Ritual Faults, Sins, and Legal Offences

Daniela Berti (1)

1 CEH - Centre d'Études Himalayennes

In this chapter I show how temple mediums and judges share some similarities: they both arbitrate cases, interpret or establish "facts" and "truth", and they pronounce judgments and verdicts. In one case the arbiter is a god's medium, who speaks on behalf of a village deity; in the other it is a professional judge who speaks on behalf of a State court. Most importantly, from the perspective of the present volume, both the mediums and the judges, especially those from Higher courts, make reference to the notion of sin in order to interpret the evidence that has to be judged. In fact, although Indian courts appear to be secularized contexts of judgment and of decision-making as far as the trial proceedings are concerned, a religious or moral understanding of sin emerges, particularly in judicial rulings.

Mots clés: religion; possession; rituals; law courts; judgments; morality; sin

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Daniela Berti. Ritual Faults, Sins, and Legal Offences: A Discussion About Two Patterns of Justice in Contemporary India. Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara. Sins and Sinners Perspectives from Asian Religions, Brill, pp.153-172, 2012, 10.1163/9789004232006_009. ⟨hal-00865688v3⟩