On Prayer

Text and Commentary

W. S. F. Pickering

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781571816337
• eBook ISBN: 9781782384755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) never completed his Doctoral thesis on prayer. Yet his scarcely mentioned introduction (Books I and II) of 176 pages and privately printed in 1909, can be seen as some of his most important work. His argument that much of prayer is a social act will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists and theologians.

Here, the first English translation to be published, is preceded by a general introduction by W.S.F.Pickering and finally a specific commentary on Mauss's use of ethnographic material.

Notes

Edited by Robert Parkin

The footnotes which Mauss provided for La Prière are often inaccurate and sometimes apparently completely spurious. One can only assume that he left them while working on the text, with a view to correcting them later for publication but failed then to do so. An attempt has been made to check them for this English edition, using principally the resources of the Bodleian Library and other libraries in Oxford, and elsewhere. Not even their copious resources, however, have proved sufficient to uncover all the errors and omissions that Mauss left behind. Minor errors and omissions have been corrected discretely when errors by Mauss are certain, but in the case of the more substantial ones an explanatory comment has been provided. The latter have been placed in square brackets and generally signed R. P. Certain footnote s remain inexplicable. Where there are uncertainties, Mauss’s notes remain unchanged. Certain details have been added. There are many references of the form: Book II. Chapter I, sometimes followed by the name of a subject. These refer to relevant places in Mauss’s thesis. Books I and II of the thesis are presented here. References to Book III relate to further parts of the thesis that have never been found. Beyond what was published, they indicate that Mauss had carefully planned much, if not all, the thesis.

1. On these phenomena of transmutation in art and in what he calls ‘myth’, see the ingenious observations of W. Wundt on the ‘Umwandlung der Motive’, Völkerpsychologie, Leipzig, 1900–20, II, I, pp. 430, 590.

2. On the relationship between myth and ritual, see our observations in L’Année sociologique, II; VI, Introduction Les Mythes (rubric), pp. 243–6; cf. M. Mauss, ‘L’art et le mythe d’après M. Wundt’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, LXVI, 1908, p. 17.

3. For an exposition of the ritualist thesis, see R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 2nd edn., London, 1894, p. 16.

4. In its theoretical form, of course, for Islam has retained sacrifices, most of them being vestiges of ancient cults, in the cult of the saints, the taking of oaths and a good number of more or less popular feasts.

5. See A. Sabatier, Esquisse d’une philosophie de la religion, d’après la psychologie et l’histoire, Paris, 1897, p. 24ff.

6. In our view, these general remarks on the evolution of religions are a more accurate version of those elaborated by C.D. Tiele; see Elements of the Science of Religion, Edinburgh, 1898, II, p. 130ff.

7. Jure pontificum cautum est, ne suis nominibus dii Romani appellarentur, ne exaugurari possent, Servius, ad Aen. II, 35 n.; cf. Pliny, N.H. XXVIII, 18; G. O. A. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, Munich, 1902, p. 333.

8. Part of this history has been described by H. Oldenberg, Le Boudha, sa vie, sa doctrine, son Eglise, transl. A. C. A. Foucher, 2nd edn., pp. 1–80 [also transl. W. Hoey, London, 1882. R. P.]; by P. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, Vols I and II, Leipzig, 1894–1917; Die Philosophie des Veda; Die Philosophie der Upanishads, Berlin, 1896, 1898; by P. [?] Oltramare, Histoire de la théosophie hindoue, I, Bibl. d’Et. du Musée Guimet.

9. We are referring primarily to the birth of the synagogue, which is, above all, a prayer ‘meeting’: see I. Loeb, ‘La communauté des pauvres’, Revue des études juives, 1889; I. Lévi, ‘Les dix-huit bénédictions’, ibid., 1896, pp. 16, 61; E. Schürer, Geschichte des Volkes Israel im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, Leipzig, 2nd edn., 1890, II, p. 45ff. On the origins of Christian prayer, see E. von der Goltz, Das Gebet in der ältesten Christenheit, Leipzig, 1901, and our observations, L’Année sociologique, VI, p. 216. [Mauss’s review of Goltz, pp. 211–17. R. P.]

10. We now know that the Psalms were originally liturgical compositions. Some belong to the temple ritual: the acrostic Psalms of the twelve and twenty-four apostles; cf. H. Gressmann, Musik und Musikinstrumente im Alten Testament, Giessen, 1903, the Psalms of the Hallel; cf. T. K. Cheyne, The Origin and Religious Content of the Psalter, London 1891. The rest come from the ‘community of the poor’; cf. F. Coblentz, Ueber das betende Ich der Psalmen etc. Frankfurt, 1897.

11. This is the case, for example, of prayers that have become part of magic; see A. v. Dietrich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, [Leipzig? R. P.], 1902.

12. We shall see later that the phenomenon of ‘wear and tear’ is far from being incompatible with extremely primitive stages of civilization, and we shall find numerous examples in Australia. Book III, Part 2, Chapter III. [For such references, see Parkin above.]

13. On the importance of, for example, this last type of regression in our own countries, one might usefully consult R. Andree, Ueber Votiv- und Weihegaben, Brunswick, 1906, where lists of formulae may be found.

14. See below.

15. Cf. below, Book II, Chapter I. See L. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, London, 1905, p. 168ff.

16. There is, however, a fine article by A. Kuhn on magic formulae in European folklore: Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1864, XIII, p. 49ff.; p. 113ff. [not found. R. P.]

17. See below, the discussion of a short work by Max Müller, actually a résumé of an Oxford University course.

18. Towards the end of their lives, however, H. K. Usener (cf. ‘Ueber zwei Rechtsriten’, Hessische Blätter für Volkskunde, I, 1902) and V. Henry (Magic in Ancient India [also La magie dans l’Inde, Paris, 1904, 2nd edn. 1909, R. P.]) showed a growing interest in the study of rites as such.

19. Cf. also J.G. Frazer, On the Scope of Social Anthropology, inaugural lecture, London, 1908.

20. Cf. below, Book II, Chapters I, II.

21. On the subject of prayer among ancient peoples, and for an idea of the ignorance which still exists about these questions as regards Greece and Rome, see C. Ausfeld, ‘De graecorum precationibus quaestiones’, Jahrbuch für Klassische Philosophie, Fleckeisen, XXVIII, Teubner, 1903, p. 305ff.; Chételat, De precatione apud poetas graecos et latinos, 1877, should also be noted; also L’Abbé Vincent, La Prière chez les Grecs et les Latins, 1887; C. Ziegler, De precationum apud Graecos formis, etc. Breslau, 1905, dissertation; H. Schmidt, ‘Veteres philosophi quomodo judicaverint de praecibus’ (Religionsgeschtliche Untersuchungen und Vorarbeiten, ed. v. Dietrich and R. Wünsch, IV, I, X, 1907). It is still worth consulting the older work of E. v. Lasaulx, Die Gebete der Griechen und der Römer, 1842. But the philologists can scarcely be blamed here: classical literature and even monuments are such a poor source of prayers!

22. The debates on the relative age of the ritual of the Atharva-Veda magicians and the sutra that belong to it, together with the rituals of the various priests, Rigveda, Yajurveda, etc., are dominated precisely by questions of this type. Some scholars maintain that the age of the texts is definitely not that of the rituals (faits) themselves and that the Atharvavedic tradition is as ancient as the other, while other scholars imply that the numerous borrowings by the Atharva-Veda from other Vedas proves that it is of later date. For an excellent discussion of the question, see M. Bloomfield, The Atharva Veda, Strasbourg, 1899 (Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie), I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Frontispiece
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Presentation, Notes and Referencing
• Introduction to an Unfinished Work
• Marcel Mauss: On Prayer
• Book I
• Book II The Nature of Elementary Oral Rites
• Notes
• Mauss’s Review of Segond’s book on Prayer
• Some Concluding Anthropological Reflections
• Index