Mircea Eliade on Myth and its Significance in Socio-Religious Culture from an "Antireductionist Orientation"

Headnote

Abstract: Mircea Eliade believed that the historical study of the development of myths of different periods or societies give us the knowledge about the culture, tradition and religious life of that period or society. As an expression of the sacred in words, myths are symbolic and symbols are the language of myth. Eliade's major emphasis was on the narrative parts of myths that reveal hidden transhistorical meanings. The aim of this paper is to justify the importance of historical approach in interpreting and analyzing myth and its significance in socio-religious culture from Eliade's perspective. The paper also intends to bring forth a critical evaluation of Mircea Eliade's "Antireductionist Orientation" of history of religion, which is empirical or phenomenological in nature, as a method to interpret myth. Eliade was criticized for being biased towards the history of religions with an "Antireductionist Orientation" as a method to study myth, on account that it provided irreducibility to religious interpretations of mythic data. But, this paper also argues in his method having a special role in integrating and synthesizing the contributions of other specialized approaches within a broad, coherent, meaningful and irreducible religious framework that history of religion as a methodology is.

Keywords: Mircea Eliade, History of Religion, Antireductionism, Myth and Mythical analysis.

Scholars often describe the philosopher Mircea Eliade as the most influential historian of religion and the world's foremost interpreter of symbols and myths. An article in People's Weekly in 1978 claimed that "Eliade is the World's foremost living historian of religion and myths"1 and the claim has been still very much evident till today when we are when we are remembering him on his twenty fifth death anniversary.

As a historian of religion, Eliade believed that any historical study implies certain familiarity with universal history. He pointed out that historical study of religions illustrates the continuous emergences, changes and modification of the idea of the sacred and how the sacred objects, myths and rituals grow up. Eliade believed that myths are very important religious phenomena and they represent some kind of human behaviour. The historical study of the developments of myths of different periods or societies gives us knowledge about the culture, tradition, and religious life of that period or society. According to Eliade,...