Deathpower - Buddhism`s Ritual Imagination in Cambodia

Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-16918-9
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 166 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 634 g

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cambodia, Erik W. Davis radically recasts attitudes toward the nature of Southeast Asian Buddhism's interactions with local religious practice and, by extension, reorients our understanding of Buddhism itself. Through a vivid study of contemporary Cambodian Buddhist funeral rites, he reveals the powerfully integrative role monks play as they care for the dead and negotiate the interplay of non-Buddhist spirits and formal Buddhist customs.

Buddhist monks perform funeral rituals rooted in the embodied practices of Khmer rice farmers and the social hierarchies of Khmer culture. The monks' realization of death underwrites key components of the Cambodian social imagination: the distinction between wild death and celibate life, the forest and the field, and moral and immoral forms of power. By connecting the performative aspects of Buddhist death rituals to Cambodian history and everyday life, Davis undermines the theory that elite Buddhist monks universally oppose rural belief systems. Instead, he shows Cambodian Buddhism to be a robust tradition with ethical and popular components extending throughout Khmer society.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davis, Erik

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Buddhismus Buddhismus: Kult, Riten, Zeremonien
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volkskunde: Sitten, Traditionen, Mythen, Legenden
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationIntroduction1. Getting Sited in Cambodia2. The Funeral3. Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil4. Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty5. Binding Mighty Death: The Craft and Authority of the Rag Robe in Cambodian Ritual Technology6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts7. Eating Leftovers, Rumors, and Witchcraft8. Buddhism Makes BrahmanismNotesKhmer GlossaryWorks CitedIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Erik W. Davis is assistant professor of religious studies at Macalester College. His current interests include contemporary religious movements, spirit possession, and the ritualization of ethnic boundaries.