20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Sviṣṭakṛt: formal structure and self-reference in Vedic ritual 599MAUSS was not unfavorable. 4 When Willem CALAND notes, in theintroduction to his Altindisches Zauberritual (1900), that he finds it“regrettable that in the principal works on cultural and religious studies ofethnologists such as TYLOR, LUBBOCK, Andrew LANG, the inestimablewealth of precious data which the ancient indian ritual literature containsremains practically unused” (1900: III), he mentions as an exception the atthat time most recent work of HUBERT and MAUSS. Modern studies ofVedic ritual are greatly indebted to the contributions of Willem CALANDwhich focused not on ritual theory but on the rich field of Vedic ritual.However, in his editions and translations he made accessible a large arrayof major texts of the “ritual science” of ancient India. 5In the work of Arnold van GENNEP (1909), we find another form of thesimple basic scheme of (a) entry, (b) main ritual event and (c) exit, whichHUBERT and MAUSS explain with reference to Vedic and Hebrew ritual,where the main ritual event is the sacrifice of a victim. A. van GENNEPapplied his tripartite scheme of entry, central act and exit to a whole range ofmeticulously described rituals which he groups together as rites of passage,a term that has since become widely accepted in anthropology.In the same period Emile DURKHEIM promoted his “view of theprimacy of belief over ritual” which was, in the perspective of STAAL andhis interest in formal structure, “a step back from the position that had alreadybeen reached by Robertson SMITH and others”; it was DURKHEIM’s viewthat “remained the preponderant view that underlies Western studies ofritual” (STAAL 1989: 126). Several decades after DURKHEIM, in the early1960s, E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD, contributed to a rediscovery withincultural anthropology of HUBERT and MAUSS. EVANS-PRITCHARD,well-known for his ethnographic work in Africa and subsequent theoreticalwork, was interested in seeing how rituals have a functional place withinthe social structure of “primitive” civilisations, and can be considered a4For CALAND, however, the explicit motivation for diving into those texts whichother indologists of his time preferred to evade on account of their dry and unattractivenature was not so much the study of the “ritual science” of the ancient Indians, but ratherthe intention to show that “the ancient Indians” are not (merely) a highly developed peopleof culture (“ein hochgebildetes Culturvolk”; CALAND 1900: XI) and to prove, “againstthe Hindu” (“dem Hindu gegenüber”) who wants to represent his literature and culturedifferently, that important parts of the Veda such as the “Wunschopfer” (kāmya-iṣṭayaḥ)are to be placed in the category of sorcery (“Zauberei”; CALAND 1908: III).5According to STRENSKI, HUBERT and MAUSS’s work “has proven to be themost frequently cited theoretical work on sacrifice ever written” (1997: 511). Even then itinitially remained in the shadow of the work of Emile DURKHEIM, author of among otherpublications “De la définition des phénomènes religieux” which preceded HUBERT’s andMAUSS’s essay in the same second issue of the Année sociologique.