著者

小田 亮

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

国際文化論集 (ISSN:09170219)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.37-66, 1990-03-01

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This paper aims to explain a correlation between the social division of ritual services on "purification" and the social connotations of "pollution", a form of ritual states of danger. In chapter I, we see the cases of performers of purification among three African societies; the Kaguru, the Nuer, and the Bambara. Among the Kaguru, 'joking partners' (watani), presons who stand reciprocal' joking relationship' with one another, conduct the ritual services to purify the pollution of death, incest, crime or witchcraft. Watani have "strangerness" and aren't regarded as pariha. Among the Nuer, the 'leopardskin chief or priest' conducts purification rituals. They are "strangers" in the communities where they live. Unlike watani leopardskin priests are specializing in purification, but, like watani, have strangerness. The Bambara society consists of three categories of people; freemen (horon), artisans (nyamakala) and slaves (djon). Among the Bambara, nyamakala, who conduct ritual srevices of purification for horon, are a kind of pariha. They are travelling "market people", and "strangers" to communities of freemen. In short, all these executors of ritual purificatuion among three societies above have "strangerness", but only Bambara nyamakala are held in contempt and, in some sense, awe others. That is, all "strangers" who execute purifying rituals are not regarded as awesome, nor as pariha. Then, what makes certain executors to be pariha and awesome? To answer this question, we must know three "ideal types" of "exchange"; market exchange, reciprocity, and redistribution, and know chieftainship from kingship. The discrimination of the types of "exchange" furnishes the ideal types of social domains; "liminal domain" or "the space of muen" where market exchange takes place, "the space of giri" where the rule of reciprocity dominates, and "domestic domain" or "the space of on". And the ritual danger of pollution can spead and affect within the domestic domain or the space of redistribution in which the pollusion arose. Persons or objects in "liminal domains" are free from the danger. This is why the executors of purification have "strangerness". Kingship, which produces the total redistribution system including liminal domains in the kingdom, stands in a dilemma. Because, only to the king, who stands on the top of the total redistribution system, "liminal domains" turn out to be "domestic domains", and the body of the king can be affected by all the pollution which every community in the kingdom throw into the liminal domains. It is "scapegoat mechanism" that can solve the kingship dilemma. The scapegoat that are connected with the king and live in the liminal domains are burdened with purification for the king. They appear as pariha in the total redistribution system, because they are alienated by the connection with the kingship from each community of which the kingdom consists.