Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil.

• Author: ABEYSEKARA, ANANDA
• Position: Review

Formations of Ritual: Colonial and Anthropological Discourses on the Sinhala Yaktovil. By DAVID SCOTT. Minneapolis: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 1994. Pp. xxxi + 300. $21.95.

Yaktovil, a Sinhala Buddhist "healing ritual," widely practiced in the southern parts of Sri Lanka, is the focus of David Scott's recent book. Yaktovil, often rendered as "exorcism," (or "devil dancing" or "demonism") is performed to eliminate the "malign" effects that yakku, a class of "malign, supernatural beings," inflict on people and thereby to restore them to a state of mental and physical equilibrium.

Though yaktovil is its central theme, the book's agenda includes consideration of theoretical issues involved in the representation of Buddhism and Buddhist identity in contemporary Sri Lanka. The sociopolitical situation of Sri Lanka today is highly charged. Since 1983, a civil war--between the Sinhalese army and groups of Tamil insurgents, who demand a state in the northern part of the island--has enveloped Sri Lanka, the majority of whose population is Sinhalese and Buddhist. Concomitantly, various movements of Sinhalese "nationalism" have emerged. Within this context a fierce debate engages many Sinhalese Buddhists, both academic and non-academic, on what it means to be "Buddhist." Scott's book sheds instructive light on issues relevant to this debate and therefore contributes more than just an analytical account of the yaktovil.

The book consists of seven chapters, the last of which recapitulates the ritual of yaktovil in terms of the post-modern concept of "strategy." In chapter one Scott offers a scintillating yet dense discussion of the "moral Universe" within which the Sinhalese understand yakku. Yakku are "by and large human," yet "malevolent beings" who cause misfortune or illness (dosa) by casting "malign glances" (distiya) on humans. Anyone, "... on the earnestness of a mere malicious last [deathbed] wish, can sink to the status of a yaksaya" (p. 15). Yakku, as tradition has it, were the "early" inhabitants of the island who devoured human flesh and blood. However, the Buddha, during one of his visits, banished yakku from the island by giving them a "warrant" (varama). The "warrant" stipulated that yakku could no longer physically inhabit the island, but, on the Buddha's authority, could cast glances, or "look" on its population. It is in these glances that the "malign power of the yakku" lies. Scott's chapter two describes the nuances of distiya, "the medium of the malevolence of the yakku." He writes that "[t]he Sinhala body is an organism constituted by energies [three humors] and normalized by an ethic of composure" (p. 58). Locating the concept of "malign glance" in the larger Sinhala conception of eyesight as a form of "obtrusive energy," Scott points out that the Sinhala body can be disrupted by energies such as the "malign glances" of yakku. But the malignity can be removed because the "warrant" that the Buddha granted also permitted the yakku to receive offerings from his victims, via authorized persons (yakadura), thus restoring the victims' mental and physical composure. Chapter three provides an ethnographic account of the ritual yaktovil, in which these authorized individuals, "the practitioners of the art of controlling malign figures," sign verses, utter charms, make various offerings, and dance, all part of tricking and bargaining with the yakku to remove his "malign glances." Influenced by the works of prominent post-modern (and post-structuralist) thinkers such as Pierre Bourdieu, Talal Asad, and Michel Foucault, Scott speaks of yaktovil as a "strategy" that the adura employ to manipulate yakku and restore the balance of the body...