Christof Zotter, Asketen auf Zeit: Das brahmanische Initiationsritual der Bāhun und Chetrī im Kathmandu-Tal. Heidelberg: CrossAsia-eBooks, Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, 2018. 528 pages. DOI: 10.11588/xabooks.316.440 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in India and Nepal
Schlagwort: Initiationsrituale, Initiation rituals 18330 Z.m.L. Zotter, Astrid / Zotter, Christof (Hrsg.): Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in India and Nepal. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2010. 380 S. m. Abb. gr 8° = Ethno-Indology, Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals Vol. 10. Hartbd. 64,00 €. ISBN 978-3-447-06387-6. This edited volume (HBIIN) of fourteen essays highlights the revived interest in ritual studies. Enriched by both textual and ethnographic materials, these wide-ranging essays explore the role of initiation in constructing social identity at both the individual and collective levels, thus bringing to light multiple aspects of rituals. Of particular interest is the definition and overlap of borders that the rituals are directed towards creating. HBIIN not only points out the breach of boundaries among different religious and ethnic groups, it also draws attention to the overlap that exists between different life cycle rituals. In the case of the ihī and aśvattha 1 initiations, for instance, we can also see a human engagement with non-human agents in the ritual act. Striking examples can be found in the rituals of Buddhist initiation where the structure of one ritual (e.g. consecration of images) is overlaid onto another (e.g. initiation of human agents), or when rituals are taken over from one tradition (Śaivite) and reassigned to another (Buddhist). HBIIN vividly portrays how rituals are transferred and abandoned with the shift in religious tradition, and points out the infusion of new meaning when older forms are maintained in new
Asking what is relevant in a ritual process and to whom, this article follows in detail a short sequence of an agricultural bhume ritual performed by the Dumi Rai of Eastern Nepal. On the basis of this example, it is suggested that moments of excitement or bewilderment among our local key partners can provide points of entry for a deeper understanding of their culture. Discussing the conceptual difference between correct and perfect ritual action, the article arrives at a pragmatic approach to the " work of ritual. " Based on the locally perceived equivalence between ritual work and other, everyday work, it is suggested to employ by analogy a notion of a ritual " working contract " between today's living community and the ancestors who are addressed in the greatest part of rituals among the Rai.
Religion Compass
Among all the Sanskrit story narratives available in the vast archive of textual collections in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, certain Buddhist tales among them found special provenance in the Mahāyāna culture of the Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of this surviving oasis of later Indic Hindu-Buddhist civilization. This paper will examine how two stories, the Sṛṇgabheri Avadāna and the Siṃhalasārthabāhu Avadāna, have been domesticated into the local religious field and adopted with special meaning for subgroups in the local society. The former recounts the consecutive, linked lives of a husband and wife, in a story of karmic retribution and reunion, a narrative that has a role in contemporary Buddhist widow mourning rites at the major stūpa in Nepal, Svayambhu. The latter, among the most popular jātaka narratives in the Buddhist world, relates the fate of a group of Buddhist merchants who are shipwrecked and captured by cannibalistic demonesses; in Nepal, this story was transposed into a tale of trans-Himalayan conf lict, and its central figure is regarded as a hometown hero. Until today, a three-day festival procession of him circumnavigates the city of Kathmandu. This paper will explore these local domestications of Buddhist stories and analyze how these traditional celebrations have changed in the context of the shifting regional and political landscape of Nepal and the region. Among all the Sanskrit story narratives available in the vast archive of textual collections in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, certain Buddhist tales among them found special provenance in the Mahāyāna culture of the Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of this surviving oasis of later Indic Hindu-Buddhist civilization. Although they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, Newars preserve the many strands of culture characteristic of later Indic Buddhism. In a community whose living Buddhist traditions trace its origins back at least 1500 years, and where later traditions of Vajrayāna Buddhism have been woven into a rich fabric of Mahāyāna Buddhism, it is still the case today that jātaka and avadāna narratives remain central to Newar Buddhists. This paper examines the prominent stories that have been domesticated into the local religious field and adopted with special meaning for subgroups in the local society. I have defined 'domestication' as the dialectical process by which a religious tradition is adapted to a region's or ethnic group's socioeconomic and cultural life. 1 While 'Great traditions' supply a clear spiritual direction to followers who are close to the charismatic founders, including norms of orthodox adaptation and missionizing, religious traditions' historical survival is related-often paradoxically-to their being 'multivocalic' so that later devotees have a large spectrum of doctrine, situational instructions, and exemplary folktales to draw on. The study of 'religious domestication' seeks to demonstrate the underlying reasons for selectivity from the whole as the tradition evolves in specific places and times to the 'logic of the locality' (Figure 1).
The homogeneity and unity of the whole ritual activity of the Buddhist rNyingmapa populations of Sikkim and Nepal could be found in the pervasiveness of the geometrical crossed threads constructions that we can see as ornaments for dough effigies, animals skulls or isolated in space, inside rNyingmapa's domestic as well as tantric monastic rituals. They can be pure ornamental figures to bring luck and chase bad influences away, or complex constructions with different meanings to lure the demons. One of the paradoxes of these crossed threads constructions is that they can be both container and contents: they can shelter or incorporate momentarily the demonic beings, which are summoned in order to be deceived and destroyed. The aim of this paper is to re-approach rituals with crossed threads called mdos in literary or nam mkha', zor, glud, yas (and eventually, many other local appellations) in Tibetan and non-Tibetan ritual and folk practices. We base our analysis on new and ancient research in Nepal and in Sikkim and we add a comparative perspective, opposing some Sikkimese and less known Nepalese Tamang examples of such rituals with mdos and nam mkha': a divinatory ritual in Sikkim and a ritual for ancestors in Nepal.
Vedic, Medieval, and Contemporary Concepts in the Nepalese Agnihotra Ritual
.. in one of the many two-storeyed and house-like temples, ... known as dyaḥcheṃ (vulgo: dyocheṃ) or dyaḥga (dyoga), from Sanskrit devagṛha, "god's house". This temple is known as Agiṃmaṭh, Agnisālā or Agnisthal, or in Sanskrit as agnimaṭha, agniśālā, agniṣṭhala. The rituals performed there range from the Vedic (Darśapūṛṇamāsa) to the unique Tantric "Agnihotra," attested with texts since 1040/1433 CE. Meaningful ritual. Structure, development and interpretation of the Tantric Agnihotra ritual of Nepal. Ritual, State and History in South Asia. Essays in honour of J.C. Heesterman, ed. A.W. van den Hoek, D.H.A. Kolff, M.S.Oort, Leiden 1992, 774-827
Journal of Religious History, 2020
Hindu Ritual at the Margins is a thoughtful and fascinating collection of essays situated in the growing field of ritual studies as a subset of the study of religion. This work offers a variety of approaches to forms of Hindu ritual performed in marginal contexts, highlighting a complexity to Hinduism that has not traditionally been explored in depth by Western scholars. The book is divided into three sections/ themes: "Transformations: History and Identity" (Chapters 1-3); "Innovations: Globalization and the Hindu Diaspora" (Chapters 4-6); and "Reconsiderations: Context and Theory" (Chapters 7-9). Leslie C. Orr's chapter, "The Medieval Murukaṉ: The Place of a God among His Tamil Worshippers," explores the medieval practices of worship of the god Murukaṉ. Literary sources on the subject of Murukaṉ and his worship between the seventh and fourteenth centuries are largely non-existent, due likely to Sanskritisation and the subsuming of Murukaṉ and other deities into the Saiva pantheon. In their absence, Orr turns to an examination of temple art and inscription to uncover "the variations, shifting patterns, and significance of the worship of Murukaṉ within the ritual context of the medieval temple" (p. 22). By situating the history of ritual and worship during this period within the context of premedieval literature and the later resurgence in popularity of Murukan, Orr successfully highlights the complex relationship of Murukan with other deities within the Hindu pantheon, and with his worshippers. In Chapter 2, "A Tale of Two Weddings: Gendered Performances of Tulsi's Marriage to Krsna," Tracy Pintchman focuses on two different types of ritual performance of the marriage between the basil plant goddess Tulsī to Kṛs : ṇa, as observed during fieldwork conducted between 1995 and 1998. Pintchman examines the visual elements of performance and ritual as reflections upon greater notions of identity, comparing the performance of Tulsi's marriage by female householdersfor whom the performance may have a "deep social resonance" (p. 55) to a performance by male renunciants. "The Role of Ritual in Two 'Blockbuster' Hindi Films" by Philip Lutgendorf examines the performance of ritual within well-known Hindi films, with regard to its function "in both a narrative and prescriptive manner" (p. 59). The chapter's focuses are on the performance of fasting in Jai Santoshi Maa (Hail to the Mother of Satisfaction), and the performance of wedding rituals in Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! (Who Am I to You?). In doing so, Lutgendorf takes an innovative approach to the study of films that have been the subject of numerous analyses and interpretations.