Asian Mythologies by Yves Bonnefoy and Wendy Doniger

Nanzan University
Asian Mythologies by Yves Bonnefoy; Wendy Doniger

Review by: Taryō Ōbayashi
Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 53, No. 2 (1994), pp. 351-353
Published by: Nanzan University
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BOOK REVIEWS
GENERAL
BONNEFOY, YVES,compiler. Asian Mythologies. Translated under the direc-
tion of Wendy Doniger. Chicago and London: The University of Chi-
cago Press, 1993. xxiii+376 pages. Illustrations, index. Paper US
$27.00; ISBN 0-226-06456-5.
In 1981 Yves BONNEFOY, professor of comparative poetics at the College des France,
published his two-volume Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des societes tradi-
tionnelles et du monde antique, with entries primarily by Francophone scholars associated
with the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. This dictionary was translated
under the direction of Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Professor at the Divinity School
of Chicago, and published in 1991 in a two-volume hardcover edition entitled Myth-
ologies. The English translation is based upon Bonnefoy's original but differs in one
important respect: the organization of the entries. In the French edition the entries
appeared in alphabetical order, while in the English translation a geographical ordering
was adopted. In 1993 a four-volume paperback edition was issued that, in effect,
presents the various sections of Mythologies as separate volumes: Roman and European
Mythologies; Greek and Egyptian Mythologies; American, African, and Old European
Mythologies; and the volume under review, Asian Mythologies. These English editions
have made Bonnefoy's work available to a wider circle of readers, and the reordering of
the material based on geography has enhanced its utility.
Asian Mythologies begins with prefaces by Doniger and Bonnefoy, followed by en-
tries in four parts. Part 1, common also to the three companion volumes, contains
introductory articles by Mircea Eliade, Marcel Detienne, Andre Leroi-Gourhan, and
Frangois-Rene Picon. The remaining three parts consist of geographical or conceptual
groupings of the contributions, with part 2 devoted to South Asia, Iran, and Buddhism;
part 3 to Southeast Asia; and part 4 to East Asia and Inner Asia. Each individual part
is also structured geographically, and in such a way that articles of a more general
nature are followed by those on more specialized topics. The entries are by a variety of
scholars, from leaders in their fields to those still young when they authored their arti-
cles. The part 2 entries on India were written by Charles Malamoud, Jacques Scheuer,
Madeleine Biardeau, and Marie-Louise Reiniche; those on Iran by Jean Varenne; and
those on Buddhism by Rolf A. Stein. The part 3 articles on mainland Southeast Asia
(with its strong Indian influence) are by Solange Thierry; those on insular Southeast
Asia by Denys Lombard and Christian Pelras; those on the highlands of Madagascar
by Paul Ottino; those on indigenous Indochina by Jacques Dournes; and those on
Vietnam by Tu Chuon Le Oc Mach. The part 4 contributions on China are by
Maxime Kaltenmark; those on Japan by Hartmut O. Rotermund, Francois Mace, and
Laurence Berthier (now Caillet); those on Korea by Li Ogg; those on Tibet by Per
Kvaerne. Turkish and Mongolian issues are discussed by Jean-Paul Roux, Caucasian
issues by Georges Charachidze, Siberian issues by Laurence Delaby, and Finno-Ugrian
issues by Jean-Luc Moreau.
[351]
352 BOOK REVIEWS
The geographical arrangement is on the whole quite successful in providing us with

a picture of the mythological and religious world of each area. There are, however,
some minor inconsistencies. In part 3, for instance, insular Southeast Asia is sand-
wiched between the Indian-influenced civilizations of mainland Southeast Asia and
those of the indigenous Indochinese. The entry "Gods and Myths of Abkhaz, the
Cherkess, and the Ubykh of the Northern Caucasus" would fit better in the section on
the Celts, Norse, Slavs, Caucasians, and their neighbors in the American, African, and
Old European Mythologies volume than in the present volume on Asia.
The present collection is more voluminous than GRIMAL'SMythologies (1963), an
earlier French compendium on world mythologies, enabling it to present wider coverage
and more detailed discussions. Southeast Asia is neglected in the Grimal book, for
example, but is given the treatment it deserves in Bonnefoy's volume. Despite the
present compendium's greater volume, however, it is not an encyclopedic work like
Grimal's, since the selection and presentation of material was left to the discretion of
the individual authors. The authors are not generally content with mere description
of the myths and rituals, and present some interpretation as well, either their own or
that current at the time. The influence of Levi-Strauss and Dumezil is considerably
less than one might expect; Varenne is rather exceptional in citing Dumezil twice in
his contributions on Iranian mythology (Amesh Spenta [112] and Mithra [118]). Nev-
ertheless, structuralist thinking in one form or another constitutes the foundation of
most of the articles. Biardeau, for instance, describes her stance in treating Hindu
mythologies as follows: "We will sacrifice exhaustiveness in favor of intelligibility,
positing both a deep unity beneath the diversity and the possibility of grasping this
unity through an appropriate method" (34).
Some of the authors present a rather balanced picture of the mythology and religion
of the area assigned to them. This is the case with Solange Thierry (mainland South-
east Asia), Denys Lombard and Christian Pelras (insular Southeast Asia), Maxime
Kaltenmark (China), Per Kvaerne (Tibet), and Jean-Paul Roux (Turkey and Mongolia).
The approaches adopted by the respective authors differ, however, with Lombard
and Pelras concentrating on recent studies by various scholars, Kaltenmark running
mainly on the rails laid by Marcel Granet, and Roux presenting a useful summary of
his own voluminous research results. Certain of the authors show a greater leaning
toward religion than mythology, such as Laurence Delaby, who discusses such sub-
jects as shamanism and conceptions of the soul in Siberia. Rotermund stresses yama-
bushi mountain ascetics, tengu demons, and other favorite themes of his in Japanese
popular religion.
The present volume includes articles on groups little studied outside of France,
such as the Madagascans (Paul Ottino) and Proto-Indochinese tribes (Jacques
Dournes), providing information on their religion and mythology otherwise difficult to
obtain in English. Certain of the articles are filled with stimulating suggestions for
further research, such as Rolf Stein's "The Guardian of the Gate" and Francois Mace's
"Japanese Conceptions of the Afterlife." All in all this volume testifies to the high
standard of French scholarship in the areas of mythology and religion.
A few minor lapses and inaccuracies have found their way into this valuable work.
In the list of contributors (xviii), the initials P.O. (Paul Ottino) are missing for the
article on Madagascar; Ottino is (or was?) "directeur d'etudes cumulant a l'Ecole Pra-
tique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Professeur au Centre Universitaire de
la Reunion (Madagascar)," according to the original French edition (vol. 1, xx).
Kvaerne's articles on Tibet are revised versions that cite works (Stein 1972, Karmay
1987, and Heffler 1977) not used in the original French, but these works are not
BOOK REVIEWS 353
mentioned in the bibliographies accompanying the present articles. On page 361

("Finno-Ugrian Myths and Rituals") mention is made of "shamanic customs," but as
this is "costume chamanique" in French the English should be "shamanic costumes."
Such shortcomings, however, do not seriously detract from the overall high quality of
this volume. Asian Mythologies will remain a standard reference work in this field of
study for decades to come.
REFERENCES CITED
BONNEFOY,Yves
1981 Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des socie'testraditionnelles et du monde
antique. Paris: Flammarion.
1991 Mythologies. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
GRIMAL,Pierre, ed.
1963 Mythologies. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie Larousse.
Taryo OBAYASHI
Tokyo Woman's Christian University
Tokyo
EVANS, GRANT, editor. Asia's Cultural Mosaic: An Anthropological Intro-

duction. Singapore: Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster (Asia), 1993.
xi+436 pages. Illustrations, figures, bibliography, glossary, index.
Paper US$19.50; ISBN 0-13-052812-9.
Every now and then a textbook crosses one's desk that is so good that the reviewer
wonders if he can possibly do it justice. Asia's Cultural Mosaic: An Anthropological
Introduction is such a book. Designed as a core text for undergraduate courses on
Asia, the collection is an up-to-date, even-quality, well-organized, open-ended, and
scholarly propaedeutic to Asia, anthropology, and ethics. It is a tribute to the academic
standards, expertise, and approach to fieldwork of editor Grant Evans and his twelve
contributors that the promise implicit in their book's title has been fulfilled; indeed,
their successful endeavor could just as well have been entitled Anthropology's Cultural
Mosaic: An Asian Introduction.
This very accessible but demanding book will appeal to a readership beyond that
it was originally designed for. The text is inviting, challenging, and interactive. It
does not represent a body of top-down knowledge to be loaded into blank minds but
rather an anthropological perspective, a way of seeing, an intersubjectivity. The
reader is involved in the knowledge-making process through constant bifurcations of
"stark moral choices" and inescapable questionings of assumptions.
Each chapter follows a familiar anthropological trope, e.g., the hominid fossil rec-
ord, language, kinship, economies, dominance, gender roles, cosmology, the field, the
future. The chapters contain numerous references for interested readers to pursue,
and feature a multitude of well-placed and well-chosen photographs to break the text
and stimulate interest.
The patrilineal ancestors of the anthropological discourse community are met as
they arise in context: Darwin, Dubois, Dart, Durkheim, Tylor, Weber, Frazer, Boas,
Malinowski, Sapir, Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard, Firth, Kroeber, Levi-Strauss,
Whorf, Leach, Geertz, Said, and Margaret Mead. The reader is also introduced to

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Nanzan University

Asian Mythologies by Yves Bonnefoy; Wendy Doniger

The geographical arrangement is on the whole quite successful in providing us with

mentioned in the bibliographies accompanying the present articles. On page 361

EVANS, GRANT, editor. Asia's Cultural Mosaic: An Anthropological Intro-

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