Explaining Mantras - Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in Hindu Tantra

List of contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Note on Translation Introduction: The Word and the World 1. Opening the Puzzle Box: Mantras, Poetry, and Magic 2. Chanting the Cosmogony: Mantras as Diagrams of Creation 3. The Linguistic Ideology of the Tantras: Language, Canon, and Idolatry 4. The Science of Illusion, Part One: Poetry and the Dream of a Natural Language 5. The Science of Illusion, Part Two: The Rhetoric of Ritual 6. Toward a Genealogy of Ritual and Rhetoric: Iconophiles and Iconophobes Notes Bibliography Index

Summary

Drawing upon linguistics, semiotics, anthropology and philosophy, as well as the history of religions, the author argues that mantras and other ritual discourses use rhetorical devices, including imitation, to construct the persuasive illusion of a "natural language", one with a direct and immediate connection to reality.

Product details

• Authors: Robert A. Yelle, Yelle Robert A.
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 19.08.2003
• EAN: 9780415966351
• ISBN: 978-0-415-96635-1
• No. of pages: 190
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 16 mm
• Weight: 540 g
• Series: Religion in History, Society and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; RELIGION / General, RELIGION / Eastern, RELIGION / Hinduism / General, Religion: general