Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects Edited by Albertina Nugteren Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects Special Issue Editor Albertina Nugteren MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editor Albertina Nugteren Tilburg University The Netherlands Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) from 2018 to 2019 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special issues/Ritual) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03897-752-0 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03897-753-7 (PDF) c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editor ...................................... vii Preface to ”Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects” ......................... ix Albertina Nugteren Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Religion, Ritual, and Ritualistic Objects’ Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 163, doi:10.3390/rel10030163 ................... 1 Walter E. A. van Beek Matter in Motion: A Dogon Kanaga Mask Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 264, doi:10.3390/rel9090264 .................... 14 Frank G. Bosman ‘Requiescat in Pace’. Initiation and Assassination Rituals in the Assassin’s Creed Game Series Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 167, doi:10.3390/rel9050167 .................... 28 Francesco Perono Cacciafoco and Francesco Cavallaro Lam`oling B`eaka: Immanence, Rituals, and Sacred Objects in an Unwritten Legend in Alor Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 211, doi:10.3390/rel9070211 .................... 47 Laurie M.C. Faro When Children Participate in the Death Ritual of a Parent: Funerary Photographs as Mnemonic Objects Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 215, doi:10.3390/rel9070215 .................... 62 Deborah de Koning The Ritualizing of the Martial and Benevolent Side of Ravana in Two Annual Rituals at the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya in Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 250, doi:10.3390/rel9090250 .................... 79 Xiaohe Ma and Chuan Wang On the Xiapu Ritual Manual Mani the Buddha of Light Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 212, doi:10.3390/rel9070212 ....................103 J. Andrew McDonald Influences of Egyptian Lotus Symbolism and Ritualistic Practices on Sacral Tree Worship in the Fertile Crescent from 1500 BCE to 200 CE Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 256, doi:10.3390/rel9090256 ....................142 Andrea Nicklisch Continuity and Discontinuity in 17th- and 18th-Century Ecclesiastical Silverworks from the Southern Andes Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 262, doi:10.3390/rel9090262 ....................169 Catrien Notermans Prayers of Cow Dung: Women Sculpturing Fertile Environments in Rural Rajasthan (India) Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 71, doi:10.3390/rel10020071 ....................183 Albertina Nugteren Bare Feet and Sacred Ground: “Vis.n. u Was Here” Reprinted from: Religions 2018, 9, 224, doi:10.3390/rel9070224 ....................208 v About the Special Issue Editor Albertina Nugteren (PhD 1991, Universities of Utrecht and Leiden, The Netherlands) is currently a Professor in the Department of Culture Studies and Digital Sciences at Tilburg University. Trained as a classical Indologist she now combines ethnography and textual studies. Through years of travel in South Asia as well as the shifting demands of academic curricula she also began to focus on contemporary issues such as Hindu communities in diaspora. Special research interests include religious rituals, rituals after disasters, material culture, and the ‘green’ environment (sacred trees, sacred groves, natural burial sites, the use of wood in open-air cremation, etc.). Her work is published widely, such as with Brill, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Equinox and Praeger/ABC-CLIO. She also published a novel on ancient India, and writes poetry. vii Preface to ”Religion, Ritual and Ritualistic Objects” The idea for the present volume was conceived gradually during academic conferences, when receiving notifications of fascinating new series set up by well-known publishers, and while ‘thinking through things’ both in the classroom and during fieldwork. When I was invited to convene and guest-edit a Special Issue on ritual by the Journal Religions, I saw this as a thrilling opportunity to send out open invitations for an object-centered volume. I was highly curious to see what kind of ritualistic ‘things’ would come floating by. I envisaged a wide range of contributions on material culture and ritual practices across religions. The primary focus was to be on objects: tangible material things as used in religious ritual settings. The response was promising, and the Journal’s time schedule guaranteed a rapid production process. As often happens, some proposals were too broad and general, and submissions sometimes lacked originality or were not based on new ethnographic data gathered ‘on the spot’. But what remained, and is proudly presented here, is an attractive collection of ten papers, most of them lavishly illustrated with pictures. As editors, we would like to express our gratitude to all authors for sharing their fascination with the life of ritualistic objects with the readers. Also, we thank all the anonymous peer reviewers whose astute remarks and suggestions greatly enhanced the quality of each paper. Albertina Nugteren Special Issue Editor ix religions Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Religion, Ritual, and Ritualistic Objects’ Albertina Nugteren Faculty of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; [email protected] Received: 13 February 2019; Accepted: 25 February 2019; Published: 6 March 2019 If an object-centered volume on religious ritual is anything, it is a collection of contributions on material culture as a manifestation of structured symbolic practices (Fleming and Mann 2014; Grimes 2011; Keane 2008; Morgan 2008). Such practices are assumed to be endowed with signification and to be based on an interrelated set of ideas. Rituals may be taken to exist because they perform the function of establishing a common mood and thus assert social solidarity, but a ritual has a particular style, is part of a cultural and symbolic order. Its material dimensions, particularly its objects, may provide us with keys to meaning-making. According to Hodder (1987, p. 1) the meaning in objects is threefold: (1) objects have use value through their effect on the world (a functionalist, materialistic, or utilitarian perspective); (2) objects have structural or coded meanings, which they communicate (their symbolic meaning); (3) objects are meaningful through their past associations (their historical meaning). Studying objects as transporters of meaning, as well as people’s responses to such objects, especially in ritual contexts, thus becomes a study not merely of culture-specific materiality (or: materialization, when the processual character is emphasized) but also of the multiple interpretations that occur when people and objects move from one context to another. We are fortunate that all authors in this Special Issue show a sensitive awareness of contexts and people’s responses to objects, and do not limit themselves to iconography, style, or symbolism. Nor do they fall victim to ‘the danger of a single story’ (as the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls it in her TED-talk, (Adichie 2009)). The single story, according to Adichie, ‘creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete’ (quoted in (Buggeln and Franco 2018, p. xii)). Instead, all contributors present multiple perspectives and suspicion of single (or reductive) narratives, and thus allow their objects to come to life before the reader’s eye, and shimmer. This is not a collection of articles about rituals, but about the power of ritual objects. Some of those objects are found in museums; others are used within religious contexts and in daily life. Grimes: ‘Ritual stuff is sometimes treasured and iconic, but sometimes it is not.’ (Grimes 2011, p. 77) Cow dung is an example of the latter. In India it may be merely dirt; it may be scattered as fertilizer in the fields; mixed with straw and dried in the sun cow-patties may be used as fuel in simple ovens and furnaces; it may be the semi-fluid ‘paint’ with which the walls and floors of traditional rooms (temples and kitchens) were (and sometimes still are) ritually purified; and it may be the stuff from which divine figures are fashioned, as related by Catrien Notermans in her article on women’s Govardhan festivities in rural Rajasthan. 1. Context Things, objects, materiality: when they become saturated with religious meanings ((Morgan 2011, p. 140): ‘a thing is an object waiting