Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée

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Richard K. Payne (Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies, Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies) Michael Witzel (Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University)

Homa Variations

The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée

Richard K. Payne (Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies, Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies, Institute of Buddhist Studies), Michael Witzel (Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
21 January 2016

Comparative religion; History of religion; Buddhist worship, rites & ceremonies

Series: Oxford Ritual Studies Series

Found in many different religious cultures, the practice of making votive offerings into fire dates back to the earliest periods of human history. Throughout the tantric world, this kind of ritual offering practice is known as the homa. With roots in Vedic and Zoroastrian rituals, the tantric homa was formed in early medieval India. Since that time tantric Buddhist practitioners transmitted it to East and Central Asia, and more recently to Europe and the Americas. Today, Hindu forms of the homa are

being practiced outside of India as well. Despite this historical and cultural range, the homa retains an identifiable unity of symbolism and ritual form. Homa Variations is the first volume to provide a series of detailed studies of a variety of homa forms. This collection of essays provides an understanding of the history of the homa from its inception up to its use in the present. The book also covers homa practice throughout a wide range of religious cultures, from India and Nepal to Tibet, China, and Japan. The theoretical focus of the collection is the study of ritual change over long periods of time, and across the boundaries of religious cultures. The identifiable unity of the homa allows for an almost unique opportunity to examine ritual change with such a broad perspective.

Edited by: Richard K. Payne (Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies Institute of Buddhist Studies), Michael Witzel (Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 31mm
Weight: 844g
ISBN: 9780199351572
ISBN 10: 0199351570
Series: Oxford Ritual Studies Series
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 21 January 2016
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Richard K. Payne is Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley. Michael Witzel is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University.

Reviews for Homa Variations: The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée

Happily, Homa Variations and the Oxford Ritual Studies series as a whole...opens up possibilities for specialists and generalists to ask new kinds of questions about a subject that has been at the center of the study of religion since its beginning. -- Brian Collins, Ohio University, Religious Studies Review Some thirty years ago, the publication of the late Frits Staal's Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar marked a significant milestone in the study of Indian religions and, in the second volume of that monumental work, Staal's collaborators began to explore the diffusion of the fire ritual throughout Asia. With Homa Variations, Professors Payne and Witzel, together with a group of outstanding contributors, extend that project, bringing to bear the resources of the best current field work, textual scholarship and ritual theory on the diversity of the fire ritual in Hindu and Buddhist milieux. --Matthew T. Kapstein, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) and The University of Chicago