Miniature Books; The Format and Function of Tiny Religious Texts; Myrvold; Parmenter

Edited by

Kristina Myrvold [+–]

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

Dorina Miller Parmenter [+–]

Spalding University

Dorina Miller Parmenter is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her research interests include material uses of the Christian Bible.

Miniature books, handwritten or printed books in the smallest format, have fascinated religious people, printers, publishers, collectors, and others through the centuries because of their unique physical features, and continue to captivate people today. The small lettering and the delicate pages, binding, and covers highlight the material form of texts and invite sensory engagement and appreciation. This volume addresses miniature books with a special focus on religious books in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The book presents various empirical contexts for how the smallest books have been produced, distributed, and used in different times and cultures and also provides theoretical reflections and comments that discuss the divergent formats and functions of books.

Series: Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts

Preliminaries

List of Figures [+–] vi-vii

Kristina Myrvold FREE

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

Introduction

Religious Miniature Books: Introduction and Overview [+–] 1-11

Kristina Myrvold,Dorina Miller Parmenter FREE

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

Spalding University

Dorina Miller Parmenter is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her research interests include material uses of the Christian Bible.

Chapter 1

Ritualizing the Size of Books [+–] 12-21

James W. Watts £17.50

Syracuse University

James W. Watts is Professor of Religion at Syracuse University and the author of Ritual and Rhetoric in Leviticus: From Sacrifice to Scripture (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Rhetoric about books usually emphasizes their semantic contents. Larger-than-average and smaller-than-average books, however, draw our attention to their material form. Size therefore provides one means for ritualizing the iconic dimension of books. While enlarging books quickly exceeds any practical purpose for the sake of public display, shrinking books tends to carry with it pragmatic rhetoric about portability, low expense, and mass production. Yet the popularity of textual amulets across history and cultures suggests that private ritualization drives much of the market for miniatures.

Chapter 2

On the Functions of Miniaturizing Books in Jewish Religion [+–] 22-44

Marianne Schleicher £17.50

Aarhus University

View Website

Marianne Schleicher is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of the Study of Religion at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research interests lie in the intersection of Judaism, scripture, gender, and the history of religion.

The purpose of this chapter is to offer a functional approach to miniaturized books as a religious phenomenon. Moving beyond mere descriptions of size and aesthetic quality, it asks about the functions of miniaturized religious books and asks how size comes to matter. To be able to treat miniaturized books as a religious phenomenon, the chapter wants to transcend prevailing size criteria that privilege the codex form used for religious texts in relatively young religions such as Christianity and Islam, and thus prevent a global, comparative perspective. Empirically, the chapter searches for answers within the context of the history of the book and in particular within Jewish religion, not only because it happens to be the field of this author’s specialization, but also because Judaism, if we include Israelite religion, covers all phases of alphabetic literate culture relevant to the phenomenon of books, and because Jewish rituals and festivals are marked by readings and the possession of small books. The chapter conjoins the author’s own distinction between the hermeneutical and artifactual use of scripture with theoretical reflections by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jonathan Z. Smith, Danièle Dehouve, Steven J. Gores, and Ian Reader. This platform has explanatory potential with regard to the analysis of miniaturized religious books in Jewish religion, but also to future analyses of miniaturized books in any religious context.

Chapter 3

Words in a Nutshell: Miniaturizing Texts in Early Modern England [+–] 45-54

Lucy Razzall £17.50

University College London

Dr Lucy Razzall is a Teaching Fellow in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at University College London. Her research focuses on literature and material culture in early modern England.

After Philemon Holland’s influential English translation of Pliny’s Natural History was first published in 1601, the Iliad-in-a-nutshell mentioned by Pliny became a commonplace motif of virtuosic compression in early modern England. Engaging with the popularity of this image, this chapter will explore its implications in early modern print culture. Although the frequently-appearing Iliad-in-a-nutshell might seem but a convenient rhetorical flourish, this chapter proposes that closer attention to it in the context of the small or miniature might help us to consider broader questions about the intertwining of physical and literary scale in early modern printed books as both texts and material objects. It argues that the miniature book, and more general desires to condense large works such as the Bible into smaller volumes, are not merely frivolous, but a manifestation of a wider anxiety about the relationship between physical size and literary weightiness.

Chapter 4

Small Things of Greatest Consequence: Miniature Bibles in America [+–] 55-71

Dorina Miller Parmenter £17.50

Spalding University

Dorina Miller Parmenter is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her research interests include material uses of the Christian Bible.

This chapter provides an overview of miniature books designated as “Bibles” that were produced in North America, with a focus on popular nineteenth-century children’s “thumb Bibles.” It examines the intended use of these Bibles, as evidenced in the prefaces to the printed books, as well as the ways that American printers altered their English prototypes and produced new volumes that reflected ideals of childhood and Christian education in the U.S. during the time. The study also addresses how developments in printing technology affected the form, content, and use of miniature Bibles since the end of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 5

Diminutive Divination and the Implications of Scale: A Miniature Quranic Falnama of the Safavid Period [+–] 72-107

Heather Coffey £17.50

OCAD University

Heather Coffey is an Assistant Professor of Art History at OCAD University. In addition to her penchant for small things, her research examines the art and architecture of the Mediterranean basin as an arena of Christian and Islamic cross- and intercultural fertilization from c. 1200-1600 CE.

This chapter investigates Adomeit Miniature Islamic Manuscript C12, a Safavid Qur’an preserved in the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Measuring 6.3 by 5.7 centimeters, the manuscript imbricates the amuletic function inherent to the Qur’an with a prognostic capacity through inclusion of a falnama (Book of Divination) attributed to the sixth Shi’i Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (d. 765). This chapter contextualizes the small-scale manuscript within Safavid bibliomantic practices, which reached their apogee during the reign of Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76). In so doing, it contrasts a miniaturized specimen against alternate manuscript formats of Safavid falnamas, thereby assessing the impact of drastically reduced scale on the user’s divinatory experience.

Chapter 6

Mite Qurans for Indian Markets: David Bryce in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century [+–] 108-131

Kristina Myrvold £17.50

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

As an influential publisher of miniature books in Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, David Bryce in Glasgow realized the profitable business of religious books and took use of the latest printing technologies to mass-produce small facsimiles of sacred texts in the world religions for a global market. This chapter presents some of the preserved letters from his colleague Henry Frowde at Oxford University Press which reveal how the two publishers cooperated with the production of miniature books over three decades and how David Bryce began printing and selling large quantities of diminutive Qur’ans intended for an Indian market in the 1890s. In literature of the twentieth century these mite Qur’ans became objects of fascination and were linked to Orientalist narratives of Arabs and Indian Muslim soldiers during the First World War that enmeshed the books in amuletic traditions of Islam.

Chapter 7

Miniature Qurans in the First World War: Religious Comforts for Indian Muslim Soldiers [+–] 132-157

Kristina Myrvold,Andreas Johansson £17.50

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

Lund University

Andreas Johansson holds a PhD in History of Religion and is the Director of the Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), Lund University. His research interests include religion and politics in South Asia.

During the First World War Muslim soldiers from India made up a significant part of the British forces. Attempts to satisfy the soldiers’ religious needs became a British strategy to maintain military discipline among the soldiers in Europe and to avoid public unease and discontent in colonial India. Based on archival material, this chapter examines how the British tried to identify the religious needs of the Indian soldiers and how letters written by Muslim soldiers emphasized the importance of the Qur’an. The chapter further explores how the Indian Soldiers’ Fund became an important charity which procured and distributed miniature copies of the Qur’an and how prominent persons in India and Europe donated scriptures to Muslim soldiers. Although the soldiers’ uses of the miniature scriptures remain uncertain, the books were given iconic functions to represent religion and identities in a time when the British national honor was threatened.

Chapter 8

Size Matters! Miniature Mushafs and the Landscape of Affordances [+–] 158-176

Jonas Svensson £17.50

Linnaeus University

Jonas Svensson is a Professor in the Study of Religions at Linnaeus University. His current research focusses on integrating the cognitive science of religion into the academic study of Islam.

The aim of this chapter is to address the question of why miniature Qur’ans have been and still are desirable objects. The question is approached with the help of the concept of “affordances” (Gibson 1986; Knappett 2005), or the different “action possibilities” that material objects present to different organisms, including humans. Affordances are relational in character, and dependent upon the organism’s anatomical, psychological, and in the case of a human, cultural and social set-up and contexts. The concept of affordances is combined with James W. Watts’ theoretical distinction between three different dimensions (semantic, performative, and iconic) of how humans interact with and relate to sacred texts. The result is a set of possible, and not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations why miniature Qur’ans are desirable objects, in what contexts, and to whom.

Chapter 9

Gitamahatmya! Paratexts in Miniature Bhagavad Gitas with Special Reference to Pictures and Gender [+–] 177-200

Jon Skarpeid £17.50

University of Stavanger

Jon Skarpeid is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stavanger University. His research interests include religion and aesthetics.

This chapter studies paratexts—such as epigraphs, prefaces, and illustrations—in four miniature Bhagavad Gitas. The analysis focuses particularly on format, illustrations, and gender. In addition to Gérard Genette’s concept of paratexts, this investigation of miniature Bhagavad Gitas draws upon Roland Barthes’ “Rhetoric of the Image” and Ervin Goffman’s Gender Advertisements. Comparisons show that some publishers have prioritized readability while others have produced smaller amuletic versions that are more difficult to read. The physical presence of the holy Gita is considered valuable in any case, and even the tiny editions are readable. With one exception, the paratexts reveal a male perspective. However, the gender ideology is presented in a rather indirect way. In one publication, a gender and class hierarchy is reflected in some illustrations. Two other publications have added mantras and ritual prescriptions that are hardly meant for women. One publisher has only included portions of the Bhagavad Gita, and stanzas where females are described as inferior to males as well as stanzas that explicitly address the four classes are omitted.

Chapter 10

Sutras Working in Buddha’s Belly and Buddhists’ Pockets: Miniature Sutras in Korean Buddhism [+–] 201-215

Yohan Yoo,Woncheol Yun £17.50

Seoul National University

Yohan Yoo is a Professor of Comparative Religion at Seoul National University. His previous publications include three books in Korean: Myths of Our Era (2012), Understanding Religious Studies (2020), and Understanding Religious Symbolism (2021). He has also co-authored Cosmologies of Pure Realms and the Rhetoric of Pollution (Routledge, 2021) and co-edited Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings (Equinox, 2021) with James W. Watts.

Seoul National University

Woncheol Yun is Professor of Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at Seoul National University.

This chapter argues that miniature sutras allow Korean Buddhists to feel Buddha’s presence and protection in their daily lives. Miniature sutras are so small that they are difficult, if not impossible, to read, but these texts are not intended for study. Instead, the mere presence of these miniature sutras is thought to be efficacious. Many Korean Buddhists possess small Buddha statues at home into whose hollow bellies they insert miniature sutras. To those Buddhists, sutras, which are the dharma of the Buddha, activate the statues and turn them into the Buddha himself. In addition, they believe that miniature sutras in their hands or pockets bless them and protect them from evil. Scriptures as the word-body of the Buddha are thought to work for Buddhists irrespective of their semantic content, and without any explicit ritual recitation or repetition.

End Matter

Index [+–] 216-237

Kristina Myrvold FREE

Linnaeus University

View Website

Kristina Myrvold is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on Indian cultures, religions, and migration.

Reviews

For those readers looking into the history of the tiny volumes for the first time wondering why miniaturise, Miniature Books presents multiple, eloquent answers, while also offering intriguing new perspectives for an audience already well-versed in the subject. Shifting from the traditional literature on miniature books to new cultural and historical research perspectives this book explores the format and the functions of miniature religious texts considered sacred in the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions.
Written by experts in the fields, Miniature Books succeed in highlighting the minuscule objects from the cabinet of the collectors to the files of the researchers, a study journey across both historical and contemporary contexts.
Anthropos

Overall, the editors and contributors have provided a welcome and thought-provoking addition to the study of iconic texts. By looking at miniature books, the semantic dimension of religious texts is decentered and questions about the format and function of the books in miniature receive attention that is often missed with standard sized books.
Reading Religion

.

Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

Miniature Books

The Format and Function of Tiny Religious Texts

Kristina Myrvold [+–]

Linnaeus University

View Website

Dorina Miller Parmenter [+–]

Spalding University

Table of Contents

Reviews

Related Journal

Related Interest

Search Equinox

Subjects