20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Sviṣṭakt: formal structure and self-reference inVedic ritualJAN E.M. HOUBENEPHE, SHP – Paris“India has not simply had a tradition,but a tradition accompanied by reflection.”Wilhelm HALBFASS in Beyond Orientalism (1997: 473)1. In more than a century of studies of Vedic ritual and of ritual systems ofthe world, scholars have been predominantly occupied by the interpretationof rituals, by the analysis of myths and legends associated with them, andwith the exploration of the functions of their performance in society and inthe environment. A few scholars, however, have occasionally emphasizedthe underlying formal structure of rituals, a foundational dimension that iseasily overlooked, and the study of which can provide a better basis for theexploration of those other, more perceptible dimensions of rituals.Many theories of ritual have been proposed in the course of the lastcentury, but only very rarely this was done directly on the basis of aninvestigation of Vedic ritual, as in the theory proposed by Frits STAAL,according to whom ritual is basically "meaningless" but capable toassociate with all sorts of meanings. The emphasis on "meaninglessness"leaves us with the formal structure of ritual as the main subject of ritualstudies. In two recent studies (Houben forthc. a and b), however, it wasfound that the Nihnava-rite which STAAL presented as a crucial exampleof "meaninglessness of ritual," is in fact solidly meaningful if we (a) placeit in its immediate and wider context and (b) properly distinguish differentorganizational levels in the ritual of which it is an episode. To distinguishand not to confound these organizational levels is as important in ritual as itis to distinguish phonemes, morphemes, words and sentences in language;and genes, cells, organs and organisms in biology.