Indigenous Cults Research Articles

Soils and land use at ancient Greek colonial temples of southern Italy

Soils at ancient Greek temples in Greece are distinct for each deity, reflecting an economic basis for their cults, but did this pattern also extend to classical Greek colonies? This study of 24 temples in southern Italy reveals little assimilation by Greek colonists of indigenous cults at first, because their temples are on the same kinds of soils, reflecting similar cults for each of the Olympian deities as in Greece. Worship of Hera was more widespread in Italy than in Greece and the Aegean, and also on Alfisol soils suitable for pastoralism. Temples of Demeter in contrast were on Mollisols best for grain cultivation. Rocks and grottos sacred to Persephone are comparable with those in Greece, but were popular with hellenized Sikels for an indigenous hybrid cult of Demeter and Kore.

Buruh Perempuan di Negeri Perempuan: Studi Kasus Pergeseran Peran Perempuan Minangkabau

The research reveals a shifting paradigm in the role of women in Minangkabau. The society perceived that the women world was still dominated by women, where a few of indigenous women still a shield and place it in the safest spot in the economic filed. It makes the case of marginalization of women’s right becomes a metter that is not relevant to be discussed, but this pradigm could come back in the evalution with the advent of this case study. This research uses historical heuristic method, criticism, interpretation, and historiography). It also describes a shift on the women’s role at Kubang Nan Duo, from the holders of power into centers of production because many asset like lands, have been sold and spout, forcing them to throw them selves in to farm working. This makes the women being undermined from two sides, where indigenous cult as a protector for woman have been cracked by the heat and weathered by rain, while patriarchal culture held them ever after.

Quan Am and Mary: Vietnamese Religious, Cultural, and Spiritual Phenomena

Quan Am and Mary:Vietnamese Religious, Cultural, and Spiritual Phenomena Thao Nguyen SJ Marian devotion among Vietnamese Catholics and worship of the Goddess of Mercy, Quan Am or Guanyin (Chinese),1 among Vietnamese Buddhists, are two dominant forms of religious practice in Vietnam.2 Popular devotion to these female deities formed a special type of religiosity that has helped sustain the institutional religions and nurture the ethical and spiritual life of the followers. While Marian devotion helps Catholics sustain their faith in the difficult times as well as survive religious persecutions,3 devotion to Quan Am helps Vietnamese Buddhists cope with trying situations in their lives.4 Moreover, while devotion to Mary motivates Catholics to live out their ethical lives in a relationship with God and other human fellows, devotion to Quan Am helps Buddhists attain ethical and spiritual values, such as compassion, patience, mercy, and harmony.5 Similarly, Catholics look to Mary as an exemplar of compassion, humility, patience, peace, and charity.6 From a cultural perspective, devotion to Quan Am and Mary has been also strengthened by the indigenous Cult of the Mother Goddess interweaved with Vietnamese feminine cultural characteristics.7 Although some have mentioned cultural interactions between the Vietnamese indigenous Cult of the Mother Goddess and Buddhist and Catholic popular piety, little research has investigated the spiritual and ethical dimensions between the two traditions comprehensively. On the contrary, many works on Vietnamese Buddhism and Catholicism seemed to have overemphasized the differences between the two traditions.8 While acknowledging the differences is important, searching for common ground on spirituality and ethics would open the door for further comparative studies. Given the significantly shared characteristics between Marian devotion and worship of Quan Am, this article attempts (1) to present the common patterns in the way in which Vietnamese Buddhists and Catholics approach Mary and Quan Am; (2) to discuss the interactions between Vietnamese indigenous cult of Mother-Goddess (Ðạo Mẫu) and Marian devotion and worship of Quan Am, through which popular piety has strongly taken root, developed, and continued to thrive in the midst of cultural and religious challenges;9 and (3) to examine the spiritual and ethical domains through which personal and collective transformation manifests. The research hopes to shed light on religions in Vietnam and aims to offer a fresh view of Buddhism and Catholicism that has been distorted by religious and political ideologies.10 [End Page 191] communal devotion: buddhists and catholics In the Catholic Church, Marian devotion manifests in different forms: pilgrimage, patronage, personal prayers, and communal celebrations. All of the Catholic pilgrimage shrines in Vietnam were built in devotion to Mary. Hundreds of Catholic parishes chose Mary to be their patron.11 More important, every Vietnamese Catholic parish always presents at least a magnificent shrine or statue of Mary. These shrines are frequented by people of different ages. In addition, large pilgrimage locations, such as La Vang, Tra Kieu, and Binh Trieu, attract millions of people annually. Every year in mid-August, an estimated half million Vietnamese Catholics, including a majority of bishops, clergy, and religious men and women, gather to pray to Mary at the National Marian Shrine called La Vang in Quang Tri Province, a central province of Vietnam.12 Catholic pilgrimages to the Marian shrines in several places, such as Ðà Nẵng, Kontum, Daklak, Bến Tre, and Vinh Long, have also increased.13 When the Catholics gather at Marian shrines, local as well as national, they recite the rosary, sing praise songs to Mary, offer flowers and petitions to her, and hope for abundant blessings bestowed on their families and country. To Vietnamese Catholics, more significantly, Mary is not only the Mother of Christians, she is the Mother of the country of Vietnam. western influences and cultural roots Marian devotion in Vietnam has been significantly promoted and developed from the beginning of the Western missionary period in the seventeenth century.14 Various religious groups from Europe and North America, such as the Dominicans and Redemptorists, introduced Marian devotion to Vietnam.15 Also, according to some scholars, at the very beginning of his missionary effort, Alexander de Rhodes, a pioneering Jesuit missionary in Vietnam, had already incorporated Mariology in his...

Los emigrantes en las áreas mineras y las ciudades de Hispania: religión, identidades y difusión cultural

En el presente artículo analizamos los desplazamientos de cultos indígenas hispanos desde distintas áreas de la Península Ibérica hacia los principales lugares de inmigración en Hispania: las áreas mineras y las ciudades. Proponemos que estos grupos de emigrantes rendían culto en su nueva residencia a las deidades que veneraban en sus regiones de procedencia como un medio de preservar su cohesión social y su identidad cultural. La dureza de la vida laboral en las áreas mineras reforzaba la necesidad de fortalecer los lazos culturales.

Kaieteur: place of the pharmakos and deconstruction

The Fall of Kaieteur, iconic for Guyana, takes its name from an indigenous legend, assimilated by the influential poet, A.J. Seymour, to the Christian version of the pharmakos, the sacrificial victim. Harris exposes the structural ambivalence of the motif and its basis in Seymour’s suppression of an interiority ultimately derived from physical space. He submits the indigenous cult of kanaima to a similar spatialization of the collective unconscious in a landscape corresponding to the findings of recent anthropology. In The Age of the Rainmakers Kaieteur is the location for the reactive formations of political conflict and the writing resorts to “infinite rehearsal” in language to escape entrapment in the same ambivalences. This brings Harris close to the practice of différance and the deconstructive position on language and politics in Tel Quel, where Derrida first published “La pharmacie de Platon”, but whereas Derrida bases deconstruction purely on language, Harris bases his approach to language on physical space.

Untouchable Bodies of Knowledge in the Spirit Possession of Malabar

Abstract This article treats the liturgical narratives that bring on spirit possession in the Teyyam worship of northern Kerala for a deity named Poṭṭan, the apotheosis of an Untouchable who is celebrated as having openly contended with the great Śaṅkarācārya over the issue of caste. By tracing the history and stratigraphy of these liturgical materials from their later Sanskritized framing back into their earlier textual antecedents in Malayalam and Tamil, we find evidence for formalized bodies of knowledge among the lower castes which had fused indigenous cults of spirit possession with Tantric doctrines of embodied liberation to argue for the baselessness of caste discrimination.

La question du sanctuaire de Limassol-Komissariato : modalités de la présence phénicienne dans le royaume d'Amathonte

The material retrieved from the Cypro-Archaic sanctuary of Limassol-Komissariato gives important informations about the long-debated issue of Phoenician penetration in the Amathous kingdom. Notable Eastern influences do not define this place as a purely Phoenician sanctuary : some terracottas have affinities with Phoenician and Punic productions, as remarked by many scholars, but the zoomorphic figurines are isolated ; besides, most of the material, and especially the ceramics, are certainly of local manufacture. The evidence thus suggests an indigenous cult which incorporated Phoenician elements, well established in the city-capital. Since the publication of the Limassol-Komissariato sanctuary, thirty years ago, new discoveries in Limassol and its area show a strong Phoenician influence in local crafts but they do not give indisputable proof for a Phoenician presence in the Amathus kingdom.

Healing Practices among the Yezidi Sheikhs of Armenia

The Yezidis, speakers of a Kurdish dialect living mainly in northern Iraq, are distinguished from the (Muslim) Kurds and other neighboring communities by their religion, a syncretism of Islamic and Christian elements with local indigenous cults. They are at pains both to distance themselves from the Kurds and to keep their rituals secret from outsiders, having gone so far as not to adopt Arabic or any other writing system and to stigmatize literacy. This report of field research among the exilic Yezidi communities of Armenia and southern Russia sketches the relationship of their traditional healing practices with their social structure and describes both a sanctioned treatment by a sheikh of one of the clerical castes and the practice of a non-traditional, but tolerated, woman healer and fortune-teller.

Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage

Whether a pilgrimage crystallizes around a place, a visionary individual, or a text, it brings widely diverse individuals and their beliefs, doctrines, and expectations into contact with each other. One person's holy site is another person's profit center - and this mingling of the sacred and the profane is what makes pilgrimages and their destinations complex sites of exchange and conflict. Focusing on Christian pilgrimage to locales as far flung as Lourdes, Italy, Jerusalem, Sri Lanka, and Peru, this important collection assesses the qualities and power of pilgrimage shrines as sites for accommodating various, often competing, meanings and practices, both among pilgrims and between shrine custodians and devotees.Contributors discuss the highly organized shrine at Lourdes and also the shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo in Sangiovannesi, Italy, where conflicting interests among townspeople and pilgrims have crystallized around the life and the remains, respectively, of a holy man Padre Pio. Another contributor looks at the competing images of Jerusalem among pilgrims of various Christian faiths - Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Christian Zionist - who see the holy land as, respectively, the repository of treasured icons, the itinerary of Christ's recorded life, and a sacred site in itself.Others discuss the unique attributes of shrines outside the Christian heartland: in Sri Lanka, where Christianity as a minority religion is enclaved within the dominant Sinhalese Buddhist culture; and in Peru, where Catholic observances are interwoven with the practices of local indigenous cults. There is a major advance in understanding the complexity of pilgrimage, Contesting the Sacred that provides valuable insight into the process of exchange between human beings and the divine that gives pilgrimage its central rationale. John Eade's new introduction places the book's theoretical frame in the context of recent thinking and writing on pilgrimage and considers the impact of globalization and tourism on pilgrimage cults and sites.

The Social Context of Cult Practices in Pre-Roman Lucania

The period of the late fifth to early third century B. C. in the Italic hinterland of Magna Graecia is marked by a number of important economic, social, and political transformations which have now been archaeologically documented. Increased knowledge of settlements now allows us to place the cultic activity established at Lucanian sites within a clearer architectural and societal context. Three types of indigenous cult places exist. Two are extramural, serve large population groups, and developed in the second half of the fourth century B. C. The third type, the focus of this paper, is the ceremonial area with a cultic association found in major residential complexes within fifth- and fourth-century nucleated or fortified settlements and is to be seen in connection with a monumentalizing trend in domestic architecture. The best example of this type of cult place has been found at the western Lucanian site of Roccagloriosa, discussed here in detail. Relevant analogies are found with neighboring Italic sites and with similar but earlier developments in both Archaic Etruria and early Rome for which much better textual and archaeological documentation exists.

Deux fêtes de village en Corée

The Korean village as a basic sociological unit is held together by religious festivals (tongje) celebrated at regular, mostly annual, intervals. Two villages in the south-west of Korea are presented as typical examples. The first, Kuryong, is an agricultural community located at the foot of a mountain. The second village, Suri, is situated on an island off the west coast of the Korean peninsula. Its inhabitants live mostly on fishing and the gathering of seaweed. Both villages hold an annual festival at the beginning of the lunar year. The protective deity feasted in the agricultural village is at the same time the deity of a mountain east of the village — a feature not uncommon in Korea. The festival is conducted by six officiants who are male representatives of the community selected a few days prior to the ceremony. The central rite consists in the offering of incense, wine and food to the deity, accompanied by numerous prostrations and prayers for protection of the village. Ritual purity is strictly observed and women are excluded from the ceremony. The community participates only in a final reunion. A very similar ceremony is found in the village on the island. However, in Suri, the ceremony of offerings and prayer to the protective deity — residing on top of the island hill — is only one part, called sangdangje, of a larger festival. The other part, hadangje, takes place on the beach. Women play an active role, all villagers participate and a large part of the ceremony consists of improvisation and merry-making. The deity being feasted is the dragon king present in the form of a puppet. The villagers approach him with offerings of wine and money and the deity, through a spokesman, gives words of praise or admonition in an improvised dialogue with the fishermen. A strong sexual symbolism and much spontaneity characterize the festival in which no taboos of purity are observed. At the end, the dragon king is sent off into the sea in a small boat bearing impurities and misfortune away. Comparing these two village festivals, it appears that they belong to two entirely different types. The first, with its strong emphasis on ritual purity and fixed ritual procedure, is related to Confucian ancestor worship and was introduced in the villages by the educated elite. In contrast to this, the second festival seems to be much older and to have a popular and indigenous origin. Traces of similar festivals held in the same region during the first centuries A.D. can already be found in the San-kuo chih. What Christian Deschamps describes here for Korea is of great interest to historians of Chinese religion. The ceremony of sending off the Dragon King's boat, as practiced in the Suri village, resembles the Chinese Pestilence King Exorcism still practiced in Taiwan as well as in mainland China (see Kenneth Dean's report in this issue of the Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie, p. 203). The tension between indigenous cults and the Confucian administrators who try to replace these festivals with their official rites is a phenomenon well known throughout Chinese history. Jean Lévi's study (in this issue, p. 81) throws new light on these perennial efforts of the Chinese government to "civilise" local customs.

<i>P'yŏnnyŏn T'ongnok</i>: The Foundation Legend of the Koryŏ State

¦Articles P 'yònnyòn T'ongnok: The Foundation Legend of the Koryö State MICHAEL C. ROGERS In Korea as in China, the overthrow of one dynasty and its replacement by another were events of far-reaching significance that stimulated the imaginations of people of all classes, generating a profusion of stories about what had happened and why. The climate of magicomoralistic determinism was such that a central theme of these stories was the build-up of virtue and power in the persons of the dynastic founder's ancestors. For without the latter's continuing spiritual support the founder (for all the heroics attributed to him personally) could never have succeeded in the "great undertaking." Officials of the fledgling dynasty had their own reasons for accepting that kind of material: it provided grist for the legitimation mill. Popular values and beliefs were built into the stories that were current among the common people; with appropriate editing and embellishment they could be turned to good account in the essential undertaking of convincing the people that their new rulers were paragons of wisdom and virtue who enjoyed heaven's favor and that of the myriad local deities. Such legends formed the substance of officially sponsored ritual, the regular performance of which was entrusted to local magistrates. Koryö's codification of ritual was heavily influenced by Chinese models; Research for this article was completed during sabbatical leave from die University of California, Berkeley, assisted by a grant from the university's Humanities Research Fellowship Program. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Abbreviations used in the notes are listed alphabetically with their full citations before the bibliography, following this article. References to bibliographic listing are by name and year of publication. 4 Journal ofKorean Studies indeed by the standard of "self-integrity" (chuch'e) KoryS represents a step backward from Silla.1 Official sanction apart, however, it is evident that local spirit cults, particularly those associated with mountains , were amalgamated with Buddhist and Taoist belief and practice and had a great vogue, especially in the countryside. The educated shared in large measure the popular belief in spirits, though their attitude was characterized by a curious ambivalence that persisted into the Yi period.2 Like several of the Chinese dynastic histories, the official history of Koryo (KoryìS-sa [KRS] ) begins with a chapter on the careers of the predynastic ancestors. This genealogy of Koryo {KoryÒ" segye [KRSG] ) begins with a brief notice that in 919 the founder Wang KOn (T'aejo) honored three generations of his ancestors with posthumous titles; the Veritable Records of T'aejo (Taejo sillok) are given as authority for this information, which appears also in T'aejo's annals. The genealogy in question is represented by the diagram at the top of the following page. Immediately following this spare entry and comprising the great bulk of the genealogy chapter is an extended quotation from the PyiSnnyiin t'ongnok (PNTN), a work attributed to a man named Kim Kwanui, who was active during the reign of Uijong. Here we find 1.In SUIa the indigenous mountain-and-river sacrifices were divided, in the Chinese manner, into "great," "middle," and "small" (SGSG, k. 92: Yi/Sagi, p. 314, trans., p. 498). KoryS also had a threefold division of sacrifices, but with a significant difference: all the indigenous cults were placed in the small category (KRS, k. 63); the other two categories (great: KRS, k. 59, 60, 61; middle: KRS 62) consist of rituals borrowed from China (see Han U'giïn 1976, pp. 17Of.). The compilers of the KRS chapters on rites depended heavily on the ritual compendium ascribed to Ch'oe Uniii, who did his work by order of Uijong (see n. 25 below). 2.The tension between belief in spirits or their rejection is illustrated by the career of Ham Yuil (1106-85), who served under Injong, Uijong, and Myongjong (biog.: KRS, k. 99. 26a-28b). As intendant of bridges and roads under Uijong, he made the expulsion of shamans and the destruction of shrines his main concern. Unfortunately his iconoclastic efforts usually elicited a spirit response that only served to strengthen both popular and royal support for various cults; his...

Ambiguous Sanctuaries and Bektashi Propaganda

The stratification of cults at famous sanctuaries of the ancient world, reflected for the most part in their local mythology, has long been interpreted as evidence of the invasion of older by newer gods and religious systems. A religion carried by a conquering race or by a missionary priesthood to alien lands superimposes itself, by force or persuasion, on an indigenous cult: the process is expressed in mythological terms under the figure of a personal combat between the rival gods or of the ‘reception’ of the new god by the old. Eventually either one god or the other succumbs and disappears or is relegated to an inferior position; or, again, the two may be more or less completely identified and fused.Of the religions of antiquity it is seldom possible to do more than conjecture by what methods and processes these transitions were actually carried out. The paper which follows is an attempt to examine some phenomena of the superimposition of cult in the case of a modern Mahommedan sect—the Bektashi—acting on the sanctuaries of the mixed populations of Turkey and in particular on Christian saint-cults. So far as we can see, where Bektashism has gained ground at the expense of Christianity this has been accomplished without violence, either by processes analogous to that known to the ancient world as the ‘reception’ of the new god by the old, or simply by the identification of the two personalities.

The Problem of the Bacchae

In two recent numbers of the Classical Review two most interesting notes have appeared, the first by Dr. Verrall under the same title as that of the present paper, and the second a notice of the second volume of Rohde's Psyche by Miss Harrison. Dr. Rohde in his work and both Dr. Verrall and Miss Harrison in these notes are led to the conclusion, if they do not assume the fact as an axiom, that the worship of Dionysus is not an indigenous cult in Greece but came in from Thrace and the north. It is a fact which at first sight appears incontestable: the mythology of nearly every state in Greece has the tale of the incoming of the god from abroad. Thebes and Athens, Argos and Orchomenos, Corinth and Brasiae—all have their own stories of his advent. The very name Dionysus has a foreign, probably a Phrygian, derivation. Thus it is no wonder that modern mythologists almost without exception have adopted the view of the ancients themselves that the worship is one imported into Greece.But, though it is evident that much of the later cult is undoubtedly not indigenous, there does yet seem to be a groundwork of a real old folk religion at the bottom of all these Phrygian and Thracian mysteries of later times. It would seem to be an almost unscientific method, if I may use the term without offence, on the strength of certain similarities in customs and cults between the deities of two different countries, to conclude that therefore the two are identical.