Buddhist Stories in Korean Cinema

Films with specific Buddhist content do not make up a significant percentage of Korean cinema, and among them not many can be confirmed as the products of self-conscious Buddhist religious practice. Rather than relying on the self-understanding of the filmmakers, however, I read the 'Buddhist film' within the historical lineage of a specific cultural tradition of popular oral performances, as well as its derivative tradition of popular narratives. Seen in this light, the thin trickle of films joins forces with a well-established and traditional deployment of art as religious practice. Hence, rather than isolating the films withing their modern temporal framework, I instead view them as the contemporary evolution of a process that began as far back as the eighth century.

This strategy allow us to gain a diverse perspective on Korean cinema as well. Korea's film industry has been, for most of its history, an ideological battleground define by twentieth-century history. During the ear of Japanese colonial rule (1910-45), the film industry was monitored for nationalist sentiment and utilized for pro-Japanese propaganda. After the north-south division of the country, which began with the Soviet-U.S. occupation (1945-48) and which solidified after the civil war (1950-53), the ideological standoff between the two Koreas intensified the political use of film on both sides. While North Korean cinema is a state-controlled affair, from production to distribution, the South Korean industry has been only slightly better off, being constantly subject to ideological control and censorship. The Korean Motion Picture Act (1962), for example, suppressed any portrayals of poverty and economic conflict, promoting instead narratives of prosperity tied to the Park Chung Hee regime (1961-79). Since the 1980s, the easing of political pressures has given rise to the use of film as a medium of social criticism - a freer yet equally political utilization. Concurrently, more films have been produced for the international market in the pursuit of national prestige as well as of cultural identity.

The Buddhist film makes its appearance largely since the 1980s and is well represented in the category of the international export film. Its relative novelty can lead one to interpret it as the outcome of contemporary social needs. Hence, the turn to religious themes is read by Hyangjin Lee in Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, Politics (2000, p. 61) as a 'search for a moral vision of society,' particularly in the midst of rapid modernization. Im Kwontaek's Mandala (1981) and Come, Come, Come Upward (1989), and Bae Yonggyun's Why Has Bodi Dharma Left for the East? (1989), in fact, all exhibit a social consciousness that is the hallmark of South Korea's 'new wave' filmmakers, and they utilize a Buddhist filter in order to address contemporary concerns about class and poverty, as noted by David James in Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema (2002). The Buddhist film also reflects the vogue of traditional culture and folkways as a subject of Korean cinema, made most explicit in such films as Im Kwontaek's Sopyanje (1993) and Festival (1996). This new interest in the past bespeaks the contemporary yearning for identity and cultural pride. In addition, the nostalgia for traditional and folk culture can be read as a politics of aesthetics which 'traditional Koran culture' is marketed to the international film community as a way of gaining currency in the global cultural arena.

Bearing these contemporary dynamics in mind, our view of these films can be significantly broadened if we place them within the lineage of Buddhist religious practices. To illustrate this, I will examine 'Passage to Buddha' as exemplary of the tendency of Buddhist scriptures to be co-opted into more popular and accessible formats. Passage to Buddha is the English translation of the Korean film title, Hwaomkyong, which is the Korean name of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Chinese: Huayanjing). The film borrows its narrative from the final chapter of the sutra, which also exists independently in the Sanskritic tradition as the Gandavyuha (entry into the realm of reality). In this text, the central character - a young boy named Sudhana - sets off on a pilgrimage to attain enlightenment from 53 successive teachers. These 'enlightening beings,' who are the subject of the first half of the Gandavyuha, have two notable qualities. First, they take a multitude of human forms: mendicants, priests, scholars, scientists, doctors, merchants, ascetics, entertainers, artisans, and craftsmen (The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, 1993, p. 1169). This variety embodies the Mahayana view that all beings are bodhisattvas who have a role to play in the weal of other beings. It also underscores the concept of 'expedient means' (upaya), and the idea that different people respond to different kinds of teachers. The enlightening beings take on different forms for that reason. This is also related to their second notable quality, which is that they are 'phantom' beings who appear to people according to the latter's need: 'Having pervaded the cosmos with their emanations, they enlightened, developed, and guided sentient beings' (The Flower Ornament Scripture, p. 1168). As phantom manifestations, the enlightening beings demonstrate the Mahayana view that illusion can be a form of benevolent magic.

The human diversity and the skillful magic of the enlightening beings lend themselves to narrative description. the idea that all kinds of beings can function as spiritual guides sets up the possibility of many kinds of narrative scenarios. It offers a leave, if you will, to enter into any number of human predicaments for their inherent dramatic interest. In Passage to Buddha, the pilgrim is an 11-year-old boy names Sonje who wanders through modern-day Korea, particularly its social margins. The film opens in a crematorium where the body of Sonje's father, too poor and inconsequential to be identified, is rendered into ashes. Beginning with the loss of his father, who is never seen or named, Sonje proceeds in the rest of the film to search for his mother, who apparently abandoned him as an infant. The themes of orphanage and homelessness, as we will see, are ubiquitous Buddhist tropes. They pervade the medieval biographies of eminent monks and surface in both our films.

Sonje's search for his mother is overtly conflated with Sudhana's search for Buddhahood, as the former declares that his mother can be found in any 'good person.' The interchangeability of mother and Buddha as objects of yearning is depicted in one Oedipal dream sequence in which Sonje encounters a beautiful older woman who makes love to him. At the end of the film, Sonje has another vision, this time of his mother, who declares to him that she is the mother of all beings, including the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. The ultimate convertibility of signs, or manifestations, is a pointed declaration here, very much in the spirit of the Gandavyuha's teaching that enlightening beings take any and all forms. The specific conflation of Buddha and mother, who is also depicted as a love object, makes the further point that the traditionally antipodal realms of religion and domesticity are oppositions that must be overcome. Interestingly, Sonje has difficulty accepting this lesson in his own life, when he rejects marriage to the young woman he has impregnated in order to continue his spiritual pilgrimage.

Sonje's succession teachers include a doctor, a blond beggar woman, a political prisoner, an astronomer, and a lighthouse keeper. In keeping with its namesake text, the film narrates a deliberate process in which each teacher sends Sonje on to the next, indicating the each as a particular teaching to give and that a variety of encounters are necessary to attain the full Dharma. The idea that each human encounter imparts a spiritual boon is denoted by the deep bow that Sonje renders to each character before moving on. The one personage that weaves in and out of Sonje's journey is the apostate Buddhist monk, another abiding trope of East Asian narratives. At the very beginning of his travels, Sonje encounters the monk in a restaurant, eating meat and drinking wine. The monk appears again midpoint in the film to exhort Sonje to marry the little girl - now a young woman whom Sonje initially met at the crematorium. In the final encounter, Sonje sees the monk working with the village women, gutting fish in order to earn money for wine. The meeting culminates Sonje's sense of hopelessness and confusion, triggering a suicide attempt and the ultimate turn toward understanding, as signified by the aforementioned vision of his mother.

The world-embracing monk, with his decidedly nonmonastic ways, is a familiar figure that reaches back to the popular Buddhist text the Vimalakirtinirdeua Sutra. The text is named for its principle character, Vimalakirti, a noncleric who indulges in worldly activities yet who bests the most renowned Buddhist disciples in Buddha wisdom. This second-century Mahayana text was extremely favored in East Asia for its emphasis on the value of lay life. The critique of monastic reclusion that is implicit in the wold-embracing monk is a prominent theme in Korean Buddhist films. To be sure, Passage to Buddha's overall focus on the social fringes - each of Sonje's teachers bear the pain of a personal or social lack - manifests a political consciousness that is the imprint of post-1980s Korean cinema. The concordance of religious practice and social service, however, is a theme explicitly emphasized throughout the Avatamsaka, which embraces worldly activity and skills 'guided not by the personal desires of the practitioners but by the current needs of the society that they are serving, according to what will be beneficial' (The Flower Ornament Scripture, p. 41).

In simply co-opting the title of a significant Buddhist text, Passage to Buddha declares its lineage. Beyond lifting its plot line from Sudhana's famous pilgrimage, the film plays on the theme of enlightening illusions. One method it employs is a classic use of dreams as a way of advancing the tale - as well as Sonje's spiritual knowledge. Both dream episodes entail encounters with mother figures that are emotionally and religiously loaded. In the first, Sonje's Oedipal encounter with his mother/lover abruptly and rather disturbingly ends when she falls from a cliff during a post-coital excursion. In the second, Sonje finally has a vision of a woman who calls herself his mother, as well as the mother of all beings. the dream sequences mark significant noes in the plot/journey - at the point of maximum loss and absence and at the point of maximum attainment and presence. The ability of dreams - which, after all, are illusions - to function so meaningfully in the course of Sonje's journey can be paralleled to the medium of film itself. This is pointedly suggested by a curious detail in Passage to Buddha: The boy Sonje never ages despite the passage of many years. This detail explicitly invokes the conceit of the Buddhist-derived short dream, as I have discussed elsewhere in Embracing Illusion: Truth and Fiction in the Dream of the Nine Clouds (1996, pp. 85-107). When such dramas are told as stories or acted out as films, the efficacy of the former is extended to the latter genres as functional equivalents. These 'transformations,' which offer a distilled and potent experience of life, are better vehicles of instruction than the distracted experiences of waking reality.

Passage to Buddha is a secular telling of a story derived from Buddhist narratives and tropes. In that sense, this film continues the tradition of oral storytelling performances, which are themselves derived from religious storytelling practices - both Buddhist and shamanic. In this lineage of performance, entertainment is a logical aspect of religious practice because the ability to 'entertain' a reality made present by art is a necessary step to religious truth. Passage to Buddha is overt and didactic about linking religion and art, paralleling the religious journey of Sudhana with the film journey of Sonje, and by using the dream trope to implicitly question the distinctions between dream, reality, and film. The qualitative performance of the religious question in the medium of film enables one to transcend the distinctions between the religious, the secular, and the aesthetic as merely functional qualifications of the greater truth of presence.

[This essay was written by Francisca Cho. It was extracted and slightly edited from her chapter 'The Art of Presence: Buddhism and Korean Films,' which was originally published in Representing Religion in World Cinema: Filmmaking, Mythmaking, Culture Making (2003), pp. 107-119. Aside from the short clip above, Passage to Buddha turns up on YouTube from time to time and separate English subtitles are available here.]

A Celebratory Event in Muslim Culture

The mawlid is a celebratory event and genre to be found in Muslim lands from the Atlantic coast of Africa all the way to Indonesia and the southern islands of the Philippines. Many spellings and pronunciations have been given to the title of this religious literary form and its various embellishments - mevlit, mevlut, maulud, malid, milad, molid, mulid and moulid being but a partial listing. These terms and the varying phenomena to which they are applied have been utilized in non-Arabic- speaking as well as Arabic-speaking regions of the Muslim world. All variants are colloquializations of the Arabic word, mawlid, which for purposes of consistency will be used throughout this article. The term mawlid has carried many different meanings. Derived from the Arabic root verb wulida ('to be born'), mawlid means 'the event of birth' or 'the place of birth.' In these literal senses, it applies to any birth. More specifically, however, it has denoted the birth, the birthday or the birthplace of Muhammad the Prophet of Islam, and with this meaning it is also rendered as mawlid al-nabi, i.e., 'Birthday of the Prophet.'

The honor and respect accorded to Muhammad as the spiritual and temporal model for human behavior gave rise to a third use of the term mawlid. It became the designation for annual celebrations of the Prophet's birthday. By derivation, mawlid sometimes also names similar celebrations honoring other respected religious leaders. The celebrations honoring the Prophet are enhanced by the retelling of events from his life as well as recitations praising his qualities and deeds. These narrative and poetic recitations, also called mawlids, involve solo chants and hymn singing. In some communities the mawlid also incorporates examples of instrumental accompaniment, body movements and/or gala processions.

Mawlid therefore is a term which means: 1) the event or place of a birth; 2) the birth, birthplace or birthday of the Prophet; 3) the celebratory event connected with the Prophet's birth or other important occasions; and 4) the aesthetic forms or genres which enhance such celebrations. It is its use as celebratory event and as aesthetic form that the mawlid will be defined and described here.

The mawlid as a celebratory event developed several centuries after the death of Muhammad. One of the earliest mentions of such activities is included in a description of life in Cairo during the Fatimi period (909-1171), as reported by Taqi al Din Ahmad al Maqrizi (d. 1442). Though in 12th century Mecca, the birth place of the Prophet, the day was marked by solemn visits to the place of Muhammad's birth, as reported by Ibn Jubayr (d.1217) in The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, the mawlid in other places came to be celebrated with a variety of activities. For various descriptions of mawlid celebrations, see Edward Willlam Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, J.W. McPherson, The Moulids of Egypt, M. Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt: An Essay in the Sociology of Religion, and C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mecca in the Latter Part of the 19th Century.

The mawlid as celebratory event for the Prophet's birthday takes place on the 12th day of the third month of the Islamic lunar calendar (Rabi’ al-‘Awwal). Other occasions for which it has been used are the two major religious holidays (Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-‘Adha); occasions of family significance (births, circumcisions, weddings, illness, and death); and celebrations of significant political events (e.g., a military victory or an independence day). In many contemporary societies the mawlid as celebratory event honoring the Prophet is also frequently experienced in gatherings on the eve preceding Friday, the day of congregational worship.

The mawlid performance is a non-liturgical event and therefore may be held in a variety of places. The location for the event may be religiously significant - for example, in a mosque courtyard or community room (though rarely in the prayer hall itself) or in the courtyard of a tomb or shrine. The event may also be held in a religiously neutral area such as a private residence, a government building or a public square.

The mawlid event has many functions. First, it may serve as a celebration honoring Prophet, saint, political leader, or bride and groom. Second, it may be an expression of thanksgiving on the part of the individual or group organizing it. As such, it represents thanks to Allah for an outstanding personal achievement, birth of a child, recovery from physical illness, escape from injury or disaster or political and military success. Third, the mawlid functions in some cases as an event of propitiation, as a way of seeking divine aid for recovery from illness, mercy for the deceased, or intervention to assure success in some individual or group effort. Fourth, the event also plays an educative role, for it imparts knowledge of the Prophet's biography and stimulates Arabic literary and musical skills. Fifth, it provides moral edification through the poetic content of its performance. The mawlid is thus a religiously, psychologically and aesthetically significant component of community life.

Although participants of the mawlid event can be divided into two categories - performers and audience - the boundary between them is never rigidly defined, nor are the two groups mutually exclusive. Members of the audience, when sufficiently moved, may spontaneously join in as performers. At other times, a performer may relinquish his part to another person in order to assume the less demanding role of chorister or listener. Even soloists and reciters rarely continue in that role for the whole event. Instead, leadership rotates among members of a soloist group.

Those who recite, sing, move or play instruments for the performance vary in numbers according to the size of the community and the importance of the event. No minimum or maximum limits are relevant. As non-professionals, the performers come from all walks of life and backgrounds. Some of them participate regularly with a local group; others join only occasionally. Regardless of their expertise and accomplishment, the performers do not think of themselves as professionals, but as participants in a community event. Therefore, they rarely receive monetary compensation for their participation. They may be served refreshments or a meal, and their expenses as a group may be covered by the host or organizer of the event; but performance fees are not the rule. This results from two significant factors: Payment for any religious activity or service is frowned upon in Islamic culture. Though the mawlid is a non-liturgical event, it is essentially a religious phenomenon and therefore is regarded as carrying its own spiritual reward for the performer. In addition, charging fees for a performance would relegate the recipient to the culturally denigrating position of professional musician. Any financial compensation, therefore, is regarded as a voluntary contribution, not a compulsory fee.

Depending on the occasion and function for which the mawlid is called, audience participation may include an extended family group augmented by close friends, or a public gathering open to the community. As in other social activities in Islamic societies, the mawlid is generally a sexually segregated event with a male audience attending the performance of a male group and a female audience attending a female performance. This is not true, however, in many southeast Asian Muslim communities. Clothing of both performers and audience follows local customs. Heads are usually covered as a sign of respect for the event.

As an aesthetic form or genre enhancing the celebratory event, the term mawlid refers to a wide range of aesthetic forms, including poetic or prose literature, their vocalization (both solo and choral), and possibly inclusion of instrumental accompaniment and body movements. The poetic and prose elements in these genres are the factors determining their identity as mawlid expressions. While vocal, instrumental, and movement features may vary from region to region, the prose and poetic genres designated as mawlid are standard. It is for this reason that any form containing the following poetic and prose elements is generally labelled as a mawlid, regardless of the occasion for its use or the extra-literary aspects which it incorporates. Four types of literary content are typical of the mawlid: 1) recited accounts of events from the biography of the Prophet Muhammad; 2) eulogies of the Prophet; 3) Qur’anic recitation, and 4) invocations of blessing and supplicatory prayers. Any mawlid evidences a series of examples of these literary forms which alternate with each other in free and spontaneous manner. The performance however generally begins with a Qur’anic selection and ends with a supplicatory prayer.

Anecdotes from the biography of the Prophet are perhaps the most important literary genre of the mawlid. They are recited in Arabic from memory or read from a collection of such materials known in the Muslim world as 'Birth of the Glory of Mankind.' This work is commonly referred to as Mawlid Barzanji or simply 'Barzanji,' after Ja’far al-Barzanji (d.1765), one of the best known of the collectors of these prose narrative episodes and the accompanying invocations and poetic items. There are many variant editions of this Arabic work, as well as similar works in other Islamic languages. An edition of Mawlid Barzanji published in Delhi (Muhammadiyyah Press, 1940) contains 19 anecdotes plus two additional segments on the Prophet's physical and spiritual qualities, as well as a wealth of other pious, poetic and prose inclusions.

Any number of the anecdotes from the life of the Prophet may be recited, depending on the inspiration or mood of the participants and the importance of the occasion. After the chanting of each anecdote by a soloist, members of the group respond with a short repetitive and rhythmical answer. The answer incorporates such well known Islamic phrases as salawat ‘ala al-nabi (‘Prayers upon the Prophet’), ya habibullah (‘Oh beloved of Allah’), allahumma salli wa sallim 'alayhi (‘Oh God, bless him and grant him salvation’).

Eulogies of the Prophet, known as madih in Arabic, are a second element of literary content found in every mawlid performance. These may be in the form of simple prose, rhymed prose, or poetry. They are often in Arabic, but are also heard in the vernacular of the Muslims who perform them. One of the most common forms is the poetic qasida, or 'ode,' which comprises independent poetic lines evidencing a monorhyme and monorhythm. Although the content of madih is essentially panegyric, other materials pertaining to the Prophet's life or to pious themes may be included.

The Qur'anic selections recited in the mawlid are unspecified, but reciters usually choose those connected with the role or characteristics of the Prophet. These recitations are always in Arabic.

Invocations and supplicatory prayers, known as du’a, comprise the fourth element of literary content in the mawlid. They may be recited by a soloist, in which case the group responds with pious conventional expressions after each phrase or sentence. If performed by the group, they may either play the role of formulaic responses to a larger poetic or prose segment,or serve as repetitive sequences to heighten religious experience. These prayers are most often in Arabic, regardless of the area of the Muslim world in which they are performed.

A combination of an indeterminate number of these literary units in alternation or succession is often designated as a performance section. A mawlid will usually comprise a number of such sections, separated by intervals for refreshments and/or conversation. A performance thus resembles a suite-like organization of performance segments, each of which is made up of smaller literary units.

The anecdotal episodes from the Prophet's biography are chanted by a soloist in an improvisatory and free rhythmed style. Repetition of motifs (both tonal and durational) and returns to tones of modal stability provide the main elements of unity in these cantillations. Comparable in style to the vocalise of European music, these improvisations show considerable influence from Qur'anic recitation. Separations between these units are punctuated by short repetitive and rhythmical melodic responses performed by the group. These may comprise a short melodic phrase emphasizing the stable tone(s) of the scalar segments used by the soloist, or they may be simply a rhythmic pattern repeating a single tone.

The lines of simple prose, rhymed prose or poetry eulogizing the Prophet are performed in two ways: 1) as litanies, with alternations between reciter and group; or 2) as hymns sung in unison by the group. In the former case, lines are chanted by a soloist in an improvisatory, free rhythmed style and followed by short rhythmical responses sung in unison by the group. As hymns, the poetic eulogies become metered songs. They are given various names - nashid, qasida, ilahi, na’t, and others. Sometimes a vocal drone, either as a continuous sustained tone, or as a rhythmic repetition on that tone, is added to the hymn. Another possibility for increased melodic interest is the inclusion of an ostinato line repeating a short melodic motif or phrase continuously as underlay for the main vocal line.

Qur'anic passages are chanted in the usual manner, by a soloist in an improvisatory and free rhythmed style. The improvisation is divided into well defined melodic segments separated by periods of silence. Invocations and supplicatory prayers are also embellished tonally and rhythmically. They are rendered either as improvisatory solo lines with short motifs of metered choral response, or as repetitive, unison chants.

Although instruments are widely used in secular contexts in Islamic culture, their incorporation in a liturgical context, i.e., in the ritual worship or salat or in connection with Qur'anic recitation and supplication, are strongly disapproved. Even in connection with such non-liturgical genres as the mawlid, they are avoided or used only infrequently. Of the four types of literary-musical genres included in a mawlid it is only the metered songs which sometimes evidence instrumental accompaniment. Instrument use is not only statistically rare; it is also limited as to the types of instruments which are acceptable in this religious genre. Membranophones (instruments whose sound is produced by the vibration of a membrane or skin) are the instruments most frequently used. Of these, frame drums (tambourines) of various sizes and construction details are the most common. Kettle drums and double-headed cylindrical drums are still less frequently used. Only rarely would a melodic instrument from the family of chordophones or aerophones be used to accompany the vocal lines of a mawlid. Many performances are purely vocal in musical content.

The movement arts have never been regarded as suitable components of Islamic liturgical genres.This generally holds true for such non-liturgical religious genres as the mawlid as well, though here, a somewhat greater variety of expression is accepted. When accompanying a metered mawlid segment, such movements include repetitive bendings of the head, swaying of the torso, and/or waving of arms, usually done from a seated or kneeling position as participants face each other in two parallel lines or an oval formation. No one, however, identifies these movements as raqs, the Arabic term for dance. Raqs is regarded an appropriate appellation for only the frivolous and purely secular movement arts.

Although local customs and conservative or liberal views bring elements of variety to the outward forms and internal inclusions of musical and movement elements, the mawlid as a celebratory event and as a genre for performance evidences strong ties of religious, literary, and aesthetic unity throughout the Muslim world. This unity is evidenced in the widespread coincidence of times, places, functions, and participants that are relevant to this performance event, as well as in the literary genres and musical styles which it includes.

[The foregoing was written by Lamya al-Faruqi and originally published under the title 'The Mawlid' in the journal The World of Music (Vol. 28, No. 3, 1987, pp. 78-89). Lamya Faruqi was a noted ethnomusicologist developing a body of research on art and music in the world of Islam until her tragic death in 1986. This was one of her last academic articles, published posthumously, and has been slightly edited for inclusion here. The original also included examples in musical notation, which have been omitted for this version. There are many examples of mawlid videos on YouTube, only a very few of which are included above; while searching, try using different spellings as noted earlier in this article.]

Religion and Indian Cinema

Since the early 1990s Indian society has undergone some of the greatest changes it has seen since Independence in 1947. Several key events at the beginning of the 1990s inaugurated the processes that occurred during the decade. These years saw the rise and fall of the political parties who support Hindutva or policies of Hindu nationalism, while economic reforms brought in a new age of consumerism and liberalism that has taken root across the Indian metropolises. While other major social transformations also took place during this decade, such as the rise of lower castes, this period can be said to be one in which a new social group, 'the new middle classes,' rose to dominate India economically, politically, socially and culturally. The impact of these new groups was felt outside of India as they were part of transnational family networks and the diaspora that became increasingly important as a market for Hindi films, alongside other global audiences.

This decade also saw a media revolution (satellite and cable television since 1991), a communications revolution (the mobile phone and the Internet) and new technologies (the audio cassette, the CD, the VCD and the DVD). The dynamics of the interaction of these new media with the film industry have been fast and there has barely been time to analyse them. Religious genres, which had been phenomenally popular as religious soaps on terrestrial television (notably Raymond Sagar's Ramayan and B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat), soon spread throughout the cable and satellite channels along with other religious programming (lectures, music programs), and now religious channels such as Astha and Sanskar grew in in popularity. Audio cassettes and CDs of religious music have continued to sell well, while VCDs and DVDs have allowed religious films to recirculate. Religious content has also flourished in other media, so the Internet now offers online pujas ('worship') as well as access to texts, religious history and so on, while even mobile phones offer SMS blessings and religious ringtones.

Much of this material in the new media is recycled from the religious films. It is impossible to predict where this is all going, and even the present situation remains unclear. One emerging trend is that the consumption of these new media is very different from that of cinema. Although cinema attendance in India has grown with new viewing trends such as the multiplex, the trend for mediated religion is away from an audience in a theatre hall towards a consumer in a domestic space. This must be viewed with caution as the work of Mankekar in Screening Culture, Viewing Politics (1999) on viewing the television Mahabharata suggests Indian viewing practices may be different and these new media may allow the creation of new audiences. This is true of other media as audio cassettes and CDs are played in taxis, autorickshaws and other public places, while VCDs are shown on television screens during festivals. These new technologies allow more rapid dissemination of religious content to the diaspora, and increasingly these groups are active as consumers and producers. Just as Islam has been affected by globalization, especially among the Muslim diaspora (Devji 2005, Roy 2004), one may expect to see the emergence of a new form of globalized Hinduism as the religioscape spreads through the world, linked by these new media. It remains to be seen what form this globalized Hinduism will take.

Although these new media may have initially been viewed as a threat to film (and the DVD seems to be a particular problem for piracy), they actually reinforce film, which remains more spectacular, has better technology and brings audiences together in pleasant surroundings, notably the new muliplexes in shopping malls. The changes in film technology, especially those of digitally produced special effects, have led to talk of a new film of the Mahabharata with superstars Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan playing Karan and Arjun (although it remains to be seen if the audience will accept Muslims, albeit superstars, in these roles).

Cinema is part of the wider project of modernization. It deals with material progress, sometimes with moral progress but it has deep ambiguities which are its strengths and which make its study so rewarding. In Film as Religion Lyden (2003) suggests that the very nature of film evokes the religious. I read this with the caution exercized by Asad in Formations of the Secular (2003), in particular his analysis of the proposition that nationalism is a form of religion, where he shows that this widely held view does not stand up to close scrutiny. While there is much that is religious in the nature of film itself, it does not necessarily constitute a religion. The differences between American cinema and religion and the Indian cinema and religion are such that great care should be taken in drawing parallels between the two. More research needs to be done into the pleasures of the religious aesthetic, of faith and of belief in a moral universe in India and in India cinema.

It may be that Indian cinema has specific traits that incline it more towards the religious than other cinemas. One must consider the aesthetics of Hindi cinema, such as its deployment of the miraculous, stars, darshan, tableaux, sets, song and dance, and the aesthetic of astonishment and its evocation of wonder and reverence. Of course it is not just the text itself, but the way the audience perceives it. One only has to think of how Gandhi came to be sen as a divine figure. While all film stars are different from mere mortals through the mechanisms of stardom, Hindi film stars are often perceived as gods by their fans, who may dedicate temples to them. Research has already shown the close associations in India of religion and performance, though this is yet to be analyzed in cinema. As Bharucha's work In the Name of the Secular (1998, p. 40) suggests: 'There is, I believe, an intensely private space in the believer's consciousness that is activated during prayer, worship, meditation or ecstasy.' Cinema creates a group identity for people who believe in the congregation (satsang) and its miraculous effects, and its 'aesthetic of astonishment' (to use the phrase employed by Tom Gunning in his chapter in Linda Williams' Viewing Positions) for an audience that believes in miracles and in stars as gods. Most people react to cinema as something ineffable: we know cinema, we feel cinema but we find it hard to analyze.

It is promising that the scholarly discipline of film studies is slowly beginning to engage seriously with religion. For some years the dominant paradigms were Freud and feminism, which undoubtedly were productive for engaging with melodrama with its study of the unconscious, dreams, desire, and fantasy. We still do not have a better language than this, and so we persist with it, despite our awareness of its limitations. Of course, for religious films, one has to be aware that psychoanalysis sets itself up as a new religion. The theories of postmodernism and the breakdown of grand narratives are not accepted by the majority, neither in the West nor in India. In Filming the Gods, most of the readings can be said to be meanings that are known to the audience and also based on the views of the filmmakers, critics and audiences, though for the first time they are historicized and contextualized rather than interpreted individually, and as a mistaken teleology.

These films, however cynical critics may be, do create religious sentiment in viewers and audiences and may contribute towards a hybrid Hinduism, whether they are taking it from the world around them or whether they are creating it themselves. The films' focus on the family, on the group, on the nation, on the transnational Indian community is all part of a search for a new morality and a new happiness. This raises the question of a Hindu imagination, for these films suggest that religion is more important than nationalism. As British Muslims now often prefer to define themselves as Muslims rather than as Pakistani or Indian, so perhaps a new Hindu imagination may be emerging where the British or North American person of Indian origin is no less Hindu than an Indian. This does not imply any necessary association with Hindutva or Hindu nationalism but with a form of popular belief that has not been redefined in these Semitic terms, nor in any form of systematic belief. If this is indeed a Hindu imagination, it needs to be defined, analysed and historicized.

[The foregoing is from Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema by Rachel Dwyer (Taylor and Francis Books, 2006). This version was extracted and slightly edited from the author's chapter in The Religion and Film Reader, edited by Jolyon Mitchell and S. Brent Plate (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 137-40.]

An Ethnobiographical Film by Jorge Preloran

Jorge Preloran (1933-2009) was an Argentinian-American filmmaker who developed a unique style of ethnobiographical documentary film during the 1960s. One of his most well known works in this genre is Hermogenes Cayo, the Spanish language version of which he made in 1969. A year later, Preloran collaborated with American Anthropologist Robert Gardner to produce an English language version of the film under the title Imaginero. In this film we have the sensitive and human portrayal of a folk artist living on the puna of Northwestern Argentina. The subject of the film, Hermogenes Cayo, is a self made man with a deep dedication to both folk Catholicism and the plastic arts. His creativity and ingenuity reveal a self confidence rarely found in descriptions of Andean lifeways.

The film allows Hermogenes to narrate in his own language, Spanish, some twenty years of his life. Though impoverished, he seems more than satisfied with his lot. His accomplishments are impressive. He produces paintings, altars, and images, and even designs and builds a chapel. When faced with the complexities of a broken harmonium, an instrument he has never seen before, he first rebuilds it without guidance and then proceeds to fashion one for himself from memory. As explanation as to how he accomplishes all this, he states simply that "these things are not of a different world; they were made by men just like me ... All you have to do is be determined and by thinking, thinking ... you can invent machines."

The film picks up the thread of Hermogenes' life at middle age and then, in flash backs, takes him to Buenos Aires. There, in 1946, he participated in the "Raid of Peace" as one of 175 peasants from the puna demanding restoration of ancestral lands that for centuries had belonged to the Church. As participant in the "Raid," he walked 1500 miles over several months time. The trip opened entirely new worlds to him. While in Buenos Aires, he visited nearby Lujan, the great Argentine center of religious pilgrimage. There he encountered forms that were to inspire him throughout the rest of his life.

On returning to the puna, Hermogenes took a woman. After living with her for over ten years, he one day was removed from a religious procession by a German missionary priest who objected to his "living in sin." Instead of turning against religion, Hermogenes reasoned that a man as religious as himself needed order in his life, and so he arranged a formal wedding. The film chronicles the wedding preparations and the ceremony. Since the wedding took place on February 2, the feast of Our Lady of Copacabana, its documentation simultaneously shows the blessing of household saints and Andean dance groups such as the wacawacas. Hermogenes's marriage, unfortunately, did not last long. Approximately one year after the ceremony he died of pneumonia. At death, he was sixty years old.

Hermogenes Cayo's life style was that of Andean, rather than Argentinian man, in cultural terms far more closely related to Bolivia than to Buenos Aires. In colonial days the section of northwestern Argentina shown in the film was part of Alto Peru. Race, economic base, religion, and even dress remain today an integral part of a cultural tradition that stretches from the Peruvian altiplano south. Filmmaker Preloran concentrates on the religious aspect of this tradition and, in particular, on its static qualities. He sees it as totally Spanish, rather than as the synthetic hybrid uncovered by anthropologists. In his words: "what happened was that the Jesuits came into that area with the Conquistadores in the 16th century and displaced native religion. And then it was frozen ... absolutely frozen. And the religion has not changed in 400 years. So today, you still have processions, the cult of images, the other religious festivities of that time, which of course have changed even in Spain; but there they remained exactly the same."

By focusing on one man through a lengthy period of his life, and by allowing that man himself to narrate the film, Preloran has produced the most believable portrait yet of Andean man. His excellent photography and careful editing keep the audience spell-bound. Colors, music, deliberateness, and long silences all ring as authentic for anyone who knows central Andean plateaus. The fact that this is a truly superb film, however, does not preclude flaws - particularly as seen from the point of view of the anthropologist. First of all, in dubbing English translation into Cayo's narrative, much becomes lost. There are spots where it is difficult to understand what is said in either language. Second, the matter of techniques and media used by the artist is very poorly presented. Students of folk art will be greatly disappointed, for they will learn nothing about the paints the artist employs, the canvases (or boards?) on which he paints, or the steps he takes to come up with a finished product. Nor will they have adequate information on the volume of works the artist produced. Most serious of all, however, is the fact that the film presents Hermogenes Cayo largely outside his social context. Even though Preloran assures us that his subject is extroverted and self confident, there seems to be consider- able evidence that he is marginal, and even borders on being a recluse. Hermogenes speaks of a friend, Ambrosio, but we learn nothing of the man. He refuses to participate in carnival, and in fact calls it the work of the devil. Yet anyone with any acquaintance of Andean culture knows that, as a rite of intensification, carnival is one of the most important events of each year. From his Lujan experience onward, Hermogenes considers himself a slave of the blessed virgin, and dedicates all his spare time and efforts to religion. While such intense religiosity is often found among folk peoples of the Andes, it is the exception rather than the rule. One explanation for such unusual orientation may lie in the fact that neither Hermogenes nor his wife knew their fathers. They seem to have been social isolates from birth. His role as religious chanter and image maker seems to have done little to break down his isolation. At his death only three mourners gathered. This, in a culture in which deep bilateral kin ties are the norm, seems unusual to say the least. Not even the fact that families in the area live from three to four miles apart adequately explains the event.

In all fairness to Jorge Preloran, however, it must be said that he never intended to present ethnography. He was working on several documentaries on the cultures of northwestern Argentina. While filming the feast of Our Lady of the Assumption in Casabindo, a hamlet lost in the 12,000 foot high desert that borders on Bolivia and Chile, he was told, by a school teacher, of a Colla artist who would make an interesting subject. For six months Preloran periodically visited Hermogenes, getting to know him as a person. The longer he knew the man, the more his admiration grew. He set up a tape recorder and let Hermogenes talk. From these conversations the idea of a film gradually took shape.

In February, 1966, shooting began with the documentation of Hermogenes's wedding. From then on, Preloran filmed off-and-on for over a year. He was still preparing documentaries in the area and would visit Hermogenes whenever he had time. On returning one day to take additional footage, he was shocked to find that his subject had died. Until that time, Preloran had felt no urgency in his endeavor, nor had he seriously thought of how he was going to make a film out of the footage. By listening anew to Hermogenes's taped narrative, and imposing a heavy editorial hand, Preloran gradually worked his disjointed sequences into a film. In doing so, he tried to keep uppermost the portrait of a living man. He succeeded superbly. In the end, Hermogenes Cayo emerged as a Renaissance type, not only in art style and religious perception, but in wide ranging curiosity and competence. His life, combining constant deprivation with an equally constant search for perfection, speaks in a universal way to the human condition.

Preloran's work brings a challenging dimension to the world of ethnographic films. He criticizes most such endeavors on the grounds that they concentrate overmuch on material culture. He argues that such films should rather present the dramatic flow of natural events, with the unabashed purpose of making an emotional impact. His approach is being amazingly well received. The Argentine National Fund for the Arts was forced to expand an originally planned single showing to six, and Film Comment recently published a nine page interview on his work.

Imaginero gives the most sensitive portrayal of an Andean man yet to be produced by the film medium. Its subject is presented with respect, sensitivity, and a refreshing absence of patronization. As a work of art, and even as ethnography, it is a must for any library which attempts to collect materials on either Latin America or folk art.

[This is a slightly edited version of a film review by William E. Carter that was originally published in American Anthropologist, Vol. 73, No. 6 (December 1971), pp. 1473-75. Further information about the films of Jorge Preloran is available in Louis Werner's essay 'Cineaste of the Human Angle.' Documentary Educational Resources has a filmmaker profile of Jorge Preloran, and has announced its upcoming release of several Preloran films on DVD.]

The Nature of Tibetan Buddhist Medicine

A 2006 television documentary, ‘The Blue Buddha: Lost Secrets of Tibetan Medicine,’ introduces the Tibetan Buddhist medical tradition and the relationship between Buddhist teachings and medical knowledge, emphasizing that the founder of Buddhism considered himself as a healer, rather than as a god or a prophet, and that he presented his teachings not as doctrines but as remedies intended to heal the body and mind. These teachings form the basis of Buddhist oriented medicine today, with regional variations, and so the documentary begins by surveying its historical development in Tibet.

At an 8th century conference held in Tibet, participants from India, Nepal, Greece, Persia and China met to share their wisdom. Tibetan medicine developed as an inquisitive fusion of these traditions, filtered through the Buddhist spiritual worldview. In the 17th century, the 5th Dalai Lama oversaw the compilation of this knowledge as a series of 79 detailed paintings, which are a blend of medical knowledge and Buddhist teachings, and which serve both as an aid to learning and as an art form. Doctors who mastered this tradition at monasteries in Lhasa travelled throughout Asia spreading their wisdom. In the 20th century, Cold War politics and the Chinese occupation drove many Tibetans into exile in India. In 1961, a medical institute was established in Dharamsala, including a school and a facility to manufacture medicines.

In the Tibetan tradition, virtually anything can be used as medicine and the healing process is usually understood as a collaboration between doctor and patient. Ailments are treated according to methods involving correct diet and behavior, and making use of natural medicine and accessory therapies such as massage and acupuncture. Medicinal compounds made from plants and minerals are stored in a visual encyclopedia along with other aspects of the tradition. A diagnostic painting, for example, depicts a tree with three branches, illustrating the diagnostic technique with its emphasis on touch and pulse taking, and the practice of gaining intimate knowledge of the patient through interviews and questioning.

Along with surveying Tibetan medicine, the documentary emphasizes dialog. Tibetan medicine is forward looking, as suggested by Dorje Dawa, a doctor at the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute in Dharamsala, who says that, ‘We cannot be content just to say that Tibetan medicine is one of the most ancient systems of healing. We need to interact with modern medicine so we can authentic our results and cross reference our diagnoses and treatments to correct inaccuracies. That does not mean we should lose our identity in trying to imitate Western medicine. We need to create dialog with Western science.’ Such a dialog would have to recognize the strengths of each tradition, as Dr. Dawa continues, ‘Western medicine is good for acute ailments and for emergency cases, as when there are traumatic injuries, whereas Tibetan medicine is good for long standing conditions or chronic diseases. Its particular strength is getting at the root cause of diseases, rather than masking or just treating the symptoms.’

While Western medicine and science tend to have an uneasy, if not hostile, relationship with religion and spiritual knowledge, in the Tibetan tradition the two work hand in hand. Tibetan doctors have a detailed knowledge of plant habitat and medical uses, for anything ranging from tonics and sedatives to anti-viral compounds, and they learn to combine plants and minerals in myriad ways to treat various diseases. However, these compounds are activated by a series of ritual prayers, some taking months to complete, which energize the medical compounds to do their healing. Another important difference is that death is not seen as a failure of treatment. Instead, according to Buddhist eschatology, death is seen as an awakening from the dream of life, and so part of the role of the Tibetan doctor is to help a patient recognize that death is near and to assist in the preparation for the passage from life, rather than frantically clinging to life.

The ‘Blue Buddha’ also features a profile of Tuvan Dorzhi Radnayevich, a Buddhist monk and doctor of Tibetan medicine who works in Ulan Ude, the capital city of Buryatia, a Russian republic in southern Siberia. Known in the local community as Tuvan Lama, he is shown receiving visitors at his clinic, making house calls and providing various community services. Returning to the theme of dialog, Tuvan Lama suggests, ‘It is not that we ignore modern Western medicine. They have their own excellent aspects, such as surgical treatments and computer analysis. They can be very effective and we can make use of them. In the future I hope we can combine the good points of Western medicine and traditional Buddhist medicine.’

By inserting several calls to dialog within a general overview of Tibetan medicine, the producers seem to be suggesting that the key to dialog between the Tibetan Buddhist and modern Western traditions of medicine is an independent and rigorous training in and acceptance of the Buddhist tradition on its own terms, rather than as a supplement to the Western training. While admirable, this overlooks another crucial aspect of dialog, which is to move the dialog beyond Western medicine, and to create many dialogs among medical traditions of the world, such as the Ayurvedic system of India or the Islamic tradition.

‘The Blue Buddha – Lost Secrets of Tibetan Medicine’ is a Canada/Japan co-production directed by Aerlyn Weissman and Tetsuya Itano, produced in 2006 in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. It is currently available on Google Video.

[This review is by Yusef Progler and was originally published in the Journal of Research on Medical Sciences, vol. 13, no. 2, 2008.]

Healing Arts in an Ancient Indian Tradition

‘Ayurveda: Art of Being,’ a 2001 documentary film by Pan Nalin, opens with an elderly man collecting and washing plants by a riverside, begging pardon from the Lord for uprooting them, saying that they are necessary for medicine. That single scene encapsulates the main message of this film, echoing Hindu cosmology, that for Ayurveda ‘everything in and around us are one and single existence.’ Dr G. Gangadharan of the Medicinal Plant Conservation Centre in Kerala, India, elaborates on this principle: ‘The microcosm, the body in which we are living, or that of all the living beings, and the macrocosm around us, are all part of one unit. And the role of the physician is merely the role of a conveyer belt between these two, where he may be processing something so that the body can easily assimilate it. Other than that, there is nothing. He is doing nothing other than substituting things which are lacking in the system by things which are available externally.’

The term Ayurveda broadly refers to the ancient Hindu medical system, recorded in texts dating back three thousand years and divided into eight branches that correspond roughly to internal or general medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, ear, nose and throat, surgery, toxicology, geriatrics and rejuvenation. The earliest texts refer to what would be recognized today as brain research, noting the neurological qualities of health and disease. The ancient corpus was redacted by Charaka in around 300BCE, which provides a codified basis for the continuity of the tradition to the present.

Ayurvedic medicine proceeds from five bodily elements arranged according to three energies: 1) space and air, with the basic quality of movement, 2) fire, with the basic quality of heat, and 3) water and earth, with the basic quality of fluidity. In diagnosing a patient, the physician will take pulses for these three energies on the nerves of the thumb, index and middle fingers, and supplement this with careful examination of the fingernails, which indicate blood flow, and the eyes, which reflect disease and constitution. In addition to demonstrating diagnosis, the film features treatment sessions in which therapies ranging from massage to purging are utilized.

The intimate contact with each patient, from diagnosis through treatment, is underlined by a basic principle, as stated by Ayurvedic physician Brahmanand Swamigal, who insists that, ‘I do not treat diseases, I treat people.’ The film profiles Swamigal, observing his practice and learning something of his training. From a long lineage of fourteen generations of Ayurvedic physicians, he began studying with his father at age thirteen and continued to study throughout his 55 year career, having learned specializations from 20 gurus, or masters, who used poetry as a way to aid in learning the medical principles and formulas. Many of these gurus are now deceased, perhaps pointing to the fragility of a trans-generational master-student tradition, but which is nevertheless necessary to interpret and pass on the interwoven ancient wisdoms to the younger generations.

The moral implications of the Ayurvedic tradition are explored by Brahmanand Swamigal, who suggests that ‘if science is only followed for money, it is wasted’ and that ‘wealth earned from medical sciences is always contaminated as it comes from the suffering of others, thus it must be practiced with compassion and humility, and without greed or ego.’ To demonstrate this, the film takes viewers into a free clinic in rural India, and in a section discussion training of practioners, it is suggested that before entering into a course of medical study or apprenticeship in Ayurvedic traditions, students are screened to be certain they can conform to these basic moral principles.

Throughout the film, several cases are presented in which Ayurvedic and Western traditions are compared. In a demonstration of treatment for diabetic retinitis, for example, Dr B.G. Gokulan, a practioner of Ayurvedic opthamology, notes that the Ayurvedic tradition is more concerned with treating the cause of disease, not just the symptoms. For treating schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, Ayurvedic approaches work to awaken the mind by removing toxins from the body, while the main approach in Western medicine aims to quiet the mind by prescribing sedatives.

Practioners of Ayurvedic medicine outside India are profiled in several case studies, such as at the Holistic Health Centre in Athens, Greece, where Dr Nicolos Kostopoulos applies Ayurvedic principles and methods, including yoga and herbal treatments, to help provide relief for his patients from the stresses of the modern lifestyle. Dr Scott Gerson, a physician at the National Institute of Ayurvedic Medicine New York, discusses questions about adopting the ancient Ayurvedic traditions to modern society, where people are more interested in instant results and shortcuts. Over the twenty years of his practice, he has come to that conclusion that, ‘what we are missing in modern society is being in harmony with the rhythms of nature’ and that many of the diseases of modern society are those of over-consumption, which need a lifestyle change.

Several sections of the film demonstrate the laborious procedures for collecting and preparing the natural ingredients, from minerals and plants, into various Ayurvedic compounds, some of which involve the use of gems and other precious stones integrated with astronomical data. In the end, however, Ayurveda is not merely a system of medicines and treatments. Rather, as Dr Ashwin Barot says, ‘Ayurveda is the art of living, how to live, and Ayurveda is the art of being.’

‘Ayurveda: Art of Being’ was produced by Pandora Films in association with Monsoon Films. Further information is available on the filmmaker's website and the film can be watched in 7 parts on YouTube.]

[This review is by Yusef Progler and originally appeared in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, vol. 13, no. 3, 2008.]