Ilsuffit d'une réflexion rapide pour constater que l'expression, «les origines de la Reévolution», comporte toute une seérie d'obscuriteés et d'ambiguïtés, qui s'attachent aussi bien aux origines qu'à ce qu'il convient d'entendre par Révolution française.

Weingrod, writing of Sardinia, distinguishes between ‘patronage’ in the social anthropological sense of “patron-client relationships” —”how persons of unequal authority, yet linked through ties of interest and friendship, manipulate their relationships in order to attain their ends”; and ‘patronage’ in the political scientist's sense of “party-directed patronage”—”the ways in which party politicians distribute public jobsor special favours in exchange for electoral support”. Weingrod goes on to argue that the former conception is no longer relevant to an analysis of modern Sardinian political behaviour: with the narrowing of the gap between village, city and state, and the evolution of national parties at the local level, the conception of party-directed patronage is more appropriate.

Recent studies of symbols in ritual share two features. First, they isolate symbols from the ritualprocess; second, they interpret symbols as units containing meaning. In this paper I want to argue thatsymbols in ritual cannot be understood without a prior study of the nature of the communication medium of ritual in which they are embedded, in particular singing and dancing, and that once this has been done we find that symbols cannot any more be understood as units of meaning simply on the Saussurian signifier/signified model, however subtly this model is handled. Such varied writers as Bettelheim (1954) and Turner (1959) are to my mind examples of writers ultimately using this model for the study of meaning in ritual.

Les saints de la confrérie mouride sont habituellement décrits, par les observateurs extérieurs, comme une aristocratie d'élus auxquels l'exploitation économique d'environ un demi-million de disciples, paysans pauvres, procure d'importants privilèges matériels.

Nepal, though the only Hindu Kingdom in the world, nonetheless is a nation in which numerous Buddhist communities co-exist in tranquility with their Hindu neighbours. The Newars, the numerically dominant ethnic community of the Kathmandu Valley, and a people justly famed for their remarkable artistic achievements in sculpture, painting and architecture, offer a microcosm of this peaceful coexistence as internally they are composed of Hindu and Buddhist sections. The existence of these two separate yet interrelated religious traditions is of extreme interest as it is one of the few remaining examples of the situation found in India from the inception of Buddhism through its demise. In recent years there has been much speculation based upon textual analysis concerning the nature of the relationship between Hinduism and Buddhism. Nepal, particularly the Kathmandu Valley, is an area in which a study of the actual dynamics of the mutual interactions of Hinduism and Buddhism may be made. Moreover, an examination of Newar religious organization permits investigation of how an actual Buddhist community has come to terms with the Hindu caste structure. Once again, this is a subject on which there has been a great deal of speculation. While passages in various Buddhist texts can be found which attack the Brahmanical view of how society should be organized, nevertheless little is known about how, in fact, Buddhists related to their Hindu neighbours. Lastly, the Newars who have replaced the usual Buddhist monastic structure with a married clergy offer an opportunity of examining the precise nature of the relationship between Buddhism and asceticism.