ACTIONS OF GREAT MOMENT
(AND LESS MEANING)These examples were taken from Java, India, Nepal and Central
Africa, but I could have chosen virtually any other continent or reli-
gion to illustrate the point. Rituals of various kinds are found in most
human groups, and notions of supernatural agents are associated with
them. Indeed, it is rare that people have concepts of gods or ancestors
without prescriptions for particular sequences of actions to be per-
formed at specific times and with the expectation of particular results.
Why do people spend their time and resources doing all this? Ritu- [231]
als are often described as occasions for people to commune with gods
and spirits, to partake in a transcendent world through highly emo-
tional experience. Rituals are said to communicate profound meanings
about gods and spirits, so that the real significance of the supernatural
concepts is conveyed through some special experience. In a less
exalted way, rituals also seem to be occasions for people to interact
with gods and spirits, both to ask for help and to demonstrate worship
and loyalty. Indeed, in many places people have some confidence in
the actual efficacy of ritual, in its power to bring about proper rainfalls
or good crops. All of these perspectives give us valuable insights into
how people see their own rituals, but that is not enough. There are rit-
uals in all human groups, and as we will see presently they have some
important features in common. What we should try to explain is why
ritual is such a general human activity.
The most obvious feature that distinguishes a ritual from an ordi-
nary action is that specific rules organize the performance. First, the
participants are each given a specific partto act, as it were. The priests
of the Hindu sacrifice described above are Brahmans, which explains
both why they can consecrate the various elements and why they can-
not kill the animal themselves. In the same way, the cleaning of Buyut's
relics is primarily the business of the caretaker in charge of the shrine
and the relics, and of the men of the group. The women are not part of
the circle and only handle the relics after they have been cleaned by the
primary participants. This division between men and women is even
more salient in the case of initiation among the Gbaya of Central
Africa, as each sex is assigned a specific role to play in the ceremony.
Second, the placeis also special: a specially erected platform near
Buyut's shrine, a Hindu temple dedicated to the local goddess, a pole in
the middle of the village, a pond in the forest. Third, each of the
WHYRITUALS?