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Points of Departure: Comments on Religious Pilgrimage in Sri Lanka and Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

William LaFleur
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Abstract

The anthropologist Victor Turner has proposed a new theory of religious pilgrimage, holding that people on pilgrimage have entered into a social modality that contrasts sharply with the one they ordinarily experience at home; roles, ranks, and social hierarchy have all been left behind, and what Turner calls communitas has come into being en route. Studies in Japanese by Eiki Hoshino confirm the cross-cultural applicability of Turner's theory, and show that it most adequately explains an ancient and famous pilgrimage tradition in Japan, that to the eighty-eight sites on Shikoku. It especially helps us account for the unusual tensions between pilgrims and government during the Tokugawa era. These materials and analyses are used, then, to suggest that in his study of the Kataragama pilgrimage, Bryan Pfaffenberger has misinterpreted Turner's theory and has overlooked ways in which it does, in fact, explain the materials from Sri Lanka.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , February 1979 , pp. 271 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1979

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References

1 Turner, Victor, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1974), p. 196.Google Scholar

2 Turner, Victor, “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology,” Rice University Studies, 60 (1974), 53–92. See especially pp. 76–78.Google Scholar

3 The essays by Hoshino are: “Shikoku henro ni okeru settai no imi,” Shūkyō kenkyū 47:2 (January 1974), 183–204;Google Scholar“Enkaku sankei no ruikei-teki kenkyū josetsu,” Mikkyōgaku kenkyū, 8 (March 1977). 89–104;Google Scholar“Hikaku junrei-ron no kokoromi,” in Bukkyō to girei (vol. honoring Prof. Kato Shoichi) (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1977), pp. 239–56;Google Scholar and “Kihi to kōgū—Shikoku henrosha no tachiba,” in Bukkyō-Minzoku no ryōiki, ed. Koryū, Nakamura (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1978), pp. 167–83.Google Scholar The references to these will be referred to hereafter by the first two words of each essay's title.

4 The only important essay on this in English is Kitagawa, J. M., “Three Types of Pilgrimage in Japan,” in Studies in Mysticism and Religion: Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, eds. Urbach, E. E., Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi, AND Wirszubski, Ch. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), pp. 155–64;Google Scholar see also Usaku, Sakai, “Les Pelerinages au Japon,” trans. Sieffert, Rene, in Sources Orientates III: Les Pelerinages (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1960), pp. 34766.Google Scholar

5 See Hakeda, Yoshito S., trans., Kūkri: Major Works (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Hoshino, “Kihi to kōgū,” p. 169.

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11 Hoshino, “Shikoku henro,” pp. 82, ff;J. M. Kitagawa, “Three Types of Pilgrimage”; and Sakai Usaku, “Les Pelerinages,” p. 352.

12 Hoshino, “Kihi to kōgū,” p. 178.

13 Hoshino, “Kihi to kōgū,” p. 181.

14 Hoshino, “Enkakusankei,”pp. 98–99.

15 Hoshino, “Hikaku junrei-ron,” p. 249.

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17 Hoshino, “Enkakusankei,”p. 99.

18 Hoshino, “Hikaku junrei-ron,” p. 248.

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21 Already in the eighth century there were certain attempts by civil authorities to control carefully the activities of Buddhist monks wanting to go to the mountains. See Kenkō, Futaba, Kodai Bukkyō shisō-shi kenkyū—Nibon kodai ni okeru ritsuryō Bukkyō oyobi ban-ritsuryō Bukkyō no kenkyū (Kyoto: Nagata Bunsho-dd, 1962), pp. 384 ff.Google Scholar

22 Victor Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid,” p. 54. In this Turner seems to differentiate his approach from that of Claude Lévi-Strauss.

23 Pfaffenberger, see above, p. 253.

24 Pfaffenberger, p. 255.

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26 Pfaffenberger, p. 261.

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32 Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, p. 202. (Emphasis mine.)

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34 Pfaffenberger, p. 270.

35 Pfaffenberger, p. 270.

36 Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, p. 132.

37 Pfaffenberger, p. 257.

38 Pfaffenberger, p. 270.

39 Obeyesekere, p. 231.

40 Obeyesekere, Gananath, “The Fire-walkers of Kataragama: The Rise of Bhakti Religiosity in Buddhist Sri Lanka,” JAS, 37:3 (1978), 475.Google Scholar

41 Luckmann, Thomas, The Invisible Religion: The Problems of Religion in Modem Society (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p. 34.Google Scholar