Patrick, your more detailed elaboration of your point of enquiry supplied many things that were missing in your thread initiating post. It is these details that I was trying to gather through my responses to your 'naïve-looking' question which I knew did not have the naivety  it reflected,  in its actual background.

Now that you made the details clear, let me converse with you on those lines.

1. Yes, at the outset , the karmakānḍa practitioner of 2016 feeling compelled to follow the scriptural injunctions to perform the rituals and believing that he is performing the rituals exactly the way his ancestors or 'beginners' of the rituals performed them  is part of the general cultural universal of ritual performance. In a purely oral society of ,say, a tribal community, the norms of the ritual may not be perceived to be coming from a 'scripture' or its injunctions. But pattern is the same. Members of organized, say, semitic religions, may consider the norms to have been 'written down' in a 'book'. Nevertheless, they too share the feature of believing that they are re-enacting the performance of the rituals performed by their ancestors or 'beginners' of the rituals, in spite of the changes in the details of the performance. Just as the contemporary 'Hindu' considers his ritual to be 'Vedic', in spite of the changes, they too consider their rituals to be of Judaism or Christianity in spite of the changes. This belief that present form has continuity with or from the past one is vital to each of these cultures because identity of each of these is anchored to this belief in continuity.

2. What makes the 'Hindu' scene more complex than this is that it has an auto-anthropology of issues such as what a ritual is(kim karma), what are its functions (karmaNaa kim labhate), how a praising hymn or a narrative in a hymn is in fact an injunction to perform a ritual (arthavaada), the spirit or  'psychological' effect (jnaana) of a ritual , the relative significance (praadhaanya) of the performance (karma) or the spirit (jnaana) of the ritual (i.e. can  rituals be given up if their spirit is achieved through other means or are there no substitutes for the ritual to get its effect ?). Different schools of Vedanta take different positions with regard to these relative significances etc. 

3. What is interesting is, not all Bhakti schools downplay the significance of rituals. In fact, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita stand opposed to Advaita in this aspect.   

   

On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 9:43 AM, Michaels, Axel <michaels@asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:

Dear all,

 

in my recent book „Homo ritualis—Hindu Rituals and Ist Significance for Ritual Theory“ (OUP, 2016, ch. 9), I have elaborated on the relation of Pūrvamīmāṃsā and the practice of ritual as exemplified in the Arthasaṃgraha and other texts.

 

Best,

Axel Michaels

 

Von: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> im Auftrag von "Olivelle, J P" <jpo@austin.utexas.edu>
Datum: Dienstag, 20. September 2016 um 09:53
An: patrick mccartney <psdmccartney@gmail.com>
Cc: "indology@list.indology.info" <indology@list.indology.info>
Betreff: Re: [INDOLOGY] mīmāṃsā

 

Try, Mīmāṃśānyāyaprakāśa edited and translated by Edgerton.

 

 

 

On Sep 19, 2016, at 10:45 PM, patrick mccartney <psdmccartney@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Dear Friends, 

 

I find myself intrigued by the idea that there are people today compelled to carry on the karmakāṇḑa rituals. 

 

I read a brief passage that alludes to the mīmāṃsā thought-world as providing textual evidence and injunctions for this practice of reenacting scriptural commandments, which were originally meant for a group of people in a different time and place. However, it only mentions mīmāṃsā and does not mention any specific author or text.

 

I would like to read this text but, as I know very little about mīmāṃsā I do not really know where to start. I thought I might find some help here in locating the passages I seek. 

 

Thank you for your help.

 


All the best,

Patrick McCartney, PhD

Fellow

School of Culture, History & Language
College of the Asia-Pacific
The Australian National University
Canberra, Australia, 0200


Skype - psdmccartney

Phone + Whatsapp:  +61 414 954 748

Twitter - @psdmccartney

 

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--
Nagaraj Paturi
 
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
 
Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies
 
FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
 
(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )