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Avec ce volume, M. Feener et A. Blackburn reunissent de maniere inedite des chercheurs specialistes du bouddhisme et de l’islam pour faire apparaitre les lignes de force de la circulation et de la localisation des traditions religieuses en Asie meridionale, du XVIe au XXe siecle. Le cadre geographique de l’Asie meridionale, lui-meme inhabituel – a l’exception de l’approche englobante des civilisations de l’Asie des moussons de Paul Mus et de celle braudelienne de la Mediterranee asiatique de ...

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In this paper, the religious donation–meaning oriented interactions that occur between a lay donor and his or her monastic recipient or between laypeople and religious institutions as a whole–is first examined in the Burmese Buddhist context, in regard to the Maussian theory of the gift. The formal analysis of ‘serving rice’ to monks during their daily alms tour, the main form of religious donation, demonstrates that it is in keeping with the definition of a free gift rather than involving reciprocity, although it is supposed to be rewarded by merit through an impersonal process. Then, moving from a formal analysis of the ethnography of religious donation (ahlu) to the contextual analysis of the differentiated uses of various forms of giving in contemporary Burma, the discussion aims at highlighting differences with practices of ‘ritual offering’ (kadaw bwe) and ‘humanitarian aid’(ke hse yay) showing how these different forms of interaction shape contrasted fields of practice. The transaction occurring in religious donations then emerges as setting into motion a crucial social process, the enactment and reproduction of the difference in status between monastics and laypeople that is one of the main social processes contributing to the differentiation of a Buddhist-defined ‘religious field’.

Provocante, l’image que l’on a vue cet ete a l’affiche des cinemas parisiens l’est tout autant que celle a la une du Time Asie de juillet 2013 et dont la violence a suscite alors, en Birmanie, le retrait a la vente du magazine. La premiere image montre un moine bouddhiste a la face d’ange meditant sur fond de mosquees calcinees. La seconde qui figure le meme moine illustre un dossier intitule « The Face of Buddhist Terror ». Les deux jouent sur le choc provoque par l’association du bouddhisme...

Benedicte Brac de la Perriere brings a fresh perspective on the semantics of the word thathana (from Pali sāsana), which lies at the basis of Burmese conceptualizations of ‘religion’ as social space, by looking into its use within three contexts: universal, political and ritual. The interface of Buddhism as a ‘universalism’ and its localization in Burma is first examined through the convening of councils. Then, both ideas and practices linked to thathana are examined in relation to political and religious configurations set in the colonial period and under the various regimes that have ruled the country since its independence in 1948. The last section deals with Burmese ritual sphere in which those events concerning the Buddha’s teachings are distinguished through their religious character from mere rituals.

In Buddhist Burma, a variety of ritual has been found pertaining to quite differentiated aspects of religion. This rich ritual landscape remains under-examined due partly to the Buddhist-studies bias of most of the scholars looking at religion in Burma. In this paper, I develop comparative analysis of a class of ritual, namely that of initiation, in three components of Burmese religion: Buddhist monasticism, Buddhist esotericism, and spirit worship. At least from the present analytic perspective, the three components considered could be taken as encompassing the entire Buddhist religious sphere in Burma. Looking at initiation rituals in these three ‘paths’ is a means of understanding how they frame contrasting kinds of differently valued religious practice, and of showing that, although not often discussed, rituals do matter in Burma because they help to distinguish categories of action according to their relative religiosity. By doing so, I aim to give a sense of the real diversity of the Burmese ritual landscape, which until recently was rarely taken into account, and to contribute to the on-going debate in the field of Buddhist studies on what could be encapsulated as the question of Buddhism and spirit cults in Southeast Asian Theravada.

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In this paper, I bring into focus the biography of a Burmese ritual specialist who combines in her practice different spiritual resources in order to master her changing world. By analysing the way in which she positions herself between different fields of practice, namely the weikza path and the spirit possession cult, I aim to show that beliefs and practices considered normatively distinct according to their relative distance from the core of Buddhism actually converge in her personal history. By bringing to light the evolution of such a specialist in terms of a “spiritual career,” I seek to illuminate changes in the religious landscape that reflect those of the overall social context. Finally, this case demonstrates that magic, as a field of practice, is fully constitutive of the way the Burmese Buddhists of today think about and manage their lives, even if it has often been regarded as deviant from normative Buddhism.

In this article, practices related to the weikza are not considered as a bounded realm but as existing in a complex setting of dialogical relationships crisscrossing the overall religious landscape. Particularly, processes of interactions between spirit mediums and weikza path practitioners will be examined in the context of the recent growth of the weikza phenomenon visibility. Starting at Mount Poppa, where various religious specialists are present together at the anniversary of Bomingaung, the inquiry moves toward changing practices involving weikza in spirit possession ceremonies and proceeds to the examination of a hybrid path combining mediation with both spirits and weikza. Finally, practices of mediation with spiritual agents by weikza path practitioners ( dat si ) and spirit mediums ( nat win ) are compared to show that differences displayed in this regard by weikza followers are used to delineate and rank their own field of practice as a distinctive one.

The cult of the Thirty-Seven Lords is distinctively known for its practices of spirit possession although possession by spiritual agents may be found in other domains of Burmese Buddhist culture. What sets apart the practices observed in the cult of the Thirty Seven Lords is a form of individual and relocatable possession contrasting with traditional rituals linked to the locality and allowing for the professionalisation and the autonomisation of the ritual role of spirit mediums. Ceremonies of possession for the Thirty-Seven Lords mobilize communities of followers in which bonds of dependence with the nats are mediated by ritual masters, married to a nat , such bonds fashion these communities on the model of “clienteles” whose dominant authorizing principle is spirit possession. Spirit possession is what allows the cohesion of the spirit mediums practices that can be observed particularly during the festivals and can be said to constitue an autonomous ritual domain in the Burmese Buddhist culture.

This paper focuses on the career of a Burmese preaching monk and on what happened to him in November 2011, following a particularly successful series of sermons on the ‘ten duties of a Buddhist king’. Belonging to the lineage of the Mogok abbot, this monk was known as the ‘Frying pan’ abbot and had gained a considerable influence through the combination of systematic preaching and of humanitarian aid and social action. The turn to mass preaching was aimed, in his case, to implement moral reform and located him in the monastic lineages that contest established powers to such an extent that, eventually, he was banned from large public preaching in the region of Rangoon by the religious body administrating the Sangha. This case is examined from the point of view of renunciation that defines the position occupied by monks in Theravadin societies as opposed to that of the laity, and as representative of a specific moment in the articulation of religion and politics in Myanmar.

Burmese conceptions manifested by death rituals reveal a variety of concepts related to spiritual components of the self, such as leikpya, wignan, wignin, nam and manaw and a complementarity of beliefs and practices linked to the soul stuff (leikpya) and the karmic theory. These concepts are further examined in the opposite extreme situations of bad and good deaths that both produce beings, inconsistent with the Buddhist karmic theory, ghosts or spirits (nat) on the one hand, weikza or saints on the other hand. Nat and weikza, equally anomalous from the point of view of the Buddhist theory, are nevertheless the object of institutionalized cults and display strongly contrasted features. This is exemplified by the comparison of the performing sessions in which they manifest in this world through contrasted forms of possession. Finally, too good or too bad deaths both similarly prevent rebirth and thus leave the space for various after-death agencies in this world.

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