overemphasis on magic

[F. Smith]

Until recntly I would have agreed that the distinctions "magic" and 
"religion" and other such seemingly simplistic distinctions had been 
discussed until they took refuge of their own accord in the great 
discourse graveyard. The ultimate death knell had been sounded by Inden 
and others with their cries of "essentialism." 
But note the following from Jonathan Parry, Death in Banaras (Cambridge, 
1994): "In anthropology the distinction between 'religion' and 
'superstition' went out with the dodo - for which we might be entitled 
to breathe a deep sigh of relief were it not for the fact that for our 
informants it is alive and well. Modern scholarly squeamishness has 
tended to obscure this crucial sociological fact" (p. 228). Alas, the 
same can be said for the way terms like indrajaala and yaatu were used
in Skt texts and their counterparts in modern languages, e.g. jaaduu in 
Hindi, etc. So, it turns out that these may actually be "indigenous 
categories" that cannot be so easily abandoned by exorcising our own 
orientalism and essentialism.

Frederick M. Smith
Univ. of Iowa