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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

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 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 RITUAL & HISTORY

Moderator: Olle Qvarnström, Lunds University, Sweden

1. 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 first-
hand 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.

3. 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 RITUAL & MODERNITY

Moderator: Knut Jacobsen, Bergen University, Norway

1. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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 RITUAL & TEXTS

Moderator: Tord Olsson, Lund University, Sweden.

1. 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.

2. 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.

4. Continuity of Ritual Tradition: The Sixteen Shraddhas

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 Johanna Buss, University of Heidelberg, Germany

In the first part of the paper I will present the performance of the Newar latya-
ritual, 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

1. 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 caste-
clusters 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.

3. 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 self-
identity 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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