Ritual Manuals And Performance in Early China: The *Ci Mamei Manuscript From Zhangjiashan M336

This paper introduces a new project, Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics (DECL), which aims to create a framework for producing online editions of historical manuscripts suitable for both corpus linguistic and historical research. Up to now, few digital editions of historical texts have been designed with corpus linguistics in mind. Equally, few historical corpora have been compiled from original manuscripts. By combining the approaches of manuscript studies and corpus linguistics, DECL seeks to enable editors of historical manuscripts to create editions which also constitute corpora.The DECL framework will consist of encoding guidelines compliant with the TEI XML standard, together with tools based on existing open source models and software projects. DECL editions will contain diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscripts, into which linguistic, palaeographic and codicological features will be encoded. Additional layers of contextual, codicological and linguistic annotation can be added freely to the editions using standoff XML tagging.The paper first introduces the theoretical and research-ideological background of the DECL project, and then proceeds to discuss some of the limitations and problems of traditional digital editions and historical corpora. The solutions to these problems offered by DECL are then introduced, with reference to other projects offering similar solutions. Finally, the goals of the project are placed in the wider context of current trends in digital editing and corpus compilation.

Estara Arrant examines categories of Torah codices from the Cairo Genizah that have not been afforded sufficient scholarly attention, namely ‘near-model’ codices, a term coined by Arrant. The study analyses almost three hundred fragments by means of a methodology based on statistical analysis. The study shows how statistical methods can be employed to reveal sub-types of Torah fragments that share linguistic and codicological features.

Ritual performance contributes significantly to the artistic power and aesthetic value of Elechi Amadi’s novel, The Concubine. This essay explores the narrative functions of ritual patterns to the plot, characters and themes of the novel. The textual analytic method exposes the researcher to profound underlying meanings associated with each ritual element. The reader-response theoretical framework opens the novel to fresh insight in order to unpack the various intricate significations attached to the ritual symbols embedded in the tapestry of the novel. It helps the research to treat ritual elements as narrative devices thus enhancing their interpretation and unveiling their literary, artistic, structural and aesthetic qualities. It is discovered from the textual analysis that ritual performance can be viewed from three angles. The essay concludes that ritual divination, ritual sacrifice and ritual fortification constitute the triangle of ritual performance and that they contribute to characterizing characters, initiating conflict, arousing suspense, enacting flashback and resolving conflicts. Ritual performance, from the above reasons, functions as narrative techniques in the novel.

Kazakh auxiliary verbs represent a challenge for learners and instructors due to their inherent linguistic complexity. There is a particular group of such “challenging” auxiliary verbs that are used to reflect similar linguistic characteristics: otyr, tūr, zhatyr, and zhür. While these verbs are quite often, but not always, interchangeable, there are minor differences between them that depend on the general linguistic and specific semantic contexts in which they are used. The main purpose of this paper is to elucidate the linguistic complexity of one of these auxiliary verbs, the verb zhatyr. Of particular interest to this study are the morphological, syntactic, and semantic characteristics of this verb. While zhatyr can undergo a number of transformations and be used to express a variety of tense-related meanings, the main focus of this study is only on the Present Continuous Tense version of this auxiliary verb. In order to understand the linguistic characteristics of zhatyr, it is necessary to discuss the notion of ‘auxiliary verbs’ in general and the nature of auxiliary verbs in modern languages, including Turkic languages and, of course, Kazakh itself. Such an overview is expected to provide insight into the general and specific linguistic properties of the phenomenon in question. Zhatyr is often considered a universal auxiliary verb that is used in the most frequent number of cases. Despite its broad implication and variety of tenses it is applicable to, its utilization nevertheless relies on factors of speaker’s position and length of the action. The verb zhatyr, in comparison with other three auxiliary verbs, is of extreme interest due to the highest number of cases in which it is contextually suitable.

Èdè Àyàn: The Language of Àyàn in Yorùbá Art and Ritual of Egúngún

Through an examination of Aztec death iconography in pre- and post-Conquest codices of the central valley of Mexico (Borgia, Mendoza, Florentine, and Telleriano-Remensis), this paper will explore how attitudes towards the Aztec afterlife were linked to questions of hierarchical structure, ritual performance and the preservation of Aztec cosmovision. Particular attention will be paid to the representation of mummy bundles, sacrificial debt-payment and god-impersonator (ixiptla) sacrificial rituals. The scholarship of Alfredo López-Austin on Aztec world preservation through sacrifice will serve as a framework in this analysis of Aztec iconography on death. The transformation of pre-Hispanic traditions of representing death will be traced from these pre- to post-Conquest Mexican codices, in light of processes of guided syncretism as defined by Hugo G. Nutini and Diana Taylor’s work on the performative role that codices play in re-activating the past. These practices will help to reflect on the creation of the modern-day Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos.

Ancestral hall sacrifice ritual refers to actions performed by lineage members to worship their ancestors in the ancestral hall, a common architectural form in rural southern China. This paper first reviews the rise and growth of ancestral halls during the Song and Ming dynasties, and then examines the mediality of ancestral halls and the transmissibility of ancestral hall sacrifice rituals from the perspective of communication studies. To be more specific, this paper explores the communication mechanism of ancestral halls and sacrifice rituals by conducting fieldwork in the rural areas of Luoyuan County in Fujian Province. The obvious findings to emerge from the study are as follows: firstly, the ancestral hall, housing the portraits, relics, and tablets of ancestors, serves as a medium that facilitates communication between the living (lineage members) and the dead (ancestors); secondly, the lineage head, as the “representative” of ancestors, plays a dominant role in the rituals and gains the communication power to connect the living and the dead; finally, the ritual symbols composed of tributes, blessing words (zhu ci), and prayers (dao wen), constitute the embodied content of communication, which engages lineage members in the ritual performance. Through this process, each member internalizes the moral standards, behavioral norms, and shared emotions of the lineage, contributing to the establishment of the lineage order. The media facilities in the ancestral hall, together with the lineage head as the “representative” of ancestors and the ritual symbols, make up the “communicable ancestral phenomenon”, which paves the way for the ritual communication of ancestral hall sacrifice.

One subfield of assessment of language proficiency is predicting language proficiency level.This research aims at proposing a computational linguistic model to predict language proficiency level and to explore the general properties of the levels. To this end, a corpus is developed from Persian learners' textbooks and statistical and linguistic features are extracted from this text corpus to train three classifiers as learners. The performance of the models vary based on the learning algorithm and the feature set(s) used for training the models. For evaluating the models, four standard metrics, namely accuracy, precision, recall, and F-measure were used. Based on the results, the model created by the Random Forest classifier performed the best when statistical features extracted from raw text is used. The Support Vector Machine classifier performed the best by using linguistic features extracted from the automatically annotated corpus. The results determine that enriching the model and providing various kinds of information do not guarantee that a classifier (learner) performs the best.To discover the latent teaching methodology of the textbooks, the general performance of the classifiers with respect to the language level and the linguistic knowledge used for creating the model are studied. Based on the obtained results, the amount of extracted features plays an important role in training a classifier. Furthermore, the average best performance of the classifiers is extending the linguistic knowledge from syntactic patterns at proficiency level A (beginner) to all linguistic information at levels B (intermediate) and C (advanced).

The term indexicality is understood within linguistic anthropology and related fields as the general property of anything that acquires a meaning thanks to its existential relation with its referent. Linguistic features such as certain sentence-final particles in Japanese may directly index certain affective stances like speaking coarsely or speaking gently and indirectly index speaking like a man or speaking like a woman. The temporal unfolding of a spontaneous pointing gesture can be documented by means of anthropological methods like participant-observation, aural or visual recording, interviews, and reliance on historical records. A wide range of phenomena have been shown to persist in all kinds of practices that take for granted and reinforce the idea of the intellectual superiority of the phonology, lexicon, and syntax of one particular dialect called “Standard” over the dialects of minority, non-dominant groups.

Throughout the course of premodern China’s history, the planning and performance of religious ritual has been a primary concern. These offerings of bloody victuals, drink, and, later, incense to gods and ancestors seek to ensure the ongoing vitality and prosperity of the living and the peaceful security and well-being of the ancestral dead. Sacrifices were understood as food, sustenance for the occupants of the other world, who would, in return, imbue the sacrificed provender with blessings (fu福), which the sacrificer and family could share by consuming the food. This sacrificial ritual is at the heart of a diffuse, indigenous religion that encompasses people of all social classes, from the poorest peasant to the ruler and his representatives. It was never named, but scholars sometimes isolate segments and discuss them as “folk religion,” “state religion,” “Confucianism,” or “Daoism.” C. K. Yang dubbed the complex “shenism” based on the Chinese word for god (shen神), but this ignores the closely parallel practices directed toward the ancestors. Here we will use the term Chinese popular religion to refer to this complex of beliefs and practices. Daoism (previously Taoism) is a vexed word that has been used to stand for several distinct terms in Chinese. Here it will refer to China’s indigenous organized religion, a faith founded upon a revelation in 142 ce to a man named Zhang Ling and passed down through the ages by ritual ordination and the transmission of sacred texts, talismans, and ritual regalia. This religion appropriated the ancient philosophical text Laozi老子 and reread it as theology, taking a divinized form of the legendary figure Laozi as their supreme deity, the Most High Lord Lao. Although initially a communal religion with strong millenarian beliefs, Daoism evolved into a religion of religious specialists employed ad hoc by the populace for resolving problems of birth, health, death, prosperity, and security. Similarly, Daoism was initially an evangelical faith requiring of its members a complete break with popular practice, but Daoist priests evolved into caretakers for the popular pantheon, providing the lengthiest and most complex rituals within the array of ritual interventions that might address specific problems or events.

This paper examines Chán master Jìngxiū’s preface to the original Zǔtáng jí in one scroll, which was presented to him by Jìng and Yún at the Zhāoqìng monastery in Quánzhōu around the mid-tenth century. Building on a recent TEI-based edition, it offers an annotated translation and comprehensive analysis of the preface, with special attention to its structure, linguistic features, and issues of intertextuality. The essay focuses on elements of textual history, the possible incentives behind the compilation of the Zǔtáng jí, and Jìngxiū’s perception of the text. Most importantly, this study investigates in detail two idiomatic expressions used by Jìngxiū (i.e., “[cases of] shuǐhè easily arise”; “[the characters] wū and mǎ are difficult to distinguish”), showing their significance for understanding the preface. In addition, we demonstrate that further research is needed to support the hypothesis according to which the original Zǔtáng jí would correspond to the first two fascicles of the received Goryeo edition of 1245. Eventually, this article serves as the first part of a research summary on the textual history of the Zǔtáng jí aimed at facilitating further studies on this highly important Chán text.

The altar in sacrifice has been the subject of much recent research, in which the altar itself is not considered in all its aspects, but as the seat of a god or a place of supernatural power. Throughout this research, the members of the workshop “Polytheistic Practices” have very often been faced with such concepts as “presence” or “manifestation”. While knowing full well that such ideas originate in large part from our own cultural tradition, and that there does not exist such a category allowing specialists from different disciplines to agree, they have nevertheless not entirely refrained from using these terms to describe a ritual context. They have not felt entirely entitled to declare that these categories would lose all relevance once used in the context of ritual practices far removed from those that are familiar in our cultural horizons. The author of the present study has himself encountered these concepts in his research on the sacrificial altar of one African ethnic group. At a certain point in his research, he hit upon some difficulties, as he did know how these concepts might be expressed in gourmantchema (the language spoken by the Gourmantche of south-eastern Burkino Faso), particularly in those situations where is expressed the idea of a “god” being present. The same author soon realized that he might get around this difficulty by postulating that there are in this language terms which, since they are used in the sacrificial context, signify that the process followed in this kind of ritual aims at bringing about an encounter between the one sacrificing and that category of power called bulo by the Gourmantche. The author also remarked that in this same language there are usages that return to the idea of a form of “manifestation”. There is also a certain kind of sacrificial rite called the “binding sacrifice”. In this instance, at each moment when he presents his offering, be it first or last, the man who speaks to the bulo must always utter the following phrase: “I shall fall to my knees as one who is truly there…” What are we to make of this moment in the ritual that takes the form of an encounter with the bulo? How are we to understand that in the dynamic of the rite one can find oneself before an altar that refers not simply to a place in the world but to an intersection with an unseen power where the man present is “truly there”? The answer involves more profound research on the status of an object placed under the eyes of the one presiding over ritual: a small piece of a calabash covered with marks. Throughout the ritual of binding, the one officiating actively uses this fragment. Each time he questions the bulo, the intended power, he presents those words that suit the different things - or substances - that he holds in hand in place of offerings. To do so, he studies the marks inscribed on this little writing tablet. It might be said for sake of precision that he does not make out letters in the strict sense, but converts into words what the inscriptions means to him. At other moment during the prayer, the one officiating speaks as though he were reciting a text learned by heart. When inspecting the piece of calabash, the spoken word appears to rely entirely on what is inscribed. Once the role played by the tablet is displayed in the ritual performance, we must determine the way in which the said tablet has been composed by the liido (a Gourmantche soothsayer), after a preliminary consultation. It soon appears that this last inquiry cannot be brought to a satisfying conclusion unless conducted in the proper spirit of Gourmantche soothsaying. In light of the ritual action to come, how does the soothsayer beforehand discover what has been revealed by the oracle? How does the soothsayer proceed when he will have found the sacrificial formula that he tailors to the case of the consultant, or to that of the person closest to him? In this final phase he must inscribe the aforementioned formula on the inside surface of a small fragment of calabash by tracing glyphs representing not only the power to which the offering is destined, but also the things that the sacrificing one must present by way of gift (be they imaginary animals or real ones). In order to take on the problems addressed in the present work, the author was guided by the questions called to mind by the fate of the tablet covered with inscriptions, from the moment when it is created by the soothsayer until the last moments of the binding sacrifice when the one sacrificing destroys it.

The use of animals in ceremonial contexts is universal. Throughout history, across cultures, in both religious and secular settings, animals are often seen as mere symbols rather than as individuals with the capacity to be harmed in ritual performances. While some ritualized uses of animals are unquestionably cruel (e.g., the Islamic ritual sacrifice of sheep at Eid al-Adha), the morality of other uses (e.g., the ritual release of animals at Buddhist festivals) is less certain. This article examines what stance animal advocates should take toward the ritualized release of animals, arguing that, on the whole, the inclusion of animals in ritual activity perpetuates the misguided and anthropocentric notion that animals are instruments for human use. Since ritualized animal release is a prominent feature of Buddhist tradition, this article pays particular attention to the effects of “merit-making” ceremonies on animals across Asia.

As a traditional festival of the Miao and Wa people in western Hunan, the Tiaoxiang Festival carries rich cultural memory and serves as a vital function in ethnic identity formation. This paper adopts Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory as its analytical framework and explores how the Tiaoxiang Festival enables the storage and reproduction of Miao cultural memory through its symbolic system and cyclical ritual practices. The study focuses on three dimensions: temporal symbols, ritual practices, and material symbols. Findings reveal that the festival’s temporal symbolism transforms natural time into cultural time, with alternating day-and-night rituals reinforcing the agrarian view of life cycles. The concentric-circle layout of sacrificial rituals reflects the Miao cosmology and collective identity. Through embodied ritual practices, everyday agricultural experiences are elevated into sacred narratives, fostering mimetic memory and intergenerational transmission of ethnic identity. Moreover, symbolic objects such as sacrificial offerings and traditional costume patterns serve as carriers of cultural memory, visually and materially encoding the Miao people’s migration history, ancestral beliefs, and ecological ethics. The study concludes that the Tiaoxiang Festival not only concretizes Miao cultural memory through performative rituals but also facilitates its intergenerational inheritance, thus strengthening collective identity.

The performance of sacrificial rituals by the ancient Hebrews served a number of important social and cultural functions. Although adapted from religious and cultural sources exogenous to the Hebrews (i. e., pagan), when recast in the light of Hebrew theology, ritual immolations served to identify and separate the Hebrew culture from surrounding pagan cultures. This in turn established the social boundaries of the Hebrew culture, thereby facilitating its development in the ancient world. Importantly, the social and cultural emphasis placed on sacrifices altered considerably over the years in direct relationship to the waning of pagan influences. The historical, theological, and sociocultural implications of these changes in the meanings of sacrifices are discussed in light of Israel's reestablishment as an independent nation.