The Precision of Ambiguity: A Study of the Cryptotypic Meaning of a Tibetan Buddhist Oracle’s Pronouncements
Nair, Urmila
The Precision of Ambiguity: A Study of the Cryptotypic Meaning of a Tibetan Buddhist Oracle’s Pronouncements - 2025.
28
This article analyzes the Nechung Oracle’s Pronouncements (bka’ lung), proffered during the trance ritual (spyan’ dren), performed at present at the monastery in exile, in Dharamsala. I analyze the trance ritual as a text that is poetically structured via dense laminations of indexical icons, these laminations figurating aspects of the macrocosm. (For example, the Oracle’s peculiar voice iconizes and indexes the god’s presence within the trance’s microcosm, and works to figurate a broader cosmology in which gods and humans interact.) The Pronouncements are however ambiguous, being susceptible of multiple meanings. This is indicated by the ambivalence of supplicants who, on certain occasions, seem to be uncertain about whether, and how, specific Pronouncements may be admissible as predictions. A study of ritual poetics alone does not suffice to explain this ambiguity. I accordingly mobilize Benjamin Whorf’s notion of cryptotypic meaning. For Whorf, this meaning is not so much a function of the explicit sense and reference of a word, but rather lurks, inobvious and diffuse, within it. Extending Whorf’s conception, I argue that the Nechung Pronouncements’ meaning as prediction is cryptotypic. Not so much a function of the words of a given Pronouncement, this predictive meaning instead lurks, inobvious, within the Oracle’s utterance, depending more on contextually present stories, especially stories of Nechung’s past Pronouncements deemed to be predictions that came true. It is these stories, rather than the literal meaning of the Oracle’s utterance alone, that bring to the fore a Pronouncement’s–otherwise cryptotypic–meaning as prediction. Despite the cryptotypic nature of Nechung’s Pronouncements, their ambiguity also functions with great precision: it performs the cosmological hierarchy between clairvoyant Oracle and ignorant human supplicants.
The Precision of Ambiguity: A Study of the Cryptotypic Meaning of a Tibetan Buddhist Oracle’s Pronouncements - 2025.
28
This article analyzes the Nechung Oracle’s Pronouncements (bka’ lung), proffered during the trance ritual (spyan’ dren), performed at present at the monastery in exile, in Dharamsala. I analyze the trance ritual as a text that is poetically structured via dense laminations of indexical icons, these laminations figurating aspects of the macrocosm. (For example, the Oracle’s peculiar voice iconizes and indexes the god’s presence within the trance’s microcosm, and works to figurate a broader cosmology in which gods and humans interact.) The Pronouncements are however ambiguous, being susceptible of multiple meanings. This is indicated by the ambivalence of supplicants who, on certain occasions, seem to be uncertain about whether, and how, specific Pronouncements may be admissible as predictions. A study of ritual poetics alone does not suffice to explain this ambiguity. I accordingly mobilize Benjamin Whorf’s notion of cryptotypic meaning. For Whorf, this meaning is not so much a function of the explicit sense and reference of a word, but rather lurks, inobvious and diffuse, within it. Extending Whorf’s conception, I argue that the Nechung Pronouncements’ meaning as prediction is cryptotypic. Not so much a function of the words of a given Pronouncement, this predictive meaning instead lurks, inobvious, within the Oracle’s utterance, depending more on contextually present stories, especially stories of Nechung’s past Pronouncements deemed to be predictions that came true. It is these stories, rather than the literal meaning of the Oracle’s utterance alone, that bring to the fore a Pronouncement’s–otherwise cryptotypic–meaning as prediction. Despite the cryptotypic nature of Nechung’s Pronouncements, their ambiguity also functions with great precision: it performs the cosmological hierarchy between clairvoyant Oracle and ignorant human supplicants.
Réseaux sociaux