Three sources of ritual blessings in traditional Indonesian societies

Abstract

One of the merits of the Field of Anthropological Study approach in the so called 'Leiden tradition' is that it focuses on what RE. de Josselin de Jong has called the mutual interpretability of local transformations. Within a Field of Study, with its common historical roots, 'each culture can, in principle at least, contribute to an understanding of the others' (De Josselin de Jong 1980a:325). On the basis of the results of such comparison, recent develop ments in this approach with respect to Indonesia have identified more and more 'distinguishing features of an Austronesian heritage' (Fox 1993:5). These features are not isolated traits, but they are not part of a closed sys tem either. The Leiden tradition stressed from the outset that the ordering of local forms was governed by basic structural principles that pervade the var ious aspects of a culture. Initially this was explained, in accordance with the ideas developed by E. Durkheim and M. Mauss (1903), by saying that it is 'the scheme of the social categories' that provides 'the model for an all embracing classification' (Van Wouden 1935:2). Later, this 'primacy of the social organization' (De Josselin de Jong and Vermeulen 1989:303) was reject ed. The 'internal coherence of the representational system' of a society then was quite generally attributed to a 'holistic' axioma' (Platenkamp 1990:18) and considered to be based on an 'innate' human propensity (see Schulte Nordholt 1971:436). However, to quote Schulte Nordholt (1971:13) again, this order is 'never in

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