Search Results
This paper delivers an interdisciplinary approach to historical Chinese epistolary data, by examining the language and style of historical Chinese letters from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics, historical politeness research and relational ritual theory. It argues that various discursive characteristics of Chinese epistles, which previous Sinological research has identified, may be systematically modelled if one approaches historical Chinese letter writing as a ritual practice. Language use in historical Chinese letters tends to have a strongly ritual character, due to two reasons. First, Chinese epistles represent interpersonal interaction in a sociocultural context that triggered intensive ritual politeness. Second, many literati regarded letter writing as an activity of fine art by means of which one could ritually display one’s epistolary skill. Owing to this, the language of historical Chinese epistles features a duality of (1) other-oriented ritual politeness and (2) self-oriented ritual display. The present paper examines this duality by setting up an analytic model, and by investigating a renowned corpus of Qing Dynasty letters, Xuehongxuan chidu 雪鴻軒尺牘 (Letters from Snow Swan Retreat).
Different levels of meeting (with other participants, with other cultures, with art, with oneself, with nature or God) and the sense of community are essential experiences during a pilgrimage. The following text deals with the meaning and functions of pilgrimage rituals concerning community and team spirit. What part does the performing dimension of symbolic acting play and how does the ritual intention differ from the intention of everyday acting? The recent attraction of pilgrimage goes back also to a growing longing for rituals and tradition enabling people to leave the everyday life in a limited, well structured and most of all repeatable way.
Pat 1988 . The moral order of a suburb . Oxford : Oxford University Press . Bax , Marcel . 2010 . Rituals . In: A. H. Jucker and I
This article seeks to highlight the understanding of and insight into the African ritual of animal slaughtering in South Africa. Reference will be made to the ritual as performed by the African National Congress (ANC) activist, Tony Yengeni after being released from prison in 2007. Furthermore, the paper shows its implications for current debates on intangible heritage and human rights in South Africa. It adopts a descriptive and narrative approach to the issue of animal slaughtering for the purpose of ritual performance. The questions asked in this paper are developed within a discussion of the academic and policy literature relevant to intangible cultural heritage. The paper shows the utilisation of heritage discourses in debates over multiculturalism. In evaluating Tony Yengeni’s case, a more comprehensive approach is developed in order to give a better appreciation of the intangible cultural heritage as a source of cultural identity, creativity and diversity. Through this paper, a moderate understanding of the different types of rituals performed in South Africa is acknowledged. It is through this understanding, that the notion of a ‘united Rainbow Nation’ may be achieved.
In this paper, I seek to reevaluate Victor Turner's related concepts of liminality and communitas in the context of Hindu ritual. The primary data come from an all-Hindu village named Goalpara, which is located in Birbhum District, West Bengal. The specific ritual in question is an annual three-day event performed for the village's main deity, Dharmaraj, the “king of duty”. Through ethnographic inquiry I argue that the events during the three days seem to reinforce Turner's idea of an actual abolishment of social hierarchy, since low-caste devotees of the deity seem to take on the status of high-caste Brahmans through an initiatory transformation. However, upon closer investigation, the transformation only occurs on the symbolic level. Close observation of the ritual in question suggests that hierarchy is never abandoned. In some respects, it is even reinforced through ritual action. Nonetheless, I argue that the question of a change in social status depends largely on the interpretations provided by participants in the ritual. High-caste participants suggest that the rituals reinforce hierarchy, while low-caste devotees insist that they actually become Brahmins in ontological terms, albeit temporarily. I conclude by drawing attention to those aspects of the ritual that support Turner's basic hypotheses about liminality and communitas. However, in so doing, I suggest that liminality and communitas are phenomena that are negotiated in ritual. They do not exist as a priori universal categories. By stressing the negotiated quality of liminality and communitas, I argue, the analyst is better situated to understand how ritual allows for low-caste members of the village to become empowered, thereby offering them the ability to speak on equal terms with their Brahman counterparts. Such negotiation during ritual potentially provides a platform for egalitarian action among and within the village's local caste system after the annual ritual period has ended.
References Bax , Marcel . 1999 . Ritual levelling: The balance between the eristic and contractual motive in hostile verbal encounters in Medieval romance and
, let us summarize very shortly the traditional definitions of the Roman rituals of devotio and evocatio . 2 Both of them are generally defined as religious formulas pronounced by a Roman general in time of war
Introduction Psychoactive fungi and plants have been incorporated time and again into the medicine, ritual life, and leisure of diverse human populations throughout the world ( Guerra-Doce, 2015 ; Guzmán, 2013 ; Kennedy, 2014
Introduction Ayahuasca is a botanical hallucinogenic beverage traditionally used by indigenous groups throughout the Northwestern Amazon for ritual and therapeutic purposes ( Schultes & Hofmann, 1992 ). It is usually prepared
Even though there exists a vast ritual literature of Kerala, topics related to theology and to the function of ‘initiation’ were taken up for discussion only in the early ritual manuals of Kerala, such as the Śaivāgamanibandhana, Prayogamañjarī, Ĭśānagurudevapaddhati etc. The later ritual manuals, such as the Kriyādīpikā, Tantrasamuccaya etc. did not deal with ‘initiation’ and instead prescribed a mantropadeśa in which the teacher (ācārya) teaches the mūla-mantra to the student. This paper will discuss in detail how the early ritual manuals of Kerala dealt with the subject of ‘initiation’ and will show how the importance of ‘initiation’ declined gradually and was forgotten by the later authors of the ritual manuals of Kerala.
