Etymology And Magic Yaskas Nirukta Flatos Cratylus And Riddle Of Semanticetymologies

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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Johannes Bronkhorst
Etwnology and Magic
189
and said it was had science; Malinawski appreciated the force of the second cquation and said that magic was constituted of speech acts in a performative and persuasive mode, and that therefore they were pragmatically reasonable.... The now puzzling duality of magic will disappear only when we succeed in embeddling magic in a more ample theory of human life in which the path of ritual action is seen as an indispensable mode for man anywhere and everywhere of relating to and participating in the life of the world
Tambiah's recognition of the other side of magic would seem to be a major step forward with regard to his own earlier studies (e.g., Tambiah 1968, 1973) and those of others. Tambiah develops this idea further by distinguishing two 'orientations to the world', which he calls participation and causality. He then explains (p. 108): "Although 'causation and participation may seem different or contrastive orientations to the world, the analyst must maintain that both are projected on the experiential and symbolizing capacities of the same sensory modalities of man — the modalities of touch, taste, hearing, seeing.... If participation emphasizes sensory and affective communication and the language of emotions, causality stresses the rationality of instrumental action and the language of cognition. But these are ideal type exag
gerations, and neither can exclude the devices of the other." In other words, at least some of the practitioners of magic do not totally exclude the idea that magic has a causal effect on the intended person or object.
The idea of multiple orientations to the world is plausible, and Tambiah presents a number of arguments which support it. This does not change the fact that his position remains in some respects very close to the one of Tylor and Frazer. These scholars had claimed that magic made the mistake of taking ideal connections for real connections. Tambiah rather speaks of an orientation or ordering of reality, in which people believe in the causal efficacy of communicative acts. In both cases there is a mistake regarding objective reality. And in both cases this mistake finds its origin in the subjective realm.4 It appears, then, that Tambiah's latest attempt, in spite of its obvious
62 See, e.g., Kilani, 1989: 126: "La magie est un langage symbolique, un mode de communication sociale.... L'efficacité d'un acic magique consiste dans le fait de dire des choses sur l'individuc un groupe d'individus qui sont en train d'accomplir une action donnée. La magic a une efficacité sociale, elle peut dans certains cas se transformer en moyen de mobilisation sociale. Similarly Kilani, 1983: passim. Waardenburg, on the other hand, recognizes the ohjective connections that are supposed to underlie magical acts; See Waardenburg, 1986: 196: "Wesentlich bei diesen Völkern ist eine Grundanschauung von Zusammenhangen, die es zwischen den Dingen gibt." (The Dutch version of this book (1990: 203) speaks of "verbanden en samenhangen... die wij in het Westen niet kennen" ("relations and connections which we in the West do not know')) H.E. Brekle, speaking from the point of view of 'popular linguistics', observes (1990: 42): "Ce qui est essentiel pour toutes sortes d'activités magiques à l'aide de moyens langagiers, c'est la foi ou la croyance dans les effets produits par la seule énonciation de certains mots ou de certaines formules. Cela implique que ces croyants' (exécuteurs et victimes') prennent pour assure qu'il existe des rapports nécessaires et causaux, voire des rapports d'identité, entre le can d'une chose et la chose elle-même, ou l'énonciation d'une formule et l'état de choses évoqué par cette formule."
In spite of claims to the contrary, Freedberg would seem to admit the same in the following passage (Freedberg, 1989: 276; the use of 'elide' and 'elision in this passage does not appear to have any of the meanings enumerated in the Webster's and the New Shorter Oxford English dictionaries: the index states under 'Elision of image and prototype': "See also Fusion of image and prototype" (p. 524): "When we see the resembling image, we elide it with the living prototype it represents... This tendency to clision does not happen by some kind of magical process. It is part of cognition and it lies at the root of the helict in the efficy of magical images. Aware of the supervening tendency to abstract and dillerentiate, makers of clumatory or magical images encourage the clision, and set out to preempt the move to differentiation."
This, of course, opens the way to psychological explanations, such as the one ollered by C.R. Halipike (1979: +29), which draws on the work of Page: "Ethnographic literature is replete with examples of the way in which primitives treat mental and bodily conditions and processes, properties and qualities of physical objects, and physical processes, as well as conditions of society such as ill luck, sin, and general ill health, as entities which can be transmitted from man to nature, from one natural object to another, and from natural objects to man, in an enormous variety of ways. The true significance of this cognitive phenomenon is not so much that it is a case of Frazer's homeopathic magic, of like producing like. as of the pre-operatory propensity to isolate particular phenomena and treat them as bounded entities which can he klached from their physical context with solute properties and an inner dynamism of their own. The reification of p ens in particular is a notable example of this proclivity of mind..For an attempt to provide an evolutionary explanation