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- Convenors:
-
Benedetta Lomi
(University of Bristol)
Caroline Hirasawa (Waseda University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Ina Hein
(University of Vienna)
- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 02
- Start time:
- 31 August, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
How do objects become "sacred"? Our panel tackles this question by focusing on humble materials that take on powerful meanings. Presentations will discuss how the status and power of materials and objects are defined by their participation in networks of practice, exchange, and disposal.
Long Abstract:
How do objects become "sacred"? Our panel tackles this question by focusing on humble materials that incidentally or deliberately get "stuck" with powerful meanings. If sacred objects are often said to derive their power from ritual manipulation, we wish to complicate this interpretation by exploring their participation in networks of practice, exchange, and disposal. We thereby strive to develop a more dynamic model for mapping agency among human and non-human actors in Japanese religious contexts.
To accomplish this, we propose a roundtable format, in which Benedetta Lomi and Caroline Hirasawa open the panel by fleshing out key theoretical questions surrounding the lives of non-human agents in sacred contexts. Then each presenter will have 5-10 minutes to discuss his or her research, framed as a response to these theoretical issues. David Quinter investigates the social and soteriological uses of rosters in Mantra of Light rituals performed by Eison and his Saidaiji order. Lucia Dolce analyzes the material and format of Nichiren's paper mandalas, and their talismanic functions. Christine Guth considers the relationship between the material attributes of the needle and its sacralization from the perspective of three ritual contexts involving needles. Fabio Gygi probes the boundaries between sacred practices and trash in contemporary Japan by examining the disposal of dolls at shrines and temples. Steven Trenson focuses on esoteric Buddhist discourses on rice grains that rely on an intricate web of conceptual connections between cereals, relics, and the human body.
We hope this format will foster a lively discussion with the audience around the following questions:
• How much of the life of a sacred object is actually sacred?
• What happens when we understand an object's sacrality as determined by use, neglect, accident, natural or historical forces, and other factors, rather than solely by its ritual manipulation?
• How then can we chart the social lives of objects in a way that can be used comparatively? In other words, can we theorize across the complex biographies of particular objects, without flattening our analysis, to develop a multi-dimensional model for analyzing sacred things?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Steven Trenson (Waseda University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will highlight some aspects of the sacredness of rice grains in medieval Japanese esoteric Buddhism by focusing on their place and role in a network of practices related to relic worship.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will attempt to clarify some aspects of the sacredness of rice grains in medieval Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Grains of rice, a rather common material, sometimes fulfilled a rather important and sacred function in medieval esoteric Buddhist practice and worship. Concretely, rice grains were used in certain cases as the primary icon in esoteric Buddhist relic rituals or inserted inside small wooden stūpas. As the substitute of the Buddha's relics, rice grains were thus given special metaphysical meaning due to their close association with the relics of the Buddha, which in themselves are the center in a rich and dense network of esoteric Buddhist concepts and beliefs. The present paper intends to explain the rationale and context behind the use of rice grains in esoteric Buddhist ritual and worship. More concretely, it will focus on the following questions: What doctrines supported the substitution of rice grains for relics? For what purposes were they used? What was the nature of the social network in which the practice occurred? In this endeavor, it will be argued that much of the sacredness of rice grains depended not only on their connection to relic beliefs but also on dragon worship, embryology, and Buddhist beliefs related to the cycle of life and death.
Fabio Gygi (SOAS, University of London)
Paper short abstract:
Can sacred or animated objects ever be considered garbage? Based on fieldwork in 2012/13, this paper focuses on the ritual disposal of the difficult to get rid of category of puppets and stuffed animals and explores how their disposal is conceptualized in terms of ambivalent, two-way attachments.
Paper long abstract:
Can sacred or animated objects ever be considered garbage? The strict division between the sacred and the profane that is held up in discourse often proves permeable in practice. Charms who function as "seeds of luck" (Komatsu 1998) are bought as commercial paraphernalia but then become "terminal commodities" (Kopytoff 1986) that cannot be circulated any further. In order to recreate cyclical rhythms of consumption and to avoid excessive accumulation, religious institutions are increasingly involved in finding ways of disposing such objects with proper decorum. Based on fieldwork in 2012/13, this paper focuses on the ritual disposal of the difficult to get rid of category of puppets and stuffed animals and explores how their disposal is conceptualized in terms of ambivalent, two-way attachments: the attachment of the owners to their possessions as well as the attachment the puppets form with their owners. While sentimental attachment to possessions is certainly important, the ownership of puppets and stuffed animals is often characterized by participants as a "duty of care", a care that would be neglected if the puppets were simply given away to an anonymous receiver. One possibility to deal with this conundrum is the sacrificial destruction by fire which is equivalent to the social death of the object. The other possibility is to undertake rituals during which the once personal, intimate relationship with an inalienable possession is severed so the object returns to its former status as commodity. Sacrificial disposal and re-commodification then are discussed as two ways of escaping the seeming one-way-street of "terminal" commodities.
David Quinter (University of Alberta)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the "humble materialities" that proved essential to the popularization of the Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) in Japan, with a focus on the ritual, material, and soteriological uses of contributor rosters for the mass annual assemblies that Eison (1201-90) initiated at Saidaiji.
Paper long abstract:
Our earliest evidence for uses of the Mantra of Light (kōmyō shingon) in Japan dates to the ninth century, but the mantra's popularity accelerated in the thirteenth century through the efforts of Myōe (1173-1232) and Eison (1201-90), founder of the Saidaiji order of "Shingon Ritsu" monks and nuns. Each promoted recitation of the mantra and distribution of sand empowered by it to the living and the dead to erase transgressions, provide protection and other practical benefits, and ensure rebirth in a pure land. I suggest that while both monks were pivotal in popularizing the practice, they did so in different ways that were inseparable from the mantra's "humble materialities."
As Paul Copp has argued, the power of spells in East Asia derived from much more than the reproduction of Sanskrit sounds that is commonly emphasized; rather, their written forms were themselves seen as dhāraṇī and "not merely the incidental details of their encoding for future speech" (The Body Incantatory [2014], 5). And moving beyond the written forms of the syllables, we find many other examples of physical embodiments of spells and their links to material culture. For the Mantra of Light in Japan, the materiality that has drawn the most scholarly attention is the sand it empowers, which received a strong boost from Myōe's texts and lectures. I suggest, however, that focusing on the sand as the impetus for the mantra's popularization casts into shadow another key to its spread: the annual assemblies implemented by Eison at Saidaiji in 1264 and the networks of exchange in which they were embedded. Those networks are exemplified in the order's wide-ranging use of contributor rosters, including liturgical, soteriological, and iconographic practices that continue to the present. This paper will thus spotlight the "lives and afterlives" of the rosters of donors and other contributors to the assemblies, which were held as mass ceremonies involving a spectrum of monastics and laypeople. In examining the assemblies and rosters through both textual and ethnographic evidence, this paper will help illuminate the ongoing evolution of the mantra in Japan and its intimately linked material and ritual contexts.
Lucia Dolce (SOAS University of London)
Paper short abstract:
This contribution analyzes the material and format of Nichiren's paper mandalas, and their talismanic functions.
Paper long abstract:
The monk Nichiren (1222-1282) inscribed more than one hundred different calligraphic icons, which he called "mandalas of the Lotus Sutra" and which he distributed to followers and disciples. On the one hand, Nichiren presented complex doctrinal justifications for the worship of such objects, and some of his arguments provide an opportunity to assess the theoretical basis on which the agency of things was formulated in medieval Buddhism. On the other hand, the material characteristics of these icons reveal compelling aspects of the religious dynamic that engendered their production.
The great majority of Nichiren's mandalas were inscribed on sheets of paper, assembled and glued together in different ways. The size and number of paper sheets, the folds in the paper, the brush and other tools used to inscribe the ideographs, as well as the dimension of each mandala, shed light on the relational character of the production of these objects. This contribution will explore such material evidence to reveal Nichiren's interactions with lay people and monastics who were the recipients of the mandalas, and to investigate the talismanic and apotropaic properties that Nichiren invested these objects with at the very moment of production. As generations of followers reproduced Nichiren's mandalas on other fragile materials, such as pieces of fabric and clothing, such talismanic use continued through the centuries.