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Title The materiality and efficacy of Balinese letters : situating scriptural practices / edited by Richard Fox, Annette Hornbacher
Published Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2016]
©2016

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 241 pages)
Series Brill's Southeast Asian library ; volume 6
Brill's Southeast Asian library ; v. 6.
Contents Preface; List of Figures and Table; Notes on Contributors; Chapter 1; Introduction -- Balinese Practices of Script and Western Paradigms of Text: An Anthropological Approach to a Philological Topic; Annette Hornbacher; Chapter 2; The Meaning of Life, or How to Do Things with Letters; Richard Fox; Chapter 3; 'The World is Full of Letters': Graphic Ideologies, Graphic Technologies, and Transformative Practice in Bali; Margaret J. Wiener; Chapter 4; The Body of Letters: Balinese Aksara as an Intersection between Script, Power and Knowledge; Annette Hornbacher; Chapter 5
The Medium is the Message: Chirographic Figures in Two TraditionsThomas M. Hunter; Chapter 6; Imposition of the Syllabary (svaravyañjana-nyāsa) in the Old Javano-Balinese Tradition in the Light of South Asian Tantric Sources; Andrea Acri; Chapter 7; Im-Materiality: Where Have All the Akṣara Gone?; Helen Creese; Chapter 8; Visible and Invisible Script Used at Consecrations of Buildings in Bali; H.I.R. Hinzler; Postscript; Richard Fox; Consolidated Bibliography; Index
Summary The Materiality and Efficacy of Balinese Letters' examines traditional uses of writing on the Indonesian island of Bali, focusing on the power attributed to Balinese script. The approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, bringing together insights from anthropological and philological perspectives. Scholars have long recognized a gap between the practices of philological interpretation and those of the Javano-Balinese textual tradition. The question is what impact this gap should have on our conception of 'the text'. Of what relevance, for example, are the uses to which Balinese script has been put in the context of ceremonial rites? What ideas of materiality, power and agency are at work in the production and preservation of palm-leaf manuscripts, inscribed amulets and other script-bearing instruments?
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Balinese language -- Writing
Balinese language -- Alphabet
Balinese language -- Social life and customs
Javanese language -- Alphabet
Javanese language -- Writing
FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDY -- Miscellaneous.
Balinese language -- Alphabet
Balinese language -- Writing
Javanese language -- Alphabet
Javanese language -- Writing
Balinesisch
Schriftzeichen
Alphabet
Ritus
Form Electronic book
Author Fox, Richard, 1972- editor.
Hornbacher, Annette, editor.
LC no. 2016045138
ISBN 9789004326828
9004326820