Death of Sacred Texts
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Amida's Pure Land
Amida’s Pure Land
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Cremation Ceremony
Cremation Chamber
disposal
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Final Dharma
Fire Sacrifice
gospel
granth
Granth Sahib
guru
Guru Granth Sahib
Guru Nanak
Human Gurus
Iconic Dimension
interfaith ritual practices
Jain Tradition
lotus
Lotus Sutra
Mahayana Buddhist Traditions
Muslim World
Nara Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan
Personal Email Correspondence
religious manuscript preservation
religious text disposal rituals analysis
ritual
ritual text burial
sacred object disposal
sahib
Scriptural Body
scripture materiality
scrolls
Shulkhan Arukh
Sikh Community
Sikh Prayer
Sikh Scripture
sutra
Tamil Nadu
textual lifecycle studies
torah
Torah Scroll
Yoreh Deah
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754669180
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 May 2010
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The Death of Sacred Texts draws attention to a much neglected topic in the study of sacred texts: the religious and ritual attitudes towards texts which have become old and damaged and can no longer be used for reading practices or in religious worship. This book approaches religious texts and scriptures by focusing on their physical properties and the dynamic interactions of devices and habits that lie beneath and within a given text. In the last decades a growing body of research studies has directed attention to the multiple uses and ways people encounter written texts and how they make them alive, even as social actors, in different times and cultures. Considering religious people seem to have all the motives for giving their sacred texts a respectful symbolic treatment, scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the ritual procedures of disposing and renovating old texts. This book fills this gap, providing empirical data and theoretical analyses of historical and contemporary religious attitudes towards, and practices of text disposals within, seven world religions: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Exploring the cultural and historical variations of rituals for religious scriptures and texts (such as burials, cremations and immersion into rivers) and the underlying beliefs within the religious traditions, this book investigates how these religious practices and stances respond to modernization and globalization processes when new technologies have made it possible to mass-produce and publish religious texts on the Internet.
Kristina Myrvold is Assistant Professor of History and Anthropology of Religion at the Center for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Sweden. Her research focuses on religious practices, identity formation and historiography among the Sikhs in India and in different diasporic settings. She is the author of "Inside the Guru's Gate: Ritual Uses of Texts Among the Sikhs in Varanasi" (2007) and co-editor of a forthcoming publication about the Sikhs in Europe.
