COMPREHENSIVE STUDIES ON,SACRED TEXTS,AND THEIR INTERPRETATIONS IN PRIMAL RELIGIOUS TRADITION

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Sacred texts have playd extremely important roles in the formation of various religious civilizations of the world. In this joint research by studying both literary and orally transmitted sacred texts comprehensively, we have attempted to clarify the variety of processes through which religious ideas and thought have penetrated into the life of the ordinaty people. Previous works on the sacred texts tended to center around the critical examination, based on the philological tradition, of the formation process of the specific text itself. Only very limited amount of attention have been paid to the way how the texts are received by cartain social strata and located within some social contexts. In this joint research, along with the traditional approach, social contexts of the transmission of the certain sacred text and its influence on the life and thought of the ordinary people are regarded as an essential aspect of the whole scheme of the study of the sacred texts. In other words we have aimed at the study of the sacred texts as an example of the new type of history of ideas which is integrated with social hisotory. We could also find some clues to reexamine the concept of the sacred text itself as well as to rebuild the framework of the theory of the sacred taxts through this joint research. The main findings of this research was edited as a study report, and the selected papers will be published as a volume in the spring of 1998.