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Book Review
The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite Of Worship. By C. Humphrey and J. Laidlaw. xiii + 293 pp., figs. 4 + 11 plates, with glossary and index. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994. ISBN 0-1982747-7 (Pbk.)
In a radical shift from the metatheories of ritual by such scholars as Van Gennep, Turner and Levi-Strauss, this latest contribution by Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw breaks from the closure presented in traditional anthropology. It attempts to shatter the prevalent consensus of ritual action as an all-explanatory hidden code of communication begging to be deciphered. Reverberating with echoes of Frits Staal and Catherine Bell, the work through anecdotal documentation shows that rituals are intrinsically "meaningless," and to decode them as a single, unchanging, universal structure of communication between performer and performer, or performer and audience, falls to interpretative twists and spirals imposed by the theorizing observer.
Humphrey and Laidlaw question the "meaning" of ritual performance in the Jaina religious tradition, and question the very nature of ritual itself. Citing the ashta prakari puja performed in the Dadabari Temple as an example, the coauthors reinforce their primary question when it was noted that many of their informants made "offerings" (they were sensitive to the shortcomings of this word) to the Jina murti (idol), and yet, were fully cognizant that the Jinas, as perfected beings, transcend the mundane cosmos. More importantly, several of the informants view the performance of puja, particularly external actions, as irrelevant to the transformation of the soul.
So where does this leave ritual performance? Humphrey and Laidlaw note that the informants who perform puja bring with them a variety of meanings and intention to their action.
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