Blurb:

Clemens Cavallin’s text takes as its point of departure the theme of interiorized ritual and its relation to changes in religious and ritual practices in early India, especially the tendency to shift focus towards the person or human being. He argues that such interiorizations of ritual practice and discourse need to be placed in a larger comparative context that is based on a theoretical model of ritualization and forms of interiorization. Cavallin employs a notion of abstract action, as formulated by Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlaw in their analysis of the Jain puja (1994). He develops a theory of the relationship between the abstraction of meaning (concepts) and of action (ritual acts) as they are connected to the religious principles of sacralization and personification.