The Living Papyrus: Ritual, Cosmology and Immanent Divinity among the Sihanaka of Madagascar

Abstract

This thesis in historical anthropology of religion examines ritual and cosmology among the Sihanaka of Madagascar. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the rizicultural community of Anororo (2015–2022) and drawing on recent theoretical developments in the study of religion, it explores the immanentism of Sihanaka cosmology—how hasina, a divine power immanent to the cosmos, sustains life and underpins both social and agricultural prosperity. At the apex of the Sihanaka ritual cycle stands Feraomby, a communal ritual in which the royal hasina of the immortal ruler Ndrianampanjaka is renewed, sustaining fertility and abundance. As this ritual illustrates, hasina is an invisible yet workable substance—fundamentally unknowable, yet accumulated, preserved, and transmitted through the gathering of potent plants, shrine reconstruction and water aspersion. Comparable to Polynesian mana and Indonesian semangat,hasina does not belong to a transcendent otherworld; it is an immanent divinity embedded in the cosmos, differentiating into divinities (zanahary) and mediated through ritual practice. Offering the first comprehensive anthropological study of Sihanaka society in Western scholarship, this thesis addresses a significant gap in Malagasy studies. By tracing historical trajectories—from Austronesian antecedents to Indic, Islamic, and Christian influences, and the conquests and colonisation by Sakalava, Merina and the French—it reveals how Sihanaka traditions have continuously absorbed external elements while maintaining an immanentist framework. Engaging with the theory of immanentism and transcendentalism developed by Marshall Sahlins and Alan Strathern, it provides a rare ethnographic case of an enduring immanentist tradition that has persisted despite extensive exposure to transcendentalist influences.