Theology as History. Divine Images, Imagination, and Rituals in India

Gilles Tarabout (1, 2)

1 CEIAS - Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud
2 LESC - Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative

There is in India a widespread theological view according to which the limitations of human beings make it necessary for them to practise image worship in order to approach the divine. Such an assertion, however, is not confined to theology. It often pretends to “explain” actual practices in relation to society, and has spilled over into both art history and that part of general historiography that seeks to reconstruct the early developments of image worship on the subcontinent. Ethnographic evidence, on the contrary, suggests that observable practices provide a markedly different picture from the one that could be expected to follow from the “theological view” when it is applied to society. Moreover, today's observations impose on any theory of the past a set of empirical constraints that it should have to meet.The paper argues in favour of a thorough reconsideration of some frequently made assumptions about the sociology and the early history of image worship, suggesting eventually a few perspectives that could orient further research and discussion.

Mots clés: Anthropology; Gods; iconography

Mots clés: Ethnologie; iconographie; dieux; Kérala; Inde

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Gilles Tarabout. Theology as History. Divine Images, Imagination, and Rituals in India. Phyllis Granoff, Koichi Shinohara. Images in Asian Religions: Texts and Contexts, University of British Columbia Press, pp.56-84, 2004. ⟨hal-00524452⟩