Anna Kudriavtceva

MAE (Kunstkamera), RAS, St. Petersburg, Russia

E-mail: kudriavtsevaa@mail.ru

The Sacred Meal: a View from Qur’anic Arabia to the “Strange Islam” of Vietnam

Abstract. Post-structuralism and the apparent achievements of semiotics have revised the notion of “text” in modern cultural studies. The understanding of text as an encoded written message has been replaced by its understanding as a set of cultural artefacts, wherein culture becomes a text that shapes the personal and social space of human existence. The present paper is based on the experience of the author, a specialist in Qur’anic ethnography, who travelled through the areas of compact settlement of the Cham in Vietnam in January 2020. Part of the Cham community in Vietnam practises a particular form of religion known as “strange Islam”, based on a combination of female spirit worship and Shaivism, with some elements of Islamic doctrine and rituals. Observing a Cham Bani sacred meal helped to document the fundamental elements of their spiritual culture, including the matricentric nature of their social structure, the sacrificial aspect of the food prepared by women, and the important role of the male priesthood, which acted as a mediator between the divine and the human and guaranteed the observance of tradition by all members of the community. This paper proposes two “opposing” approaches to the reader: that of “reproducing” the culture based on linguistic and textological techniques, and that of “reading” the ethnographic field material as a text.

Keywords: Cham Bani, Cham Balamon, Arabia, Vietnam, food, ritual, ethnic identity, Qur’anic ethnography

Acknowledgments. This paper and the research upon which it is based were conducted as part of the programme “Ethnic history and diversity of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world in historical dynamics,” which is overseen by the interdisciplinary laboratory “International Centre for Islamic Studies of the MAE RAS”. I am indebted to the St. Petersburg Museum of Islamic Culture, which organised the expedition to Vietnam in 2020. I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Phan Quốc Anh for his kind and highly professional support during our trip. We are especially grateful to the members of the Cham Bani community in Phan Rang — Tháp Chàm for their friendliness and openness.

DOI: 10.31250/1238-5018-2024-30-1-69-78

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Received by the Editorial Board: 10.04.2023