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From Aristocrats to Primitives: an Interview with Gananath Obeyesekere

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From Aristocrats to Primitives: an Interview with Gananath Obeyesekere IIAS | P.O. Box 9515 | 2300 RA Leiden | The Netherlands | T +31-71-527 2227 | F +31-71-527 4162 | [email protected] | www.iias.nl Website: www.IIAS.nl (fragment) <Theme: (1995). Harsh Goenka, Bombay. Bombay. Goenka, Harsh (1995). Psychiatry in Asia Dr. Patels’s Clinic-Lamington Road Clinic-Lamington Patels’s Dr. Atul Dodiya, Dodiya, Atul 30 page 6-11 March 2003 | the IIAS newsletter is published by the IIAS and is available free of charge ¶ p.33 From Aristocrats to Primitives An Interview with Gananath Obeyesekere Gananath Obeyesekere lives on a mountaintop in Kandy. From his eyrie he has a sweeping panorama of the Interview > eastern hills of Sri Lanka, and it is in those hills where the wild Veddas were once supposed to have lived, 7 South Asia according to Sri Lankan histories and stories. These Veddas are the focus of his present research. By Han ten Brummelhuis happened to the Veddas who once lived in this part of the country? he genealogy of Obeyesekere’s research project can be ‘Then, as my fieldwork and thinking progressed, I asked Ttraced back to a classic work, The Veddas, written by myself: if the Veddas were in this vast region north of the area The connection between algebra and Asia is laid bare laid is Asia and algebra between connection The Charles and Brenda Seligmann in 1911. The Veddas were first in which the Seligmanns did their fieldwork, let me figure ¶ recognized in anthropological terms as a classic hunting and out whether they existed in other parts of the country, too. So Roald Maliangkay reviews the first English language book language English first the reviews Maliangkay Roald p. 14 p. gathering society. Edward Tylor, in his textbook on anthro- I probed the sixteenth-century classic literature and poetry Both Jemma Purdey and Bernard Adeney-Risakotta examine the examine Adeney-Risakotta Bernard and Purdey Jemma Both pology (1881), refers to them as ‘shy wild men’, or primitives, written by Buddhist monks and other erudite scholars. And ¶ In A Martyr’s Tale [2], IIAS fellow Ken Hammond tells the story of a of story the tells Hammond Ken fellow IIAS [2], Tale Martyr’s A In living by hunting and gathering. The Seligmanns, however, some of their texts refer to Veddas in other parts of the coun- ¶ pioneered with one of the first field studies of any group from try, for example, roughly around Sri Pada – sometimes known p. 17 p. Koen De Ceuster wonders whether Korean historians are shedding light shedding are historians Korean whether wonders Ceuster De Koen p.3 the British side of our discipline. C.G. Seligmann and W.H.R. as Adam’s Peak – where the sacred footprint of the Buddha Rivers were the first systematic fieldworkers who, in turn, is embedded. Other texts speak of Veddas in the very south taught the two great anthropologists Radcliffe-Brown and of Sri Lanka which is now entirely – and passionately – Sin- ¶ Malinowski, the founding fathers of British Social Anthro- hala Buddhist. Another text refers to Veddas living about > Publications > pology. twenty miles south of the main city of Colombo which is p 24-25 p ‘What I found puzzling about the Seligmanns’ study is that unthinkable as a Vedda habitat nowadays, except symboli- Eurasians in India are the living proof of a blurry divide between colonizer and colonized. [3]. colonized. and colonizer between divide blurry a of proof living the are India in Eurasians ¶ the Veddas were confined by them to a small area in the cally, I suppose, if one were to designate capitalism as a form Debra Diamond visited the traveling exhibition of Chola Bronzes [5] and places these statues in statues these places and [5] Bronzes Chola of exhibition traveling the visited Diamond Debra northern and eastern part of the country called Bintanna, ‘the of hunting and gathering.’ p.15 flat lands.’ Unfortunately, given that their work was still root- Obeyesekere also re-examined some of the ritual texts Nina Cichocki shows the connection between the work of Irans leading sculptor, Parviz Tanavoli and Tanavoli Parviz sculptor, leading Irans of work the between connection the shows Cichocki Nina > In this edition this In > ed in the nineteenth-century preoccupation with the primi- which he had worked on some twenty or thirty years ago. ¶ Freek Colombijn and Peter Nas attend us to the intentions and planning beyond largely unchecked mega- unchecked largely beyond planning and intentions the to us attend Nas Peter and Colombijn Freek tive, the two Seligmanns were out to find the ‘pure’ Veddas; These texts also referred to Veddas as living in different ¶ p.41 and of course they didn’t find any. This was a kind of futile parts of the country. In one fascinating post-harvest ritual p.42 quest, because ultimately only four families, who were living the priest (never the monk) recites an invocation known as in utterly desperate economic and social conditions, were ‘the roll-call of the Veddas’ in which he lists about ninety found to approximate their ideal. Looking from my balcony Vedda villages in a fairly large area north and south of With his review of Moral Tales Nile Green provides a valuable insight in the rich universe of Indian storytelling [4], storytelling Indian of universe rich the in insight valuable a provides Green Nile Tales Moral of review his With ¶ ¶ up on my hilltop, I know that the mountainous area north of Kandy, and some settlements in the heart of the city of p.49 the Seligmanns’ field site was known in ancient Sinhala texts Kandy itself. Further enquiries led Obeyesekere to believe p.30 of nearly three hundred years ago as ‘the Vedda country,’ or that when the city of Kandy was founded in the fifteenth 123456 as ‘the great [maha] Vedda country’, a huge expanse of well century it was a Vedda village named Katupulle, the chief The essence of being good in Tantric Buddhism, lies in being bad. being in lies Buddhism, Tantric in good being of essence The > Asian art & cultures & art Asian > over a thousand square miles. But in my wanderings and of that village being known as Katupulle Vedda. Very much ¶ meanderings in that latter region I found that there are no later, Kandyan texts mention a group of police officers called urbanization [7]. urbanization on Korean film Korean on connection between power and violence in Indonesia. in violence and power between connection on the nations recent history or are merely adding to the confusion [1]. confusion the to adding merely are or history recent nations the on China. post-communist in rehabilitation his and official dynasty Ming willed strong p 16 p a tradition of worship and beauty. beauty. and worship of tradition a traditional Persian writing. [6]. writing. Persian traditional in Frits Staal’s article on Artificial Languages. Artificial on article Staal’s Frits in Veddas today; all who live there claim to be Sinhala Bud- katupulle; the same term. dhists. So the question that posed itself to me was: whatever continued on page 3 > > BurmeseGeneral news heritage continued from page 1 > Boundary books Professor Gananath ‘Now what we have at this point, is a very intriguing propo- sition; Veddas were not just confined to Kandy and its outly- Obeyesekere ing regions but they were also, at least three hundred years ago, living in every part of the nation. Though their numbers Professor Gananath Obeyesekere is Professor Emeritus are indeterminate their physical presence is extremely sig- of Anthropology at Princeton University. From 1 July – 30 nificant. Thus I became very much excited in the possibili- November 2002 he was a senior visiting fellow at the IIAS. ties of the project, both from an historical and also from an He is the author of, among other works, Medusa’s Hair: An ethnographic point of view. I put several research assistants Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (1984), to tackle certain kinds of texts which were different from the The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (1984), and The Work of Cul- ones that Sri Lankan historians normally look at, that is Bud- ture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthro- dhist and ‘canonical’ literary texts. In the University of Per- pology (1990) – three studies remarkable for their attention adeniya there is a cupboard containing virtually unread palm to both psychological and cultural reality. His The Apothe- leaf manuscripts; not monks’ writings, but that of ordinary osis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific people, some of them local elites, scribes, and village lead- (1992) led to a polemical controversy with Marshall Sahlins ers. These texts provide a fabulous source of information on about the Western representation of ‘primitive thinking’. contemporary Kandyan social organization, including the At present he seems more productive than ever. He has position of the Veddas.’ almost finished a first draft of a book tentatively entitled One genre among these multiple texts is called ‘boundary Cannibal Talk: Dialogical Misunderstandings in the South books’. One particular type gives the boundaries for all of Sri Seas, contents of which he expounded in a seminar at the Lanka, the main provinces demarcated by named rivers, well University of Amsterdam. His comparative study Imagin- known landmarks, or, even, rocks and trees. Often, carved ing Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, stone boundary markers are used. and Greek Rebirth has just arrived in the bookshops. In this ‘One nice example of such a boundary book is the ‘Matale book Gananath Obeyesekere shows the wide dispersal of boundary book’ (Matale being a district north of Kandy). In rebirth theories outside the orbit of Indic religions.
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