Abstract The object discussed in this contribution is a metal helmet in several parts placed on its side on a rattan mat. This helmet was never intended for battle; it was made for ceremonial purposes, specifically for the adornment of a god statue. The object belongs to a local community of worshippers in Jiangxi Province, China, who celebrated the festivals of a local pantheon of gods, including Kang Wang. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) the object was “archived”: hidden away from public view for safekeeping. Including this helmet amongst our historical sources allows us to understand knowledge of materials, high-level craftsmanship, and local participation in religious worship. It also reveals the political nous and foresight required to hide the object in the face of persecution. The villagers who hid the object engaged with archivality, even if that term was not part of the local linguistic repertoire.

ABSTRACT Muslim Jogis constitute a unique community that straddles the boundaries of Islam, Hinduism, and the Nath Yogi (Jogi) order dwelling at the margins of religion, sect, and caste. By self-definition they identify as a caste of Yogis (vernacular term, Jogis), followers of god Shiva in belief, and Muslims in religious identity. While located at the cusp of cultural and religious zones of Hinduism and Islam, they traditionally performed the roles of healers, bards, ritual specialists, and folklorists in north Indian village society catering to a variety of villagers’ needs, including the ability to cure various diseases with their yogic skills. This article examines the meaning and image of the Muslim Jogi to understand a dynamic interplay between various religious traditions, belief systems, and popular religious practices complicating and challenging the imaginary of Jogis (Yogis) as quintessentially a Hindu idea. It shows a long tradition of Muslim Jogis in north Indian village society who used their yogic skills in everyday life, arguing that lived religious practices and the yogic knowledge of the Muslim Jogis, which drew on yogic culture, popular magico-Tantric beliefs, and Islam, are representative of shared and localized forms of Tantric and yogic traditions.

This essay examines the everyday life and death of residents in urban Hanoi during the fourth wave of the pandemic in the summer of 2021. The article considers how city dwellers developed manifold creative strategies to deal with government requirements and argue that part of the population developed tactics of survival to circumvent prescribed rules in coping with the pandemic. But it was not just the living who were affected by the virus. The dead are believed to live on in the afterlife, and hence the essay also illustrates popular religious practices performed to protect ancestors from infection. Since customary respect for the deceased involves burning paper votive replicas, new items in the form of face masks and vaccine kits began circulating online. This not only sheds light on people’s efforts to ensure that ancestors feel safe in the hereafter but shows how ritual artifacts and practices reflect and refract political, economic, and health concerns to bridge life and death.

Background: This article examines interaction between Buddhism and South Asian folklore exploring the influences of Buddhist traditions over culture, traditions, beliefs and practices of the local people specifically in northern India since the origin of Buddhism in the region. Objective: The objective of the paper is to focus the impacts of the Buddhist principles in various culture, custom and folklore in the South Asian region as the Dhamma gets expanded across South Asia and beyond. Methodology: Interdisciplinary methodology is employed while going through the research work, drawing from historical, textual, ethnographic, and sociological approaches to analyze the relationships between Buddhism, folklore, and contemporary South Asian society. Result: The paper depicts how the states were formed adopting the values of the Dhamma and how it brought a cultural integration becoming a popular religious practice in the region. There were people who preferred monastic life with Spiritual Practices and Meditations under the guidance of core Buddhist Philosophy whereas there were others, the householders, who were much more influenced by Buddhist rituals and local folklore. The role of Buddhist Monks and Nuns in facilitating the laities with ritual practices and Buddhist teachings is highlighted in the article. The article reflects the role of monastic folklorists in transforming folk traditions into an important part of Buddhist Practices by mixing up local deities, spirits and rituals into Buddhist cosmology. Jatakas and Avadanas stories of the Buddha's past lives are highlighted in the paper as the key sources of Teaching Buddhist ethics and doctrines to the common people. Conclusion: The paper investigates how Buddhism, in South Asia, got flourished with its modest engagement with various cultures and traditions in the region with significant influences over the folklore of the contemporary societies

For Venezuelans, the figure of Saint Malandro (delinquent or thug) embodies a particular relationship to violence that blends the imaginary of the delinquent from the barrios (slums or favelas) with popular religious practices. When spread through social media, this imaginary hybridises both digital and spiritual practices, notably in the form of memes. This article explores the post-digital implications of such memes by analyzing their socio-technical dynamics as a mode of mediating with violence. In doing so, we seek to advance the understanding of the complex cultural relationship that Venezuelans have with violence. We also aim to inquire to what extent the cultural and religious specificities of these images call for the articulation of certain aspects of memes as an anthropological concept (memetics) with those of memes as digital objects.

Science in a Hungarian Minority Environment—From the Point of View of Ethnography The study attempts to outline the main aspects of ethnographic research on the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and the content of the papers published during the quarter of a century of the Fórum Társadalomtudományi Szemle [Forum Social Sciences Review], and to present the results of the research on national minority culture. In conclusion, the ethnographic and cultural anthropological publications of the Forum Social Sciences Review have in many respects broadened our knowledge of the culture of the Hungarian minority. In three respects, a definitely richer and more nuanced picture emerges on the basis of the papers in the various sections: 1. First and foremost, through the theoretical and methodological aspects (especially European ethnology) of research on the Hungarian minority. As a result, we gain a more nuanced picture of interethnic relations, the interrelationships of social stratification (occupation, age, gender, etc.), in addition to the linguistic and religious determinants of ethnic identity. 2. The principle and practice of regionality is applied to the description of territorial, local and settlement examples, and, in many areas, it brings to the surface new knowledge in the field of material-factual education of Hungarian ethnic culture and folklore, and folk customs in a broader sense. (Perhaps the research of folk music and folk dance could have been given more space.) 3. Special mention should be made of the publications dealing with sacral ethnography and popular religious practice, both in terms of quantity and new approaches to analysis. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to assume that this has also played a part in the creation of the internationally esteemed database of sacral relics (Sacral Relics Archive; Sacral Relics Bibliography; Sacral Relics Resources) by the Centre for European Ethnology of the Forum Minority Research Institute. All in all, the Forum Social Sciences Review is an integral trace and document of the cultural history of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and of (all) Hungarians, which will hopefully continue to expand.

In a changing society, such as the current one, with a tendency to eliminate religious symbols from social life, it is surprising to continue to find indicators of traditional religiosity in rural societies. This article refers to a popular religious practice linked to simple but highly expressive religious buildings located in the Polaciones Valley in Cantabria. These are the humilladeros. An ethnographic investigation is presented, with a methodology typical of Social Anthropology, based on field work and the use of ethnographic techniques, such as observation and interviews with key informants.

Popular religion in China has been very active ever since the late 1970s, with the restoration of temples and statues, a rising numbers of believers, and people’s increasing enthusiasm for religious activities. Folklore, rituals and legends are also ‘borrowed’ to reinvent tradition to fit in the strand of intangible cultural heritage. Therefore, seemingly reviving religions are also going through the process of de-religionization. Based on my ethnographic work in a Chinese county, I attempted to understand religion’s role in constructing local knowledge and how religious practices are affected by urbanization as well as globalization. The revival of institutional religions like Buddhism and Protestantism comes at the cost of popular religion or popular religious practices. Local deities lost the battle of competing with regional deities, which led to the simplification of local religious knowledge, a decrease in the diversity of deities and the tendency of convergence in terms of deities’ functions and believers’ appeals. A once complicated celestial hierarchy mirroring the imperial dynasty has been replaced by a more universal understanding of either bodhi in Buddhism or salvation in Protestantism. Local knowledge is reinterpreted by these religious teachings in the name of a higher cause of morality.

The cultural renaissance in 20th-century India has fostered an aesthetic integration of contemplative mysticism with popular religious practices, influencing various artistic and theological movements. This paper examines Christian artist Joy Elamkunnapuzha’s use of Indian classical and mythical elements in his religious artworks, particularly in two North Indian churches. These intercultural icons, which incorporate symbols from Hindu traditions like mandalas and mudras, have been central to the worship practices of local Catholic communities for over three decades. Through ritual ethnography, the study reveals how these visual representations mediate ritual affectivity and communal imagination, impacting identity formation and spiritual engagement in a multi-religious context. Respondents—including worshippers, ministers, and religious students—attest to the transformative impact of these images, as they negotiate between Christian metaphors and Hindu aesthetic traditions. The research is grounded in practical theology, liturgical theology, and ritual studies, contributing to the works of Indian Christian cultural activists like Jyoti Sahi. By exploring the creative dynamics of visual approach, visual appeal, and visual affinity within worship spaces, the study elucidates the complex processes of meaning making through symbolic mediation in interreligious environments.

Abstract This paper uses textual analysis of an audio note that circulated on WhatsApp in 2018 presenting the founder of a rapidly growing predominantly women-only Zimbabwean prayer group. The audio note’s content is taken as an emergent ethnography exposing emic views of women’s lived realities. The analysis uses notions of ‘chronicity’, (Vigh 2008, 10–15) and ‘women’s suffering’ (Cole 2012, 384–6) to ground the audio note’s content in Zimbabwe’s prolonged socioeconomic and political crises. Chronic crises produce unique social actions (Vigh 2008), such as popular religious practices and theologies (Miller-McLemore 2018). The group prefers do-it-yourself (DIY) prayers which demand constant environmental and self-assessment, and comparing with peers. The group’s construction of women’s suffering as anathema to ideal Pentecostal personhoods discussed in four themes discernible from the audio note is revealing (Harnisch 2000). Techniques of DIY prayers echo the feminist notion that ‘the personal is political’. Thus, the group potentially contributes to gender transformation.

In contemporary Nigeria, the proliferation of prophetic claims has profoundly influenced popular religious practices across all societal strata. This phenomenon engages individuals from various backgrounds as they seek divine insights and prophecies from spiritual leaders. This study focuses on Ola Rotimi's play The Gods Are Not to Blame to critically examine the role of prophecy within African cultural beliefs. While existing scholarship on Rotimi's work often analyzes themes of fate, tragedy, and the allocation of blame within the play among others, scant attention has been paid to the fundamental role of prophecy itself as the root cause of the play’s tragic events. This research aims to conduct a deconstructive reading of the play, scrutinizing how the characters' pursuit of foreknowledge and attempts to alter their fates paradoxically precipitate their destinies. The method involves a detailed textual analysis of the play, focusing on key dialogues and actions that highlight the characters' motivations and the unfolding of events. The findings reveal two key instances: first, Baba Fakunle’s prophecy, which foretells disaster for Odewale’s family, leads his parents to attempt to kill him to prevent the predicted calamity. Ironically, this attempt to alter the future sets in motion the very disaster they sought to avoid. Secondly, an elder’s parable causes Odewale to discover the prophecy's truth. In trying to understand and avoid his destiny, Odewale discovers that his actions to prevent it end up fulfilling it. Both instances suggest that the desire to know and change the future is fraught with peril, often precipitating the very outcomes one seeks to avoid. The conclusion emphasizes the prudence of embracing the uncertainty of the future, as attempting to alter it can lead to unintended and often tragic consequences.

Abstract: Through researching the provenance of a Buddhist manuscript written in the Pali and Thai languages currently held at Rollins, this article seeks to answer the question of how a religious document created in Thailand ended up in a liberal arts college library in America. Regarded as an act of devotion by many Buddhist followers in Southeast Asia, the use of folding manuscripts (samut khoi) has been observed for centuries. The folding manuscripts served as handbooks and chanting manuals for Buddhist monks, who often recited in religious ceremonies while paying tributes to the deceased, with the hope of reincarnation in a heavenly realm. Acquired by Henry Harkness while serving in the British colonial forces in Asia in the early nineteenth century and later donated by Howard Kelly in 1932 to support Professor Edwin Grover's course, The History of Books, at Rollins College, the large leporello manuscript contains five Pali texts in Khom script and one Thai text in Khom Thai script. Both scripts are variations of ancient Khmer script and have been extensively used in Thailand. The long journey of this samut khoi from Thailand to America not only shows the growth of Buddhism and the popular religious practice in Southeast Asia, but also reflects the colonial history in Asia and the rise of "Oriental Studies" in the West. By focusing on the background of the Pali- and Thai-language manuscript and through careful examinations of both Henry Harkness and Howard Kelly's lives, this article also sheds light on the practice of manuscript collection in the Western tradition and the act of philanthropy in America.

The Holy Islamic Tomb at Lingshan Mountain in Quanzhou, China, is believed to be the final resting place of two of the Prophet Muhammad’s disciples who were dispatched as missionaries in the early seventh century. While prior scholarship has centred on verifying the tradition’s chronology, this article foregrounds the role of environmental actors in the tomb site’s ascent to prominence. I argue that the holy tomb (shengmu) tradition did not emerge until the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, so its invention should be analysed alongside concurrent climate hazards that plagued late Ming China (1368–1644). Uncommon episodes of snowfall, flooding, drought, and associated famines drove Quanzhou’s local communities towards popular religious practices. Muslim visitation practices in Quanzhou, which experienced a restrained period following the decline of Mongol rule, re-emerged into universal consciousness and became integral to the city’s spiritual landscape by aligning with Chinese allegorical narratives. Through this reinvented tradition, the Holy Islamic Tomb was characterized as a site blessed by the heavens during times of cosmic disturbances. Instead of passive assimilation, through which religious identities may be diluted, the active participation of Quanzhou Muslims in local practices empowered them to elevate and honour Islamic traditions within a predominantly non-Muslim society.

The presented text focuses on the most important works from the early period of Polish writer Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina’s literary career, in particular, works written before the Second World War. The article discusses the author’s early novels, selected short stories, and short stage performances. The connecting element of the presented analysis is the presence of the overarching religious and religious-cultural motifs recurring throughout Ewa Szelburg-Zarembina’s texts. Subsequent chapters of this article are dedicated to these motifs, particularly forms of traditional Polish Marian devotion, images of Christian symbolism, literary descriptions of popular religious practices, and motifs of folk tradition in the form of magic, superstitions, and old wives’ tales.

Reviewed by: The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937 by Skye Doney Jonathan Sperber The Persistence of the Sacred: German Catholic Pilgrimage, 1832–1937. By Skye Doney. [German and European Studies.] (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2022. Pp. xxii, 345. $85.00. ISBN 978-1-4875-4310-5.) Skye Doney's book is a study of two major pilgrimages in western Germany during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the septennial pilgrimage to the relics of the Aachen Cathedral and, especially, the pilgrimages to the Holy Coat of Trier, occurring at irregular intervals. Based on extensive unpublished material in ecclesiastical archives, the contemporary periodical press, the many pamphlets, fliers, memorial images, medallions, and other ephemeral forms of commemoration, and a thorough evaluation of the anthropological and historical literature on popular religious practice, the book contrasts official and expressly stated opinions of the church hierarchy and more bourgeois and educated Catholics on the one hand, and the not explicitly articulated aspirations of the hundreds of thousands or even millions of less educated and lower-middle or lower-class pilgrims on the other. The upshot is an eminently readable and very fruitful study, whose main premises might require some additional consideration. Doney outlines the development of a more bureaucratic organization of the pilgrimages—complete with pre-registration, entry tickets, assigned viewing times, and even medical questionnaires to fill out, in order to evaluate claims of miraculous healing. Proposals for pilgrimage songs or for memorial images and medallions required approval of the cathedral chapter, whose canons applied strict aesthetic criteria. Coterminous with this organizational process was the growth of a more empirical attitude toward the sacred. Positivist historical investigation would demonstrate the authenticity of the relics; pilgrims' claims of being cured of disease would no longer be accepted at face value but would require medical confirmation. The author is critical of this whole line of intellectual development, seeing it as a concession to Protestant and rationalist critics of Catholic piety and the sexist imposition of the evaluation of male clergy and physicians on the claims of miraculous healing by female pilgrims—although he does show that there was a male minority of claimants to the miraculous as well. Doney contrasts these changing opinions with the attitudes of the pilgrims, who yearned for the physical presence of the sacred in their lives. They aspired to touch the relics, to touch objects which had touched the relics, or, at the very least to take home a picture or medallion with an image of a relic. He argues that these attitudes persisted, largely unchanging, spontaneously expressed, and unprepared, over the entire period his book covers. This idea of a naïve, spontaneous, and unchanging popular piety is the weakest point of the book, largely because the author does not investigate any potential influences on it. He has nothing to say about the impact of ecclesiastically sponsored devotions—the two great nineteenth-century ones, to the Virgin and to the Sacred [End Page 414] Heart, and the early twentieth-century Christ the King devotions. (One of the officially disapproved proposals for a pilgrimage song does seem to work from Christ the King devotions.) Widely publicized experiences of other pilgrimage sites, especially Lourdes, are missing from his argument, although his study of potential pilgrims' correspondence with the pilgrimage organizers contains many mentions of Lourdes. Changes in the prevalence of disease, attitudes toward illness, or in the practice of medicine, as well as the increasing familiarity of Germans with medical treatment and the medical profession, as a result of the growth of the social insurance system, do not enter his discussions of claims to miraculous healing. Without any consideration of these developments, the assertion of an autonomous, persisting popular piety, in contrast to a changing clerically sponsored one, remains unproven. Jonathan Sperber University of Missouri Jonathan Sperber University of Missouri Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press

This article inquires into the effects of heritagisation on popular religious practices in Guangdong Province, People’s Republic of China. With the establishment of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) inventory system in China, numerous popular religious practices, such as procession of local deities, ancestor worship, temple festivals, exorcisms, divination, and spirit mediumship, are free of the stigma of “feudal superstition” and are now recognised as ICH. Based on the fieldwork conducted in the prefecture city of Zhanjiang (Guangdong Province, China) on the local festival tradition of Nianli, I examine how local communities respond to the Party-state’s efforts to safeguard ICH through two processes: the commodification and the transmission of ritual practice. How does the heritage-making process affect the commodification of ritual practice? And what impact has the participation of a plurality of new actors in ICH transmission had on the methods of transmission of local ritual knowledge?

This paper analyzes four fictional works by Park Wansuh (1931–2011) that thematize the issue of son preference and sex-selective abortion against the background of the recent decriminalization of abortion. Prior to 2021, although abortion was illegal in Korea it was widely practiced, providing the environment in which sex-selective abortion could also be accessed. However, in arguing for women's reproductive rights, feminists have largely relied on Western discourse without considering the implications of this local practice that allowed women the choice without the legal rights. As shown in Park's works, in reality, both abortion and sex-selective abortion served the modernization of the patrilineal Confucian family as it faced the normativization of the monogamous relationship. In penalizing unmarried pregnant women and sonless married women, the popular religious practice of Confucian patriarchy overrode the illegality of abortion and made it culturally acceptable. Against this practice, and also against feminist discourse, Park's works argue for women's right to choose to become mothers regardless of marital status or sex of the fetus. Park's argument is all the more informative for local practice as it does not rely on the Christian narrative of life but on the virtuous motherhood of Confucian practice and on her relationship with her mother-in-law, who was not Christian but whose death eventually led Park to becoming a Catholic.

Among the popular religious practices in Islamic society that are of concern to scholars are about life cycle ceremonies and pilgrimages to the graves of figures believed to be the guardians of Allah to obtain blessings. Many popular religious practices in Islamic society that have been carried out in popular religious practices are quite diverse, including local Islam as opposed to universal Islam, practical Islam as opposed to textual Islam, popular Islam versus ulama Islam, symbolic Islam versus normative Islam, popular Islam opposed to official Islam, small tradition versus big tradition, real Islam versus normative Islam. Therefore, this will examine one of the diversity of death traditions in Indonesia, especially those carried out by Nahdiyin residents. Various events and traditions are sometimes associated with the reading of Surah Yasin in it so that this surah has become a staple meal at religious events. The researcher focuses on the relationship that exists between the religious rituals held and the reading of Surah Yasin in it. The values ​​of the Koran that live in this tradition include, first, that people place the Koran as a holy book, so that reading the chosen letter of the Koran in an activity is a form of reviving the Koran in everyday life. Second, the reading of selected surahs of the Qur'an serves as a guard from various kinds of disturbances. Third, reading the chosen letter of the Koran is able to reduce the fears that will occur in the fetus it contains. The conclusion of this study is that the tradition of memitu is understood as gratitude which perceives the values ​​of the Qur'an as a source of holiness, protection and peace.
 Keywords: Al-Qur'an, Rites of death, Islam

The identification of Tal al-Jazar in Abu Shusha as the site of ancient Gezer by Clermont-Ganneau in 1874 was accompanied by one of the first colonial (in this case German) settlements in Palestine.With the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF), Gezer became an important base for the use of biblical archaeology in interpreting the history of ancient Palestine.This interpretation circumvented the extensive Roman-Byzantine, early Islamic, and Crusader periods in the Ramla-Jaffa area.In this essay, Tamari discusses the subaltern element in Gezer's relationship to the village of Abu Shusha.The village was the source of hired labor for the successive archaeological excavations prior to 1948.For the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the local villagers of Abu Shusha became the source for the "scientific" reconstruction of the Palestinian peasant as residual biblical figures (Macalister).This disparity becomes obvious when the Gezer site is examined in terms of popular religious practices in Abu Shusha.An important ethnographic feature of this relationship between the village and its archaeology is the identification of its local holy figures (awliya') as the living nodes of "scouting martyrs" (tala'i' alkashshafa) who protected village lands from encroaching enemies.Since Tal al-Jazar was a major arena for Islamic-Crusader encounters in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, these subaltern features of popular religion have been preserved in the village collective memory.

Homa, a fire ritual of Vedic origin, is a popular religious practice adapted from Hinduism to Esoteric Buddhism. Homa, seen in meditation and yoga practices in Tibetan Buddhism, is a ritual that aims to reach wisdom and enlightenment, which is represented in Buddhist Tantras in particular, Agni, the god of fire. The homa ritual is also known as a performance that involves the building of a fire at an altar and the burning of offerings over it. Predominantly in Tibetan Buddhism, the practice of homa, visualized with a maṇḍala, takes place under the guidance of masters of teaching called Guru or Ācārya. In the practice of homa, offerings thrown into the fire symbolically mean removing spiritual barriers. The practice of homa, which usually has functions such as protection, prolonging life, destroying evil and evil beings, is a ritual of purification and renewal. This ritual is a popular practice in all Buddhist regions of Central Asia, not just the Indian and Tibetan region. In this respect, the present study deals with the narratives of the fire ritual among the Uyghurs, who adopted Tibetan Buddhism in the Old Turkish religious life. This practice, which is seen with the term hom(a) ~ hoom in Old Uyghur, is also seen in written materials, especially in Buddhist Uyghurs, where ritual-based narratives are abundant.