Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on food offerings and explores how communities create meaning and interpretation through food in Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract:

Food offerings in Sri Lanka range from scraps of food for the invisible beings collected from the monks to rice and curry for 3,000 people handed out at a generosity stall. The motivations for food offerings are equally varied but nearly always include merit. Large events which require more disposable income and labour are occasions to form merit communities (van Esterick 1985) consisting of sponsors and food makers (often but not exclusively female). These communities not only work together but they can also shape interpretations and create meanings. For example, lay donors increasingly opt to prepare vegetarian food when catering for monastics thereby transforming the consumers into a more virtuous group for the duration of the meal. Equally, many ritual specialists now offer their clients vegetarian options for pujas to demons who traditionally received meat, eggs and blood. Just as the providers, the consumers, too, form communities. These commensal communities can be temporary and for the occasion of a specific offering. For example, at a shrine for deities (devale), the priest accepts the offering and after the deity has enjoyed and transformed it into blessed food (prasād) the priest hands it back to the donor to share with others at the shrine. Others are more permanent, including the commensal community which has the Buddhist temple at its center (Strong 1992) which is hierarchical, with the Buddha at the top and stray and wild animals at the bottom. And just as the providers, the consumers also have power as they can refuse to accept certain foods or reject certain donors. This paper explores the ways these communities create meaning and interpretation through food.