20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

598 Jan E.M. HoubenOf decisive importance for the work of HUBERT and MAUSS was theindologist Sylvain LÉVI who was a direct teacher and mentor of MAUSS 1 .Sylvain LÉVI, however, based himself not so much on any direct studyof ritual but on the ancient explanatory and speculative treatises dealingwith Vedic ritual, the Brāhmaṇas. Sylvain LÉVI was struck by the“mechanism” and “causality” attributed to sacrificial rituals in the ancientVedic Brāhmaṇa-texts. LÉVI explained the view of the sacrifice as hefound it in the Brāhmaṇas with reference to ideas and perceptions currentin contemporary natural science:Sacrifice is a learned and complicated combination of ritual acts andsacred speech, or rather it is the impalpable and irresistible power whichis released when they are brought together, like electricity is born fromelements put into contact. 2The importance of Sylvain LÉVI for HUBERT and MAUSS and eventuallyfor STAAL’s theory of ritual was highlighted by Ivan STRENSKI in anarticle in which he also points out (1997: 532) that Sylvain LÉVI defendsthe for his time original position that ritual is not so much a means tounderstand religion, but that “the nature of the religion revealed in theBrāhmaṇas is constituted by sacrificial ritual”: “So potent is the sacrifice,”says STRENSKI paraphrasing Sylvain LÉVI’s explanation, “that even ifgods are relevant, those very gods are ‘born’ from sacrifice, are ‘products’of it.” In a similar vein, Louis Renou observed about Sylvain LÉVI thatfor him “ritual dominates mythology” (STRENSKI, 1997: 537 note 55,with reference to RENOU 1937: xxiii); but to this we should add that thisconcerns Sylvain LÉVI when he explains his understanding of the VedicBrāhmaṇa texts. 32.2 The contemporaneous reception of the work of HUBERT and1Another scholar important for HUBERT’s and MAUSS’s emphasis on formalstructure was W. Robertson SMITH, to whose Lectures on the Religion of the Semites(1889) they approvingly refer.2My transl. of LEVI 1898: 77: “Le sacrifice est une combinaison savante etcompliquée d’actes rituels et de paroles sacrées, ou plutôt il est la puissance impalpableet irrésistible qui se dégage de leur rapprochement, comme le fluide électrique naît deséléments mis en contact.”3When RENOU describes Sylvain LEVI’s work on the Brāhmaṇas he saysabout the exposition of the Brāhmaṇas: “l’exposé fixe les traits de cette mythologie àsoubassement rituel, créée en fonction du rituel... et qui a relégué à l’arrière-plan, et nonsans l’avoir vidée de sa substance, la mythologie d’essence naturaliste qui était celle deshymnes” (RENOU 1936: 19).