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JAAR 45/2 (1977) 147-160

Two Notes on Modern Rituals

Bruce Lincoln

ABSTRACTThe fundamental issue raised in this paper is whether ritual is a necessary

part of all societies. Some authors have questioned this, arguing that ritualdoes not really exist in modern Western society. In response to this, twoexamples are offered here that show ritual behavior in unexpected areas ofmodern life. The first example, "The Gifts of Initiation," shows how differentcultures define themselves, their values and their accomplishments, in thegifts they present to their children who have just come of age. Evidence fromIndia, Iran, and East Africa is offered to establish the pattern, and then thethree most common

gifts givenon

initiatoryoccasions in modern

America-pen and pencil set, wristwatch, and automobile-are shown tohave the same function, symbolically expressing the technological conquestof space, time, and ignorance. The second example, "Invoking the Ancestors,or the Sacred Footnote," calls attention to the rites found among peopleswho exhibit particular reverence for their recent ancestors, such as the Mendeof West Africa and the Ngaing of New Guinea. Among such peoples, thememory of the dead is preserved for only a few generations, but during thattime the ancestors are often appealed to as protectors, are treated withextreme courtesy, and are regularly nvited by name to come and share feasts.A comparison is made between these practices and the highly developedetiquette that attends footnoting-the scholar's invocation of his ancestors.In both instances proper use of names is extremely important, for by using aforebear's name, one demonstrates that death has not triumphed over thesolidarity of one's lineage. Based on these two examples, it is then argued thatritual is present even in the most secularized society, although it is notnecessarily found in the places one would readily expect it. Given this, theauthor is inclined to accept the universality of ritual behavior.

Bruce Lincoln (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Assistant Professor ofHumanities, Religious Studies, and South Asian Studies at the University ofMinnesota. He has published in History of Religions, Novum Testamentum,Paideuma, Journal of Indo-European Studies, and elsewhere. Most recently, he hasco-edited a

special issue of History of Religions entitled The Mythic Imagination:Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade (HR, May 1977).


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148 Bruce Lincoln

H ISTORIANS f religions have not always been noted for their modesty ortemerity, and among the more audacious claims that they are prone to

make is the oft-voiced proprietary statement that their proper field ofstudy is the entire religious experience of man from the paleolithic era to thepresent day. In principle there is some justification for this bold annexation ofterritory, however, for the consequences of taking a smaller field wouldamount to overemphasizing the importance of certain data and ignoringothers. Thus, the origins of the field known in Germany as Religionswissen-schaft (Wach) are to be found in the reaction against a study of religion thatfocused on the study of Christian theology and which accepted the truthclaims of

Christianityas normative. Such a

perspectivewas

properlyrecognized as suffering from a serious bias, and the necessary corrective wasand has been the attempt to study all religious phenomena with equalobjectivity.

The process is quite similar to certain events in the history ofanthropology, whereby Western civilization was taken as normative and allelse regarded as quaint customs of savage peoples. It is because she overthrewthis mind set and established as a basic rule that all data must be given equalweight that Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture remains a classic for the

anthropological field (3-10). No anthropologist would dare claim to bestudying culture if he studied only the Roman republic, Renaissance Italy andmodern Europe, any more than a linguist would claim to be studying languagewith no more than Latin, Chinese, and English as his base. Researchers inthese fields have rightly recognized that they are each dealing with animportant area in which the human mind has exercised itself in multiple ways,and that, if their studies are to have merit, they must explore mankind in all itsdiversity and not limit themselves to a few favored examples. Historians of

religionsvoice a

similar conclusionin

their audacious claims.If those claims can be seen to bejustified in principle, however, in practicethey are extremely difficult to apply. The sheer mass of data is so enormousthat we are forced to pick and choose and to understand fully that anyreligious system in all of its complexity can require a lifetime of study.Historians of religions therefore tend to accept one or two or perhaps eventhree different cultures or traditions as their area of specialization, and thenattempt to acquire as much knowledge as is possible about the rest, resigned tothe fact that we always fall short of doing it full justice. Such a practice is, ofcourse, regrettable, and falls woefully short of the "paleolithic man to thepresent day" ideal, but one does the best one can, and the hope becomes that ifno individual can span this entire area, at least the field as a whole can do so.

Yet again we run into difficulty, for it seems that certain favorite areas forstudy inevitably emerge. A few good books or a few talented teachers cancreate a stampede, and being small in numbers as well as grandiose inaspirations, the field can ill afford too much duplication. Yet those who studyAfrican religions do tend to gravitate to the Dogon, Nuer or Ashanti; thosewho

studySouth American

religionsto the

Bororo, Desana or Tupi Guarani;those who study Australia to the Aranda or Kamilaroi, despite the hundreds

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Two Notes on Modern Rituals 149

of other peoples for whom information is available. Still other areas continueto monopolize a disproportionate share of talent and energy: the religions of

ancient Greece, India and China are perennial favorites, as are those of theancient Near East and the Hellenistic era. But the religious life of the Finno-Ugrians or the Turco-Mongols goes largely unstudied. One of the mostinteresting lacunae is the near end of the spectrum defined in the formula"from Paleolithic man to the present day." Certainly Mircea Eliade hascontributed some highly suggestive remarks with regard to the religiouselement involved in modern political movements, literature, or even the ritualstrucutre of the simple act of attending a film / 1 , but beyond this there is notmuch to be found in the literature.

Having mentioned ritual, we are brought to another neglected area forstudy, for most scholars have tended to give far more attention to myth than toritual. Certainly works on myth have been enormously valuable, and haveopened up a way to understand man's religious imagination more fully thanwas ever possible before, but what of his religious activity, the ways in whichimagination has been translated nto deed? Several valuable studies of specificrituals have appeared recently, such as Joseph Jorgensen's analysis of the SunDance in North America, or Stephan Beyer's study of Tibetan rites, but there

still exists a grievous imbalance in favor of myth, and studies on such topics ascosmology and soteriology also outnumber those on ritual.

It is for these reasons that a book such as The Roots of Ritual, edited byJames Shaughnessy, is much to be welcomed. Here, on the topic of ritual,essays by nine different authors from widely different perspectives are broughttogether, and at one point or another most come to deal with the problem ofritual and the modern world. The essays, in general, are lively andprovocative, and much could be learned from going over the various articlesin

depth. That, however,is not what I have in mind.

Rather, Iam struck

bythe

fact that there seems to be general agreement among those authors whodiscuss the issue of modern ritual on three basic points. These are: (1) thatritual is a necessary part of life, (2) that ritual has largely disappeared in themodern world, and (3) that attempts to create new rituals or reinvigorate oldones face serious difficulties /2/. Of course this is something of an over-simplification, and I certainly have not done justice to the richness of any ofthe authors' thoughts, but I do think that this three-point outline captures theprevalent line of thought represented in this volume.

There is, however, something which I take to be a serious inconsistencyhere. For if ritual is truly necessary, then its disappearance is impossible.Either it is neccessary, in which case it hasn't disappeared, or it hasdisappeared, in which case it wasn't really necessary. Point (1) and point (2)cannot both be valid, although point (3) no doubt holds water in any event.For my part, given what I know of cultures other than our own, I am inclinedto accept that ritual is necessary, although one need not be conscious of whatis ritual behavior and what is not. Thus an informant is likely to report that acertain

pieceof behavior is

only habitual or customary, whereas careful studyreveals it to be ritual.



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150 Bruce Lincoln

For instance, among the Tiv, scars are cut on the abdomen of women atthe time of puberty. The Tiv say this is done "to make them beautiful," and

they stoutly deny the scars have any ritual significance. Yet, when one decodesthe carefully repeated patterns, one finds an elegent depiction of a woman'splace in time and in society, a pattern which is also placed on the most sacredof Tiv ritual instruments and which in effect transforms the woman into asacred object (Lincoln). Further examples could be added easily, and as aresult, I am led to hypothesize that if ritual is necessary, it will be found in ourculture just as in any other. Horace Miner, with tongue firmly planted incheek, demonstrated something of this sort in his essay on "Body Ritualamong the Nacirema," and the work of such sociologists as Erving Goffman(1959, 1963, 1967) serve to reinforce the conclusion. The following examplesof modern ritual have occurred to me of late; I offer them for whatever interestthey may have.

I. The Gifts of Initiation

At a general theoretical level, rites of intitiation have been studied from anumber of perspectives, most notably as rituals of separation and

reincorporation (van Gennep: 65-115)and of death and rebirth

(Eliade,1958:30-37). And, in addition to these broad interpretations much has beensaid about specific details often found within initiation, such as the role ofbodily mutilation or marking (cf. Jensen, 1933; Betelheim, 1954), and thebestowing of a new name upon the initiand (cf. van Gennep; Eliade, 1958). Butone feature which has not been much discussed is the moment in theceremonies when gifts are given to the novice upon his completion of theritual. Perhaps this is because these gifts can be viewed as not really forming apart of the rite, but rather standing posterior to it. Such a definition is a matter

of opinion, however, and these gifts are not without importance, as I hope toshow. In general, such gifts have several functions. Thus, they not only markthe new status of the initiand, but they also convey to him or her a sense ofwhat is expected by the society into which he or she has just been initiated.These two aspects of the gift stem from the way in which initiation serves toredefine an individual, but there is still more depth to the matter. For when agroup admits a new member, it must also redefine itself in terms of its past andfuture, and traditional gifts are one way of a group's reaffirming ts ideals and

aspirationsfor

all to see. To the outside observer, then, they offer aparticularly valuable insight into just what it is that a society wishes toemphasize within itself.

Thus, for instance, among the Nuer-a cattle-herding people of theNilotic Sudan-upon initiation a young man is presented with a spear and anox, an extremely powerful symbolic cluster. The spear is the tool of thewarrior, and it will now accompany the man in all his important undertakings:in war, in herding, and in dances. As a boy, one cannot carry a spear, and it isonly initiation which confers this tool and emblem of manly status. The spearis also "an extension of the right hand," to use Evans-Pritchard's term, andthus carries associations of strength, vitality, and virtue. Moreover, the spear

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solidifies the individual with his entire lineage, for it carries a name that istraditional within the lineage and which evokes the spears of all one's

ancestors /3/. The ox is equally important, for cattle form the basis of theNuer economy, and all social institutions revolve around caring for cattle. Asa young boy, one can only help in milking the animals, but upon completion ofthe initiatory rite, one acquires his first head of cattle. For the first time, he willtake responsibility for the full care of an animal, and this ox will focus hisattention on all the Nuer herds in a new and more mature way. So deep is aman's affection for this animal that he now takes his name from somecharacteristic of the ox-its color, or the shape of its horns, for example. Whatis

more,cattle also serve as the basis for all

dealingsbetween man and the

sacred, as they are the chief sacrificial animal. After initiation, one gains theright to sacrifice, because he now is a man, and because he possesses cattle /4/.

Another example of the significance attached to gifts of initiation can betaken from the period of the Achaemenid empire, when members of thePersian imperial army were given a special belt or girdle to wear afterinitiation, and were known as bandaka, "the bound ones," as a result of this.The term was also understood to mean "serf, slave," and this was the statusthat each soldier occupied in relation to the king. When his belt was bound

around him, he became bound to the king, and the belt remained as a constantsign of that relation (Widengren).

Yet again, those initiated into religious groups in India and Tibet,particularly in Tantric circles, must go through elaborate initiatory rites(Sanskrit diksa or abhiseka; Tibetan angkur) involving such complex themesas dissolution of one's body, homologization to the deity, return tonothingness, and so forth /5/. Upon the completion of these ordeals, thenovice is then given his mantra by the guru, a mystic formula imbued with

sacred and creative power. That mantra will form the basis of his worshiphenceforth, and will make possible his ultimate liberation. To put it somewhatdifferently, the initiation gives the novice the right to perform worship (pu7jaor some other form), but it is the possession of the mantra which gives him theability to do so /6/.

Now in each of these instances, the nature of the gift bestowed uponinitiation is an important symbolic statement of the culture'saccomplishments and goals. As such, they are very much rooted in a specificculture, and only take on meaning when seen in this context. The ox and thespear have significance only for a cattle-herding people, the belt of bondageonly for a culture with kingship and feudal institutions, the mantra only for aculture with a highly developed ideology of mystic sounds and a powerfulsoteriological inclination. We, as outsiders, can appreciate the meaning ofthese symbols only insofar as we understand the culture in which theyoriginate.

Within our own culture certain gifts are customarily bestowed at the timeof initiation, and no great significance is attached to them. Yet might it not be

that we fail to see their significance only because they are so familiar that wetake them for granted? Perhaps the situation is made more difficult by the fact



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152 Bruce Lincoln

that we have no one specific rite of initiation, but I would maintain that severaldifferent ceremonies all fulfill this role. These are, within the secular sphere,

commencement from high school or college, and within the religious sphere,first communion, confirmation, and bar or bat mitzvah. On these occasions, anumber of gifts are commonly given, and three strike me as most important,although many others might also be discussed. My selection is purelyintuitive, but I hope the reader will not have too much difficulty in acceptingthem. The three which I point to are a pen and pencil set, a wristwatch, and anautomobile. The three differ greatly in terms of expense, and only a relativewho is very affluent and very close to the initiand will generally give anautomobile, while those who are most distant and least wealthy will tend togive a pen and pencil set, but all three are often given, as most people who havelived in America for the last fifty years will recognize.

Now, it is interesting to note that these three items have certain features incommon. First, they are all manufactured goods-the products of anadvanced technology. Second, they are all made of metal and fashioned byheavy machinery. Third, they are all precision instruments of one sort oranother. But perhaps most important of all is the fact that each one is themeans whereby our culture achieves some of its greatest accomplishments.

Taking them individually, we must note that the pen and pencil set makeswriting possible, and is thus responsible for the transmission of knowledge.The watch facilitates the organization and utilization of time, and thecoordination of activity. The automobile permits rapid transportation andfreedom of motion from place to place. Now these are all familiar to us, sofamiliar that we take them for granted as a rule, but nonetheless they arespectacular achievements made possible by the technology whichcharacterizes our world. I do not think that it is stretching the point to speak ofthese gifts having a symbolic significance, even if that

significanceis not

generally present at the conscious level. But we, no less than the Nuer,Iranians, Tibetans, or Indians, define our ideals and aspirations when we giveinitiatory gifts. Given the nature of our culture, the gift of an ox or a mantrawould make little sense, but these mechanical gifts make great sense indeed. Ineffect we are telling our children who have just come of age: "Look,technology has made possible the transcendence ("conquest" is the termusually used) of space, of time, of ignorance. You may now take part in theseachievements." Our characteristic gifts of initiation are the way in which this

statement is made.

II. Invoking the Ancestors, or the Sacred Footnote

Scholars have often called attention to myths which tell of the ancestorswho lived in the time of the creation, discussing them as "culture heroes,"whose deeds served to establish this world and the proper modes of actionwithin it / 7/. Yet beside these primordial ancestors, there stands another classof ancestors: the historic ancestors, those who have died more recently andwho are known by name and who are felt to be close and intimately concerned

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with the affairs of the living. Often, such ancestors play a role of greatimportance in the religious life of a given people, and much can be learned

from the consideration of a few selected examples.For instance, the Mende of Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa

differentiate between two types of ancestor-the Kekeni, "Fathers," whosememories are fresh, and the Ndeblaa, "Forebears," who are virtuallyforgotten. Living people are much more concerned with the "Fathers," andmost cultic activity is directed toward them (Sawyerr: 27; Jedrej: 39f.). On theaverage, ancestors are remembered and treated as "Fathers" for a period oftime equivalent to about two generations before losing their individual

identityand

fadinginto the

groupof "Forebears" Little: 219). This, of course,

will vary according to an individual's prestige gained in life, but for the mostpart the state of affairs is as it was described by one student of the Mende: theinfluence of an ancestor varies inversely with the time elapsed since his death(Sawyerr: 26). The relation of ancestors to the living is also expressed inspatial terms, for the "Fathers" are thought to be located directly within thevillage and the territory of his kin-that is to say, in the realm of society andcivilization, the known and the comforting. In contrast, the "Forebears" arelocated on the border between village and bush, the thin strip which divides

order from chaos, and the more frightening non-ancestral spirits are locatedentirely in the forest /8/.

The "Fathers" are intimately involved with the most important aspects ofhuman life. They protect the land, aid in the growth of the crops, and alsopunish breaches of etiquette, particularly those which injure the solidarity ofthe kinship group. They are regarded as the most senior members of thelineage, and as such they can expect to receive the respect and affectionnormally extended to all older living members of the clan (cf. Little: 219;

Sawyerr: 27;Hofstra:

189, 192). Offeringsare not made to them on

anyregular schedule, but do take place with relative frequency (Hofstra: 194). Forthe most important festivals, the eldest living member of the lineage-whoholds a special status as henmi, "praying man"-will go to the spot where thespirits are located on the night before the ceremony. There, he calls them byname and invites them to come take part in the ritual. On the following day,the spirits are thought to arrive in the village, where they are joined by all theliving members of the family, and together they share a meal (Sawyerr: 31;Hofstra: 188). In this way the solidarity of the lineage is affirmed, a solidaritywhich is in no way broken by the event of death. The dead and the livingcontinue to be in contact, as the living offer food, respect and remembrance,while the dead provide protection and support when pleased. On the whole,this pattern is found in the religious life of many African tribes, and has beenably discussed by a number of scholars /9/.

Less attention has been paid to the importance of ancestors in Oceanicreligions, although certain groups in that area preserve beliefs very similar tothose of the Mende / 10/. For example, the Ngaing, a tribe located on the RaiCoast of Northeastern New Guinea, show

manyresemblances. While the

Ngaing do not distinguish between near and distant ancestors semantically,



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154 Bruce Lincoln

cult is directed exclusively to the former, and the names of the deceased areusually forgotten after three generations (Lawrence: 206f.). The recent

ancestors, however, must be honored, and when satisfied they serve the livingin many ways: warding off illness, bringing messages about the future, andensuring success in warfare, hunting and agriculture (Lawrence: 210). At twomajor festivals each year attention is focused upon the ancestors. At thesetimes, men within a given kinship group will go to the sacred pools of theirclan, where the ancestral spirits are to be found. There, they perform rites toinvite the ancestors to their settlement, invoking them and asking them tofollow them home. The spirits are then led to the cult house within thesettlement, and as

theyenter their

personal call-signs-signswhich

theybore

in life and which have been preserved in memory-are beaten on the slit-gongto announce their presence. Once in the cult house, they are fed andentertained with music, then led back to the pools where they normally reside(Lawrence: 210-12). Like those of the Mende, the ancestral rituals of theNgaing affirm the solidarity of the kinship group, a solidarity that transcendsthe barrier of death, and they also serve to reestablish a relation of reciprocitybetween living and dead.

It is particularly worthy of note that in both these instances the names of

the departed form an important part of the ritual, for these are the meanswhereby the ancestors are contacted, invited, announced, and shown honor.Moreover, they are the positive sign that the memory of the dead has beenpreserved by the living. The memory and its token, the name, become themeans whereby communication between living and dead is possible, for oncean ancestor ceases to be remembered and invoked he becomes inactive,unconcerned with the affairs of the living / 11/. The invocation is thus a formof anamnesis-a conquest of forgetfulness, and thus of time /12/.

All of this may seem quite exaggerated in light of the fact that the Mendepreserve memory of their ancestors for only two generations and the Ngaingfor three, but such is not the case. The ancestors themselves continue toremember their ancestors, and if the living will only do their part an unbrokenline is thus preserved "to the very end of primal time" / 13/. A memory of onlytwo or three generations is sufficient to bridge the most critical gap in thenature of being: death. If men are able to do this, they then put themselves intouch with all of the ancestors in an extended chain, stretching back to thetime of beginnings when the power of the sacred was most fresh / 14/. Finally,the invocation of the ancestors also extends assurance to the living that deathdoes not pose an end to his existence. After death he will be remembered bythe living, and he will join the ancestors who have preceded him. Thisknowledge assures him that he partakes of something broader than finite,historic life, for he will continue to exist and he will be remembered.

In large measure we moderns have lost the habit of invoking ourancestors, and have forgotten much of the ideology that attends this practice.Yet in certain corners of our society the practice is preserved, albeit in a

somewhat unconscious fashion. I would like to suggest that it is thus with thelowly footnote.

Bruce Lincoln54


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In order to recognize this, we must first observe that footnoting is an artthat is governed by an elaborate set of rules which is rigid, formal, and

traditional in the extreme. Of all the aspects of scholarly writing, none is moreelaborate in its etiquette, and it is interesting to note that by far the longest andmost detailed sections of the twelfth edition of the Manual of Style (Chicago,1969) are devoted to "Names and Terms" and "Notes and Footnotes." Now,given this large set of rules, footnoting is not something which just anyone inthe culture at large will intuitively know how to do, and accordingly the secretsof the practice-the details of form, style, etiquette and sensitivity to properoccasion-are transmitted within the course of higher education. In fact, thehigher the educational level one attains, the greater are the demands forfootnoting and for proper footnoting procedures. Perhaps it is not stretchingthe point to speak of this as stages of knowledge appropriate to different levelsof initiation. Similarly, one may speak of the whole scholarly fraternity assomething of a secret society given, among other things, to preservation anduse of proper ritual formulae in footnotes.

These morphological similarities, however interesting they may be, aresuperficial, of course, and there are stronger reasons for seeing the footnote asa ritual act. Most important, I think, is the fact that the footnote is in effect a

way of demonstrating anamnesis, the conquest of forgetfulness, for in thefootnote we preserve the memory of our forebears and pay honor to theirachievements. When we footnote, we do not simply "review he literature," ordemonstrate that we have read a certain work, although these pragmaticfunctions are also fulfilled. But we also place ourself in a lineage of pastscholars, and we make public statement that our ancestors are not forgotten.In most cases, of course, our memories are all too short, and no more than afew scholars continue to be cited for more than a generation or two. Yet thefact that

theycontinue to be

noted,to

be honored after death for any time atall does hold forth a form of salvation and immortality to many. Ultimately,the citers themselves are cited, and research in some sense consists of workingback through the footnotes, probing back to ever more distant generations ofscholars. A chain is thus built up that links the living and the dead in atheoretically infinite series, much as the Mende, Ngaing and others are linkedto their ancestors through their invocations.

As I stated at the outset, these are simply a few examples and many morecould be added. But I hope that these two analyses have been sufficient tomake a broader point. Ritual is not always where you expect to find it, yet inany culture it is there to be found, and perhaps our much-heralded "secularsociety" is not so secular as some would have us believe. In the last analysis, Iam inclined to agree that ritual is necessary, but my reasons are empiricalrather than theoretical. In every culture I have studied, ritual plays animportant part, and it appears that modern society is no exception to this rule.Of course, members of any given culture may deny vehemently that ritual ispresent, but we are not bound to accept their opinion, even if they be

theologians, sociologists or other such experts. In fact, a cross-cultural studyof attitudes toward ritual would probably show wide variation in how people



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156 Bruce Lincoln

regard the rituals within their own culture, and in this respect the modernworld might prove different from other societies. But without stronger

evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to take the existence of ritual as acultural universal.

NOTES

/1/ See, for instance, 1959:201-13, "Sacred and Profane in the Modern World";1960:23-38, 'The Myths of the Modern World"; 1969:112-26, "Initiation and theModern World."

/2/ See, for instance, the following sections in Shaughnessy: Brian Wicker (16-23),"Ritual and Culture: Some Dimensions of the Problem Today"; Margaret Mead (96-101), "Ritual and Social Crisis"; Aidan Kavanagh (145-47), "The Role of Ritual inPersonal Development"; Edward Fischer (162-65), "Ritual as Communication"; andRobert N. Bellah (217-34), "Liturgy and Experience."

/3/ See Evans-Pritchard, chap. IX. (Also published as "Nuer Spear Symbolism,"in Anthropological Quarterly, 26 [1953], 1-19.)

/4/ Evans-Pritchard, chap. X. (Also published as "The Sacrificial Role of Cattle

among the Nuer," Africa, 23 [1953], 181-98.)/5/ See, for instance, the Abhiseka described in chap. 41 of the Laksmi Tantra,(Gupta: 269-77). There, the initiand is led into a mandala specially constructed for theoccasion, at the center of which is set a pitcher of water representing the deity. Thus heis led into a new, sacralized space. Here, a three-stranded thread is arranged with knots,and is set as a representation of the novice (a pun figures here, as Sanskrit guna canmean either "personal qualities" or "thread"). The guru then visualizes the novice asconsisting only of one element, and he then effects the dissolution of that element bytouching him with his hands-hands that have earlier been homologized to those of thedeity. This is done for each of the five elements in turn, and as it is done, knots on thethree threads are torn off, mixed in butter, and poured into the fire. By this action, allthe elements and qualities which bind the novice to the material world (prakrti) arecompletely destroyed, and only the pristine self (purusa) remains. For a discussion ofsimilar rites, see Hoens.

/6/ Cf. Hoens: 76f.; Gupta: 275; Avalon: 42, 258; Evans-Wentz: 222-24; Gonda,1970: 65. For various views on the nature and importance of the mantras, see Gonda,1964; Woodroffe; Pratyagatmananda.

/7/ Cf. Eliade, 1969:72-87, "Cosmogonic Myth and 'Sacred History"'; van derLeeuw; Pettazzoni.

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/8/ Jedrej: 41-43. Actually, his analysis is even more complex and subtle than this,and draws on a number of other categories.

/9/ Cf. especially Ankermann; Driberg; Fortes; Kopytoff; and Thomas: 109-21.

/10/ The most complete study to date, although relatively unimaginative, has beendone by Aufenanger. Most scholarship has been focused on the mythologysurrounding the land of the dead, as in Korner and Moss.

/ 11 Cf. Lawrence: 207. Lawrence's informants thus admitted the possibility thatdistant ancestors could interfere in human affairs if they wanted to, but this wasdeemed so improbable as not to be worth serious consideration.

/12/On anamnesis as a crucial

categoryfor the

studyof

religions,see Eliade, 1963.

/13/ Cf. Jensen, 1963:287-92. But note that Jensen is so struck by the importance ofthe Dema, the primordial ancestors, that the main point of his discussion is to provethat other forms of ancestor cult (i.e., those directed to recent ancestors) are only asecondary phenomenon.

/14/ Cf. Sawyerr: 27; Little: 217f. Note that among the Mende, the distantancestors after they have been forgotten go to reside with the/aewO, the High God.They have now become closer to the creator and his primordial age, but they, like he,are otiose as regards the current affairs of men.

WORKS CONSULTED

Ankermann, Bernard1918 "Totenkult und Seelenglaube bei afrikanischen Volker," Zeitschriftfur

Ethnologie, 50, 89-153.

Aufenanger, Heinrich1955 Die Stellung der Ahnen im Glauben und Brach der Eingeborenen des

Territoriums von Neu-Guinea. Unpublished dissertation, UniversitatWien.

Avalon, Arthur1972 Tantra of the Great Liberation. New York: Dover.

Benedict, Ruth1934 Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Bettelheim, Bruno1954 Symbolic Wounds. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press.

Beyer, Stephan1973 The Cult of Tara. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Driberg, J. H.1936 "The Secular Aspect of Ancestor Worship in Africa," Journal of the

Royal African Society, 35, Supplement, 1-21.Eliade, Mircea

1958 Rites and Svmbols of Initiation. New York: Harper and Row.

1959 The Sacred and the Profane. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

1960 Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. New York: Harper and Row.

1963 "Mythologies of Memory and Forgetting," History of Religions, 2,329-44.

1969 The Quest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E.1956 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y.1960 The Tibetan Book of the Dead. London: Oxford University Press.

Fortes, Meyer1965 "Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship in Africa," African Systems

of Thought.London:

Oxford University Press, 122-41.Goffman, Erving

1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.

1963 Behavior in Public Places. New York: Macmillan.

1967 Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. New York:Doubleday.

Gonda, Jan1964 "The Indian

Mantra,"Oriens

16,244-97.

1970 Visnuism and Sivaism: A Comparison. London: Athlone Press.

Gupta, Sanjukta, Trans.1972 LaksmT Tantra. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Hoens, D. J.1965 "Initiation in later Hinduism according to Tantric texts," in Initiation,

C. J. Bleeker, ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 71-80.

Hofstra, Sjoerd1941 'The Ancestral Spirits of the Mendi," Internationales Archiv farEthnologie, 39, 177-96.

Jedrej, M. C.1974 "An Analytical Note on the Land and Spirits of the Sewa Mende,"

Africa, 44, 38-45.


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160 Bruce Lincoln

van Gennep, Arnold1960 The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wach, Joachim1924 Religionswissenschaft. Prolegomena zu ihrer Grundlegung. Leipzig: J.

C. Hinrichs.

Widengren, Geo1968 "Le symbolisme de la ceinture," Iranica Antiqua, 8, 133-55.

Woodroffe, (Sir) John1955 The Garland of Letters: Studies in the Mantra Sgstra. Madras: Ganesh

and Co.

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