ABSTRACT
This paper purports to investigate certain ritualistic acts of mantra recitation in the light of their family resemblances to more familiar everyday speech acts (such as promising, pardoning, naming, etc.), without thereby intending to minimize the differences between the ritual and the quotidian varieties of speech act or to suggest the reducibility without residue of the religious rites under consideration to the mere stipulation of a list of necessary and sufficient conditions for performing the speech acts which they contain.
