|
|
RÉSUMÉSImprimer / télécharger le livret : Booklet_RitualMathematicsAstralSciences_SAW_2016
Vers les résumés de : | Béatrice DAVID | Alan LEVINOVITZ & Daniel P. MORGAN | Philipp NOTHAFT | TESHIMA Hideki | YANO Michio
Alan LEVINOVITZ | James Madison University, USA & Daniel P. MORGAN | CNRS, SPHERE, & SAW project, Paris Virtue on trial: ritual archery competitions and astronomical testing in Early China Commentaire : Pascal BRIOIST | In this talk, we will analyze written sources for the “Big Shoot” 大射, a ritual archery contest held at court for the purpose of selecting officers to participate in the royal sacrifices. The key to the “observation of virtue” in sport and/as ritual, we argue, is its quantification and the observed assurance of exact, reproducible benchmarks, and it is there, as concerns scoring and target geometry, where later commentaries spill the most amount of ink. This begs the question of whether the “Big Shoot” represents historical practice or scholastic fantasy, which we address with a survey of historical records from the third century BCE to the ninth century CE. Having explored the transferability of this model of ritualized, meritocratic testing over time, we then turn in the second half to an exploration of how the “shoot” 射 came to inform other forms of testing at the core of the history of science and thought in early Imperial China. The institution of the live trial for making policy decisions as concerns li 曆 calendro-astronomy, it turns out, operates on the same model and same rules of scoring, appealing to the vocabulary of archery to conceptualize accuracy, which comes as little surprise considering as how it was the grand clerk, or astronomer royale, who presided over both competitions. But, we argue, there is more than a bureaucratic connection at stake here. The archery competition reveals to the observers (觀 者) the virtue of the participants, and, in turn, the virtue of the commander who chose them. Hitting the targets reveals broader capabilities of those involved—just as the participants aim at targets to reveal their archery prowess, the “target” system aimed at by the competition is not archery prowess but rather the virtuousness of the participants. The same archetypal testing system transfers neatly over to testing li, where a competition limited to specified targets (heliacal rising, etc.) serve to reveal the adequacy of li to an entire target system, namely the heavens. The accuracy of li, in turn, serves to reveal the “virtue” of its author and the ruler who possesses it. We will discuss these archetypes by building on recent work in philosophy of scientific modeling, looking at the correspondence between a competition and iconic modeling, and considering competition as a widespread but under-theorized form of idealization, the structure of which helps to illuminate foundational epistemic virtues of science. YANO Michio | Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan Astrology and rituals in India — with special references to the Muhūrtacintāmaṇi Commentaire : Caterina GUENZI | Astrology played an important role in India since the Vedic period. Out of the many elements of astrology I would like to focus on the muhūrta and its significance in rituals. In the old texts, the muhūrta is a time unit of 1/30 of a day, there being 15 muhūrtas of day and 15 muhūrtas of night, each with its own name. In ritual texts, the muhūrta is mentioned in the context of good or bad moment for sacrificial rites. The word muhūrta gained a general meaning after the establishment of the five elements (pañcāṅga) of the calendar, namely, the nakṣatra (lunar mansion), tithi (lunar day), karaṇa (half of tithi), yoga (based on the sum of solar and lunar longitudes), and vāra (weekday). Astrologers were expected to foretell auspicious and inauspicious muhūrta based on the combination of all the time units beginning with the year, namely, the half-year, season, month, half-month and the pañcāṅga elements. The planetary weekday was a new element of astrology introduced from the west with the 12 rāśis (zodiacal signs) and the 12 bhāvas (houses). These new elements contributed to the further sophistication of the muhūrta theory. From the beginning of the second millennium CE, texts dealing exclusively with muhūrta appear and begin to form a new genre of astrological literature, muhūrta-śāstra. Philipp NOTHAFT | All Souls College, Oxford, England Calendar reform in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: problems and perspectives Commentaire : Matthieu HUSSON | For most of its history in medieval and early modern Europe, the issue of calendar improvement and reform was closely tied to the celebration of Easter and the structure of the liturgical year. A fixed point in most debates of this kind were the writings of the church fathers and the decrees of the late antique church councils, which had established a firm link between the date of Easter and astronomical criteria – the full moon and the vernal equinox. Astronomical accuracy thus became a fundamental requirement, which the medieval ecclesiastical calendar was supposed to fulfil in theory, but failed to meet in practice. My talk will use the theological and legal background of Easter reckoning as a starting point to analyze the parameters and constraints that shaped the debate surrounding the ecclesiastical calendar in the late Middle Ages, focusing in particular on sources produced at the court of Pope Clement VI in Avignon (1344/45) and at the Council of Basel (1434-43). Special attention will be paid to the way these sources frame the relationship between religious ritual, on the one hand, and astronomical data, on the other, as well as to the general points of intersection between the Easter problem and the history of astronomy in this period. It will be argued that the criteria established in the course of these late medieval debates remained normative throughout the subsequent history leading up to the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582. ZHU Yiwen | Sun Yatsen University, China Commentaries on numbers of ritual through different mathematical knowledges in seventh century China Commentaire : Béatrice L’HARIDON | Numbers of ritual (Lishu 禮數) is a key part of ritual in ancient China. Some studies have been done on it based on ritual texts. On the other hand, Liu Hui 劉徽, who commented on the Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures (Jiuzhang suanshu 九章筭術), understood this book as a derivative of the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮), and further as a part of Confucianism (Ruxue 儒學). This fact points to the relationship between ritual and mathematics in general. However, it is as yet unclear how scholars in the past understood this relationship in relation to numbers of ritual. On the basis of analyzing different commentaries on numbers of ritual respectively in a mathematical book, called Mathematical Procedures on Five Canons (Wujing suanshu 五經筭術), and in Confucian canons, this talk aims at revealing different relationships between numbers of ritual and mathematical knowledges established by different scholars in seventh century China. Furthermore, the special role of numbers of ritual compared to other kind of numbers within the interdependence of ritual and mathematics will be discussed. TESHIMA Hideki | Kyoto Bunkyo University, Japan Vedic measure system and its application in the ritual field Commentaire : HIROSE Sho & Agathe KELLER | The Kalpa-Sūtras (compiled sometimes after the 6th century BC.) are vedic ritual manuals that contain explanations of how to set up the site where a sacrifice is to be held. In these texts we find mention of various measures used in the preparation of the ritual grounds, the sacred altar, the hearth of divine fire and the other elements of sacrifice. I will begin by summarizing the vedic system of measure, then examining its application in large-scale kingship rituals such as the Rājasūya (the Royal Consecration) or the Aśvamedha (the Horse Sacrifice). Through this examination we will try to understand the way that vedic ritualists integrate arithmetical/geometrical knowledge with magical procedures designed to realize the wishes of the supplicant king. WU Yan | Inner Mongolia Normal University, China The replacement of traditional ceremonies in the process of the movement for “Abolishing the traditional calendar and promoting the national calendar”: focusing on the Memorial Day of the birth of Confucius Commentaire : YANO Michio | On January 1st, 1912, the Republic of China was founded. At the presidential inauguration, SunYat-sen, the temporary President, announced the adoption of a calendar counted from the founding of the Republic and based on the principles of the Gregorian calendar, the argument being that a calendar of this type had been adopted by “advanced” western countries. However, because of the close relation between the calendar and everyday life and customs, the new calendar did not immediately replace the common one upon its promulgation. In 1927, the Nationalist Government took power in Nanjing; in the following year, the government initiated a movement named “abolishing the traditional calendar and promoting the national calendar” aimed at forcing the transition. At the time, the dates of festivals and commemorations were officially transferred from the traditional calendar to fixed days in the Gregorian calendar. For instance, the government established the Memorial Day of the Birth of Confucius as a national holiday and fixed its date August 27, rejecting contemporary scholars’ proposal to calculate the date each year via the traditional luni-solar calendar. This difference of opinions sheds light on two different notions of ritual time. The way in which the government reconstructed an ancient tradition according to modern usages is typical of the period. By replacing the date and regulating the ritual, the government re-interpreted the cultural meaning of Confucius and this commemorative day while at once rejecting the “abolished calendar” on the charge that “the fact that one continues to use the old calendar means he carries out the calendar promulgated by Tsing Dynasty, so that he would be the rebel of the Republic of China.” The interment of the traditional calendar and resurrection of Confucius would seem to be contradictory; in essence, however, their common aim is to reconstruct the order of time, through which the government aimed to legitimize and distinguish itself from the previous dynasty. By doing so, the Gregorian calendar, as an element of a foreign culture, offered a solution to establish a new order of time and reconstruct a tradition. Meanwhile, by placing the “tradition” into the new order of time, foreign culture became a part of local culture. Béatrice DAVID | Université Paris Vincennes, France A preliminary investigation of the ritual use of the calendar and the oracular script of the Sui (Guizhou, Southwest China) Commentaire : YANO Michio | The Sui (Shui in Chinese) live in Southeastern Guizhou. They are speakers of a dialect belonging to the Kam-Sui branch of the Tai-Kadai language family. They are one of the 55 official “ethnic groups” labeled as “national minorities”. Sui possess their own calendar and oracular script mainly used for divination purposes. The Sui script and manuscripts (le-sui) entered in the Chinese historiography in the late 19th century but research, mainly carried by Sui researchers, have been largely ignored outside China and even within China. The recent and on-going “development” of their mountainous region opened up for tourism and leisure activities has however brought a new kind of interest on this script in both official and academic circles, which led to its registration in 2006 in the national list of “intangible heritage” and the conservation of the manuscripts owned by the specialists. The political and tourism use of the Sui scripts is transforming what has become a “cultural heritage” into a major marker of the Sui ethnicity and some selected specialists as its official ambassador are asked to perform in festivals designed for the official spectacle of ethnicity offered for visitors. However, outside this arena, the specialists of the Sui script, who distinguished themselves from other specialists playing a role in the interactions between the human-beings and their spiritual counterparts such as the spirit-mediums, do continue to perform the ritual activities requiring their specific intervention as “master of the Sui manuscripts”. The Sui writing, around 300 characters, is an oracular script. It is mainly used at the domestic level to perform divination and rituals such as home setting, wedding and funerals, and at the collective level to perform at territorial rituals such as the Dor and the Mau festivals. These collective rituals take place in the specific time frame of the Sui calendar. Based on preliminary fieldwork research in the Sui autonomous district of Sandu and exploration of the fertile academic work mainly produced by Sui researchers who have played a major role in the protection of the manuscripts and its official recognition as “a Sui intangible heritage”, the present talk will present the main characteristic of the Sui scripture and calendar. The role of the “master of the le-sui” will be placed in the ritual context of the territorial lineage festival Dor which marks the beginning of the Sui year. Although the collective ritual has undergone major transformations since the last century, attempts by the “communist” authorities during the time of collectivism in the 1960 and 1970 to change the date of the festival and have it coincide with the celebration of the national day on October 1st, have failed. The “traditional” Sui calendar provides a “time of the self” as Sui, while the festivals of “traditional” luni-solar calendar of the Han nongli contributes in many ways to their sense of Chineseness as members of the Chinese pluri-national nation self-defined as Zhonghua. And the Gregorian calendar, or “Western calendar”, yangli, provides the time of the Chinese nation within the rest of the globalized world.
|
| Personnes connectées : 1 |
|
