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Jinamañjari, Volume 19, No.1, April 1999
BOOK REVIEWS
Absent Lord: Ascetics and Kings in Jain Ritual Culture. Lawrence A. Babb. New Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. 1996. Pp. xi + 244, with glossary and index. ISBN 0-520-203240-0 (Softbound)
In his latest contribution Lawrence Babb creatively ruptures the bubble of analytic structuralism (Bell, Ritual Theory, 1992:219) and imaginatively illustrates how components of the new ethnography can assist his readers to grasp the subtle complexities contained within the "ritual theatre” of the Mūrtipūjak Jaina communities of Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Although this methodological approach to ritual might appear to be a stretch for some, he comes by it honestly and makes an excellent case -- by paraphrasing Milton Singer. According to Babb, there is, however, a notable difference between the "theatre of entertainment" and the "theatre of ritual." . That is, the players are largely their own audience, and their roles and performance are reliant on interactive discourse.
Babb raises two fundamential questions: Who are the performers? And what are their roles in the dramaturgy of their ritual theatre? Human performers are the obvious answer. Babb recognises in chapter 1, it is not just living beings who perform in ritual: objects of worship, but also play an important role. As he states, the dynamics operating within the püjās. are not just a matter of interaction between the lay-community and the living sādhus and sādhvis.. There is also ritual interaction between the living cast of characters and non-living other such as the Tirthankaras (as both liberated soul -- the ascetic ideal - - and mūrti as axis muni of the community) and the Dādāgurus (the icons of the magical monks of antiquity).
According to Babb the worship of the Tirthankaras presents a significant existential problem for those acting within the ritual performance. Unlike the Hindu pūjā in which the worshiper anticipates the recovery of offerings that have been transformed by a divine receiver, the Tirthankaras are fully liberated beings who are no longer present cosmologically. He is quick to anticipate the obvious question: With the mūrti being both a non-living and non-present entity, what posible meaning and expectation lies behind such rituals as the snātra pājā (bathing of the mūrti) or the aștprakāri pājā (eight-fold worship)? He
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