Veda on Parade: Revivalist Ritual as Civic Spectacle

In this paper I explore how Vedic textual heritage is appropriated and performed in contemporary Maharashtra. I will revisit the concept of the Vedas as the cornerstone of Brahmin identity and how this identity is constructed through a system of formal education and through different modes of socialization, ritual in particular. In doing so, I will highlight the relevance of the Vedas as embodied texts in the figure of the Brahmin male. I will present here examples of pre-modern discourses on the orality of the Vedas as an intrinsic value linked to the social and cosmic order and how these continue to circulate and solidify in current practices in the Vedic schools of India. With this, I hope to show discursive continuities between the past and the present that have contributed to shape current practices and ideologies in the Bråhma~ical transmission of knowledge. The material presented here is based on the study of traditional Vedic schools, or vedapå †haçålås, of the state of Maharashtra. 1

Approaching Ritual Economy: Socio-Cosmic Fields in Globalised Contexts, ed. by Roland Hardenberg, 2017

Mainly based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article deals with two interconnected Hindu festivals celebrated by the Vaishnava Shri Jagannath Temple in Puri in the East Indian state of Odisha. While one of the festivals is celebrated annually (Ratha Yatra or Chariot Festival), the other is celebrated in nineteen year intervals (Nabakalebara or Renewal of the Deities). Both festivals bear a central significance for Hindu devotees. Focusing on two groups of actors, the article examines the relationships emerging from and during these two rituals.

The ritual in ancient India is certainly a dynamic product of an élites searching to perform constantly a perfect action. This activity is the most important action, “the best action”, because is the only true and real action. This dimension depends from the power of this action, a productive and creative power. Ritual creates and maintains the reality and this creation is nothing else but the adhesion of the Reality: this is the main goal of the ritualists.

Asian folklore studies, 1987

Asian Ethnicity, 2018

Chavang Kut, a post-harvesting festival in Manipur, represents an important cultural expression of the Chin-Kuki-Mizo group of people. The article looks at the participation of the Thadou community in the celebration by tracing their performative historiography. In the past, the celebration was primarily important in the religio-cultural sense. The rhythmic movements of the dances in the festival were inspired by animals, agricultural techniques and showed their relationship with ecology. Today, the celebration witnesses the shifting of stages and is revamped to suit new contexts and interpretations. The traditional dances which forms the core of the festival is now performed in the out-of-village settings and are staged in a secular public sphere. While used by the state as a political project to bring unity amongst the different communities of Manipur, recent sociopolitical occasions showed how it is used as a site of contestations against the state.

Studia Religiologica

The focus of this article is on the spatial aspect of the daily temple rites of Gauḍīẏa Vaiṣṇavism. The study is a contribution to theoretical reflection on rituals and their role within religious systems. Studies on rituals as multi-media entities have tended to concentrate on “visible”aspects of ritual such as objects, actors or symbols, while ritual space has often been neglected. However, in this essay, I would like to show that ritual space may operate as an interactive “field of ritual,”which structures the conduct of practitioners and is subsequently structured by them. The text is modelled as an interpretative case-study grounded in field research performed in a Gauḍīẏa Vaiṣṇava temple in Kolkata. The goal of the article is to develop a theoretical approach appropriate for this particular set of data which, nevertheless, could serve as an inspiration for theorizing in analogical cases.

Caste and Equality in India, 2021

Chapter 8 depicts and analyses the festival of the local goddess, Rāmacaṇḍī. I suggest that we can identify potential cultural resources in the ritual that provide the foundations of people’s moral–ethical agency for overcoming the postcolonial predicament. The ritual goes through three phases: (a) the arrival of the goddess’s power from the forest into the fort-village through the tribal medium, which manifests the value of ontological equality; (b) the union of the divine power with the royal authority mediated by the brāhmaṇa priest, which affirms the value of hierarchy; and (c) the consumption of the product of the union in the form of sacrificial meat, which represents the value of the centrality of power. I argue that this ritual can be seen as an enactment of the sacrificial drama of regeneration, where the three values and social configurations of ‘equality’, ‘hierarchy’ and ‘centrality’ unfold and interact to reproduce the community. The three phases of the ritual represent ‘revolving values’ which are legitimate, plural and multifaceted cultural resources utilised by the people to valorise their existence as well as their social practices. This chapter also analyses how the ritual form and the structure of patronage changed historically (‘ritual in history’) and how the ritual invokes historical memory in the form of myths, legends and family narratives (‘history in ritual’). The ritual can be said to be a representation of local history not in terms of linear transformation but of an accumulation of the past: tribals worshipping the goddess, the gradual migration of peasant-warriors and other caste members into the area, the chief challenging and being defeated by the medium/goddess, royal patronage of the goddess in the form of royal sacrifice, the introduction of the new rich as new patrons of the ritual during the colonial era etc. The entanglement of history and ritual enable the people to reflect upon their past and present. This has the effect of not only legitimising the status and power of the upper castes but also unsettling their hegemony by calling into question the prevailing practices. In the postcolonial situation, there is, on the one hand, the hegemonic attempt by the old and new elites to ritually assert the colonially constructed structure of status and power and, on the other hand, also the subaltern attempts to emphasise the importance of devotion and service, thus placing weight on ontological equality in the face of divine power. It is noteworthy that, in the ritual, there is an increasing number of people making offerings individually and approaching the medium/goddess directly on the hill outside the village. Also, the medium/goddess now enters every house, instead of a chosen few as in the past, to bless family members, particularly married women who cannot come out in public. These changes suggest that more emphasis is now placed on the devotion and service of individuals and direct ties and contact with the goddess. Here, we observe dilemma and contestation between the superalternate values of hierarchy and centrality and the subalternate value of ontological equality. In this way, the ritual not only leads to the reproduction of the structure of status and power, but also illustrates the potential of subaltern resistance against the hegemonic structure.

Theatrical and Ritual Boundaries in South Asia. Part II, Cracow Indological Studies 20.1, 2018

Digitalizacja czasopisma naukowego "Cracow Indological Studies" w celu zapewnienia i utrzymania otwartego dostępu do niego przez sieć Internet -zadanie finansowane w ramach umowy 688/P-DUN/2018 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę.

Review of Development and Change, 2009

This article addresses South Indian festiva ls on the basis of fieldwork in Tharangambadi and Velankanni. In South India festivals and chariot fes tivals have been common since medieval times. Even if there is some agreement that ritual expressions in chariot festivals in In dia have developed with interaction between the different religions, they have recently been seen rath er as expressions of the strength of the religious communities than instances of collaboration, due to the present conflicts among different religious communities. This article argues for a more even approach as ii will identify instances of cultural encounters among the different religious communUies as they may be identified in the celebration of the various South In dian festivals. The article also considers how far the fes tivals are manifestations of separate religious co mmunities and th e ways in which they are manifestations of co llaborat ion among th em. Th e arti cle at th e outset considers observation.1• of recent chariot festivals in Tharangambadi, where Hindus Peter B. And erse n is Associate Professor, Section of Religious Stud ies , Departm ent of Cross-Cultural and Regiona l Swde s. Unive rsi ty of Co penhagen This paper is base d on fi eld work ca rr ie d out in Tharangamb ad i by the auth or in Janu ary 2006 and Augu st-September 200 7. The re gistration of the Mu slim ca r fest iv al of tlw Pirs was ca rried out by Oluf Sc hOnb ec k in Jul y 2006, and th e author owes him great tha nks fo r permission to draw freel y on hi s notes. Parts of th e prese nt atio n o f th e Mu slim Car ft:stiva l an: taken dire ctl y from hi s notes. Besid es Andersen and Schonbeck Ma lenc Lykkcbo and Daniel Hen sc hen were part of the research group, an d R. Meenaka imd Barathi acted as in terprete rs at different parts of the field collections. The fieldwork could , however. never have been carried out wi th o ut the generous co ll aboration of numerous people in Tharangambadi , to all of whom our grateful thanks. The field trips have been generous ly supported by the Bikubenfonden , Denmark and are a part of the larger Tranquebar Init iat iv e at the National Museum of Denm ark , Copenha gen .