20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

The Sviṣṭakṛt: formal structure and self-reference in Vedic ritual 603basis of a performance in Kerala (KNIPE 1986, SCHECHNER 1986,1987b). A symposium is organized on the occasion of the publicationof STAAL’s Rules Without Meaning (1989). The proceedings of thesymposium, with contributions of Allan G. GRAPARD, Burton MACKand Ivan STRENSKI and a reply by STAAL, appear in vol. 21 of Religion(1991).Several critics have tried to formulate, each in their own diverging wayand according to their own disciplinary background, why ritual is in factmeaningful. BODEWITZ argues that STAAL’s “ingenious argumentation”as presented in his 1979 article “does not prove the meaninglessness ofthis ritual” (1990: 9). WITZEL (1992) demonstrates in detail the variousdimensions of meaning (Vedic, indological, anthropological) of a TantricAgnihotra ritual in Nepal of which he gives a structural analysis in termsnot of STAAL’s rules and trees but in terms of “frames” or “boxes.” Inhis 1979 article, STAAL quoted Isadora Duncan “If I could tell you whatit meant, there would be no point in dancing it” (1979 note 11). Far frombeing an indication of the meaninglessness of her dance, this rather pointsto its meaningfulness, as I pointed out in 1991 (1991: 9 note 13).2.4 As a matter of fact, an elaborate theory which, like the theory ofSTAAL, takes the formal nature of ritual as starting point but links thiswith a theory of extended meaningfulness was presented two decades afterSTAAL’s first presentation of his theory in 1979, by RAPPAPORT in 1999.RAPPAPORT based himself not on Vedic ritual but on entirely differentmaterial: ethnographic fieldwork done among the Tsembaga (subclan ofthe) Maring in New Guinea. However, RAPPAPORT's theory can be verywell applied to Vedic ritual where it would be able to highlight neglecteddimensions. 8In RAPPAPORT’s theory of formal-ritual-plus-rich-meaning,rituals transmit several kinds of messages, of which two major types aredistinguished: (a) canonical messages (which derive from the invariantaspect of what is encoded by others than the performers); and (b) whatRAPPAPORT calls self-referential messages (messages transmitted bothto the performers themselves and to others and that provide informationon the participants' own current physical, psychic, economic, and/orsocial status). It is the former, the canonical messages, which representuniversal orders transcending concrete time and space. It is this dimension8As I have argued elsewhere (HOUBEN 2003), the Vedic ritual system adheredto by Brahmin intellectuals must be relevant to one of the more striking features of theirwork, often commented upon by modern scholars, the remarkable (relative) absence ofconcrete historical referentiality.