Text is not the only answer... let's party

Oh right the blog entry... my mind has been consumed by SHHRCing and I would rather be reading over my proposal for the millionth time and stressing about having everything together... must... concentrate... on... something... else... ok here goes.

“Ritual action always ends up looking like a “text”... the astute scholar can then use ritual as a window to the deeply embedded social systems, collective representations, and even the inner psychic like of foreign cultures.....
.....There is simply no a priori reason to believe that rituals stand in need of interpretation, and thus rituals should not be reduced to something - to anything - other than itself. To approach ritual as a text is tantamount to reducing music to its score, or territory to its map.” (Sharf 249-250)

Why would one wish to focus on the textual aspects of ritual and not the ritual itself. Maybe the ritual no longer exists and can only be found in the texts. Or maybe it is so esoteric that outsiders (if it is indeed outsiders who are investigating this ritual... which in the majority of circumstances it is...) are not allowed to witness the real thing.

I love reading, books are neat! But we cannot learn everything in books. Disciplines such as religious studies, cultural studies and anthropology have had quite a number of “armchair” scholars over history. In the field of Indology the ubiquitous name of Max Muller often finds itself as the butt of many jokes. The famous Indologist and lover of all things “Indian” had never been to India!!

During my undergrad I also felt like an impostor. I was studying a culture I had never experienced outside the weddings, funerals, and many festivals I had attended with my friends in the Indian diaspora community. I felt like I had no authority on any matters, even though I had studies them for many years. (let me just say now I still feel like I have no authority to talk about any such matters... but at least I no longer DREAD the question “oh so you have been to India?”). Yearning for India, a question always nagged in the back of my head “what if I hate it?” (My dad *knew* I would, but haha I proved him wrong!!). There is a second Indologist from the nineteenth century (I forgot his name, but he is less famous than Max Muller so I am making that my excuse!! ) who did make it to India, but quickly turned around and went back home. He hated it in reality, but still studied in from the comfort of his home in England.

I took a really cool class at UBC in Asian Theatre. We learned all about lots of different “performance” traditions. I was really interested in Kathakali. It’s not a “ritual” per se. But the line between what is or is not “religious” in India is always blurred and it is based on the Epics, which are and are not religious... so yeah in a way this “performance” or “play” is a “religious ritual”. Reading about Kathakali and actually going to a performance (although it was not fully traditional as those go on all night, and well, I like my sleep!!) are two very different things. There is a “script” they follow and the story line is from the “scriptures” (oh look at all the problems I am eclipsing with my use of quotation marks!! Relating back to the semantic theme of two weeks ago: “We are entering an era in which what we want to learn cannot be learned if our terminology overdetermines the theatre of engagement. It is an era in which our terms are best used as a minimalist set of props...” (Bell 220-221)... Sharf started off his essay by stating that defining ritual would be a “difficult and contentious task” (Sharf 245) so he just never did it... my kind of guy!... but I digress) But when it comes down to it, it is less to do with the well known story of Rama etc. more about the atmosphere, the insane costumes and the crazy eye movements.

There are manual texts in Sanskrit describing every aspect of performance. The section on appreciating performances talks about the levels of appreciation, from an ignorant viewer who just enjoys it for its entertainment value to the expert scholar who can appreciate every nuance in the performance. “Just as exposure to and training in music is necessary to appreciate musical performance, the appreciation of ritual entails the acquisition....[of] a skill acquired through early habituation and/or prolonged practice...” (Sharf 250). So in a way, you could say that because I had previously studies the tradition I appreciated it in a different way than the others watching (mostly tourists... but I myself was a tourist...so I can’t say anything).

Wow I totally just went off topic and randomly talked about random things. I intended to talk about rituals and text and instead talked about me... how narcissistic! Oops!

So what I am saying is that we cannot learn everything from books, some things must be experience first hand. This can be difficult and sometimes downright impossible (I could digress and narcissistically talk about my search for a theyyam ritual in the rainy season... but I wont indulge), but the actual aspect of living religion should never be forgotten, even if we are students who focus on text (like myself).

OK back to SSHRCing... or maybe sleep... sleep is good... mmmmmmmmm

Sacred Groves of India: An Ancient form of Environmental Conservation

During the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, India is described as being a land of impenetrable forest (Evans 1992: 13). For individuals imagining India today, dense forests are unlikely a prominent image of association. Only 11 percent of the country remains covered by woodland (Evans 1992:13) and with rapid modernisation this number is likely to continue to drop. The problem of deforestation in India has not gained as much attention as the parallel problem in the South American Amazon. In both cases the push for modernisation has led to major ecological destruction and the loss of indigenous practices connecting the people to the earth.

In India, the two regions of the Himalayan mountains range and the Western Ghats have been included in the list of the thirty-four biodiversity ‘hotspots’ around the world. These designated areas are described as “the richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on Earth” (www.biodiversityhotspots.org). Biodiversity is valuable for many reasons, from preserving the ecological dynamics of the world to the supplying genetic resources for pharmaceutical research(Jayarajan 2004: 10). Intact forests also act against climate change as they are natural and effective carbon sequestering sinks. Specifically, the deforestation of India greatly affects the annual monsoon. The trees increase the levels of water vapour in the air through transpiration, the evaporation of water through leaves, drawing the clouds across the Arabian Sea and encouraging the rains to fall. The monsoon brings life as well as death to India, yet much of the deaths caused by flooding would not occur if there was an effective amount of tree cover. Forests hold groundwater, act as a natural reservoir, and prevent flooding (Jayarajan 2004: 34-35).

I intend to explore the importance the environment and conservation held in the past throughout the history of Indian belief and apply this knowledge to how the past importance can be emphasised for the future. In particular I am interested in examining the importance the practice of maintaining sacred groves has had throughout history and how a stronger link between religion and environmental awareness can be created.

The people of India have had a pronounced affinity with nature since ancient times. Trees were possibly the first objects worshipped, dating back to the early days of civilisation in the Indus Valley (Gupta 1971: 14). In India, almost every village traditionally has had their own sacred grove, a locally protected forested area. As a result, the original biodiversity of these lands has been preserved representing the “relic climax vegetation of the region” (Tiwali et al. 2001: 20). In this way, the practice of maintaining sacred groves constitutes a method of conservation. This traditional conservational technique has been highly efficient, as these forests have survived in pristine condition since prehistoric times. (Waghchaure et al. 2006: 55)

Ironically, the origins of sacred groves are likely secular and practical, as the local inhabitants realized the value of protecting the natural resources which they relied so heavily on. Sacred groves commonly house important water resevoirs, and ponds and wells are often associated with them, providing a perennial source of water for the local village (Chandran and Hughes 1997: 419). Yet religion has played an important role in their conservation to this day as taboos have been created which restrict the destruction and exploitation of these areas deemed sacred.

These beliefs and traditions are eroding and increasingly forgotten with the advancement of modernity which labels such thinking as “backwards” superstitions (Jayarajan 2004: 20), or “low” forms of religion (Tiwali et al. 2001: 30). Religious taboo alone cannot reasonably be considered the front line defence in protecting the forests of India. Instead, increasing the awareness of their ecological importance and heightening the value placed on tradition needs to be combined in order for the existence of the sacred groves to be protected. I intend to investigate how these current tensions between modernity and tradition impact both the cultural identity of a suppressed people as well as the loss of valuable biodiversity. In doing so, I will seek to explore how these two factors integrate on these sites of cultural and environmental intersection.

With the popular imagination focused on issues such as climate change and environmental sustainability in the media, politics, and academia, I believe the ecological ramifications of my proposed research will be relevant and beneficial in dealing with such issues. The effects of climate change are felt throughout the Indian subcontinent, especially in the valuable and delicate ecosystems of the Himalayas and Western Ghats. Conservational efforts across the world will not be successful unless the local populations are included in any proposed solution. Therefore it is absolutely critical to collaborate with local communities and increase their awareness of the environmental impact of their practices.

Religion continues to be the medium through which many people in India understand and interact with their surroundings. I believe greater incentive to mobilise and participate in modern conservational projects will manifest if encouragement to become actively involved can be found within their own traditions and the Indian people understand and interact with the issues of deforestation and climate change in the context of their own worldview.
I believe my background prepares me to undertake my unique perspective which combines the disciplines of Religious Studies and Environmental Science. Focusing on the traditional interactions of Hinduism and folk beliefs with the environment would be beneficial in collaboration with environmental projects. It is important for modern conservational programs to acknowledge these traditional systems of conservation as viable strategies, and incorporate them into modern methods.

My research will explore ancient Indian literature to uncover the importance the sacred grove held in the Indian imagination throughout history. I also wish to study the traditions and rituals associated with the sacred groves. A greater awareness of the value and respect the ancient practices received has the potential to revive a new found pride in such traditional conservational and can create an environmentally positive mentality. This can be worked into new environmental programs. My future studies will culminate in a collaboration with conservational projects and working with local communities raising awareness of the importance of the environment and the values their ancestors placed on conservation.

I am currently enrolled in my first year of the Master’s program at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Students are required to complete four full-year graduate courses, a major research paper, and show evidence of reading knowledge of one language of modern scholarship or a necessary source language. I am currently focusing on improving my reading Sanskrit in preparation of fulfilling this requirement. This is a vital language to posses in my field of research as the majority of primary sources are written in this ancient language.

I feel that an interdisciplinary approach is important when studying and understanding cultures different from one’s own. Along with my home department in Religious Studies, I am also working in collaboration with two other centres: The Centre for South Asian Studies and the Centre for Environmental Studies. In the Centre for South Asian Studies there is a half-year interdisciplinary taught course, and attendance at visiting lectures relating to South Asia is mandatory. The requirements for Environmental Studies are another interdisciplinary taught course, along with an elective course chosen from a list. As I am collaborating with two centres my major research paper must include both a South Asian and environmental component.



Sacred Grove I found in Kerala, India!!!

Origins to Classification

Two universal questions have plagued human beings from first consciousness: “where do I come from?” obsesses children, maturing into “who I am?” when we are adults. Buddha said the ego was the cause of all suffering. Our desire to prove we are different will never be fulfilled, as we have no soul, we are anatman, and we are therefore no different from anyone else. Insecurities arise from our inability to prove we are different, something we continue to strive for. Religions can be said to have been created to explain to people the answers to these questions. Most religions have creation myths dealing with the original humans, original language, and original homeland.

The search for origins among the Europeans started with the desire to prove the stories in the Bible, such as the story of the Tower of Babel:

And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language: and this is only the beginning of what they will do: nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and the left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the Earth.” (Gen 11:6-9)

The idea of a linguistically and racially unified people fueled fields of study that aimed at searching for connections between the dispersed people of today. in particular philology was a new field of science that emerged (see Masuzawa pg xii).

This was a time of great anti-semitism and attempts were made to move away from genealogy of the Old Testament patriarch Noah which made everyone a half-sibling of the Jewish “others”. Philology helped with this. with Sir William Jones’ “discovery” of the relations to other Indo-European languages, and the distancing from the agglutinating Semitic languages people could “reconstruct their ancestral roots” (Masuzawa pg xii) they could now be closer to the great traditions of Greece and the exotic India. (see Masuzawa pg 19)

With the Enlightenment, and the rise of science over the sacred, people started to lose the answers to their questions, as the Bible lost its hegemony on ‘truth’ in Europe. Therefore people searched for new beginnings, which they found in India. Adam died as the universal father, and India was born as their new mother.

In the nineteenth century many people early on were beginning to move away from Eden, starting to believe that India was the “womb of the world”. I seem to recall that even Voltaire jumped on the India bandwagon and claimed everything came from India.


OK so what do my totally random ramblings about the need to prove legitimacy and philology have to do with these readings and this class? Well first off they stem from what I was thinking when reading through Masuzawa’s book. But they also respond to part of the discussion question of why Europeans were so eager to classify religions.


I think the nineteenth century European obsession with categorizing largely stems from these insecurities, possibly even an inferiority complex. It is a need for control. Control over the chaos in the new lands they ruled over, such as India.

the question of why Europeans have such a longing to prove their legitimacy must be asked. It is not a recent phenomenon, as the Romans looked for authenticity in their mythical journey from the battlefields of Troy. Maybe Europeans, and people of European decent, felt the need to justify their dominance on the world. They created myths of origin as a means of compensating for the subconscious realization that they may not be as powerful and ancient a race as they would have desired.

With Sir William Jones’ personal conclusion that Sanskrit was possibly the most perfected language. Many British were not comfortable with this. Some even went as far as denying the existence of Sanskrit, saying Jones was deceived by Brahmin forgers. Others claimed that the reason there was a similarity between the Sanskrit of India and the Classic languages of Latin and Greek was because Sanskrit was actually a form of Greek borrowed by the Brahmins when Alexander the Great traveled to the subcontinent!!

Early on, Categorizing also placed Christianity against the “others”. It was the “West-and-the-rest” (Masuzawa pg 3) This “othering” is another form of control.
Categorizing also was a more “scientific” method, and therefore utilizing this technique was a method of securing the status of the subject in academia where scientific thought was at the top of the totem pole (see Masuzawa pg 14). Being based on a more concrete social science of Philology further added to the attempt at raising the status. Sciences still today enjoy higher prestige and funding “This is particularly true in the humanities and many social science departments, where the percentage of outside funding in relation to the total operational cost of the unit is much smaller than most natural science departments and professional schools” (Masuzawa pg 9). With the methods to their studies “the study of the Orient emerged as a fashionable and respectable science” (Masuzawa pg 17).

So I think that classifying was a means of control, putting labels on people made them easier to rule. That is why the census was so important in colonial disneyland. Think about it.

Jackie