Kinship and Religious Practices as Institutionalization of Trade Networks Manangi Trade

Kinship and Religious Practices as Institutionalization of Trade Networks: Manangi TradeCommunities in South and Southeast AsiaAuthor(s): Prista RatanapruckSource: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 50, No. 2/3, Spatialand Temporal Continuities of Merchant Networks in South Asia and the Indian Ocean (2007),pp. 325-346Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165198 .

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KINSHIP AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AS INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF TRADE NETWORKS:

MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

BY

PRISTA RATANAPRUCK*

Abstract

This paper examines social and religious institutions that create and sustain a trade network

among Nepali traders in South and Southeast Asia. It looks at how kinship and religious

practices sanction a system of social and economic cooperation in their community. By pool

ing labor, information, material and financial resources, ensured by trust and mutual obliga tion, they can lower their operating costs. By extending kinship relations to societies abroad, such as through marriages with local women, they can have access to both local and trans

local trade networks, as well as reduce protection costs. Because the trade network is embed

ded in institutionalized social practices, it is resilient and keeps a geographically dispersed

community connected and competitive throughout their trading history. The paper is based on

field research in Nepal, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore.

Dans cet article l'auteur m?ne une analyse des institutions sociales et religieuses qui cr?ent et maintiennent un r?seau de commer?ants n?palais dans l'Asie du Sud et du Sud-est.

L'article s'adresse aux moyens par lesquelles les liens de parent? et des pratiques religieuses soutiennent un syst?me de coop?ration sociale et ?conomique dans cette communaut? dias

porique. En partageant du travail, des renseignements et de certaines ressources mat?rielles et financi?res, c'est-?-dire en suivant un processus dont la bonne foi et le sens d'obligation r?ciproque garantissent le bon fonctionnement, ils savent r?duire les d?penses d'op?ration. En

?largissant les r?seaux de parent? vers l'?tranger, par exemple par des rapports matrimoni

aux, ils r?ussissent en m?me temps ? gagner l'acc?s aux ?conomies locales et trans-locales en r?duisant ?galement les frais de la sauvegarde contre l'extorsion et les razzias. C'est gr?ce ? l'enracinement du r?seau de commerce dans des pratiques sociales institutionelles que celui ci reste toujours flexible et de longue dur?e, ce qui lui permet de survivre dans une commu

naut? g?ographiquement dispers? et de maintenir un haut niveau de concurrence ? travers une

longue histoire d'activit?s commerciales. Les enqu?tes sur lesquelles s'appuie cet article

furent men?es ? Kathmandu et ? plusieurs comptoirs en d'autres pays.

Keywords: kinship, religion, trade network, local marriage, protection cost

* Harvard University, [email protected] The author would like to thank Gita Dharampal-Frick, Jos J.L.Gommans and Bhaswati

Bhattacharya for organizing the panel, Engseng Ho for mentoring support, and Pius Malekandathil

for comments on the presentation.

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 JESHO 50,2-3 Also available online - www.brill.nl



326 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK

Written texts are excellent sources for learning about traders who kept records, or whose stories were recorded by others. But traders for whom writing is nei

ther a means of communication nor an instrument of business leave behind few

traces of their movements and trade networks. Manangi merchants from Nepal are one such group of traders. They are former caravan traders who had

migrated to Nepal across the Himalaya from the southern edge of the Tibetan

plateau over several centuries. Although they are not well known to historians,

they traded for centuries along the North-South river valleys that cut through the Himalayas, and are still trading nowadays between Nepal, India, and South east Asia.

What makes Manangis resilient and able to remain thriving traders until

now? What kind of trade networks do they establish? How have they sustained

that network throughout their trading history? Using written sources as starting

points to answer these questions has limitations for several reasons. Firstly, record keeping and written correspondence is not really a part of the Manangi trade.1 Secondly, their movements were disguised during the later colonial

period since they often traveled as British-Indian subjects and hence did not

attract the attention of historians. Thirdly, the East India Company records on

overland trade are limited compared to records on maritime trade. Therefore, a

retrospective approach from the contemporary period, by doing field research

and learning about their history from the current community, is a fruitful way to

learn about them. Under which conditions do Manangis operate as a commu

nity? What is the nature of internal relationships within the community? What kind of relationships do they form with the economies and societies abroad?

A COMMUNITY OF TRADERS

Although trade in the Tibetan region2 had flourished at least since the rise of

the Tibetan Empire in the 7th century, Manangis3 probably did not operate as a

1 In fact, most Manangis who are more than thirty-five years old are illiterate. Written

documents in Tibetan society are mostly religious texts by Buddhist monks. 2 Tibet was a center of regional trade in tea, wool, salt, grain, and luxury goods, with

trade routes cutting through both the Sino-Tibet border and the Himalayan region (Van

Spengen 2000: 107-10). 3 Nyishangba, as Manangis called themselves, meaning people of Nyishang (an area in Tibet

called Shang), came to live in the Manang valley at several different times, as early as 600 A.D.

(Messerchmidt, Gurung, Klatzel 2004: 2-3). Tracing back to at least the 12th century, the

Manang valley was already a tribute-paying area to Se-rib, a southern Tibetan state. With the rise and fall of various dynasties, Manang fell under the jurisdiction of different principali ties at different points in time (Messerchmidt et al. 2004: 2-3; Van Spengen 2000: 146).



MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 327

trading community until much later. Many Tibetan peddlers were not free men;

they were serfs (dud chung), whose labor was bound to aristocrats' or monas

teries' estates (Goldstein 1973). Peddlers who led caravans traded on behalf of

monasteries?the major entrepreneurs at that time.4 It was only in the 18th cen

tury, when many serfs ran away from their estates in search of physical mobil

ity and personal freedom, that the monasteries started granting a "human lease"

status to their serfs5 (Goldstein 1971: 533-4). With the "human lease" status, individuals could move freely and engage in entrepreneurial activities as long as they paid their "lease",6 either in cash or in occasional corvee labor services

(Goldstein 1971: 528-33). Under this condition, "human lease" peddlers could start trading on their own, with investment money borrowed from large finan cial institutions such as Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.7 It was probably during this time that Manangis established themselves as a trading community.

History of Trade: the Shifting Social Geography

Manangis were skilled traders, responding quickly to and taking advantage of

changes in the political and economic conditions in and around the region where they traded. In 1784, when the Shah of Gorkha attempted to unite prin

cipalities on Nepal's fringe, Manangis gave him their allegiance in return for

the privilege to trade freely in areas under the Shah's jurisdiction.8 This made

4 In the 15th century, the rise of the Gelugpa sect led to monastic rule in politics, and monastic control of labor and trade enterprise (Rajesh 2002: 119, 161; Stein 1972: 70-83; Goldstein 1973: 449-53). Supported by aristocratic religious patrons, monasteries were

endowed with animal livestock, cash, and a range of assets?from grains to jewelry (Michael 1982: 49; Nornang 1990: 256; Rajesh 2002: 123, 125). Trade was an attractive investment

option in Tibet, as it required less labor than tilling farm lands, while generating higher eco

nomic returns (Rajesh 2002: 129). In some places, an estimate of about 30% of monasteries' income came from trade, business, and banking activities such as money-lending (Michael 1982: 49-50).

5 One of the main reasons for granting "human lease" status was to discourage serfs from

running away from their lords, and thus to ensure a more reliable labor supply in the soci

ety predominated by a shortage of human labor and under-population due to the vast num

ber of celibate monks. 6 It was a "lease" from having owed their human body and labor to their lords. 7 For a discussion about how monasteries lent out cash for loans see An-che 1994: 61-2. 8 For discussions about Prithvinarayan Shah's ambition to expand his territory beyond the

Gorkha area of Nepal in the early 1770s see Shaha 1996: 23-32, 38-9, 73-81. See also Regmi 2002: 19-20. For a long time, the Shahs did not succeed in gaining alliance in the areas along the Tibet-Nepal border occupied by Tibetan ethnic Nepalis, including the Manang valley (Cooke 1985: 130-5). Likely because of this, different generations of the Shahs gave

Manangis trade privileges from 1784 until 1977 (Van Spengen 2000: 203-30; Cooke 1985: 78-80). Today Manangis still tell stories about how the trade privileges made their trade




their Tibet-India trade routes more flexible and profitable. In the early 20th cen

tury, however, the Tibet-India routes through Nepal declined, as a new route re

channeled trade away from the Nepal-Tibet border (Furer-Haimendorf 1975: 64-92; van Spengen 2000: 143). This was the Chumbi valley route to Central Tibet via

Sikkim, which was opened by the Younghusband expedition in 1904 (Mehra 1968: 288-304). Faced with this change, and with the development of new infra

structure in British India, Manangis shifted their trade towards the colonial set

tlements, taking advantages of the British pathways to India, Burma, and the

Malay Peninsula.

The history of Manangi trade in India is closely intertwined with the history of colonial expansion in British India. Development of transportation networks

between urban centers, the establishment of Gorkha army stations, and expan sion of trade to the Malayas, all opened new opportunities for Manangi trade.

As Nepali citizens, not needing a passport to travel in India, Manangis brought salt rocks, musks, and medicinal herbs from Southern Tibet and Manang to sell

in Calcutta.9 In 1920, they traded as middlemen, moving between the urban and

rural markets of Delhi and Jammu-Kashmir. After the British expansion into

Assam, they brought foreign goods from Calcutta to exchange these with prod ucts from the hinterland of Assam and Bhutan, thereby connecting overland

trade with maritime trade.

Although mainly overland traders, Manangis also moved among port cities if

there were profits to be gained. In 1930, hearing about gem mines in the Mogok and Mandalay areas of Burma from Nepali immigrants and Gorkha soldiers in Maymyo, they took British ships from Calcutta to Rangoon; after having stocked up their goods, they continued to follow the British waterways to

sell gems in the Malayas (Van Spengen 2000: 182-8). Taking advantage of

the colonial settlements, Manangis moved between the ports of Calcutta,

Rangoon, Penang, and Singapore, sometimes passing via Madras on their return

to Calcutta. In 1962, after military take-over in Burma, and with the introduc

tion of air-travel between Calcutta, Bangkok, and Singapore, Manangis shifted

their trade route again, away from the Bengal-Burma area to peninsular and

island Southeast Asia. In the last two hundred years, the shape of the Manangi trade circuit has thus changed several times?first as trans-Himalayan trade run

ning North-South through Nepal, then as trade along the northern hills of India

and in the Bengal-Burma area, to the present form of trade in handicrafts and

profitable and competitive, and how they are still grateful to the Shahs, remaining royalists until now.

9 See also Fisher 1987 for trade between Tibet and India.




precious gem stones between Kathmandu, Delhi, Jaipur, Bangkok, Singapore, and Malaysia. Yet despite these changes, Manangi traders have remained con

nected as a community throughout these centuries: their trade circuits are more

than just a physical space, they constitute the shapes of the social geography of

their trade community.

Nodes as Sites of Social and Economic Relations:

Local and Trans-Local

Manangis' trade routes reflect the trade networks that Manangis form. They are networks of social and economic relations, both within their community and

between them and local communities. When the gem trade in Burma ended,

many Manangis stayed behind?with their Burmese wives and children. As

Manangis moved through places, they established social relations with local

people?from transactional business relationships to longer-term kinship ties through marriages.

The level of connectedness between Manangi traders and local communities

has varied between places, depending on factors ranging from the nature of the

market to individuals' life events. Some relationships are based on mutual

agreements with few commitments. Some are more institutionalized and trans

actional. Others are expansive and deeply rooted, such as when Manangis marry local women and invest trade profits in local production, building on

their wives' social networks. Though wide-ranging, these relationships are not

necessarily exclusive to one another. In fact, often they build on each other

and become intertwined, as they have one common feature: they help orient

Manangis in foreign lands, connecting them with the local economies, resources,

markets, and societies. Equally, these cross-cultural relationships also help con

nect the local economies with the trans-local ones. As itinerant Manangis marry local women, become more rooted and relatively less mobile, they rely more on

itinerant Manangis to maintain their ties with the larger trans-local Manangi net

works. Being locally rooted, localized Manangis also become anchoring points that connect itinerant Manangis with local economies and societies.

Among itinerant Manangi traders, relationships are also based on mutual

dependency and mutual benefits. Trading sites form points of convergence dur

ing trips abroad. At these sites, Manangis meet up and stay together at tempo

rary residences; they share buying or selling space and they accompany each

other on their search for goods and customers. Common interests, mutual depen

dency, and companionship draw them together to share knowledge and to offer

mutual support. Cooperation, however, does not take place independent to social




conditions. Cooperation is risky, and must be sanctioned by trust. Moreover, this

trust and cooperation reduce their operating costs, making their business com

petitive. To ensure cooperation, trust must be institutionalized and constantly renewed. It is at a node?at a site of temporary residence?that Manangis renew and reinforce their trust in various ways, through many strands of kin

ship and social relations. Even though their convergence at the nodes is tempo rary and transient, it constitutes the core of social relations that are continuous

and enduring. The relations of reciprocal obligations, trust, and cooperation?sanctioned by

institutionalized kinship and social practices?are reinforced and renewed not

only at the points of convergence abroad. Manangis also meet at home, in

Kathmandu, at religious ceremonies and institutionalized social gatherings. These are organized points of convergence?nodes where frequently moving traders

and their families meet to reaffirm their values and social practices. How do

social, kinship, and religious institutions create and shape particular kinds of

values and social practices that facilitate Manangis' long-distance trade? This

paper focuses upon this question, looking into the nodes of their trade networks, both at home and abroad.

From Rooming Houses to Local Wives: Nodes Abroad

Early Days: Local Patrons

When itinerant Manangis are on trading trips abroad, they often establish a

temporarily shared residential space. With friendship and patronage relations, this local residence can cost them almost nothing. In the 1940s, Manangis

stayed at Sikh temples in Amritsar and Penang where they helped clean the

temple grounds in exchange for free housing. In the 1960s, they slept on

rooftops of people's houses in Calcutta for 3 Rupees. In the Thai beach town

of Pattaya, they slept on the floor of a barber shop paying minimal rent. Once

they were more established, they started renting a house together in Bangkok. These shared residential spaces at various trading sites were well known to itin

erant Manangis. A young trader could explore a new trade route alone by being referred to these communal sites. Arriving at a new site, an extended kinship network made the new trader recognizable and his place in the community identifiable, and he was treated as a community member. Staying together also

made it easier for Manangis to collectively reciprocate local favors. Sometimes, local patronage came in the form of local assistance; for example, on an island near Pattaya, Manangis could leave their goods at a restaurant overnight in exchange



manangi trade communities in south and SOUTHEAST ASIA 331

for helping out at the restaurant when extra labor was needed. When Manangi traders become more familiar with the places that they frequent, they develop

more complex arrangements with local people.

Hotel and Gem Middlemen s Boarding House

In Penang, Malaysia, after sleeping at a Sikh temple with bags of gems chained around their waists for years before the Second World War, Manangi traders shifted to a hotel that was safer and more private. For more than 50 years now, they have stayed at this same hotel, through three generations of owners.

Having become friends with the hotel owners, Manangis have their own large reserved room, designated as room number G, with G referring to Gurung, a

common Manangi last name. Staying in room number G, Manangis pay mini

mal rent, regardless of how many of them occupy the room. There they can do

laundry, chant, meditate, and even sell gems to Bengali traders who supply gems to jewelry factories. The room gives Manangis a shared public space that

is private to outsiders, unlike at the Sikh temple. The friendship with the hotel owners guards Manangis against unpredictable protection costs such as robbery or bribes to local police.10 Based at this convenient, inexpensive, and safe place,

Manangis take short trips to Ipoh, Alor Setar, Kota Bahru, and Kelantan to sell

gems, making Penang their base for trade in the northern Malay Peninsula. This

would not have been possible without the long-term relationship with the hotel owners. Although transactional at its start, the relationship developed into

friendship that brings Manangis favors, special arrangements, and protection. A transactional relationship with local people can also develop in a different

direction, namely into a more formalized commercial exchange of local ser

vices. Chanthaburi is the biggest gem trading town in Thailand and the largest source of gems for Manangi traders. There, Manangis have a complex business

arrangement with a Thai gem middleman named Sumith, who provides them with a comprehensive package of local services. Because the Chanthaburi gem market is structured in such a way that sellers have to move around showing their gems to potential buyers, Manangis need a buying space where they exam

ine the gems before offering their bids. As non-natives, they have to rent that

space; and Sumith provides it. Like other middlemen in Chantaburi, Sumith col

lects his rent by deducting 13% of what the sellers would receive. To make his

business competitive and the 13% commission justified, he has added additional

10 For discussion about the concept of 'protection cost' see Curtin 1984: 42. See also

Steensgaard 1973: 60-113.




services. These services cost him little, but are of high value to Manangis because they augment the value of the institutional arrangements already exist

ing within the Manangi community. Sumith dedicates a floor of his house to serve like room number G in Penang?

a shared living space for Manangis that is off-limits to others. Living in Chant

haburi, his house also serves as a transit point and store for cash and gems, whence Manangis carry and pass on their cash and gems among each other, and

among different trading sites. This practice is sensible as payment is usually due

much later, after Manangis leave their selling sites, and the transport of gems

among different sites should be minimized to ensure the safety of both the

traders and of the gems. Viewed in this light, the payment for Sumith's service can be considered as a protection cost, but one that is bought in bulk, at a

wholesale price, to be shared among Manangis. Because Manangis can cooper ate, they pool social resources together to get more out of Sumith's material and

social arrangements?the protection they pay for.

Although Sumith's protection is bought in bulk, Manangis sometimes feel

that his business is too lucrative, that they are paying more than he deserves.

Nevertheless, being Sumith's client is probably still the best arrangement for

the time being. This was an assessment made by Rinchen, a thirty-year-old Manangi gem trader with a Thai wife. This couple is emerging as Sumith's rival and

competitor. Rinchen's wife has relatives and friends in the gem business, one

of whom owns a gem buying space in the market. When Rinchen has accumu

lated enough skills, funding, and networks, he plans to separate from Sumith to establish his own gem trading house. At that point, Manangis will gravitate towards him. Local protection and assistance will be reciprocated with access

to the trans-local markets. Such social exchange based on kinship ties helps reduce Manangis' protection costs abroad and makes their trade competitive to outsiders.

Local Wives

Being a node or serving as middlemen?in an economic, social, and cultural

sense, Manangis with local wives can help itinerant Manangis in various ways. In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, they helped itinerant Manangis establish room

ing houses. By renting a house together, Manangis can become less dependent on local people such as the hotel owner or the gem middleman like Sumith. But

in order to accommodate a community of travelers whose trips must be respon sive to changes in the local markets, the house must have a sophisticated sys tem of space and rent sharing. In Singapore, where Manangis stay briefly to sell




gems and to transit through to sell a higher volume in Malaysia, the duration

of their board is uncertain. Given this uncertainty, Manangis create a flexible

system by renting a large, open, one-story house, where at night they line up rows of mattresses that can be easily added or stored away. The rent is col

lected on a per person-per night basis, depending on an average daily expense and the number of people passing through. In Kuala Lumpur, where Manangis take turns with a partner to rent a handicraft stall in Chinatown for two months at a time, they take turns with a partner to pay a fixed two-month rent for a

fixed sleeping space in a rooming house. To make sure that the house runs smoothly,

Manangi women take turns?to ensure equal opportunities of employment?in

managing the house: collecting rent, cooking, and cleaning as if it were their own lodge for the duration of their stay. Such a system of space and rent shar

ing, and communal living, requires a high degree of organization, creativity, and trust. Had it not been safe for Manangis to leave their expensive gems in their

travel bags, this space and rent sharing would not have been possible. The

benefit of sharing a space supersedes the mere reduction in operating costs. A

rooming house serves as a meeting point for sharing information, a site of the

community abroad where traveling Manangis can find one another. Its role as

a node connected to other nodes is exemplified by the sheet of paper on the

wall listing phone numbers of nodes at other trading sites: names of Manangis who married local women living in other cities, the hotels in Penang and in

Mae-Sod, the gem middlemen's boarding houses in Chantaburi and in Jaipur, the two rooming houses in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides helping itinerant Manangis establish their rooming houses locally,

Manangis with local wives also aid them in business. Neema and his Singapo rean wife help arrange transportation between Singapore and Malaysia in ways that allows itinerant Manangis to cross the border and go through customs and

immigration in the most efficient and cost-effective way. They arrange to have a local van-owner pay protection cost at customs on their behalf for a fixed pre dictable amount, to reduce hassles, loss of goods, and delays in travels due to

unpredictable encounters with custom officers. Likewise, in Kuala Lumpur, Ali, a Manangi who married a Malay woman from Kelantan and converted to Islam,

helps arrange a shared selling space inside two former Chinese coffee shops in

Chinatown, where a large number of itinerant Manangis can set up their own

individual stalls and take turns renting them every two months with a partner. This rent, in fact, is less costly than the bribes they paid to local police when

selling on the sidewalk.

Being connected through a local wife is significant to the development of a

Manangi community abroad. A rooming house does not develop just anywhere




along Manangi trade routes. Penang is an important node, but without a local woman Manangis are not able to have a house of their own there. In Chanta

buri, Rinchen has a Thai wife. But because he has not lived there long enough,

Manangis still have to stay with Sumith. Seen from another perspective, rela

tionships with itinerant Manangis are important to localized Manangis for main

taining their connections with the world beyond the local. Traveling Manangis

supply goods from abroad, export local goods to the trans-local markets and

carry money from Manangis living abroad to extended families at home in

Kathmandu. On the return journey, they bring back news and blessed objects from religious ceremonies.

Local and Trans-Local Economy and Society

Local Production and its Articulation with the Trans-Local Economy

The connection between the local and trans-local economies and societies can

also become more significant when Manangis shift their business from trade to

local production based on their wives' social networks, making their social and

economic relations more intertwined. The silver production of Tenzing and his

Thai wife is one such example. Tenzing used to trade in silver; his wife is from a silver guild family in Chiangmai. Fifteen years ago, he joined his wife's local

silver production with his trans-local silver trade to open a silver factory in Bangkok for export business. For his factory, Tenzing used skilled silversmiths and

bought cheap raw silver through his wife's family network in Chiangmai. Later

he expanded the production to incorporate stones and beads from his Manangi relatives, and hired more labor through his wife's networks of relatives and

friends. Tenzing's silver production is competitive because he has access to

cheap labor, cheap materials, and a broad international market.

Tenzing's silver production benefits not only his wife's social network, but

also his own Manangi family. As the production grew profitable, he expanded his outlets, hired more local labor and brought more relatives from Nepal to

supervise and manage the business, paving the way for Manangi relatives to

establish their own businesses locally. By providing them with extensive con

tacts in Thailand, his relatives could establish their own outlets instead of just

supplying to him. Today, they do import and export business between Thailand,

Nepal and India, dealing in silver and semi-precious stones, having their busi ness registered in Tenzing's wife's name. Without this trust, Manangi shops in

Thailand would not have multiplied, nor would more local employment have

been generated. As Tenzing's relatives open more shops, the constant flow of




his family members to Thailand increases, and the reasons for travel extend to

other domains. Older relatives come to Bangkok for a health check-up and

sometimes even just to escape winter in Nepal. Nepali wives and children come

to help in the shops during school breaks. Tenzing does not just connect the

local economy with the Manangis' trans-local one, but also the social life

around it. Because the economic relations within the Manangi community and

externally with the local community abroad are embedded in social and kinship relations, they are enduring and keep community members connected in multi

ple domains beyond those of mutual economic benefits.

Remaining Connected with the Trans-Local Community

Manangis' local business is not a local trade, but a trans-local one that has a local base of operation. Thus, when a localized Manangi becomes more

invested locally, there comes a point when it is more efficient and advantageous to have others move on his behalf instead of continuing to take trading trips. Then, they will need to rely on itinerant Manangis whose networks are expan sive and spread out. For example, when Neema opened his own handicraft store

in Singapore, it became more convenient and cost-effective for him to have his

fellow Manangis bring supplies from Kathmandu and Bangkok. Similarly, when

Ali tripled the size of his stall in Kuala Lumpur, he had his Manangi son-in

law, who was also his own sister's son, supply him with gems from abroad.

Similarly, Tenzing has his Manangi relatives supply him with beads and stones

from India. Among them is one of his two Manangi sons-in-law. Even if a

Manangi marries a local woman and shifts to invest more locally, he still main

tains his connection with the larger Manangi community. This is also due to

cultural affinity and emotional ties extending beyond mutual economic benefits. As children of Manangi mixed marriages are socialized by constantly visiting

itinerant Manangis, cultural affinity and inter-twining economic and kinship ties

often lead to marriages between them, as in the case of Ali's Manangi-Malay daughter and his Manangi nephew. The continuation of this cross-cultural mar

riage, from Ali's to his daughter's generation, enables the connection between

the trans-local and local Manangi community to continue across generations. As

the economic relations become institutionalized through family relations, trust

and cooperation are ensured over a long period of time, across generations. Even though the Manangi community is dispersed from Jaipur to Singapore, it

remains connected through kinship ties and through trade networks founded on

mutual dependency and obligations. For a community that is physically dis

persed, a node nullifies the spatial and temporal distances that separate com

munity members.




While trading sites abroad are nodes that collectively form a trans-local econ

omy and society with a social life of its own, Kathmandu?as a home base for

itinerant Manangis?can also be viewed as a node that functions as another

kind of economy, embedded in its own set of social institutions. In contrast to

the trans-local Manangi economy abroad, which is focused on profit making,

frugal living, and surplus accumulation, the Manangi economy in the Kath

mandu home base is one of conspicuous consumption and surplus redistribution.

Such an economy at home, while appearing to be in opposition to the economy of surplus accumulation abroad, in fact facilitates the Manangi trade.

INSTITUTIONALIZED RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL GATHERINGS: NODES AT HOME

The Circulation of Money Back to Kathmandu

For both localized and itinerant Manangis, profits from trade are not only reinvested in the next round of trade, but also spent on several other activities.

Local investment in a more sedentary and perhaps less risky business such as

in shops, production, service industry, and real estate is one of the activities common among both itinerant and Manangi living abroad. Location of local

investments varies depending on individuals' home base, economic opportuni ties, and their sense of connection to a place. But besides reinvesting in busi

ness, a large fraction of profits from trade is spent on religious and social

functions at home in Nepal?the domains where conspicuous consumption and

redistribution of economic surplus take place.

Surplus Accumulation and Conspicuous Consumption

Although Manangis are traders and entrepreneurs who invest a large amount

of money in profit-making activities, Manangis are also religiously devoted

and dedicate a generous portion of money, labor, and time to various kinds of

merit-making activities. Buddhist religious practice is an important part of the

Manangis' social life. Being ordained as a monk or a novice is the greatest merit one can attain. Not everyone, however, can afford to be a monk as most

people must earn money to support their family and community. Because lay traders cannot make merits by being ordained, they set aside a substantial

amount of time for religious practice: during a resting time on a trading trip,

during a home-visit between trading trips, and after retirement from trade.

Abroad, they chant daily and periodically avoid eating meat. At home in Kathmandu,

they spend a large amount of money sponsoring, organizing, and participating




in collective fasting, chanting rituals and performing ceremonies. In addition to

sponsoring elaborate religious ceremonies, Manangis also build lavishly grand religious monuments: a two-kilometer-long prayer wall around a monastery, three fifteen-meter-tall Buddha statues, a gilded stupa in Lumbhini, and a sizable rest house in Bhodgya.

Besides religious practice, Manangis also spend a significant amount of

money and time socializing with each other at several annual social gatherings, all of which involve a great deal of eating and drinking. Religious ceremonies

and institutionalized social gatherings occupy a large fraction of the calendar

year, leaving only about half the annual cycle to go trade and earn enough to

finance the elaborate gatherings. Annual events include four community-wide three

week-long daily chanting ceremonies at a monastery led by monks and nuns, a

three-week-long fasting ritual, a two-week-long, community-wide gambling fes

tival, and five one-week-long family reunions. Why do the Manangis commit so

much of their resources and time to these festivals? What is the significance of these religious and social events for the Manangi community? Do they facili tate their trade? How and in what ways?

The organization of these social and religious gatherings facilitates trade by

providing opportunities for refinancing trade and entrepreneurial activities more

equally. How is that done? The fundraising for these gatherings pools together surpluses from trade, which come from different community members, accord

ing to their wealth. And before the sums of money are spent on religious and social events, they are redistributed within the community in the form of invest

ment loans. The accumulation and redistribution of trade surpluses on such a

scale does not happen by itself. It requires organization and cooperation, which must be institutionalized, in order to motivate and enforce its practice.

In the same way that Manangis have a sophisticated and intricate system of

sharing a rooming house, a selling space, or a system of passing on money and

gems abroad, they, likewise, have an equally sophisticated system of sharing religious and social responsibilities at home. For religious ceremonies, each

married Manangi man must take turns to host the community-wide gatherings at a monastery. While the contribution of labor and time is required equally of

every host, the contribution of money is voluntary. This augments the latter's social value, associated as it is with generosity, prestige and social status?

qualities that must be recognized publicly. Because monetary contribution is not

limited to the host, it is of high social value to other community members as well. In addition to the social values associated with the monetary contributions

towards hosting religious ceremonies, the contribution of money has an equally important religious value. It is a form of merit-making?a material contribution




to support the Sangha. Not only does the material contribution have an imme

diate direct religious value in itself, but merit-making in the form of monetary contributions can also be exchanged for other kinds of religious merits derived

from other forms of merit-making practices such as chanting and fasting. For

example, even though participating in a religious ceremony by oneself is more

virtuous, it can still be substituted through a financial contribution to support others' religious practice. When this religious idea of merit-making is combined

with the prestige and social status associated with generosity, merit-making can

assume the form of conspicuous consumption. The numerous social gatherings in the Manangi community are no less elab

orate. The two-week-long gambling festival organized on a monastery ground is a large, lavish feast. At each of the four annual, one-week-long family-lineage reunions 300-400 people gather together in a comparatively festive atmosphere. The gathering of families of twelve women who form a close circle of friends

is often in the form of a trip to a resort hotel. While merit-making in the form

of donations provides the funding for religious ceremonies, the funds for social

gatherings are amassed through several means. The village-wide gambling festival pools money to finance the festival by taxing 15% of an individual's

gambling earnings. The village usually makes much profit, which goes into

establishing a village fund. The family-lineage reunions are financed by inter ests earned from guthi money?a lineage fund accumulated from every married

man's contribution, according to his economic status. The married women's get

together is financed by a similar process, but within a circle of friends, through the intermediary of women. At all these gatherings, each contribution to

the funds is influenced by the idea of wealth, generosity, prestige, and social sta

tus. The contribution amount reflects one's wealth and the level of generosity? both of which affect a person's social status and his credibility. Hence, be it a

religious or a social gathering, for the purpose of chanting, fasting, gambling or

meeting relatives, all such events require the pooling of funds through various

means, endorsed by the same set of ideas and social values. That is, one's

virtue, prestige and status do not depend on the wealth one accumulates, but on

the wealth one expends on others. Viewed in this light, the institutionalized

religious and social gatherings are an economic institution that pools together

capital from wealthy community members to amass large funds, which is tan

tamount to a form of taxation on trade surplus.

Although the accumulated trade surplus is collected to finance religious and

social gatherings, it can still be redistributed as investment loans. This is possi ble because of the time lag between the collection and the expenditure of the fund. Before the fund is used for sponsoring religious ceremonies, religious




monuments, family reunions and vacation trips, it can be circulated within the

Manangi community. Such redistribution of various funds and on multiple scales requires a sophisticated and thorough system of administration providing for the availability of loans in such a way that the loans are available to the

most needy community members, while still ensuring the repayment of the

loans back to the community.

Internal Credit Rotation

For most loans, credibility is an important criterion for ensuring loan repay ment and for disbursing them. How do Manangis verify one another's credibil

ity? Because earning one's credibility requires time and opportunities for

cross-checking, it involves multiple contexts for verification. The diversity of

religious and social events and the ways in which they are organized provide a

range of opportunities and contexts for Manangis to get to know each other, to

earn and to verify their credibility among different circles of community mem

bers. Each social gathering brings Manangis together along different lines of

social and kinship relations, and along different levels of relatedness?all of

which add up to form a large span of kinship and social networks. Religious ceremonies bring together the whole community and pool the largest funds. The

gambling festival compartmentalizes the whole community according to the seven ancestral villages in Manang Valley, with each village organizing its own

festival with its own village fund. The four family reunions are organized along each person's four grandparents' lineage, providing access to four family funds

available through four sets of kinship networks. The twelve women's gatherings add another social circle on the basis of friendship, allowing for the creation of social relations that do not require preexisting blood relations.

At each of these events, social and economic status, credibility and trust can

be earned and verified in various ways. Donation for sponsoring religious cere

monies indicates one's social and economic status. Payment according to the amount pledged signifies one's credibility and trustworthiness. Appropriate con

tributions to family funds and timely repayments of loans reflect one's levels of

integrity and financial liquidity. Credibility, integrity, trustworthiness and relia

bility can also be earned through social exchanges of labor and time, in addi

tion to earning them through monetary transactions. Being able to host religious and social gatherings well when one's turn is due?and being able to help out

relatives when it is their turn?reflect one's level of responsibility, reliability, trustworthiness, and credibility. Monetary and social exchanges at social and

religious gatherings provide multiple ways in which Manangis can cross-check




one another's credibility, besides carrying gems and money for each other

between trading sites abroad. At each one of these gatherings, Manangis can

form a variety of social and kinship networks with different boundaries and

levels of intimacy, earn trust and credibility among themselves, and take out

loans of various kinds.

The purposes for which religious and social events are organized, and the

ways in which the funds are managed and rotated as credit, generate different

sizes of loans and various borrowing conditions. Funds collected for organizing

religious ceremonies, for example, can be given out as loans in their entirety,

earning interest to be further contributed towards the merit-making ceremonies, and thus must be repaid on time. The size of the loans generated from this fund is large and is used for large investment projects. The village fund generated

largely from gambling festivals can also be given out as sizable loans. Interest

from this loan is accumulated as the village fund, which sometimes is used for

village-wide merit-making activities. Such a fund is smaller than a religious

temple fund and the timing of its expenditure is flexible; thus, it can absorb more risks and some delays in payments. The loans offered by family-lineage funds are smaller and are provided by a circle of relatives, which makes it

easier and more effective to sanction default loans. The diversity of contexts in

which Manangis can meet and verify their credibility, and the diversity in the size of loans, the ways in which religious and social events are organized, and

the ways in which funds are managed, provide multiple borrowing options to

members of the Manangi communities.

By pooling funds to organize religious and social events, Manangis generate a working capital that can be used as rotating credits for investments in entre

preneurial activities, enabling new traders to establish themselves and the Manangis' trade network to expand. Viewed in this light, religious and kinship institutions in the Manangi community are financial institutions that are sanctioned by reli

gious values and kinship practice. When individuals are unlikely to default a

loan provided by a fund collected for religious ceremonies, and when they are

unlikely to cheat their kin, the accumulation and redistribution of surplus for

further investments can function effectively. It is the embodiment of trust and

economic cooperation in social institutions that is the key to the formation and

the sustenance of the Manangi trade networks?both in the social, material, and financial domains. And when that trust and cooperation?which are ensured

by religious and kinship institutions at home?echo the trust and cooperation abroad, it becomes even more binding.




Nodes as Sites for Pooling Social, Material, and Financial Resources

The nodes where Manangis converge, both at home and abroad, at religious ceremonies, at social gatherings, at rooming houses, and at trading sites, may

appear to be rather different in many ways. But in fact they were established

according to the same principle: as sites for pooling resources?social, material, and financial. Abroad, the nodes pool together residential and commercial space to lower expenses. At a rooming house and on the road, they pool knowledge, information, companionship, and assistance?carrying money and goods for

each other. Such cooperation, which lowers their operating costs, requires trust. But trust and cooperation do not exist by themselves, in a vacuum. They

must be created, enforced, sanctioned, and made verifiable by social institu

tions. Being endowed with such a network of social and economic cooperation,

Manangis could offer this asset and enter into an exchange relation with local

economies and societies. These social relations, ranging from business transac

tions to marriages with local women, have allowed Manangis to reduce local

protection costs and expand their trade networks locally. The pooling of

resources between trans-local Manangi and local communities abroad, through economic, social, and kinship ties, makes Manangis' trade competitive and

profitable.

Cooperation within the Manangi community is not limited to the pooling of

resources abroad. At home, religious ceremonies and social gatherings serve as

nodes that pool together social and financial resources. Being present in the

same shared social space, such as at a rooming house abroad, Manangis share

economic information about trade, social information about individuals' credi

bility, and emotional sentiments about distant family members. By pooling labor

and time to organize religious ceremonies and social gatherings, Manangis pool

together economic surplus accumulated abroad in order to redistribute them

as loans. Such redistribution of economic surplus at multiple scales allows Manangis,

especially those with limited funding, to invest in trade. This leads to an expan sion of the trade network, which requires a larger scale and higher degree of

social and economic cooperation which, if achieved, can facilitate long-distance trade even further. In the Manangi community, this high level of trust and eco

nomic cooperation is achieved and sustained because it is embedded in institu

tionalized religious and kinship practices. Such institutionalized religious and

kinship practices, albeit crucial to the creation and sustenance of the trade

networks, are unlikely to be visible in colonial sources, or to leave traces in

written documents. Yet it is precisely because the trade networks are embedded

in these institutionalized social practices, that they remain resilient and can keep




a geographically dispersed Manangi community connected and competitive through out their trading history.

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Figure 1: North-South river valleys in Nepal: natural trade routes between Tibet and India. (Furer-Haimendorf 1975: ix)



PRISTA RATANAPRUCK

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Figure 2: Shared selling space in Kuala Lumpur

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Figure 3: Rooming house in Kuala Lumpur




Figure 4: Religious ceremony at home in Kathmandu

Figure 5: Chanting and fasting ritual at a monastery in Kathmandu




Figure 6: Gambling festival in Kathmandu

Figure 7: Social gathering at a religious ceremony in Kathmandu



Documents

Kinship and Religious Practices as Institutionalization of Trade Networks Manangi Trade