Panel Sessions

Ritual Practices in Indian Religions and Contexts December 9 to 11, 2004 Lund, Sweden

PANEL 1

RITUAL THEORIES & METHODS Moderator: Peter Habbe, Lund University, Sweden

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Abolishment of Intention and Interiorisation Clemens Cavallin, Bergen University, Norway In their general theory of ritualization Caroline Humphrey & James Laidlaw (1994) argue that the abolishment of individual intention is foundational for ritual activity. The reintroduction of individual intention in ritual practices should thus be detrimental to ritualization as such. In the Vedic scriptures we can see how processes of interiorisation are introduced, which reflect different attitudes towards and ways of handling ritualization. In my paper I will discuss the main thesis of Humphrey & Laidlaw on a more general level with specific references to Vedic material. In 2002 Clemens Cavallin defended his thesis The Efficacy of Sacrifice: Correspondences in the Rigvedic Brahmanas at Gothenburg University. He is presently working at the division for Religious Studies at Bergen University. His primary research interests are within the field of Vedic and ritual studies.

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The Hymn as a Ritual Performance: A Comparative Exercise Based Primarily on Vedic and Ancient Egyptian Hymns Jørgen Podemann Sørensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Hymns have often been regarded as eulogies or panegyric meant to please gods or even to render them favourable towards the needs of their pious devotees. This paper will consider hymns as paraphrasing, situating and ultimately performing a ritual process designed to enact the divine blessings and maintenance of the world. It will be argued that although hymns and other ritual texts address gods, ritual is not persuasive communication. Bio-data is missing.

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Sacrility and Ritual Geometry in Hindu Traditions of Banaras Rana P. B. Singh, Banaras Hindu University, India This paper deals with the two levels of ritualscape, which is the overcome of sacral manifestation of space (spirituo-magnetism), time (auspiciousness) and ritual functions, viz. the ritual geometry, and the complexity that results into the system based on the scale of importance of festivals as fixed on luni-solar calendars. In 1

all rituals, the holy bath in the river Ganga is a prerequisite for cleansing and initiating the rituals. The relationship between religious rituals (sacred) and social activities (mundane) forms at least five geometrical model patterns of functional system: (1) Ascending triangle; (2) Descending triangle; (3) Pyramid; (4) Side-by-Side worship; and finally (5) Concentric rings. In each case, the symbolic significance of rituals, organised in these patterns, is associated with the frequency of attendants (devotees), ritual purity or the status of worshippers and their gods. A study of the age-wise frequency of devout Hindus during four hours in the morning for 600 days at the bank of river Ganga in Banaras support the tendency of ‘open system’ that reached a critical state. Ritual behaviour may generate ideational impulses, which are propagate through it, generate responses, and promote cultural integration. This is not organised by any central political or ecclesiastical authority, but by the movement of peoples’ feet. In the end, it provides cohesion for the entire land. Rana P. B. Singh is Professor of Cultural Geography at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India. For the last two decades he is involved in studies of heritage planning, ritualscape and spiritual tourism in the Varanasi region. He has been lecturing on these topics at various centres in America, Europe, East Asia and Australia. His publications include over 145 papers and 31 books on the subjects. 4.

Buddhism in Burmese Spirit-medium Per-Arne Berglie, Stockholm University, Sweden Today Burmese spirit mediums are flourishing, developing and changing, but they have hardly received much scholarly attention. The ceremonies, the nat pews, are performances, in which music, singing, dancing and wearing colourful clothes are important and necessary elements. The spirit mediums perform the stories of the nat gods in ways which are easily recognizable by the audience, and the moments where they loose control of their behaviour are few and of grief duration. The nat cult is clearly subordinated to “normative” Buddhism, but the nat pews are, of course, performed by Buddhists for Buddhists. In the opening of the ceremonies the spirit-mediums and the dancers are paying respect to the Buddha and his teaching, and in the conclusion they are offering food to the petas and other homeless spirits. In Burmese religion, however, there are not only monks and mediums, but also weikzas and bodaws. They are, or have been, humans who possess supernatural gifts acquired in ways the Burmese consider being normatively Buddhist. The most venerated weikzas have already entered an invisible world from which they extend to help people in this world, while the bodaws are not thought of as having reached that high level of existence. The weikzas may be present at the nat pews, as inspiring and powerful supernatural beings even able to possess people, while a living bodaw may act as a medium or a dancer. Both are said to be intermediaries between the world of the nats and the world of the “occult” or “messianic” Buddhism. It seems obvious that rituals sometimes tell more, or something else, than what participants usually tell in interviews and conversations. A few video sequences and slides from nat pews at Mount Popa and in Mandalay will be shown in an attempt to demonstrate the continuity between the cult of the nats, the “occult” Buddhism, and the “normative” Buddhism. This being the case, a person’s relations to the nats may certainly be relevant to his fate at death and to his spiritual progress, and thus everything has to do with Buddhism.

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Per-Arne Berglie, Professor and Head of Department at the Department of Comparative Religion, Stockholm University. Berglie’s main interest is Buddhism and especially the phenomena of ritual possession in Buddhist contexts. He has conducted fieldwork in Taiwan, Vietnam, Burma and among Tibetans in Nepal. His latest publications include “Shamanic Buddhism in Burmese Spirit Medium Rituals", which will be published in Shaman, 2005 (in press). 5.

Performing the Yogasutra Klas Nevrin, Stockholm University, Sweden The use of chant and recitation is rapidly becoming an important feature in many religious settings, most notably in several modern Yoga traditions, yet the phenomenon has received less attention in research studies on contemporary religions. This paper is a work in progress that will draw attention to the dimensions of aurality and orality in ritual theory. The paper will investigate the usefulness of various performance and body-oriented approaches in an attempt to understand oral performances of Yogasutra in the Viniyoga tradition. These approaches are considered relevant because in many ways the dimensions of aurality and orality, as evinced in recitation, destabilize a rigid mind-body discontinuity, and may be seen as a significant part of the endeavour to destabilize dichotomies that are otherwise common in studies on the ritual use of texts. Recitation is also discussed in terms of (a) various modes of reception and interpretation of texts, such as informative, performative and transformative; (b) "flow" and "deep play"; and (c) so-called "gnoseological hermeneutics". The resulting tentative framework of the analysis draws attention to tensions and subtleties in the relationship between meditation, ritual, and scholastic study. Klas Nevrin is a Ph.D. Student at the Department of Comparative Religion, Stockholm University. He is working on a dissertation on modern Yoga. His is interested in views of body, health, ritualization, and devotion, and primarily his research study is using a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach.

PANEL 2 1.

RITUAL & HISTORY

Moderator: Olle Qvarnström, Lunds University, Sweden The Snake in the Grass-Roots Movement: Orthodox Texts and the Preservation and Transformation of Snake Worship Rituals Laurie A. Cozad, University of Mississippi, USA Rituals devoted to the propitiation of supernatural snakes have been practiced on the Indian sub-continent for more than two millennia, and these ritual practices remain relevant for people in India today. Worshippers honor these supernatural snakes, known as Nagas, in order that these deities might ensure such things as the birth of healthy children and the provision of bountiful harvests. While firsthand observation is one means for identifying the ritual practices involved in the worship of the supernatural snake, that method does not help us compose a historical picture of this grass-roots tradition. Orthodox texts of the Hindu

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tradition, however, provide us with a glimpse into the religious life of the ancient world, wherein supernatural snakes abound as do ritual practices associated with the worship of these creatures. What we will discover as we examine snake worship rituals through the lens of these orthodox texts is that certain redactors found the phenomenon of snake worship to be threatening to their ideological agenda, and as a result, used context as a weapon to portray the snake and its associated ritual tradition in a very negative fashion. Thus, the purpose of this paper is both to analyze the role of orthodox texts in preserving and transforming grass-root’s ritual practices and to compare how various sets of Brahmin redactors reacted very differently to a pre-established tradition of snake worship. To do this, we will compare several of the late Vedic texts as juxtaposed against the Adi Parvan of the Mahabharata, to determine the following: the ways and means by which the snake rituals preserved in the late Vedas were (1) denigrated, (2) re-signified, and (3) incorporated by the Brahmin redactors of the Adi Parvan in order simultaneously to quell a rival tradition while elevating their own. Laurie Cozad received her Ph.D. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where she specialized in Hinduism and Buddhism. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Croft Institute for International Studies. Her most recent publications include the book Sacred Snakes: Orthodox Images of Indian Snake Worship. 2.

The Ordination Ritual in Indian Buddhism through Chinese Texts Chen Huaiyu, Princeton University, USA Drawing upon Chinese Buddhist texts, this paper will examine the ordination ritual in Indian Buddhism. Buddhist ordination ritual is a traditional subject, which has been examined by many scholars working on Indian Buddhism. However, these studies, which are mostly based on Pali texts, have often neglected that the Chinese texts can add a new understanding of the Buddhist ritual in Indian Buddhism. My paper will examine travel accounts of pilgrims in medieval China and the biographies of eminent monks that are neglected by Buddhist historian. By doing so, this paper will draw a picture of the ordination ritual in the view of Chinese monks. More specifically, the paper will focus on the construction of the ordination platforms and the performers of the ordination ritual in India, as well as the Buddhist texts applied during the process of the ordination ritual. This paper will explore the legend about the origin of the ordination platform and its religious meaning in Chinese narratives. From an anthropological perspective, this paper will also contextualize the process of the ritual performance on the ordination platform, for instance how the Buddhist scripture is recited, how the positions of the monks are arranged and their religious meanings. Bio-data is missing.

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The Kalachakra Initiation Ritual and Its Importance for the Tibetans Today Urban Hammer, Stockholm University, Sweden

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During the last thirty years the present Dalai Lama has given a number of initiations in the Kalachakra Tantra for great numbers of participants. The tantra is considered to be one of the highest tantra teachings in Tibet. These initiations have had a great significance for the Tibetans in exile and strengthened their national consciousness. The ritual is long and complicated, and the meaning of it is to permit the practice of different meditation and yoga methods found in the texts. The ceremony is also a ritual of a symbolic death and rebirth, in which the participant is actually being born into seeing the world in a new way. There are eleven initiation levels where the initiated novice is brought before the mandala and is allowed to enter it symbolically. The great number of initiations and people initiated implies that in practice all of the Tibetans in exile have received the Kalachakra initiation. A number of Tibetans from inside the Tibet have also been initiated and there have been many initiations in other Buddhist schools than the Gelugpa tradition of Dalai Lama. As a consequence, these initiations are having a significant function of uniting the Tibetan people, even in a spiritual way. There is an eschatological perspective in the Kalachakra Tantra, saying that all who have received the initiation will assemble with the king of Shambhala and fight against evil in the future. This might inspire the activities for more freedom in Tibet. Urban Hammar is affiliated to the Department of History of Religions at Stockholm University. He is preparing a doctoral dissertation on the Kalachakra Tantra, treating both the history of the doctrine in Tibet and the concept of Adibuddha. His research interests focus on Tibetan and Indian religions.

PANEL 3

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RITUAL & MODERNITY

Moderator: Knut Jacobsen, Bergen University, Norway Tyagaraja- the poet, composer, ancestor, saint, and builder of the Indian nation. Lars Kjærholm, Arhus University, Denmark Tyagaraja was an obscure South Indian composer in the 19th century. Now he has become a celebrated composer and his stature as a national figure is growing in a peculiar process that combines ancestor worship (sraddha) and modern mass media. This paper explores the very complex performative event of Tyagaraja’s death day. It is significant that the day he died is celebrated and more important than his birthday, because he is believed to have ‘achieved samadhi’, i.e. he died and was not reborn. While his descendants celebrate him as an ancestor, the general public commemorate him as a bhakti-composer and singer, and he is revered as an example to Hindus, since he attained the Hindu version of ‘salvation’. On top of all this, some calls him the ‘first modern Indian’. This paper explores the way in which the celebration of Tyagaraja contribute to the building of a Indian nation, and what impact this has on the evolving middle class culture in India. What is modern about Tyagaraja? Lars Kjærholm, MA in Japanese and Social Anthropology, is a lecturer at the Department of Ethnography and Anthropology at Aarhus University in Denmark. Kjærholm research interests focus on social, cultural and religious changes, and he has conducted extensive fieldworks in South India since 1971

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and two years of research work in Ifugo, the Philippines. His most recent publication is The Avatars of Modernity (2003), co-edited with Heinz Werne Wessler and Niels Brimnes. 2.

Sikh Ritual Identity: Who Speaks for Sikh Women? Doris Jakobsh, University of Waterloo, Canada This paper focuses on a recent controversy at the Harimandir Sahib, commonly known as the Golden Temple the holiest shrine of the Sikhs, in Amritsar India. Two British women, both amritdhari (initiated) Khalsa Sikhs were refused the right to participate in the Sukhasan procession, a nightly ritual whereby the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, is formally uninstalled from its elevated public platform and carried to its nightly resting place. The incident prompted a media uproar, particularly in India; it also became a hotly debated issue on the WWW. Given that the women at the centre of the controversy were ‘Western’ Sikhs of Punjabi origin, the incident prompted a widespread petition process within the Diaspora. This paper will address the question of Sikh women’s religious and ritual rights, particularly within the context of the apparent divide between the concerns of Sikhs of the Diaspora and Sikhs in the Punjab. In essence, who speaks for Sikh women? Doris Jakobsh is Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and teaches a variety of courses on women in eastern religions and Sikhism. Her interests focus on women in Sikh history, Sikh women’s ritual identities, particularly as they are forged on the WWW. Her most recent publications include Relocating Gender in Sikh History- Transformation, Meaning and Identity, OUP, 2003.

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Sacred Concrete? Ajay Kumar, University of London & Royal College of Art, UK This proposed paper hypothesis the possibilities of re-conception, re-invention, re-formation’ of certain historical tantric notions of performative ritual in contemporary space-time. In this there is a particular speculation on a notion of ‘mind’ that is located in an interstitial realm between interacting body and ‘external’ space. The paper firstly investigates an aspiration to a synthetical practice of architecture and ontology at the rock cut edifices of Ellora. Secondly, it interrogates the significance of the corporeal, kinetic meditation in the experiencing of certain mandalas. The paper finally attempts trans-historical and trans-cultural analysis of a contemporary Buddhist temple realised by Tadao Ando, inspired in part by the Ellora edifices, which in its architecture embodies ritual journey through space as ontological process. The architects-philosophers, who constructed the more than thirty temples at Ellora, seem to have designed ambulations through physical space-time in order to precipitate metaphysical journeys. The integration of architecture, painting, and sculpture endeavours to embody the philosophic outlook of a civilisation that aspired to a dependent relation of body, space, time, science, nature, art, technology and philosophy. In this sense, could it be appropriate to describe their practice as poly-tekhnekal? The

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Honpukuji Water Temple, which Ando constructed in Awaji-shima, Japan, in 1991, appears to achieve a form-theme synthesis of tantric philosophy. Ando utilises contemporary technologies, such as concrete, in combination with materials historically familiar to Japanese in religious architecture - wood, water, pebbles and emptiness - to engender an ontological engagement paralleling, in particular, temple twenty-nine at Ellora. Ajay Kumar is an artist and academic at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research concerns philosophical and therapeutic insights engendered through art work; notions of sacred and sublime in mundane, every day phenomena; spectatorship; and perceived correspondence between conceptions of void and metaphysical space-time in South Asia with contemporary notions of virtual space.

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Mari Mata Sacred Complex at Bahraich: A Study in the Geography of Ritualscape Ravi S. Singh, Kisan PG College, India Adherence to the heritage of religious practices is still strong in the average Indian life system. Among the Hindu belief systems, goddesses – the feminine divine powers- assume a distinct place, as in the case with all other ancient cultures wherein strong tradition of goddess worship is reported. In India the system of exclusive goddess worship is found in the Sakta and Tantric traditions, but goddesses are also widely worshipped in more common practice. The popularity of goddess worship could be gauged by the existence of a vast body of puranic literature in the eulogy of goddess (es), and the large variety of goddesses existing across the country. This paper will discuss a case study of a sacred complex being constructed at the edge of the town Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh, India. People who lives in this town are primarily making visit to this temple complex, and the number and frequency of devotees visiting the temple has rapidly increased over the past years. Quite naturally, this trend makes a positive impact on the growth of this temple complex. In this paper I will trace the evolutionary history of this sacred complex and examine the factors responsible for the increasing number of visitations. I will also analyse the prospects for future developments of the temple. Ravi S. Singh, PhD, is a senior lecturer in Cultural Geography at the Department of Geography, Kisan PG College, Bahraich, India. His doctoral dissertation treats the sacred geography of goddesses in Indian religions, with special reference to the Varanasi region. His field of research includes cultural geography with emphasis on pilgrimage, ritual space, and tribal culture.

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The Karam Ritual as Ethnic Signifier among the Santals of India. Peter B. Andersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark The Karam ritual has now and again been identified as the tribal ritual among the Oraon in Central India. The ritual is also well known, even if not considered as

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having the same importance, among a number of other ethnic groups, tribes or scheduled tribes, as well as among low caste Hindus in the central and eastern parts of India. Among the Santals, the Karam ritual has been recorded since 1869, and especially in rural settings it has been considered as one among many annual rituals. The paper will study the Karam ritual as an important signifier of a Santal identity in the traditional rural Santal society, as well as among Santals and other tribes living in urban settings where they rewrite the myth for printed circulation and revise the ritual into means of collective representation. Besides printed sources in Santali, the paper utilizes my own recording of a Karam ritual in 1986 and its myth in 1982. Bio-data is missing.

PANEL 4 1.

RITUAL & TEXTS

Moderator: Tord Olsson, Lund University, Sweden. A Ritual for the Goddess in Kerala: Textual Study of Darikavadham Kalampattu Jussi Nyblom, University of Helsinki, Finland In Kerala we find rich oral traditions surrounding rituals dedicated to the Goddess Bhagavati. Most often these praises are sung and recited in the regional language, Malayalam. In this paper I will introduce some ways in which we may begin the textual study of such material. The myth of Goddess Bhagavari finds overall parallels in many Sanskrit demon myths, although some unique characteristics is also to be found. It is common that the narration starts when the demons are losing the battle against the gods and two demon ladies practise austerities to obtain a son from Brahma. Thus Darika is born and acquires invulnerability, again through austerities performed to please Brahma. Only women can slay him. When Darika has defeated Saptamatrkas, Mahesvara creates the goddess Bhagavati from his third eye, in order to kill the demon. Finally, riding on the monstrous Vetala, she kills Darika. Her thirst of blood is not quenched, however, but she proceeds to kill Siva, her father. Siva calms the goddess with his dance, and sends her to earth to be close to the worshipers. In this paper I will first give a few glimpses of how the content of this myth is arranged in relation to some pan-Indian complexes. The Sanskrit Devi-Mahatmya is of course the natural starting point, but clearly it cannot be postulated as the only source for the Darikavadham myth. Secondly, I will point out some linguistic peculiarities that are distinguishing the language of the ritual from the everyday Malayalam, on the one hand, and the classical Malayalam on the other. Jussi Nyblom, M.A., is a Ph.D student at University of Helsinki. Nyblom is preparing a doctoral thesis on the cult of the Goddess in Kerala, mainly on the basis of folksongs in medieval Malayalam. Other areas of related interests include Tamil, Dravidian linguistics, and Epic and Puranic Sanskrit.

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Rejuvenating Buddhist Manuscripts Will Tuladhar Douglas, University of Aberdeen, UK

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Among the Newar Buddhists of the Kathmandu Valley, manuscripts have a unique ritual status. Once properly constructed, they can be consecrated and are thereafter regarded as on a par with properly consecrated images and stupas. Unlike images and stupas, made from metal or stone, manuscripts degrade over time, especially if they are read through on a daily or monthly basis. There thus exists a set of rituals for renovating important manuscripts, and certain very old manuscripts carry a record of the periodic renovations on the inside of their wooden covers. There are no rituals for their disposal. I propose to edit and discuss the rituals for the proper creation, consecration and renovation of such manuscripts, and compare their ritual and ethnographic status with that of consecrated images. I will then consider the potentially embarrassing question of what to do with an obviously old manuscript where there is no motivation for renovation. Will Tuladhar-Douglas has done fieldwork and historical research among Buddhist communities in Kathmandu, Los Angeles, Maharastra and Karnataka. Trained at Chicago and Oxford, where he completed his Ph.D, he is presently a lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Aberdeen. His first book Remaking Buddhism for Medieval Nepal is due out next year, and he is now editing a history of Vajrayana Buddhism in Central, South and Southeast Asia for Brill. 3.

The Early Morning Rites According to the Hari-bhakti-vilasa Måns R. Broo, Åbo Akademi University, Finland As other similar texts, the Hari-bhakti-vilasa of Gopala Bhatta Gosvamin (16th century), a ritual compilation of the Gaudiya Vaihnava sampradaya, gives a detailed and normative description of the pratah-kryas, or early morning rites of an initiated and devout brahmana. While the description mainly follows earlier texts, it markedly differs from these texts in some aspects, such as the timing of the sandhya prayers. In my paper I intend to briefly delineate the given ritual schedule in Hari-bhakti-vilasa and compare it with older texts in order to highlight the changes. My thesis is that the changes reflect a move in the focus of religious rituals. Even though the Hari-bhakti-vilasa takes great pains in being orthodox, quoting well-known ancient sources, it does so only when convenient. The tantric methods of worship seem better suited for the contemporary and supremely important worship of Krishna and they are preferred over Vedic ones. The text thus offers us an interesting glimpse into the process of developing rituals to suit new religious ideas, while at the same time trying to maintain a traditional outlook. Måns R. Broo, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Department of Comparative Religion, Åbo Akademi. His doctoral dissertation (Åbo 2003) dealt with the guru institution of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, analyzing it in terms of the interplay of canon and charisma. At present, he is working (together with Dr. Kenneth Valpey, Oxford) on a translation of a Vaishnava ritual text.

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Continuity of Ritual Tradition: The Sixteen Shraddhas 9

Johanna Buss, University of Heidelberg, Germany In the first part of the paper I will present the performance of the Newar latyaritual, as it was filmed in August 2002 in Bhaktapur (Nepal). Nevari latya means literally “forty-five" and denotes the rituals performed at the forty-fifth day after death. These serve to help the deceased (preta) to overcome his one-year long journey through the underworld. The rituals culminate in the unification of the helpless deceased (preta) with his three paternal forefathers (pitaras). The brahmanic tradition, as it is represented in the highly influential Garudapurana that contains mythological passages as well as ritual prescriptions, or in ritual manuals like the Antyeshtipaddhati of Narayanabhatta, strongly emphasizes the total number of sixteen shraddhas, which have to be performed for the deceased. The rituals are otherwise considered worthless and the deceased will be barred from the heavenly world of his forefathers. During the actual performance of the Newar latya-ritual there are diverse references to the number sixteen. However, the actual number of the individual rites is not sixteen. The question of how the figure is to be understood will be dealt with in the second part of the paper. It will be hypothesised that symbolically the number sixteen stands for the completeness of the death rituals, and it does not denote (anymore) the actual number of shraddhas to be performed. The continuity of this tradition is thus achieved in two steps: firstly the ritual prescription is understood as being symbolic in nature, and secondly the prescription is realized not to the letter, but by referring to its symbolic value. Johanna Buss is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Classical Indology, University of Heidelberg. Her thesis will treat ritual and mythological notions of the dead in Garudapurana and Garudapuranasaroddhara. She is also a member of the Collaborative Research Centre “Ritual dynamics” at the University of Heidelberg, working in a sub-project on death and ancestor rituals in Bhaktapur, Nepal. 5.

Buddhists Facing Death: Mortuary Rites and Buddhist Doctrines Klemens Karlsson, Jönköping University, Sweden Death is central to Buddhist thought. According to Buddhist doctrines, everything in life is impermanent (anicca), dissatisfactory (dukkha) and nothing contains any permanent inner substance or self (anatta). However, rituals and beliefs surrounding death do not always reflect this doctrine. Instead, mortuary rituals reflect specific local cultural values. The aim of this paper is to study ritual practices surrounding death in Buddhist Southeast Asia. At the full moon day of August/September in Luang Prabang, Laos, an annual ritual (Haw Khao Padap Din) is performed for the well-being of dead relatives. The purpose of this paper is to describe this mortuary ritual in comparison to Buddhist doctrines, popular texts and visual art that are expressing different aspects of the doctrine of kamma. The idea that the results of a religious act undertaken by one individual may be transferred to deceased persons seems contrary to the Buddhist doctrine of kamma. “Do good, receive good; do evil, receive evil” is a common proverb among Buddhists in Southeast Asia, expressing the kamma theory that a person himself will reap the consequences of his behaviour.

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The divergence between Buddhist doctrines and Buddhism as it is practised may have consequences even for western societies. The care of people in the final stage of their lives will include people with different beliefs. Nurses in palliative care, for instance, must have some knowledge of the beliefs and practices surrounding death and dying in different religions and cultures. Today, teachings about death and dying in Buddhist cultures are rather elementary, often using popular western expressions of Buddhist doctrines. This study will illustrate the complexity of Buddhist attitudes to death and dying. Klemens Karlsson, Ph.D., is a librarian at Jönköping University in Sweden. In 2000 he completed his doctoral dissertation on early Buddhist visual art at Uppsala University. His main field of research is visual art and material religion in South and Southeast Asia. He is also teaching in Religious Studies at Jönköping University and the History of Art in India and Southeast Asia at Stockholm University.

PANEL 5

RITUAL & DAILY LIFE Moderator: Anne-Christine Hornborg, Lund University, Sweden

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Relationalism and Individualism in a Durga Temple in Banaras Göran Viktor Ståhle, Uppsala University, Sweden This paper will discuss a cultural psychological study of a Hindu temple ritual. By focusing on ritual practices in one temple it is possible to illustrate how sacredness is constructed in Hindu religiosity of the everyday life, which may also contribute to a cultural psychological understanding of these contexts. Earlier research studies in the field of cultural psychology have shown that people in Indian contexts have a “relational self”. People in the Indian and Euro-American contexts are thereby different in dichotomies of autonomy/dependence, individualism/collectivism, integrated/fragmented self, solid/fluid limits of the ego. During the last years may scholars have come to put this approach into question, remarking that this reasoning has observed Indian psychology as determined by socially conditioned groups such as caste and family, while it does not consider how individuals are agents. This study wants to develop this in relation to a Hindu temple ritual. The methodology of the study is a so-called “ethnography in practice” and one temple has been chosen as a “site of confrontation” for divergent activities that are relevant for the “self” of participants. The temple in focus is dedicated to the goddess Durga as Mahishasurmardini, and it is located in the southern part of the city Varanasi (India). By examining how sacredness is constructed by the ritual practices of devotees, and not as social and mental functions, it is possible to surmount the above-mentioned dichotomies. In particular, I want to take use of Catherine Bell’s thinking on rituals in order to create a theoretical framework for how individuality and relationality interplay in the temple practice. Göran Viktor Ståhle is a Ph.D. student in Psychology of Religion at Uppsala University. His upcoming doctoral thesis focuses on a Durga-temple in Varanasi, where he has conducted fieldwork. It develops a culturally sensitive approach for

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Psychology of Religion. Research interests include Cultural Psychology, Ritual theory, and Narrative Psychology, specifically in relation to South Asia. 2.

The Central Role of the Sacrifice in Vagri Religion and Social Organisation Torvald Olsson, Kristianstad University, Sweden This paper is based on a study of the villagers in Salem district of the Indian state Tamil Nadu. The Vagri belong to one of the many wandering or peripatetic casteclusters found all over the South Asian sub-continent. Remarkable about the Vagris in the Tamil society is their buffalo sacrifices, and their social organization, religion and sacrificial culture are mainly unknown to scholars. In his research study on untouchables in a South Indian village, Michael Moffatt claims that the most important aspect of caste hierarchies is what villagers do in relation to the hierarchy of deites, and not what they believe, since the karma theory of transmigration is absent among untouchables. Moffatt’s study supports the structuralist consensus theory of caste and caste relations proposed by Louis Dumont. As Moffatt suggests, the power structure of the deities is internalised by villagers and thus exists inside the “head” of them. According to this theory, the Vagris have fully internalised and accepted their low status. By employing the sacrifice among Vagris as an example, this paper will discuss the problems that the structuralist consensus theory presents. As I will suggest, one cannot draw any general conclusions from observing rituals or some common beliefs among villagers. A major problem with consensus theories is the lack of methodological tools to study the individual agency, divergent beliefs and different outlooks of life. Another problem is that a-historical reconstructions based on such theories fail to incorporate the historical changes in the perception of rituals, like the buffalo sacrifice for instance. In this paper I will point out some obvious problems in the scholarly approach of Moffatt and other anthropologists, as they are presupposing a causal connection between beliefs and action, or action disposition. I will suggest that this is an in-built bias stemming from the theories and values of the anthropologists themselves. Their extensive use of all types of consensus theory has consequently silenced the individual dimensions of the Indian society, leaving less space for the individual and divergent aspects of values, explanations, action, dispositions and outlooks in life. Torvald Olsson, Ph.D, is a research scholar currently working at Kristianstad University. Olsson has made a comparative study of the belief systems among local Hindu religious leaders, villagers and members of a South Indian nomadic tribe called Vagris. Since 1999 Olsson has been engaged in a study of the phenomena of infanticide in South Asia. In 2001 he studied a slum area in Chennai in order to expand the perspectives on similarities and differences between villages where infanticide was either widely prevalent or not prevalent at all.

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Mothering Rituals: Case Study on Low Caste Communities in Calcutta Riikka Uuksulainen, University of Helsinki, Finland This paper identifies an analyses the meaning that low caste women in India give to their religious rituals. The major objectives of the study are to explore and

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explain the different aspects of the gift exchange between a woman and a deity, and the ideals of motherhood that the women’s rituals represent. The essential material for my study is ethnographic data that I have collected among low caste communities in West Bengal, mostly in the metropolitan city of Calcutta. The majority of my informants were shaktas, namely worshippers of the Mahadevi, the Great Goddess and her various images. I will present a hypothesis that even though women perform many rituals, such as pujas, vratas, calendar and life cycle rites, to secure the success and longevity of their husbands and the birth of sons, rituals also play an major role in building and strengthening the female selfidentity and self-pride. Rituals increase the shakti (power) of women, satisfy emotional needs, and provide a channel to express deep devotion and love, as well as fear, frustration and rebellion. Through rituals, women both maintain tradition and rebel against it. According to my notion, in the Hindu tradition people usually perform rituals in hope of reciprocity. In the course of the ritual performance, the votary offers material gifts, usually food, flowers and money, as well as intellectual gifts, vows or resolves to satisfy the deity and to achieve particular objectives. As a response, and as an exchange of her gifts, the votive expects her wishes and prayers to be realized. By analysing the ritual process of gift exchanges, and the interpretations women are attributing these rituals, I will identity and explain the meanings of these rituals and how they are related to notions of the ideal motherhood of low caste women. Becoming a mother is an ultimate concern and a fulfilment of the newly married wife. The rates of infant and mother mortality, however, are high especially among the lowest strata of the Indian society. It seems that mothering rituals express the most intimate concern for giving birth to a healthy child and also express women’s fear of loosing a child and surviving themselves. Riikka Uuksulainen is a Ph.D student at the Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki. She completed her Master's degree in the year of 2000. 4.

Ritualization of Everyday Life in Zen Buddhism Per Drougge, Stockholm University, Sweden Zen Buddhist training (at least in its Japanese, monastic forms) is characterized by a high degree of formalization and ritualization. Even mundane activities, such as cleaning, eating, or going to the bathroom are often carried out in a prescribed, ritualized way. This makes it difficult to uphold a conventional boundary between the ‘functional and practical’ and the ‘ritual’. This ritualization is often seen as an embodiment of a certain (Zen) Buddhist ethos, and simultaneously a way of training. Learning to function effectively within the ritualized framework of the Zen monastery has been described as a central aspect of the monks’ training, just as important as the teacher’s instruction and the practice of zazen meditation and kōan study. This paper suggests that this aspect of Zen Buddhist teaching and training is also embedded in a wider social and cultural context. By examining some examples of emerging forms of (laicized) Zen Buddhism in Europe and USA, I will also provide some examples of how ritual practices can take on quite different meanings when transplanted to different contexts.

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Per Drougge (BSW, BA) is a PhD student at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. His research focuses on the social and cultural impact of electronic mass media in Bhutan and local ways of managing this potential threat to the cultural integrity of the ‘last Buddhist country in the Himalayas’. Other research interests include the ‘westernization’ of Buddhism, comparative monasticism, and the interfaces of Buddhist practice and (western) psychotherapy.

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