltar”. Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst 10: 299–304, 323–340. Laland, Kevin N. & F. John Odling-Smee & Marcus W. Feldman 2001. “Cultural Niche Construction and Human Evolution”. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 14: 22–33. Lawrence, Clifford H. 1984. Medieval Monasticism. Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. London: Longman. Marner, Dominic 2007. St. Cuthbert: His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham. London: The British Library. Mattox, Philip 2006. “Domestic Sacral Space in the Florentine Renaissance Palace”. Renaissance Studies 20/5: 658–673. Mithen, Steven 1996. Prehistory of the Mind. A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science. London: Thames and Hudson. Müller-Wille, Michael 2004. “Ansgar und die Archäeologie”, der Norden und das christliche Europa in karolingischer Zeit. Germania 82: 431-458. Odling-Smee, F. John & Kevin N. Laland & Marcus W. Feldman 2003. Niche Construction. The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press (Monographs in Population Biology 37). Okasha, Elisabeth & Jenifer O’Reilly 1984. “An Anglo-Saxon Portable Altar: Inscriptions and Iconography”. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 47: 32– 51. Oman, Charles 1957. English Church Plate 597-1830. London: Oxford University Press. Radford, C.A. Raleigh 1956. “The Portable Altar”. In: C.F. Battiscombe (ed.). The Relics of Saint Cuthbert. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 326–335. Rock, Daniel 1905. The Church of Our Fathers. As Seen in St. Osmund’s Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury. London: John Murray. Sanmark, Alexandra 2004. Power and Conversion. A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia. Uppsala: Universitetstryckeriet Ekonomikum (Occasional Papers in Archaeology 34).
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Shore, Bradd 1996. Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sørensen, Jesper 2007. A Cognitive Theory of Magic. Plymouth: AltaMira Press. Sterelny, Kim 2004. “Externalism, Epistemic Artefacts and the Extended Mind”. In: Richard Schantz (ed.). The Externalist Challenge. Vol. 2. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter: 239–254. — 2005. “Made By Each Other: Organisms and Their Environment”. Biology and Philosophy 20: 21–36. Stolt, Bengt 2001. “Boktyngder och bärbara altarskivor”. In: Bengt Stolt (ed.). Kyrkliga sällsyntheder på Gorland och annorstädes. Visby: Ödins Förlag AB: 25–42. Tesch, Sten 2001. “Från hall till kyrka”. Populär arkeologi 2: 14–16. — 2007. “Tidigmedeltida sepulkralstenar i Sigtuna – heliga stenar från Köln för såväl hallkult som mässa i stenkyrka”. In: Sten Tesch (ed.). Sigtune Dei. Sigtuna: Sigtuna Museum: 45–68. Vretemark, Maria 2007. Dakboken, September 2007, Utgrävning vid Varnhem Kloster Kyrka. http://www.vastarvet.se/kulturvast_templates/Kultur_ArticlePage.aspx?id= 8704. [last visited 28.04.2009]
Abstracts Section I: Ritual Transfer Davide Astori Researcher for General Linguistics, Department of Classical and Medieval Philology, University of Parma, Italy Passover seder and Masonic agape: Evidence of (Re)Invention or Transfer of Ritual? After presenting sèder (the ritual Passover dinner) and agàpe (the ritual Masonic dinner) with regard to their structure and value, and after considering both of them from an interdisciplinary perspective which will focus on their cultural, socio-political and historicalreligious context, we will try to point out differences and similarities between them, with particular reference to the same astronomic context (vernal equinox), the same kind of grammar and morphology of ritual, the same symbols and the same dynamics. The following questions will then be examined: is there any direct relation between sèder and agàpe? Did a (re)invention process occur? Why and who would have developed such a transfer inside the Masonic ritual? Kimberly Belcher Assistant Professor, Saint John’s School of Theology·Seminary, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA Ritual Identity and Cultural Transition in the Syro-Malabar Rite Catholic Church in Chicago Mar Thoma Shleeha Cathedral in Chicago is the first Syro-Malabar Catholic diocese outside India. The young people of this parish are developing a cultural identity that combines their South Indian, Syriac rite, Catholic heritage with American suburban influences. In the process, they have created a shared understanding of ‘participation’ in the mass as a skill which impacts their cultural and personal identity and by which they play a role in ritual transfer. The ritual transfer under consideration in this project is the creation of an Englishlanguage Qurbana (mass) attended by the youth and a few adults. Within this new ritual context, the youth think of ‘participation’ as a developable skill that extends beyond the boundaries of the Qurbana itself into their daily lives. This sense of conformity between the process of ritual transfer and the process of acculturation reflects a conviction that liturgical action is an essential element of self-interpretation. The project uses the work of Talal Asad to explore the parallels in these processes and their implications.
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Subhadra Mitra Channa Professor of Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Delhi University, India A Ritual Transfer: From the High to the Low in Hindu-Tibetan Himalayan Communities This paper critically examines the concept of ritual as actively representing a community’s social and political life, using material collected from a pastoral community, the Jad Bhotiyas, who are located on the international border between the Garhwal Himalayas and Tibet (China) and have been engaged in trans-border trade for centuries. Thus, without being a diasporic community they have maintained both a trans-national identity and culture. The political equations on the border inform their identity. Historically, their rituals and associated beliefs have changed in response to the changing political frontier in this region that has been periodically negotiated between Tibet, Nepal, British and now independent India. As a result, they have begun incorporating more Hindu elements into their existing sacred culture. I will describe how they have transferred the Yatra, a ritual journey of the gods, very popular in the Pahar (the northern hills of India), to apply it to the ritual procession of their village god Meparang to the Gangotri shrine. In this way, an endeavour is made to establish Meparang as a sovereign god of the Jads and to integrate him into the sacred complex of the Pahar. This ritual transfer is part of the integrated efforts made by the Jads to adjust to the encompassing Indian democracy and find respectability, as local Rajputs, within the surrounding Garhwali Hindu society of the now emerging political entity of Uttarakhand. Moritz Fischer Assistant Professor for History of Religion and Missiology, Augustana Theological Seminary, Neuendettelsau, Germany “Let the Tears Flow”: Performative Transfer of Healing-Rituals in Pentecostal Healing-Events between Repetition and Renewal and their Impact on the Globalisation of Christianity The Pentecostal Church FEPACO-Nzambe Malamu (“Fraternité Evangélique de Pentecôte en Afrique au Congo” and “Gemeinde Barmherziger Gott”) and its “performance” is a remarkable example of the worldwide religious Pentecostal networks. Its modes of transcultural performance (creation of the dynamics of rites, network-building, migration, social and cultural changes in the context of globalisation) testify to a rich variety. The role of these performances in the postcolonial and “neo-missionary” debate is quite crucial though its importance has often been exaggerated. In this paper, the following will be investigated: What is the significance of biblical mythological symbols, which are playing a prominent role, and how are these symbols used as identity markers and agents of change? It will be shown paradigmatically that ritual transfer is organized in an inter-religious manner between Africa and Europe with regard to biblical myths and testimonies. Thereby it will be highlighted how hybrid ritual elements, influenced by the Evangelical-Pentecostal healing movement, which originates in the US, have been de-localised from the African context and (re-)localized in Europe. It is surmised that they exemplify the European-Western desire for health and wholeness in a secular context.
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Heiko Grünwedel PhD student and lecturer, Institute for Religious Studies, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany Shamanistic Rituals from Siberia to Europe: Cultural Exchanges between Indigenous Healing Traditions of the Tyva and NeoShamans in Germany At present, it is impossible to conceptualise a map of the processes of transformation regarding shamanic practices of healing without taking into account interferences on a global scale. Based on my field research concerning changes in neo-shamanic movements in Germany and in Tyvinian indigenous traditions, I will attempt to analyse the reciprocal processes of reception from the perspective of an asymmetrical bi-directional transfer of ritual. I state in my thesis that this transfer of ritual is channelled through shared practice in staged spaces of engagement. At the focal point are media of transfer of the performative mimesis in intercultural workshops, of the transfer of discourse qua building of a canon of literature, and representations in the media. When comparing the identity constitutive effect of the rituals the question of its divergence according to the context emerges. That the bearers of the ritual, whose trans-different conceptions of life are affected by an intermediary position between the cultures, end up mediating between innovation and tradition makes clear that the transfer of ritual is paradigmatic for the basic dynamic of the ritual: the ritual itself as the physical interface between the cultures. Arne Harms PhD candidate, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Happy Mothers, Proud Sons: Hybridity, Possession, and a Heterotopy among Guyanese Hindus The Guyanese Kali-Mai-Puja allows its adherents to experience and directly interact with certain Hindu deities through their possessed mediums. Processes of healing are central to the ritual and an important part of its appeal. Yet, healing is achieved only through the establishment of an enduring relation to the deities and mediates thereby a fixed diasporic identity. To adopt (at least situationally) a here mediated, but according to local classifications doubly marginalized identity – that is, being East Indian and Madrassi – is for the ritual elite, on which this paper focuses, related to specific constructions of masculinity. Through its emphasis on purity, temporal renouncement, and strength, ritual centrality is locally linked to masculine conceptions and allows the actors to socially distinguish themselves as their embodiments. To act as deities or their immediate servants allows them to experience fragments of identity that are of a special agency. This gendered identity – male Madrassi – oscillates between Caribbean and Indian references and shall here be understood as a heterotopy. Read along these lines, the ritual will be analysed as an embedded, yet deviant invented tradition enmeshed in multiple processes of transfer.
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Liudmila Khokhlova Associate Professor, Department of Indian Philology, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Ritual Transfer in the History of the Sikh Community with Special Reference to the Sikh Marriage Ceremony The paper describes contextual aspects of ritual transfer in Sikh history, focusing on the historical evolution of the main rites constituting marriage ritual. Sikh history serves as a good example of the development of rituals when ‘primal identities’ (such as ethnicity or religion) re-emerge. Changes in social and political life as well as transformations in the roles of the participants have given rise to ritual transfer. Four main stages of this process will be discussed in the paper. It will be shown how the marriage order that never attracted any attention from Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, has in modern times become one of the main identifying features of the Sikh community. As the adepts of Sikhism usually came from the Hindu stock, the new Sikh rituals and symbols were intended to be distinct from Hindu symbols and, yet, at the same time to remain similar to them. That is the reason why many Sikh rituals and symbols might be viewed as good examples of ‘ritual quoting’ from Hindu sources. The paper will also discuss some ‘internal dimensions’ of ritual and the meanings ascribed by the participants to the text recited during the performance of the main rite of Sikh marriage which involves the circumambulation around the Holy Book. Afsar Mohammad Lecturer, Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA Following the Pir: Temporary Asceticism and Village Religion in South India How is one to interpret a ritual originating in and performed by members of one religious tradition that comes to be enacted by members of a different religious tradition? To answer this question, I analyse one extremely strict Shia ritual, Jalali Fakir, that is performed by Hindu devotees in a South Indian village as a Muharram commemorative performance. In this paper, by focusing on the process of fakiri ritual and its role in local religious tradition, I argue that this fakiri ritual makes the complex Sufi mysticism accessible to an ordinary devotee in a village context. I describe and interpret the process whereby the ritual became a part of this village’s religious practice, and focus on its appropriation and the context of its integration into a religious milieu that exhibits characteristics of both Sufi pir and Hindu yogi traditions.
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Paul Otto Professor of History, George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon, USA Wampum: The Transfer and Creation of Rituals on the Early American Frontier At the time of contact between Europeans and Native Americans in colonial northeastern North America, many Indian groups employed wampum, strings and belts of shell beads, in a variety of social, economic, religious, and political rituals. After contact, wampum became the focus of trade and frontier diplomacy. Both peoples adopted and transformed diplomatic rituals to meet the challenge of intercultural contact. Wampum played a prominent role in these ritual transfers. This essay introduces wampum, its production, and use among Native Americans. It highlights the specific ritual roles it played and surveys the ways Europeans adapted to those rituals in order to facilitate trade, communication, diplomacy, and military alliances. It further outlines the way wampum design and manufacture evolved among native people to facilitate intercultural communication and exchanges. Among other things, the essay argues that peoples of different cultural outlooks learned to adapt to one another’s rituals and further created new rituals, which represented both their traditional practices while also accommodating the practices of their new neighbours, trade partners, and allies. Tulsi Patel Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, India Transformations in Marriage Rituals: The Case of Urbanising OBCs in Rajasthan Marriage continues to remain one of the most critical of life-cycle events in India, though its forms may not have remained constant. Whilst contemporaneously love, arranged and love-cum-arranged marriages all take place, their ceremonies are solemnised through various procedures and may range from wedding rituals, as a group wedding or single wedding events, and festivities organised at home or outside in hotels, farm houses, places of worship, etc. Divorce and remarriage after divorce and widowhood are some of the other transformations occurring in Indian society. This paper, however, focuses only on the ritual of saptapadi, taking note of its transformations among the agricultural caste groups, who have traditionally permitted divorce as well as remarriage of their women after divorce and widowhood. Most of these groups are categorised as OBC (Other Backward Classes) by the Indian State. Many members of these peasant and agricultural castes have migrated and are still migrating to urban areas within and outside the state of Rajasthan. This paper addresses the question as to how the contingent conditions in urban areas, on the one hand, and their links and relationships with their rural counterparts, on the other, impinge upon these groups above all with regard to marital ritual and its transformation. Further, it will be shown how these groups make a statement regarding their social standing through the specific transformation of the respective wedding rituals.
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Sudha Sitharaman Fellow, Centre for Study of Social Change and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, India Conflict over Worship: A Study of Sri Guru Dattatreya Swami Bababudhan Dargah in South India The primary concern in this paper is to make sense of the ways in which ritual practice works its way through contemporary demands at the Sri Guru Dattatreya Bababudhan Swami Dargah, in South India. The dargah, which is known for attracting people across sectarian boundaries, has today become a site of self-identification, exclusion, and tensions among groups in the state. The paper attempts to explore the complex interactions between individuals and communities in terms of the changing dynamics of religion, ritual practices, and religious identities. In exploring how ritual practices get refracted by the changing context, the paper, firstly, maps the rituals in the shrine and secondly, focuses on these practices as an arena in which multiple interpretations are offered and debated by different participants and observers, and finally, seeks to explore how secular culture negotiates a viable relation with entrenched belief systems. The emphasis here is on how the ritual practices have been transformed in recent times, whereby they have increasingly acquired the status of cultural customs denoting a religious identity. This view vitiates against the current tendency to interpret religious traditions in line with political ideologies, thereby radically transforming the role such practices have played historically towards the realization of a pious life. Donald S. Sutton Professor of History and Anthropology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA Transfers of Ritual at a Northern Sichuan Site: Tibetan and Han Chinese Pilgrims, and Han Chinese Tourists The setting of this paper is a pilgrimage site in west China (outside the current Tibet Autonomous Region) where Tibetans and local Han Chinese have long worshipped different deities in the middle of the sixth lunar month. Since the site was registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992, it has also become the destination of hundreds of thousands of tourists from urban China. Focusing on where, how and why visitors conduct rituals and with what effects, the paper examines the mutual influence among those who rub shoulders at the site’s many way-stations. Among the three main categories of visitors – Tibetans who come in ethnic dress from a wide region, elderly Han women from nearby settlements, and urban middle class Han Chinese tourists – several types of ritual transfer have taken place. Here transfer is not geographic, from one continent to another, but from one ethnic group to another, and also in and out of the local manifestations of global culture represented by tourism.
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Ahmet Taşğın Associate Professor, Ziya Gökalp Faculty of Education, Dicle University, Diyarbakır, Turkey The Eastern Church in Sweden: The Transfer of Syrian Orthodox Rituals from Turkey to Europe As a member of the Eastern Church, the Syrian Orthodox community was noticed in Western countries recently mainly because of the large-scale migration of their members from their homeland Turkey to Europe. The migration was caused by many factors, some of them relate to the Turkish urbanisation policy, economical conditions, as well as intolerance towards ethno-religious minorities in Turkey. Eventually, many Syrian Orthodox Christians left their territories where they had been living for centuries and migrated to developed European countries. With migration, a new way of life with completely new customs had begun for them. The paper aims to describe the social conditions of the Syrian Orthodox Christians who migrated to Sweden. It focuses on the changes in their rituals as well as the invention of new rituals due to changes in places, architectural features, education, as well as social and economic conditions. The altered or new rituals will be compared with the traditional Syrian Orthodox social customs. The paper will analyse the changes in the rituals’ forms by comparing them with the church doctrine and also investigate the change in their atmosphere and meaning. Ali Yaman Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Abant İzzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey Ritual Transfer within the Anatolian Alevis: A Comparative Approach to the Cem-Ritual Alevis in Anatolia have been forced for political and religious reasons to live a closed and marginalized social life in rural areas for centuries and as a natural result of this condition, they fundamentally dwell on the traditions of oral accounts and their unique social institutions. After migrating, they lost connections with their religious and cultural institutions, but their religious marginality continued in cities too, because religious structures in cities are officially organized according to a Sunni orientation. Because of migration from rural to urban areas and concomitant modernization, the importance and role of the institutions of musahiplik, dedelik and traditional rituals has been eroded, as it happened to other institutions of Alevism. After the 1990s display of reclaiming Alevi identity, the interest of the community to Alevi faith and culture has risen again. People attempted to satisfy this interest via the courses and religious services provided by “assembly houses” (cemevis), associations, or foundations. In this paper, the Alevis’ basic ritual “Cem” will be analysed. Urbanization caused functional and formal changes to Cem rituals. We tried to observe those changes in rural and urban areas of Turkey and in Germany.
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Anne Mocko PhD candidate, Divinity School, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA Rewriting the Ritual: Community and Ethnicity in a San Francisco Performance of American Origins This paper explores the possibilities of altering and contesting ritual discourse in response to broader public discourse, and takes as its focus the annual re-enactment of Columbus’s discovery of America as performed in San Francisco. This ritual, performed first in the 1860s, revolves around “Columbus” making a rowboat landing on the shores of San Francisco Bay; over the course of the twentieth century, this event has provided a forum for representing and contesting ethnicity – both Italian ethnicity and, much more controversially, Native American. Performances in the 1960s through 1980s sought to rewrite the pageant’s depiction of Native Americans, and participants in these performances can be seen to adopt two strategies to this end: 1) revising the pageant’s script and/or casting, and 2) improvising during actual performance. This paper argues that through these strategies, the pageant displays a negotiation between its planners, its performers, and perhaps also its audience, which reveals a complex interaction between the particular localized performance, the pageant’s own history, and broader public conceptions of American identity.
Section II: Ritualized Space and Objects of Sacrosanctity Ritual Nils Holger Petersen Associate Professor of Church History and Centre Leader for the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals (under the Danish National Research Foundation) at the Theological Faculty, University of Copenhagen Il Doge and Easter Processions at San Marco in Early Modern Venice The splendour of ducal processions in Venice as an expression of political mythology connected to La serenissima is well known and has been discussed – among others – by Edward Muir. In this paper I propose to discuss features of the early modern Good Friday and Easter morning processions, c. 1500–1800. Traditional representational features – from the early Middle Ages – e.g. of the women at Christ’s grave had been incorporated into these ducal processions during the sixteenth century with special roles for the doge. The complex of solemn processions from the ducal palace around the San Marco piazza and into the basilica emphasizing political hierarchy on the one hand and combined with medieval representational liturgical traditions on the other provided a unique ceremonial which can be read as ritually manifesting several – intertwined yet different – kinds of sacrosanctity: sacred church spaces and objects, among them the temporarily erected Easter sepulchre, as well as the sacrosanct office of the doge ultimately dependent on the victory of Christ.
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Jens Fleischer Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen The Cornerstone and its Ritual Power The dedication of medieval churches is firmly rooted in tradition and well documented, while fewer sources concerning the blessing and laying the Foundation Stone are known from the Middle Ages. However, the structure of this rite is simple. Once the foundations had been marked out and a wooden cross raised to indicate the place of the altar, the bishop would sprinkle the place of the future altar and afterwards the foundation stone wherein crosses were engraved on each side. A limited number of late medieval pontificals throw more light on the rite. In the Pontificale Romanum, the key sequence is the prayer said by bishop after the act of sprinkling water: “Bless, O Lord, this creature of stone and grant by the invocation of thy holy name that all who with a pure mind shall lend aid to the building of this church may obtain soundness of body and the healing of their souls (...)”. In the paper, the setting out of the foundations and the placing of the Corner Stone will be discussed on the background of biblical sources, the archaeological material of the Early Middle Ages and the well-established Renaissance rite within the focus of the symbolic meaning of the four corners of the world. Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen Research fellow and PhD-student at the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals (under the Danish National Research Foundation) at the Theological Faculty, University of Copenhagen In the Sphere of Sacrosanctity: Altars as Generators of Space in the Late Middle Ages In this paper I will discuss the relation between images, the sacred sphere surrounding them and ritualistic behaviour in the European medieval church. Church inventory and decorations, e.g. altarpieces, statuettes and mural paintings, were more than just allegorical or moralistic representations of biblical stories. The well known claim that images in churches were the Bible of the illiterate is only a half-truth. Once established, images became material manifestations of their content. The saints on altars or Christ on the cross were physically present for the congregation. A pieta, a crucifix and any altarpiece confronted the beholder with physically present sacred persons. The church supported this by demanding ritualistic behaviour at the same time continuously claiming that it was the content, not the image as such, that was regarded as sacred. This ambiguous relation between plain representation and physically manifest sacrosanctity can be traced through the ritualistic handling of religious images from their creation until their placing inside the church pointing to a strong link between materiality and ritual behaviour.
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Minou Schraven Postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University Foundation Rituals in Renaissance Italy: The Case of the Bentivoglio Tower in Bologna There is a deeply ingrained human need to obtain protection for architectural structures by the act of depositing objects within the building’s walls or foundations. Ranging from ostrich eggs, terracotta figurines, coins, to animal and even human sacrifice, building deposits all have in common a strong apotropaic function. Just like the corner stone, they are meant to exert their magical agency from below ground, without ever being uncovered. Ambitious patrons in renaissance Italy, however, used portrait medals as building deposits, thus establishing an intimate link between building and its patron. Humanists and architectural theorists openly toyed with the idea that the portrait medal would allow for identification of the patron’s identity, once the buildings themselves had vanished. This paper addresses the way renaissance portrait medals were employed to distribute the agency of their patron. Compared to more traditional building deposits, what is the purpose of medals within dedication rituals? Erika Meyer-Dietrich Researcher, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Uppsala Religion That is Heard in Public Space: Sound Production in Ancient Egypt in a Ritual Context The paper deals with the production of sound as a strategy for the creation and the extension of a ritual environment. Durkheim’s categories “sacred” and “profane” furthered the concepts of religious space as exclusive, different, and set apart. In the modern world and, as the author will argue, in the ancient world too, there have been mingled spaces. By these, is understood public space that is neither exclusively profane nor lacking religious appearances? Material from Ancient Egypt testifies the existence and construction of space where sacred and profane relate with each other. This occurs in public spaces. The paper addresses questions regarding acoustics as ritual strategies. How is the ritual environment configured? What is the role of sound in communicating the religious ideas about space to the general public? How does sound influence the public space and the notion of it? Special attention will be paid to symbolic music and other sounds by which religious ritual generates mingled public space and place where the sacred and the profane exist side by side, at the same time, maintaining their qualities.
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Mads Dengsø Jessen PhD student in Prehistoric Archaelogy at the University of Aarhus, and currently working as Head of Excavations at the Jelling Project Altars and the Sacred Space: An Investigation into the Missionary Use of Portable Altars Material structures and artefacts are usually regarded as playing a representative role in ritual behaviour. Contrary to this view, I will argue that it makes little sense to talk about rituals ‘outside’ the material world. Firstly, rituals are localised in the material world and physically experienced and dependent on the environmental context. Secondly, this context is manipulable through human action. Ritual behaviour can therefore be regarded as distributed through systems of interaction between media residing inside and outside the human skull, making ritual cognition a combination of conceptual and material aspects. I advocate a dialectical perspective in which the extra-somatic environment of human life is recognized as a primary and indispensable dimension of religious life. Missionary activities in Late Iron Age Scandinavia will provide a case-study in examining extrasomatic means of ritual experience. Specifically the use of portable altars, which figure as a minimum requirement for an acceptable ritual environment, will be analyzed. The portable altar can be regarded a necessary participant in transferring theological concepts into an entity that can actually be experienced. That is, the instantiation of a sacrosanct concept.
Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals Edited by Axel Michaels
4: Martin Gaenszle, Jörg Gengnagel (Eds.)
Words and Deeds
Visualizing Space in Banaras: Images, Maps, and the Practice of Representation
Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia Edited by
Jörg Gengnagel Ute Hüsken Srilata Raman
2006. 358 pages, 94 ill., hc ISBN 978-3-447-05187-3 € 48,– (D) / sFr 83,–
Harrassowitz Verlag
5: Maha-deva Veda-ntin
1: Jörg Gengnagel, Ute Hüsken, Srilata Raman (Eds.)
Words and Deeds Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia
2005. 299 Seiten, 10 Abb., br ISBN 978-3-447-05152-1 € 48,– (D) / sFr 83,–
2: Ute Hüsken, Srilata Raman-Müller (Eds.)
Ritual in South Asia Text and Context In preparation.
3: Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels
Handling Death
The Dynamics of Death Rituals and Ancestor Rituals among the Newars in Bhaktapur, Nepal With Contributions by Johanna Buss and Nutan Sharma and a Film on DVD by Christian Bau 2005. 216 Seiten, 140 Abb., 1 DVD, gb ISBN 978-3-447-05160-6 € 68,– (D) / sFr 116,–
Mı-ma-msa-nya-yasamgraha ˙ ˙ A Compendium of the principles
of Mı-ma-msa˙ Edited and translated by James Benson 2010. 905 pages, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05722-6 € 148,− (D) / sFr 250,−
6: Niels Gutschow, Axel Michaels
Growing Up
Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Rituals among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal With a film on DVD by Christian Bau
2008. 307 pages, 138 ill., 17 maps, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05752-3 € 64,– (D) / sFr 109,–
7: Jörg Gengnagel
Visualized Texts
Sacred Spaces, Spatial Texts and the Religious Cartography of Banaras 2010. Ca. 358 pages, 20 ill., hc ISBN 978-3-447-05732-5 Ca. € 54,− (D) / sFr 93,−
HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG • WIESBADEN www.harrassowitz-verlag.de •
[email protected]
Orient • Slavistik • Osteuropa • Bibliothek • Buch • Kultur
Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals Edited by Axel Michaels
8: Barbara Schuler
9: Ute Hüsken
Of Death and Birth
Vis·n·u’s Children
Icakkiyamman-, a Tamil Goddess, in Ritual and Story With a Film on DVD by the Author 2009. XVI, 501 pages, 1 map, 14 ill., 1 DVD, hc ISBN 978-3-447-05844-5 € 98,– (D) / sFr 166,–
Of Death and Birth by Barbara Schuler deals with dynamics of a local (non-Brahmanical) ritual, its modular organisation and inner logic, the interaction between narrative text and ritual, and the significance of the local versus translocal nature of the text in the ritual context, while providing a broad range of issues for comparison. It demonstrates that examining texts in their context helps to understand better the complexity of religious traditions and the way in which ritual and text are programmatically employed. The author offers a vivid description of a hitherto unnoticed ritual system, along with the first translation of a text called the Icakkiyamman- Katai (IK). Composed in the Tamil language, the IK represents a substantially longer and embellished form of a core version which probably goes as far back as the seventh century C.E. Unlike the classical source, this text has been incorporated into a living tradition, and is being constantly refashioned. A range of text versions have been encapsulated in the form of a conspectus, which will shed light on the text’s variability or fixity and will add to our knowledge of bardic creativity.
Prenatal life-cycle rituals in South India Translated into English by Will Sweetman With a DVD by Ute Hüsken and Manfred Krüger
2009. 322 pages, 1 DVD, hc Book + DVD: ISBN 978-3-447-05854-4 € 52,– (D) / sFr 90,– DVD: (available apart) ISBN 978-3-447-05853-7 € 24,– (D) / sFr 42,20
The history of the Vaikha-nasas, a group of Brahmanic priests in the Vis·n·u temples of south India, is characterized by the effort of claiming their status against rivaling priests. Ute Hüsken’s work discusses the controversy, ongoing for centuries, as to what makes a person eligible to perform the rituals in Vis·n·u temples. Since the 14th century CE the discussion in the relevant Sanskrit texts centers around the question of whether the Vaikha-nasas priests must undergo an initiation, or whether their particular prenatal lifecycle ritual vis·n·ubali makes them eligible to perform temple ritual. In addition to the textual perspective, three instances of local conflicts from the 19 th/20th centuries about the question of whether the Vaikha-nasas require an initiation are analysed in their contexts. Three examples of present day performances of the crucial ritual vis·n·ubali are presented and interpreted in the light of the relation between text and performance and from the perspective of the acting priests’ ritual competence.
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