Transmissive Frequency, Ritual, andExegesis

HARVEY WHITEHOUSE¤

ABSTRACT Certain aspectsof the relationsbetween ritual action and ritual meaning are determinedby socially regulated cycles oftransmissivefrequency, via the highly structured operationsof human memory. Evidenceis presented in thisarticle that: (i) the relative scarcity ofspontaneous exegetical re ection and the relatively widedissemination of standardofŽ cial exegesis in routinizedtraditions, may beexplained by the dynamicsof implicitprocedural memory andthe opportunitiesafforded by repetition for the spread ofstable theological/ exegeticalrepresentations encoded in semanticmemory; (ii)the relativescarcity or restricted distributionof ofŽ cial exegesis and the relatively high degree ofelaboration of spontaneous exegetical re ection in rare andclimactic rituals,may beexplained by the dynamicsof episodic memory. Thesearguments are shown to havepotentially signiŽ cant implicationsfor epidemiological perspectives on cognition and religion.

Religiousrituals around the worldassume a bewilderingvariety offorms andare attributed an even greaterdiversity of meanings. Increasingly, however,we have reasonto believe thatthere arequite precisely speciŽable cognitive constraints on what counts as a well-formedritual andon what sorts of meanings ofritual actions are likely tobecome widelyaccepted. For instance, Lawson and McCauley (1990)have argued persuasivelythat, lurking beneath the apparentplasticity of religiousrituals indifferent cultures, lies alimitedrepertoire of relations between natural andsupernatural agents, actions, and patients. Barrett and Keil (1996), Boyer (1994),Guthrie (1993), and Sperber (1996), among others (see Barrett2000 for a review),have meanwhile arguedthat many basic religiousrepresentations, and consequently much of the meaning attributed toreligious rituals, result from cognitive susceptibilities to particular kinds

¤The Queen’s University ofBelfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. c KoninklijkeBrill NV, Leiden, 2001 Journal of Cognition and Culture 1.2 ° 168 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE ofconcepts. In short,ritual actions and ritual meanings arenot as plastic asthey mightseem. They aredirectly constrained and shaped by universal propertiesof human cognition, deriving from evolved neuralarchitecture. Thus,the general thrustof some recent research suggests that the acquisitionof certain aspects of religious knowledge is as natural as (for instance) the acquisitionof language. Human cognitive architecture has evolved insuch a waythat, regardless of cultural and other contextual variation,certain kinds of religious representations occur, rather than all the sortswhich are theoretically possible. This paper is concernedto show thatsuch an approachmay beenriched by attending to the context dependencyof certain cognitive operations, speciŽ cally thoseconcerned withmemory. The Ž rstpart of this article sets outthe general case forviewing cognitive operations as context-dependent. The secondpart presentsa particularepidemiological model that focuses on the contextual variableof transmissive frequency. The claims of universality for the model presentedhere arein noway weakened bythe determinationto take into accounttransmissive context. On the contrary,the effectson memory of variationsin transmissive frequency, insofar as these arerelevant tomy model,are the same forall cognitivelynormal humans everywhere. But insteadof trying to show that a context-freecognitive apparatus sets the parametersof all religions,it willbe argued that the differentialactivation ofuniversal memory systems explains agooddeal of the variation among particularreligions over time and space.

First Principles for ExplainingReligion Many aspectsof culture are materially constrained.For instance, it is ob- viousthat economic systems ofproduction, exchange, barter,and con- sumptionare constrained by states of technological development and that patternsof kinship and marriage are constrained by the natureof sexual reproductionand infant dependency in our species. The precisenature ofthe contraintsis a matterof contention, but the claimthat constraints exist isscarcely debatable. By contrast,it is quite common for religion to beenvisaged asrelatively freefrom material constraints. We nowhave a vast profusionof labels tocharacterize various aspects of religious thinking, suchas: revitalist, messianic, prophetic, nativistic, cargoist, salvationist, mil- lenarian,separatist, revolutionary, activist, syncretic, independent, and so TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 169 on.From these sortsof catalogues it mightseem thatthere areas many di- verse strandsto religiousthinking asto the untetheredhuman imagination. Typologiesof religious phenomena, of course, often have theirorigins in the concernsof religious communities themselves, andin the discoursesof politiciansand bureaucrats. These concernsand discourses are, however, oflittle explanatoryvalue. Itmay mattera greatdeal to colonial authorities whethera particularreligious movement ismillenarian, nationalistic, and revolutionary,rather than congregationalist, passivist, and ecumenical. But forthe purposesof a scientiŽc theoryof religion, that is to say atheory of the causes ofreligious phenomena and the variationsamong them, we requirea ratherdifferent method of carving up our subject matter. What wemust look for are direct material constraints on religion, no less signiŽcant than the technologicaland reproductive constraints upon economicand kinship organization. There are suchconstraints and at least someof these arederived from human cognition. Indeed, patterns ofmental activity,rooted in the biologyof brain functions and their developmental contexts,have directeffects on the elaborationof all domainsof human culture — notonly the religious.As long ago as the 1960s,it was shown that the variety ofkinship systems isconstrained as muchby the limitationsof short-term memory for genealogical categories asitis by the so-called‘ factsof life’mentioned above (see D’Andrade1995: 42-44).More recent work in psychology on cheater-detection, altruism, cooperation,theory of mind, and other aspects of cognitionis showingwith increasingprecision that technologies of mind,at least asmuch as exterior technologies,constrain the patternsof economicand political activity found withinour species (see Boyer,forthcoming). And so it is with religion. What webelieve aboutgods, spirits, and ancestors is Ž rmly constrained bywhat we can encode, process, and recall. And what we consider to be efŽcacious and necessary ritualsis shaped by deep intuitions concerning the fundamentalrelations between agents, instruments, and patients. Only oncewe begin to understand all thiscan we begin to disassemble and explain the constituentsof religion. Religion,like any culturaldomain, is a distributedphenomenon. Thatis to say, itconsists not merely ofthe thoughtsand feelings of an individualdevotee, but of the recognizablysimilar or complementary thoughtsand feelings ofa populationof religious adherents. Indeed, some 170 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE ofthose thoughts and feelings presupposethat religion is distributed. For instance,the doctrinethat only ordainedpriests can perform efŽ cacious ritesof baptism presupposes thatreligion encompasses different categories ofparticipants, such as priests and candidates for baptism. Moreover, if specialistknowledge is possessed by different categories of ofŽ ciant, the reproductionof the religioustradition will depend upon cooperation. The problemof explaining religionis therefore a problemof explaining a particulartype of distributed cognition (cf.Hutchins 1996). Accordingto DanSperber (1996), the challenge isto explain the spread andpersistence of cultural (including religious) representations in much the same wayas some medical researchers seek toexplain the spread andpersistence of diseases. The latterproject falls tothe medicalŽ eld knownas ‘ epidemiology’. What werequire, then, isan ‘epidemiologyof representations’(Sperber 1985). Sperber, however, reminds us that the analogybetween the spreadof religion (or culture in general) andthe spreadof disease should not be taken toofar. Obviously, diseases are damagingto the organismsthey infect,whereas this is not (necessarily) trueof religions. But there areother respects in which processes of viral transmission,for instance, differ from processes of religious transmission. Germs aretransmitted directly from one body to another, and reproduce bymeans ofreplication. Religious thoughts and feelings aretransmitted indirectlyand are seldom exactly replicated.Even the mostpersuasive preachercannot ‘ implant’his or her thoughtsin my head.All the evangelist cando is toalter my cognitiveenvironment in sucha wayas to encourage me toprocess the inputsin ways that resemble hisor her representations ofthe world.Whereas inviral contagion, replication is normal and mutationrare, in religious transmission mutation is normaland replication extraordinary(cf. Sperber 1985). In Sperber’s view,cultural transmission issuccessful to the extent thatmutation can be minimized with the result thatideas and sentiments aresufŽ ciently similaras to seem tobe ‘ shared’ amongmembers of a culturaltradition. According to this approach, our Žrststep is to identifythe mechanismsthat reduce cultural mutation. ButSperber’ s argumentrequires slight modiŽ cation. Culture in gen- eral,and religion in particular, does not consist simply of sharedrepresen- tations.What isimportant in some (but not all) formsof religiousactivity is the ‘sharing’of types ofexperience whichare similar in terms of the waysthey TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 171 are processed ,ratherthan interms of representational content. For instance, certainforms of religious activity encourage revelations that are idiosyn- craticand heterogeneous rather than widely known and standardized. The visionquests of North American Plains Indians, the drug-inducedhallu- cinationsof Amazonian shamanic rites, the out-of-bodystates encouraged bylengthy abstinencesand meditation in certain Buddhist monasteries, to mentionbut a fewexamples, encourageand positively value the produc- tionof religious representations that are intensely anduniquely personal. What peoplein these situationsregard as being ‘ shared’is not a common corpusof religiousrepresentations, but a set ofsalient experiences andthe procedures(primarily analogical reasoning) for their interpretation. Thus, ratherthan looking merely forthe causesof low representational mutation, weare looking for the causesof various types ofcognitive and experien- tialmatching within populations, of which uniformity of representational contentmay bean especially importanttype butwhich may alsotake the formof recognizablysimilar and/ orcomplementary patterns of processing. Matching,of this sort, is what enables usto imagine discrete cultural and religiousforms, as apparently‘ shared’entities or so-called traditions. Theprincipal selective mechanismresponsible for this sort of matching is memory.Matchingsbecome widespread, and thus ‘ cultural’, because they arecapable of being successfully stored and recalled by populations. Representationaland experiential formsthat are not memorable are simply selected out,and do not create matchings (or not at a culturallevel of distribution).If we are to explain religion,we therefore need toexplain whatmakes itsmatchings memorable. One possibility,cogently presentedby Pascal Boyer (e.g.1990, 1993, 1994,1996), is that memorability is a functionof universal features of cognitiveorganization. Boyer arguesthat the invariabledevelopment of domain-speciŽc intuitiveontological knowledge has the effectof making certainconcepts of extranatural agency easierto generate, encode, store, andrecall than arangeof alternatives. The morememorable concepts correspondto the catalogueof supernatural representations actually foundin religions, whereas hypothetical concepts predicted to fall below thiscognitive optimum are found to be rare or non-existent inreal- worldconditions. This argument Ž ndsextensive empiricalsupport, both 172 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE psychologicaland ethnographic (e.g. Boyer 1990,2001; Boyer andRamble forthcoming). The modelpresented here, however,entails aslightreŽ nement of Boyer’s approach.It is clear that universal features of cognitive organi- zationset limitson the memorabilityof would-be cultural phenomena. Butwe should not conŽ ne ourselvesto a view ofthe cognitiveappara- tusin isolation from the contextsin which it is activated. Indeed, it is impossibleto differentiate the majortypes ofmemory system withoutref- erence tocontext. To take asimpleexample, whereassingular experiences (context 1)may allowthe formationof episodic memories, repetition of atask (context 2)is necessary forthe developmentof implicit procedural memory.Transmissive frequency is thus an importantcontextual variable affectingthe operationsof memory and must be relevant toall processes ofmatchingand cultural selection. Toillustrate brie y, considerthe recurrenceof the concept‘ witch’. Witchconcepts are evidently moreextensively transmittedin some populationsthan inothers. Frequency theory may beable to account for this,whereas standard epidemiological models cannot. Following Boyer’ s account,the ‘catchiness’of the witchconcept is to be explained with reference toinvariable intuitive assumptions entailed by naï ve physics, whichare violated by the notionof persons capable of acting at a distance.Anybody can stab another person with a sharpinstrument but only specialpersons, such as witches,can stab somebody by insertingpins intoa doll.This specialness amounts to a counter-intuitiveproperty that isboth attention-grabbing and memorable. Nevertheless, whileBoyer’ s accountshows that the witchconcept is capable of being represented by any normalperson in normal developmental circumstances,regardless of culturalpeculiarities, it does not set outto predict whether such concepts willbe imported into particular culturalsettings. For instance, beliefs in witchcrafthave been describedas extremely virulentamong the Azandeof southernSudan, where witches are implicated in unfortunate happenings onaneveryday basis(Evans-Pritchard 1937: 63-4). By contrast,the clergy ofthe Churchof England are (on the whole)much less likely toattribute theirdaily misfortunes to witchcraft. Such a modeof explanation would seldombe entertained in the Žrstplace but, were it raised at all, would tendto be scorned by most vicars and bishops, if not by all members TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 173 oftheir congregations. How are we to explain suchdifferences between Englishand Zande populations?The key cannotbe found in the cognitive apparatustaken outof its context of operationbecause variables cannot be explained interms of contants. But a solutionmay emerge ifwetake into considerationvariations in transmissivefrequency. Highly routinizedreligious regimes, including many varietiesof Chris- tianity,provide optimal conditions for the rehearsaland learning of com- plex theology,with a ‘heavy’conceptual load. In suchconditions, religious orthodoxiesmay developsomewhat snobbish views on‘simplesuperstition’ , tothe exclusionof the sortsof concepts (such as ‘ witch’) thatrequire little repetitionto acquire and spread. By contrast,the conditionsof transmissive frequencyapplying in witch-infested African societies may encouragethe inclusionof ghostly concepts in the religiousŽ eld ona morestable basis. These are,of course, empirical questions. The presentstudy is concerned aboveall withdemonstrating the empiricalproductivity of a cognitiveex- planationof religion that takes transmissivefrequency into account (see alsoWhitehouse 2001).

Memory, Frequency, andReligious Rituals The ethnographicrecord suggests that the relationshipbetween ritual actionand ritual meaning (exegesis) inany given culturaltradition is closely connectedto frequency of performance (see Whitehouse2000). Rituals that areperformed on avery regularbasis, such as liturgicalrites in Christianity, tendto be associated with some form of widely-known exegesis, maintained throughthe supervisoryprominence of a religioushierarchy. Exceptional cases aresometimes presented by religious traditions that place a low premiumon ritual in general, stressinginstead the importanceof internal statesand personal enlightenment. Jainismis one such tradition — an offshootof Hinduism prevalent invariousparts of the Indiansubcontinent. Jainversions of the puja,adailyritual in which idols are worshipped, arenot attributed a stableauthoritative exegesis (Humphreyand Laidlaw 1994).Nevertheless, cases suchas these arerare. The general ruleof thumb isthat frequent rituals have orthodox,widely-disseminated meanings. An equally recurrentprinciple is that highly repetitiverituals do not attract independentre ection on their possible meanings. Both Christians and Jains,for instance, tend not to cogitatere exively onthe meaningsof their 174 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE liturgicalrites. They may readilydo so, when urgedon by ethnographers, buttheir answers tend to behighly tentative, slowto formulate,and simple. In short,if peoplehazard opinions at all, they generally have tomake them upon the spot. Avery differentstate of affairsis apparentin cases ofrarely-performed rituals.Unless these arevariants of more frequent forms of worship, infrequentrituals tend not to be associated with widely shared, stable exegesis. In many cases,ethnographers have concludedthat no tradition ofexegesis exists inthe culturaltraditions sustaining such rituals (e.g. Gell 1975;Tuzin 1992). In othercases, exegesis appearsto exist, but isrestricted to a small groupof religious experts (usually elders).Even then, the esotericknowledge may bepoorly shared and highly cryptic (e.g.Juillerat 1980, 1992). Major rituals, performed in cycles thathave tobe counted in years ratherthan months/weeks/days,are not accorded meaning in the same way asroutinized rites. Not only isofŽ cial exegesis lacking orrestricted, but personal exegetical reection appears to bemuch moreintense andwidespread. People who participate in rare initiation rites,installation ceremonies, climactic millenarian rituals, and so on, tendto re ect deeply onthe meanings oftheir activities, producing elaborateexegetical knowledgethat is intensely personaland often hard tocommunicate verbally. Detailedethnographic studies of this syndrome have been carriedout in Papua New Guinea,focusing mainly onrare fertilityrites (e.g. Herdt 1981; Barth 1975, 1987) and sporadic outbursts of cargocult activity (e.g. Schwartz 1962; Whitehouse 1995, 2000), but similar datahave been gatheredalso in Africa (e.g. Lewis 1971; Turner 1974), Amazonia(e.g. Hugh-Jones 1979; Verswijver 1992), aboriginal Australia (e.g.Strehlow 1947; Munn 1973),and many otherparts of the world. Wherever the syndromeis documented, however, we Žndthat the ritualsin questionare not only rare,but also profoundly stimulating occasions (both emotionallyand sensually). These ritualsare replete withwhat Lawson and McCauley (forthcoming)have dubbed‘ sensorypageantry’ (or SP). We aredealing here witha continuum,rather than with absolute categories.Some rituals are neither very frequentnor very rare,or entail neither highSP nordull repetition. What wehave, however,is a general pattern:very frequentrituals attract plenty ofwidely-known and stable exegesis andvery little spontaneousexegetical reection. By contrast,very TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 175 rareand climactic rituals tend to attract very little ofŽcial exegesis (or only very restrictedesoteric meanings) buta greatdeal of independently- generatedexegetical reection. Acognitiveexplanation of these Žndingsis presented below. This willfocus on the roleof transmissive frequency in the formationof gross featuresof explicit and implicit memory, and consider the effectsof this onthe wayrituals are represented, not only asactions but as meaningful actions. In orderto have implicitprocedural memory, we musthave procedural repetition.I cannotjump on a bicycleand ride it unless Ihave previously practisedriding a bicyle.Various models are available describingthe processesby which implicit procedural knowledge becomes established. One suchmodel, offered by Anderson (1983), envisages procedural uency asthe conversionof initially explicit rules into unconscious habits via repeatedrehearsal. I Žrsthave tolearn thatpulling on the brakelevers willcause the bicycleto slow down before Ireachthe stage ofbeingcapable ofstopping the bicycleas a reex action,without having torepresent consciouslythe locationof brake levers andthe correctway to use them. Butonce procedural  uency has been achieved,I notonly donot have to representcertain things (such as the locationof brakelevers) ata conscious level, Iactuallydo notdo it, at least notwhen Iamtrying to avoid a crash. Somereligious rituals are very muchlike ridinga bicyclein the respect thatthey areremembered by and large as procedural habits, encoded inimplicit memory. Moreoever, we Ž ndthat such rituals have some ratherdistinctive characteristics. Firstly, they arealways highly repetitive. Ritualsthat are only ever performedrarely or sporadically are never encodedin implicit procedural memory. In orderfor rituals to become habituatedprocedures, they have tobe rehearsed a gooddeal. Examples areeasy toŽ ndin all the worldreligions. For instance, Christian services involve varioushabituated sequences of sitting, standing, and kneeling, each associatedwith a distinctiveactivity (primarily listening, singing, and praying).During the liturgy,church-going Christians move betweenthese bodilypostures with considerable  uency,without having tothink about itand in response to quite subtle cues in the environment.Secondly, these repetitiveprocedures commonly occur within doctrinally elaborate traditions,in which rituals are attributed standard meanings thatare 176 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE verbally transmittedand widely shared. For instance, all Christiansknow thatkneeling inchurch means thatthe personis communicating with God.Children socialized into Christian cultures initially learn thismeaning atleast partlythrough explicit instruction, just as missionaries in non- Christiancountries have toexplain topotential converts the meaningof prayerand the postureit requires. Thirdly, repetitive rituals such as these donot encourage spontaneous re ection on their possible meanings. In general, Christiansdo not waste time re ecting on whether a kneeling posture,in addition to having the meaningof praying, might also mean otherthings — suchas, a wayof seeing the churchfrom a lowervantage pointand thus through the eyes ofan innocentchild. Of course, kneeling downcould conceivably mean many things,but few people would ever botherto think aboutthat. So how are we toexplain these three things? Well, weknowwhy ritualsencoded in implicit memory are frequently repeated.Quite simply, it could not be otherwise: procedural  uency requiresrepeated rehearsal, if only duringthe learningphase. We also knowwhy highly repetitiverituals occur in doctrinallyelaborate traditions. Again,it has tobe that way: complex doctrine and exegesis have tobe regularlyrepeated if they areto be sustained intact. If not, doctrines are forgotten,or transformed beyond recognition. But why isit that people whoengage inrepetitive rituals tend not to re ect independently on theirmeaning? One possibility,requiring experimental investigation,is thatexegetical thinking requiresthat procedural knowledge is represented explicitly. In otherwords, people will not re ect on the meaningof a procedureunless they representthat procedure consciously. But when, asa resultof reptition, one no longer thinks about how todo a ritual, onebecomes less likely tore ect upon why oneperforms it. Of course, even ifpeople do re ect consciously on how to do a ritual,it does notautomatically follow that they willengage inexegetical speculation. They mustalso regard the procedureas puzzling. But, in that case, the presenceof ofŽcial exegesis islikely toresolve the puzzlebefore any serious investigationgets underway.The point, however, is that the puzzledoes notarise in the Žrstplace in the absenceof explicit re ection on the procedureitself. In summary,routinized rituals typically become‘ empty’procedures — behaviouralhabits enacted unre exively. This,however, creates a vacuum TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 177 forthe transmissionof ofŽ cial exegesis. Whatever religiousauthorities claim tobe the meaningof aritual(i.e. the widelyrehearsed schemas ofreligious orthodoxy),will not be challenged toany greatextent bycompeting (personal)exegetical reection. And, as longas the ofŽcial line isalsowell- rehearsed,it will remain quite stable in semantic memory, and relatively immuneto interference. We still have toexplain, however,why rarely-peformedrituals tend togenerate considerablespontaneous exegetical reection but very little (orvery restricted)ofŽ cial exegesis. We may beginby dispensing with tworather obvious but unsatisfactory explanations. The Žrstwould be simplythat the shortageof ofŽ cial exegesis resultsfrom a lack ofreligious authorities.That is, nobody is in a positionto tell otherpeople what the ritualsmean. A versionof this argument has been presentedby Ron Brunton(1980), but it Ž ndslittle ethnographicsupport (see Whitehouse 2000:Chapter 4). On the contrary,some of the mostdetailed studies available ofrare, climactic rituals for which ofŽ cial exegesis islacking (e.g.Barth 1975) show a heavy concentrationof religious authority in the handsof elders. In the Baktaman societyof inner New Guinea,on which Barthreports, elders enjoy absoluteauthority on matters of correct ritual procedure.The absenceof an ofŽcial body of exegesis cannotbe explained bya lack ofpersonnel with sufŽ cient authority to assert and police it, but itcanbe explained interms of the limitationsof humanmemory. In conditionsof rare transmission, such as those obtaining in the Baktaman initiationsystem (reproducedin ritual cycles often toŽ fteen years), ofŽcial exegesis wouldstand very little chanceof being remembered andthus reproduced. Experimental evidence isrequiredto show precisely howmuch repetition is required for the effective learningof naturally- occurringritual exegesis, andhow much repetition is needed forits effective retrievalover time (i.e. without substantial distortion and decay). But it seems reasonableto assume that a single transmissiveepisode every ten to Žfteen years willnot sufŽ ce. Followingfrom this, a secondobvious explanation for lack ofofŽ cial exegesis wouldbe that external mnemonicsnecessary tostore the exegesis (e.g.in the formof written texts) arelacking. The problemwith the explanationis that external mnemonicsare no substitute for mental rehearsal.In orderto feature in people’ s religiousexperience, duringthe 178 HARVEYWHITEHOUSE longperiods separating major transmissive episodes, ofŽ cial exegesis has to bementally rehearsed,whether as aresultof reading texts orthrough oral transmission.Either way, we areback to ascenarioof regular repetition. In cases wherereligious transmission is extremely rare,ofŽ cial exegesis simply cannotbe sustained. But spontaneous exegetical reection is often rife, and thatis whatreally needs tobeexplained. Ourstarting point might be the factthat the actionelements and sequencesentailed in rarely performed rituals cannot be organized in implicitprocedural memory. They have tobe represented explicitly. In otherwords, in order to perform the ritualsuccessfully, knowledge of how todo it has tobe entertained at a consciouslevel. Thisappears tobe the optimalsituation for the productionof spontaneous exegetical reection. Barth, for instance, has describedhow Baktaman initiation riteshave tobe consciously reconstructed in memory in order to ensure thataction elements arenot omitted and action sequences are correctly reproduced.This process of conscious re ection in itself encourages cautiousexegetical reection which the Baktaman areofŽ cially proscribed fromcommunicating but which, in any case,may behard to put into words(Barth 1975, 1987). Butit is not only inpreparing for rare performances that Baktaman initiatedmen reect on their rituals. The surprisingnature of novices’ experiences inthese rites,and the emotionsand sensations they evoke, appearto foster enduring episodic memories for initiations, in some cases exhibitingall the featuresof classic ‘ ashbulbmemory’ (Brown and Kulik1982; McCauley 1999).As such, these experiences areavailable to consciousnessthroughout life, and the recollectionof them istriggered regularlyin all kindsof ways. Barth, for instance, describes how even the routineactivities associated with swidden horticulture can evoke intense episodicrecollections of initation rites, such that the layoutof temples is mentally projectedonto the layoutof food gardens (Barth 1975). In suchconditions, it is notsurprising that ofŽ cial exegesis isseldom, if ever, widelydisseminated. On the onehand, transmissive frequency is too lowto sustain in semanticmemory a single authoritativeexegetical system, even thoughritual action elements andaction sequences may beentirely sustainablein episodic memory. On the otherhand, the ritualsgenerate an abundanceof spontaneous exegetical reection among participants, so TRANSMISSIVEFREQUENCY,RITUAL,ANDEXEGESIS 179 thatthese wouldtend to compete with any ofŽcial version and, in practice, constantlythreaten todistortor displace it.

Conclusion

Epidemiologicalapproaches to the studyof cognition and culture have tendedto assume that invariable features of cognitive processing make somereligious representations inherently morelikely tobe remembered thanothers, and thus more likely tobecome culturally widespread. The frequencyhypothesis, however, suggests that what makes somethingmem- orable is always acombinationof cognitive capacities and socially regulated transmissivecycles. If,for instance, as Boyer’ s meticulousarguments and experimental Žndingssuggest, some concepts of supernatural agency are morelikely tobecome widespread than certain others, this must be be- causecertain patterns of transmissive frequency necessary tosustain these conceptsare also widespread. Thus, the patternsof transmissivefrequency foundin many large-scalereligions favour the selectionof elaborate and standardizedtheology, whereas the rare,climactic rites entailed in Bakta- maninitiations favour processes of spontaneous exegetical reection. Epi- demiologicalperspectives stand to beneŽ t fromfurther reŽ nement, based onthe principlethat cognition is regulated by contextual variables, among whichtransmissive frequency stands out as particularlysigniŽ cant.

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