Alana Pradhan

The ‘Vijaya Dashami’ ritual

Introduction

The ‘vijaya dashami’ ritual. Explore the Vijaya Dashami ritual in Nepal through ethnography. Discover how this Hindu festival shows reverence to social order & kinship, and that 'disorder' makes it a ritual. Challenges bounded definitions.

Abstract

This article is based on a short ethnography conducted on the 10the day of the Hindu festival ‘Vijaya Dashami’ in Nepal. Although, symbolism is important, I use a phenomenological approach to demonstrate that this ritual shows reverence not just to religion but social order and kinship. In doing so, I discover that it is ‘disorder’ or the unconventional aspects of the ritual, that make the ritual a ritual. I hope this article encourages a move away from bounded definitions of rituals and ritual ‘order’, towards fluid understandings of ritual as ‘self-organised’ and entangled with society and culture, whilst adding to anthropological debates around theory and practice.

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