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Some Comments upon the Ritual of the Sanni Demons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jerrold E. Levy
Jerrold E. Levy
Affiliation:
Portland State College
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Extract

If I have understood Obeyesekere correctly, his paper on the ritual of the Sanni demons has two major concerns: to describe and interpret the dynamics of a dramatic healing ritual and to identify the symptoms represented symbolically by the Sanni demons. The ritual of the eighteen demons is presented as a dramatic confrontation between the forces of good, the gods, and those of evil, the disease-causing demons. The story line is provided by texts recounting original mythic encounters between the Buddhas and the demons. A degree of abreaction is achieved by the patient who is drawn into the drama as well as by the audience for whom the drama acts as an alleviator of tensions and reinforcer of religious values. After observing that each of the eighteen demons represents a discrete set of symptoms and that the system of Ayurvēdic medicine currently popular in Ceylon is a naturalistic one, Obeyesekere uses comparative linguistic and myth materials from other parts of India to demonstrate that the demons once represented physical rather than psychological symptoms and that psychological content has gradually come to replace an earlier set of organic, naturalistic representations.

Type
Healing Rituals
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1969 , pp. 217 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1969

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References

page 218 note 1 For a full discussion of this subject see Clements, F. E., ‘Primitive Concepts of Disease’, University of California Publications in Anthropology and Ethnology, XXXII, No. 2 (1932).Google Scholar

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