The goal of doing anthropological research and sharing its ethnographic results is to learn more about and better understand the world(s) in which we live, and the human and nonhuman others with whom we share our existence. As anthropologists, we aim to understand the lifeworlds of those others – whether they are close to us, or as far removed as one could possibly imagine. As Margaret Mead once wrote, anthropology teaches us ‘the open‐mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess’ (1977: p. iv). As a result, anthropological writing is usually filled with ethnographic descriptions of places, relationships, and events from bottom‐up perspectives. The joy of reading ethnographic works reflects this. Good ethnographies guide us into the lifeworlds of others and help us understand their lives – if only for a brief moment. In this regard, the monograph by Tulasi Srinivas and the edited volume by Andrea Marion Pinkney and John Whalen‐Bridge are both equally marvellous, engaging, and enriching to read, albeit for different reasons.

After nearly two decades of visiting and doing research in Bangalore, India (at first supervised by her father), Srinivas has finally published her monograph on Hindu ritual life. The result is an ethnographically detailed, amazing book that fully describes the lives of devotees and the devoted, engaged in practices and processes of wonder in temples at Malleshwaram, Bangalore. The title, The cow in the elevator, already draws one into the narrative. One wants to know who this cow is or what it represents, why the cow is standing in an elevator, and what this has to do with anthropology. Luckily, these questions are answered in the first chapter. By then, the reader is already so absorbed in the narrative that putting the book down is nearly impossible. As one reads on, one realizes that the monograph itself is just as complex as the fieldwork site Srinivas describes, and the result of a long and winding road of human and divine encounters and theoretical reflections.

The chapters deal consecutively with what Srinivas sees as the significant forces behind neoliberalism: space, mobility, emotion, money, technology, and time. In each chapter, she shows how these neoliberal forces impact on ritual, and vice versa. The stories she describes are truly remarkable and at times humorous. The only thing that could be seen as missing is an overview of the anthropology of wonder as it has developed in the past decade. While Srinivas acknowledges many theorists primarily of a Western background, from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, religious studies, and sociology, perhaps she could have written more on how this debate has developed within anthropology, for example by Michael Scott (2016; 2017) and Jaap Timmer and Matt Tomlinson (2019).

Srinivas's concept of wonder is the main thread through the book, the etymology of which she traces back to the German word for fracture (Wunder, p. 11). As she makes abundantly clear, it evokes ritual creativity, transformation, and dynamism. This wonder and creativity are crucial to the development of religion, perhaps especially so in a highly modernized, quickly changing, urban and neoliberal environment such as Bangalore. Srinivas argues that the desired result of modern rituals is fracture. With this insight, she wishes to critique the prevailing image of Indian religion, which generally emphasizes tradition and stability. Change and modern life lead to religious improvisation and creativity. Instead of this being seen as detrimental to ritual and tradition, Srinivas shows how it strengthens religious beliefs in the modern, neoliberal city. This is a valuable new insight into Indian religion, and one that needs more attention, especially in the discipline of religious studies.

To support this analysis, Srinivas chooses to place emphasis on the functional elaboration of ritual. She asks ‘what ritualists do, along with … what they say they do’ (p. 32, Srinivas’s italics). By focusing on these questions, she contends that we can get ‘beyond the horizon of religious studies’ (p. 32). What this means remains unfortunately something that might need more elaboration. It appears as if Srinivas is arguing that by analysing rituals from a functional perspective, it becomes clear that rites are more than just pragmatic actions aiming towards a clear goal. Likewise, it demonstrates how religion moves beyond the traditional and becomes a template for and of change. As a result, religion is not a well‐defined, organized institution, but a ‘living and breathing discipline’ (p. 210). In other words, ritual is about what it is, not what it does. As such, ritual is creativity – or perhaps creativity in itself is ritual.

Most interesting for an added critical analysis is The cow in the elevator’s concluding chapter. Instead of summarizing the findings that are displayed clearly and in full detail throughout the monograph, Srinivas chooses to use this chapter as a platform to formulate her ideas on and wishes for the discipline of anthropology. She argues we should not only study wonder, but also let it be part of our anthropological inquiry. This will allow us to understand creativity, human endurability and survivability, and joy and hope, especially in bleak circumstances. In a radically changing world, we need wonder to understand the Other and ourselves in positive and enlightened ways.

The same optimism is seen in the edited volume on pilgrimage and religious travel in India by Pinkney and Whalen‐Bridge. Religious journeys in India is interdisciplinary and interreligious. The contributors are from Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia, and include anthropologists, sociologists, historians, English language and literature scholars, religious studies and international relations specialists, amongst others. The chapters cover pilgrimages and travel in Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, local Indian religions, Christianity, Sikhism, and new religious movements. Consequently, the contributions are diverse in many different ways: historical and contemporary; ethnographically detailed and theoretically dense; primarily focusing on pilgrimage sites and on pilgrims. The variety feels lively and provides something interesting for everybody who reads it.

In addition to this vast variety, all the chapters share one common thread: a focus on and elaboration of the once strictly held divide between pilgrimage (or religious travel) and tourism (or travel for leisure). This takes place over three separate sections. The first, ‘Constructing community spaces’, describes pilgrimage sites as social sites, where identities are shaped in both ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ ways. The authors in the second section, ‘Pilgrimage as paradox’, describe pilgrimage sites that are characterized by a cognitive dissonance, such as holy sites that have become nationalist activist sites; sites that are marked by spiritual vacuums; sites in which the boundaries between the spiritual and the commercial become blurred; and sites that are perhaps more symbolic than actual. The last section, ‘Reversals and revisions’, deals with the question of which multiple and sometimes overlapping motivations are behind pilgrimage sites and pilgrims’ actions, such as economic means, personal interpretations of scriptures, the mobility of sacredness itself, and reversals of the self.

The collection's goal is briefly mentioned in the introduction's last paragraph, where Pinkney and Whalen‐Bridge comment that ‘by looking beyond the boundaries of conventional pilgrimages, we invite readers to join us at the margins of scholarship on religion and travel – and to appreciate India on its own terms as a religious travel destination and as a landscape for religious constructions, paradoxes, and, indeed, reversals’ (p. 7, my emphasis). This mirrors the intention of Srinivas's monograph, as she also aims to understand India on its own terms. Apparently, as Pinkney and Whalen‐Bridge argue, this can only be done in comparison with – or perhaps even in contradiction to – conventional images of India. As it remains underexplored what the ‘conventional’ is, the question of what it means to get to know India ‘on its own terms’ (p. 7) lingers throughout the book. Religious journeys in India would have been strengthened in this regard by a longer, more elaborate theoretical introduction, or a concluding section that tied the chapters together. It is a shame to see that a significant amount of thought has been put into dividing the chapters into clear and sensible sections, but less effort has been made to construct an overarching theoretical framework. This may be the reason why in many chapters authors fall back on ‘conventional’ theories on pilgrimage, religion, ritual, and travel, such as the work by Benedict Anderson (1983), Ian Reader (2005; 2007), Paul Ricoeur (2004), and Victor and Edith Turner (E. Turner 2005; V. Turner 1969; 1982; V. Turner & E. Turner 1978).

This leads me to speculate about both books’ theoretical frameworks. Despite the turn to ‘world anthropologies’ or ‘de/postcolonial anthropology’ from the 1990s onwards, as scholars we often still engage almost primarily with theoretical debates and ideas which originate from the West. This might make it difficult to understand and communicate about the lives of people not living in the Occident. Insights from other societies are filtered through and perhaps in some ways coloured by debates that have their origin – and much of their more recent developments – in Western institutions. Western‐based ideas and models have perhaps become so normalized that it is – or should be – clear enough what the ‘conventional’ and what analysing a cultural artefact ‘on its own terms’ entail and thus they do not warrant explanation. As such, both books (although the edited volume by Pinkney and Whalen‐Bridge more so than the monograph by Srinivas) seem to strongly rely on that which they at the same time wish to activate against: a certain understanding of India and Indian religion which has become normalized in academia.

Regardless, what the books do clearly show is an understanding of Indian religion not as dark matter, but from the perspective of the ‘anthropology of the good’ (Ortner 2016: 60; Robbins 2013: 448). The books show the light of and in Indian religions, not their dark sides. As good anthropological accounts, they open up our understanding of India, making it not ‘provincial’ or ‘traditional’, but very much part of our modern, globalized world. As such, both volumes are extremely good books through which to explore a modernizing world that is not necessarily Western, but very much lived and experienced on its own terms.

进行人类学研究并共享其人种志研究结果的目的是，了解和更好地了解我们所生活的世界以及与我们共享我们生存的人类和非人类他人。作为人类学家，我们的目标是了解其他人的生活世界-无论他们离我们很近，或者与人们可能想像的那么遥远。正如玛格丽特·米德（Margaret Mead）曾经写道的那样，人类学教会我们“一个开放的思想，人们必须以这种开放的态度去聆听，记录，并以惊奇和惊奇的方式记录下来，而这是人们不可能猜到的”（1977年：页。iv）。结果，人类学著作通常充满了自下而上的角度对位置，关系和事件的人种学描述。阅读人种志作品的乐趣反映了这一点。好的民族志可以引导我们进入他人的生活世界，并帮助我们了解他们的生活-即使只是短暂的一刻。在这方面，尽管出于不同的原因，但图拉西·斯里尼瓦斯（Tulasi Srinivas）的专着以及安德里亚·马里恩·平尼（Andrea Marion Pinkney）和约翰·沃伦·布里奇（John Whalen-Bridge）所编辑的全书都同样出色，引人入胜，阅读丰富。

在印度班加罗尔近二十年的访问和研究之后（最初由她的父亲监督），斯里尼瓦斯终于出版了她关于印度教仪式生活的专着。结果是一本人种学上详尽的，令人惊叹的书，其中充分描述了奉献者和奉献者的生活，这些奉献者在班加罗尔的Malleshwaram的庙宇中从事奇观的实践和奇迹过程。标题，电梯里的牛，已经吸引了一个叙述。人们想知道这头牛是谁或它代表什么，为什么它站在电梯里，这与人类学有什么关系。幸运的是，第一章回答了这些问题。到那时，读者已经沉迷于叙事中，以至于放下这本书几乎是不可能的。正如人们继续读到的那样，人们意识到专着本身就像斯里尼瓦斯所描述的野外考察现场一样复杂，是人类与神的encounter绕和理论反思漫长而曲折的结果。

这些章节依次处理了斯里尼瓦斯认为的新自由主义背后的重要力量：空间，机动性，情感，金钱，技术和时间。在每一章中，她都展示了这些新自由主义力量如何影响仪式，反之亦然。她描述的故事确实很出色，有时很幽默。唯一被视为缺失的是对过去十年来发展起来的奇迹人类学的概述。尽管斯里尼瓦斯承认许多主要是西方背景的理论家，来自哲学，宗教研究和社会学等多种学科，但也许她本可以写更多关于人类学辩论如何发展的书信，例如迈克尔·斯科特（Michael Scott，2016 ; 2017）。）和Jaap Timmer和Matt Tomlinson（2019）。

斯里尼瓦斯的奇观是本书的主要内容，其词源可追溯至德语中的“骨折”（Wunder，第 11）。正如她所明确指出的那样，它唤起了仪式的创造力，变革和活力。这种奇迹和创造力对于宗教的发展至关重要，尤其是在高度现代化，快速变化的城市和新自由主义环境（例如班加罗尔）中尤其如此。斯里尼瓦斯认为，现代仪式的理想结果是破裂。有了这种见识，她希望批评印度宗教的普遍形象，该形象通常强调传统和稳定。变化和现代生活导致宗教即兴创作。斯里尼瓦斯并没有因此而被视为对仪式和传统的有害，而是向人们展示了它如何加强现代新自由主义城市的宗教信仰。这是对印度宗教的一种有价值的新见解，需要更多的关注，尤其是在宗教研究领域。

为了支持这种分析，斯里尼瓦斯选择将重点放在仪式的功能性阐述上。她问道：“礼节主义者做什么？……他们怎么说？（第32页，Srinivas的斜体字）。通过强调这些问题，她认为我们可以“超越宗教研究的视野”（第32页）。不幸的是，这意味着什么仍然需要更多的阐述。似乎斯里尼瓦斯在争论，通过从功能的角度分析仪式，很明显，仪式不仅仅是为了实现一个明确目标的务实行动。同样，它展示了宗教如何超越传统，成为变革的模板。结果，宗教不是一个明确的，有组织的机构，而是一个“生活和呼吸的纪律”（第210页）。换句话说，仪式是关于它是什么，而不是它在做什么。因此，仪式就是创造力，或者说创造力本身就是仪式。

对于附加的批判分析而言，最有趣的是《电梯中的牛》。斯里尼瓦斯并没有总结在整个专着中清楚而详细地显示的发现，而是选择以本章为平台来阐述她对人类学学科的想法和愿望。她认为，我们不仅应该研究奇迹，还应该让它成为人类学探究的一部分。这将使我们能够理解创造力，人类的忍耐力和生存力以及喜悦和希望，尤其是在严峻的环境中。在一个瞬息万变的世界中，我们需要惊奇地以积极和开明的方式了解他人和我们自己。

Pinkney和Whalen-Bridge编辑的印度朝圣和宗教旅行卷中也看到了同样的乐观情绪。印度的宗教之旅是跨学科和跨宗教的。贡献者来自欧洲，美国，澳大利亚和亚洲，其中包括人类学家，社会学家，历史学家，英语和文学学者，宗教研究和国际关系专家等。这些章节涵盖印度教，伊斯兰教，佛教，当地印度宗教，基督教，锡克教和新宗教运动的朝圣和旅行。因此，其贡献在许多方面都各不相同：历史的和当代的；人种志详细且理论上密集；主要关注朝圣地和朝圣者。这个品种感觉活泼，并为每个阅读它的人提供了一些有趣的东西。

除了种类繁多的内容外，所有各章都有一个共同的线索：着眼于并阐述曾经严格遵循的朝圣（或宗教旅行）与旅游（或休闲旅行）之间的界限。这发生在三个单独的部分。第一个是“构建社区空间”，将朝圣地描述为社交场所，在这里，身份以“宗教”和“世俗”的方式塑造。第二部分“朝圣为悖论”的作者描述了以认知失调为特征的朝圣地，例如已成为民族主义活动家的圣地；具有精神真空的地方；精神与商业之间的界限变得模糊的站点；以及比实际更具象征意义的网站。最后一部分，“撤销和修订”，

引言的最后一段简短地提到了该系列的目标，Pinkney和Whalen-Bridge在评论中说：“通过超越传统朝圣的界限，我们邀请读者加入我们在宗教和旅行方面的奖学金余地-并欣赏印度按自己的条件作为宗教旅行目的地，以及宗教建筑，悖论乃至逆转的风景”（我强调的是第7页）。这也反映了斯里尼瓦斯（Srinivas）专着的意图，因为她还打算以自己的方式理解印度。显然，正如平克尼（Pinkney）和沃伦·布里奇（Whalen-Bridge）所说，这只能与印度的传统形象进行比较，甚至可能与传统形象相抵触。由于对“常规”的理解还不够充分，因此“整顿”了解印度意味着什么（第7页）。印度的宗教之旅在这方面，将通过更长，更详尽的理论介绍或将各章联系在一起的结论性章节来加强。很遗憾看到将大量的思想用于将各章划分为清晰而明智的部分，却为构建总体的理论框架付出了较少的努力。这可能就是为什么许多章节中的作者都偏向于朝圣，宗教，礼节和旅行的“传统”理论的原因，例如本尼迪克特·安德森（Benedict Anderson，1983年），伊恩·雷德（Ian Reader，2005年；2007年），保罗·里科（Paul Ricoeur，2004年））和Victor and Edith Turner（E. Turner 2005 ; V.Turner 1969 ; 1982）; V.Turner＆E.Turner（1978）。

这使我对这两本书的理论框架进行了推测。尽管从1990年代开始转向“世界人类学”或“ de /后殖民人类学”，但作为学者，我们仍然经常几乎始终主要涉及西方的理论辩论和思想。这可能会使人们难以理解和交流不在西方生活的人们的生活。来自其他社会的见解被过滤掉了，或者在某些程度上被辩论所掩盖，这些辩论起源于西方机构，也包括其最近的发展。西方的思想和模式可能已经变得非常规范化，以至于-或者应该-足够清楚“传统”是什么，以及“按其本身”对文化人工制品进行分析的内容，因此它们不值得解释。因此，

无论如何，这些书清楚地显示出对印度宗教的理解不是一个暗物质，而是从“善良人类学”的角度来理解的（Ortner 2016：60； Robbins 2013：448）。这些书展示了印度宗教的光明和色彩，而不是黑暗面。作为良好的人类学研究，它们使我们对印度的了解更加开放，使印度不再是“省”或“传统”的，而已成为我们现代全球化世界的重要组成部分。因此，这两本书都是非常好的书，通过它们可以探索一个现代化的世界，它不一定是西方的，而是按照自己的方式生活和经历的。