It has been observed by various authors that peasant agglomerations, the so-called ‘agro-towns’ that may number several thousand inhabitants, are fairly common in southern Italy. This pattern, which geographically separates the people from their land, is not restricted to the south of Italy; it is typical for most countries along the Mediterranean.

This essay can best be considered an anthropological venture in the field of recent and contemporary Spanish historiography. Our aim is twofold: an understanding of the nature of Spanish historical interpretation as it is elaborated by national historians; the examination of certain phases of intercultural contact critical in the formation of a distinct Spanish cultural form.

Study of charismatic movements has become an increasingly large, complex, and rather confusing field. A recent bibliography on modern religious movements in Africa, to which these considerations will be restricted, lists 1,313 items.

In this paper I shall analyse the rituals for Sanni Yaka (‘the demon of Sanni’). Sanni Yaka is also known as Kōla Sanniya and is a pantheistic deity who incorporates eighteen other demons known as Dahaaṭa Sanni (eighteen Sanni) or simply as Sanni Yakku (Sanni demons; Yakku is plural of Yakā). The rituals performed for the Sanni Yakku appear in a large-scale ceremony known as the Sanni Yäkuma, ‘the demon ceremony of the Sanni’. In my analysis I shall emphasize the dramatic aspects of the rituals, where the demons appear on stage in masked representations. In these rituals a great deal of comic dialogue and obscenities prevail. Their significance has been missed by Wirz who describes one of these rituals, the dolaha pelapāliya (spectacle for the twelve gods) in the following terms: ‘This scene is called simply ‘pelapāliya’, which may best be translated as ‘dance suite’, or ‘musical show.’ … In reality, it is only interposed for diversion and has no deeper meaning’ (1954: 59). A highly sophisticated anthropologist presumably refers to similar comic humour when he says that ‘after more hocus-pocus, Riri Yaka is eventually told that by the orders of the Buddha (Budu anin) and the power of the gods (deviyangē balē) he must accept the dola (offering) and remove his curse from the patient' (Ames, 1964: 42). Almost identical words are spoken to Kōla Sanniya in the Sanni Yäkuma ritual, but we shall interpret and unravel the symbolic meaning of these humorous ritual dramas and consider their evolution and social functions.

If I have understood Obeyesekere correctly, his paper on the ritual of the Sanni demons has two major concerns: to describe and interpret the dynamics of a dramatic healing ritual and to identify the symptoms represented symbolically by the Sanni demons. The ritual of the eighteen demons is presented as a dramatic confrontation between the forces of good, the gods, and those of evil, the disease-causing demons. The story line is provided by texts recounting original mythic encounters between the Buddhas and the demons. A degree of abreaction is achieved by the patient who is drawn into the drama as well as by the audience for whom the drama acts as an alleviator of tensions and reinforcer of religious values. After observing that each of the eighteen demons represents a discrete set of symptoms and that the system of Ayurvēdic medicine currently popular in Ceylon is a naturalistic one, Obeyesekere uses comparative linguistic and myth materials from other parts of India to demonstrate that the demons once represented physical rather than psychological symptoms and that psychological content has gradually come to replace an earlier set of organic, naturalistic representations.