Numen 2008 - 55,4

Nvmen : international review for the history of religions / ed. on behalf of the International Association for the History of Religions. - Leiden [u.a.] : Brill, 1954-
Erscheinungsverlauf:
1.1954 -
ISSN 0029-5973 (Print-Ausgabe)
ISSN 1568-5276 (Online-Ausgabe)
URL: IngentaConnect
URL: Numen - Brill

Band 55, Nummer 4 vom Jahrgang 2008 ist jetzt erschienen. Folgende Artikel mit Bezug auf Südasien sind darin enthalten:

1. Quintman, Andrew: Toward a Geographic Biography: Mi la ras pa in the Tibetan Landscape. In: Numen. - 55 (2008), Nr. 4, S. 363-410
URL: IngentaConnect

Abstract: Few Tibetan figures have left an impression on the Himalayan landscape, both literary and geographic, as indelibly as Mi la ras pa (ca. 1028-1111), whose career as meditator and poet was punctuated by travel across the borderlands of southern Tibet. This essay will begin to address the defining role of place in Tibetan biographical literature by examining the intersections of text and terrain in the recording of an individual's life. In particular, this study examines sites of transformation in Mi la ras pa's biographical narratives, arguing for what might be called a geographic biography by examining the dialogical relationship between a life story recorded on paper and a life imprinted on the ground. It first considers the broad paradigms for landscaping the environment witnessed in Tibetan literature. It then examines ways in which the yogin's early biographical tradition treated the category of sacred place, creating increasingly detailed maps of the yogin's life, and how those maps were understood and reinterpreted. The paper concludes by addressing two specific modes of transformation in the life story — contested place and re-imagined place — exploring new geographies of consecration, dominion, and praxis.

2. Neubert, Frank: Ritualdiskurs, Ritualkritik und Meditationspraxis: Das Beispiel von Vipassanā nach S. N. Goenka im "Westen". - In: Numen. - 55 (2008), Nr. 4, S. 411-439
URL: IngentaConnect

Abstract: By analysing primary sources, I show in this paper how the Vipassanā meditation movement publicly objects to being categorized as a religious movement that teaches a certain form of ritual. I argue that the application of the meta-language terms "ritual" or "religion" to the practices taught by this movement, even though it is doubtlessly possible, does not help us solve the problems in explaining this fact; nor does it help in analysing the movement and its history. I argue that it is more appropriate to understand the polemic differentiation by Vipassanā as a strategy in a "modern" public discourse on religion and ritual. It seems that the reason for applying this strategy lies in the wish to avoid being identified with negative connotations of the terms "ritual" and "religion," such as inefficacy, irrationality and exaggerated rigidity. Instead, the protagonists stress rationality, efficacy and adaptation to the necessities of modern Western society. On the other hand, the movement also draws a line between itself and a so-called modern "esotericism" in which "rituals" are regarded as highly positive in their effects on humans.