See also: Copenhagen School; Functional Discourse

Grammar; Glossematics; Information Structure in Spoken

Discourse; Sgall Petr (b. 1926); Structuralist Phonology:

Prague School; Trubetskoy, Nikolai Sergeievich, Prince

(1890–1938); Vachek, Josef (1909–1996).

Bibliography

Cermak F & Hajicova E (2003). ‘Introduction: Pragueschool of linguistics in its classical time and today.’ InDuskova L (ed.) Dictionary of the Prague school oflinguistics by Josef Vachek. Klegr A et al. (trans.).Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 1–23.

Duskova L (ed.) (2003). Dictionary of the Prague school oflinguistics by Josef Vachek. Klegr A et al. (trans.).Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hajicova E, Partee B H & Sgall P (1998). Topic–focusarticulation, tripartite structures, and semantic content.Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Holenstein E (1975). Roman Jakobsons phanomenolo-gischer Strukturalismus. Frankfurt am Main.

Jakobson R (1960). ‘Closing statement: linguistics and po-etics.’ In Sebeok T A (ed.) Style in language. Cambridge,MA. 350–377.

Leska O (1995). ‘Prague School teachings of the classicalperiod and beyond.’ In Prague Linguistic Circle Papers 1.Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 3–22.

Leska O (1996). ‘The meaning of meaning in the Pragueschool.’ In Partee B H & Sgall P (eds.) Discourseand meaning. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.127–140.

Luelsdorff P (ed.) (1994). The Prague school of structuraland functional linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia:Benjamins.

Luelsdorff P, Jarmila P & Sgall P (eds.) (1994).Praguiana 1945–1990. Amsterdam & Philadelphia:Benjamins.

Mathesius V (1911). ‘O potencialnosti jevu jazykovych.’ InVestnık Kralovske ceske spolecnosti nauk: trıda filoso-ficko-historicko-jazykovedna 2. 1–24. Trans. ‘On thepotentiality of the phenomena of language.’ In VachekJ (ed.). A Prague school reader in linguistics. Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1–32.

Sgall P (1997). ‘Functionalism in Czech linguistics and inthe world.’ Linguistica Pragensia, 64–81.

Trubetzkoy N (1939). Grundzuge der phonologie: travauxdu cercle linguistique de Prague 7.

Vachek J (1960). Dictionnaire de linguistique de l’ecole dePrague. (with J Dubsky). Utrecht/Anvers: Spectrum.

Vachek J (ed.) (1964). A Prague school reader in linguistics.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Vachek J (1966). The linguistic school of Prague. Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press.

Vachek J (1983). Praguiana. Amsterdam & Philadelphia:Benjamins/Prague: Academia.

Prayer and Meditation 67

Prayer and Meditation

P G Friedlander, La Trobe University, Melbourne,

Australia

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language plays a major role in prayer and meditationin all the world’s religious traditions. However, thereare enormous differences in what might be under-stood by the terms language, prayer, and meditationin different religious traditions. This article exploresaspects of these understandings in a variety ofreligious traditions.

The earliest forms of prayer and meditation whichwe can investigate are those of the religious traditionsof hunter-gatherer peoples whose cultures survived intomodern times. Studies of cultures such as those of theAmazonian Indians have shown that activities akin toprayer and meditation form an integral part of thesetraditions. Indeed, it is also clear that language plays animportant role in these activities, both in terms ofspoken supplications to spirits and in terms of descrip-tions of states of spirit possession which are a feature ofthe religious traditions of hunter-gatherer peoples.

It is also apparent that in these religious experiencesthere is reversal of what might be seen as the normalrole of language, to be a system of symbols by whichcommunication about the nature of the world we live inis carried out. Instead language becomes an act throughwhich the world is created. It could be argued indeedthat this is a distinctive feature of language in prayerand meditation, language takes on the role of thatwhich summons up the world and creates the realityin which the religious practitioner exists.

This idea of the word actually creating the world isat the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition where itis the word of God which sets in motion the creationof the world itself. The power of the act of speech isalso integral to earlier Middle Eastern religious tradi-tions. Thus in Egyptian and Babylonian traditions,prayer forms a major part of religious activity. In-deed, the earliest written prayers may well be thosefrom Egyptian tombs where, during the fifth dynastyin around 2400 B.C., written lists of offerings tothe gods developed into written versions of prayersto the gods asking for their blessings for those whowere beginning the journey into the afterlife.

68 Prayer and Meditation

In a sense it is quite possible to see a developmentfrom the invocations of spirits in the religious tradi-tions of hunter-gatherer peoples through to the notionof prayer as a form of address to a monotheistic deityin the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The development of meditation in Judeo-Christiantradition is often linked to the Essene traditions,which were desert-dwelling ascetic traditions of theMiddle East. The role of language in the early con-templative practices of Christianity can be glimpsedthrough texts such as the Nag Hamadi texts, or theDead Sea scrolls, as they are sometimes called. Inthese it is evident that contemplation of the namesof God was an element in meditation practices. In theJewish Kabbalah there is also a strong tradition ofmeditation on the letters of the alphabet, and onmanipulating the letters of the alphabet into mantra-like focuses of concentration in meditation.

It is also perhaps in relation to these Middle East-ern traditions that one of the origins of the notion ofthe inherent sacredness of the written word can beglimpsed. In the context of the meditative commu-nities dwelling in the deserts, the act of writing sacredscripture became part of the meditative life itself,and this tradition was carried on into the Middle Agesand led to the production of glorious illuminatedmanuscripts such as the book of Kells.

Another development of the Middle Eastern tradi-tion of reverence for the written form of sacred textsis strongly manifest in the Islamic tradition where,due to a prohibition on the representation of humanforms in sacred spaces, a tradition of calligraphydeveloped. Middle Eastern traditions also incorpo-rate singing traditions, such as Judeo-Christianhymns and chants and Islamic chanting of sacredtexts as performed by Muezzins when calling thefaithful to pray and by Sufis when they are practicingrituals to develop altered states of consciousness.

Prayer in its origins also has much to do withsacrificial ritual and invocations within rituals. Inthis context it is evident that the correct form of aprayer becomes a matter of major concern, for like aspell, if spoken incorrectly, it might not have anyeffect, or worse still, might summon up the wrongspirit altogether.

In South Asian tradition Vedic rituals were, andare, a cornerstone of religious culture. Prayer, in thesense of the invocation of the gods, forms a vitalaspect of Vedic sacrificial rituals. It was also consid-ered that the rituals would only be effective if theprayers were recited correctly. This was vital, becausein South Asian religious traditions the performance ofthe ritual was seen as bringing the worlds of the godsand men into alignment. If there were no sacrificialrituals performed, or they were performed incorrectly,

the world, and its inhabitants, would not be lookedon beneficially by the gods.

Vedic traditions were initially nonwritten, so inorder to ensure that the texts were remembered cor-rectly, elaborate training in chanting the texts waspracticed. For instance, there are normally said to befour Vedas, sacred texts, and one of them is basicallyconcerned simply with how to correctly rememberand recite the other three Vedas.

To the extent we could separate out a category ofprayer in Indian tradition we might also identify itwith the tradition of stotra, verses recited in praise ofparticular deities. These often also include enumera-tions of the names of the manifold forms of particulardeities in works such as the ‘Thousand Names ofVisnu’ (vishnusahasranama). However, it could beargued that a feature of Indian tradition is that suchworks are both prayers, entreaties addressed todeities, and also meditations on deities. Indeed, thenotion that we might seek to separate out prayer andmeditation into two mutually distinctive categoriesdoes not spring naturally from the terms and ideaspractised in South Asia.

India is also famous as one of the cultures in whichmeditation traditions developed. There are referencesin the Vedas to what appear to be meditative practicesand clear accounts of meditation in the Upanishads.That language is an important aspect of meditation isalso stressed, and there are descriptions of meditationupon the names of gods and of meditation on the sacredsound ‘om’ as being a key element in some meditationpractices. ‘Om’ is often envisaged in India as the primalsound from which all of creation is manifest.

In the medieval period in India during the growthof the devotional cults based around loving devotion,or bhakti, the name of god also assumed great signifi-cance. For those who followed the path of devotion toa formless deity it became synonymous with the deityin its self. There are numerous stories that emphasizethat even the utterance of part of the name of god issufficient to form an entreaty to them for aid. Forinstance there is a story in the Bhagavata Puranaabout an elephant who was being attacked by a croc-odile and uttered the sound ‘ra’ in a roar of pain, andas this is the first syllable of the name Ram it wassufficient to attract the attention of Ram who rescuedthe elephant from his predicament. Such stories arenormally told in the context of praising the virtue ofchanting the names of god. The practice of chantingthe names of deities such as Krishna and Ram actsboth to foster in the devotee the virtues and qualitiesof the deity and also to attract their attention so thatthey may look sympathetically on the devotee. Chant-ing the names of god is at once a form of prayer, asupplication to the deity, and a form of meditation.

Prayer and Meditation 69

It should be mentioned that a particular form ofchanting practiced in some forms of Hindu devotion-al tradition is what is called the chanting of theunchanted chant, the ajapa jap. The practice ofchanting the unchanted chant is said to lead to thecognition of the ‘unstruck sound’ the anhad nad,which is a sound which is not a sound, but ratherthe fundamental sound of the universe audible only tothe practitioner in deep meditation.

The chanting of the names of god is also a featureof Buddhist practice. Buddhism developed in SouthAsia and shares in various characteristics of its prac-tices, which are often identified with Hinduism. How-ever, there are normally important ways in whichBuddhist tradition attributes new values and signifi-cance to its practices. A common ground of ritualactivity in South Asia is the practice of puja, theadoration of a particular deity which is invited toenter into some form of physical manifestation, suchas an image, and is then worshipped by various meanssuch as offerings of lights, incense, food, drink, andwords of praise and supplication. Language is anintrinsic feature of such rituals, as without invoca-tions and resolutions the ritual cannot begin, andwithout utterances honoring the spirit or deityinvited, or the Buddha, it cannot be brought tocompletion.

Buddhist meditation traditions take various forms,in some of which language has a greater focus than inothers. In insight meditation (vipassana) practitionersseek to identify the ways in which all phenomena areby nature without self essence, impermanent, andunsatisfactory. In such practices language is usedin order to break down the elements of experienceinto basic phenomena, but in itself is not a subject ofmeditation. Likewise in calming meditations (samatha)practices, language is used as a tool for meditation, butis not itself an object of meditation.

It is more fruitful to look rather at Buddhist medi-tation practices that involve meditations on mantrasof particular forms of the Buddha. These are typicallyfound in Tantric traditions, as practiced in Tibet inthe modern world. In these there is a conscious use oflanguage as part of meditation and ritual. However, itis important to note here that, in this context, it isexplicit that language must refer not only to spokenutterances, but also to bodily actions and to visualrepresentations. A Tantra in this sense involves all the

senses; it is at once a ritual, a symbolic diagram (oftencalled a Mandala in English today), a set of texts tochant, and an oral tradition of interpretation of thosetexts handed down from master to disciple.

I mentioned earlier that, in an apparent inversion ofthe normal worldly function of language as a way ofunderstanding the world, in prayer and meditationlanguage becomes a way to create the world. This isperfectly epitomized in Tantric practices, in which thefirst stage of a Tantra is the generation of a world, arealm in which the actors play their parts, the practi-tioners inviting the various deities to manifest theirpresence. However, it is then followed by a dissolu-tion stage, in which the world created by the ritual,through the language of sound, symbol, and action, isdissolved into the ultimate state of nothingness fromwhich all things emerge. Finally, at the end of theritual, the practitioners once more emerge into theconventional world in which they began the ritual.

Language is thus an integral part of prayer andmeditation in the religious traditions of the world,and it is notable that it plays a key role in the waythat it acts as a way in which the religious practitioneris able to summon up spirits and, in a sense, create theworld itself.

See also: Bible; Glossolalia; Islam and Arabic; Judaism;

Qur’an; Religion: Overview; South Asia: Religions.

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