Nepal - Comparative Perspectives on Tamang Religion

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Ritual Paradoxes in Nepal: Comparative Perspectives on Tamang ReligionAuthor(s): David HolmbergSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Aug., 1984), pp. 697-722Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057151

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VOL. XLIII, No. 4 JOURNAL FASIANSTUDIES AUGUST1984

Ritual Paradoxes n Nepal:ComparativePerspectiveson TamangReligionDAVIDHOLMBERG

umerous empirical accounts depict the religions of Nepal, like those of otherparts of South and Southeast Asia, as a myriadof religious specialists and ritual

complexes. These accounts show that Magars, Gurungs, Chantels, Thakalis, Newars,Tamangs, Sunuwars, Sherpas, Rais, Limbus, Tibetan speakers, and the prevalentIndo-Nepalese Chetri and Bahun (to mention some commonly cited groups) allengage severaltypes of specialists, distinguishable by a division of labor.The westernTamang,1 upon whose religious beliefs and practices this essay focuses, employ ninespecialists organized into three complexes associated with three prominent practi-tioners:2 Buddhist lamas, who preside over rites of death; sacrificial lambu, whopropitiate chthonic divinities and exorcise harmful agents; and "shamanic"bombo,who resuscitate the living.3

David Holmberg is Assistant Professorof An-thropology, Asian Studies, and Women's Studies,Cornell University.The author resided among the western Tamangof Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts from 1975 to1977 and briefly in 1983. His research was sup-ported by the National Institutes of Mental Healthand Cornell University in affiliation with the Cen-tre for Nepal and Asian Studies, TribhuvanUniver-sity, Kirtipur, Nepal. The author thanks Dr. PrayagRaj Sharma, then Dean of the Centre, his col-leagues and officials of the Research Division, andofficials of His Majesty's Government of Nepal fortheir assistance. He also thanks Michael Allen,James Boon, Davydd Greenwood, AndrfasHofer,A.ThomasKirsch, KathrynMarch, P StevenSangren,and Robert J. Smith; they all offered helpful criti-cism and comments on early versions of this articleor the ideas expressed in it.

1 In this article all references to "Tamang"mean particularlythe western Tamang of the localewhereI resided, and who correspondto the Tamangreportedon by Hofer (1969; 1974; 1981) andToffin(1976). For specific details of Tamanghistory, theirplace in Nepal, social structure, ritual and myth,consult Holmberg (1980) and March(1979).There is no standardsystem for transliteratingTamang,an unwritten language. Forthe ease of thereader, I have rendered Tamang with consonantclusters and vowels that most closely approximatethe pronunciation of English speakers;at the sametime, I have ried to be true to phonology. Retroflexesare written with capitals, as in lenTe r spirit ofdeceased bombo;, when it appears after a usuallyunaspiratedconsonant, indicates a breathy tone as

in mhangor evil spirit; otherwise breathy tones areindicated by an h after a vowel; long vowel soundsare indicated by italics, as in tdpa;all other vowelsareshort. Except in the caseof prominent divinities,I have avoided giving Tibetan or Sanskrit equiva-lents, which will be obvious to philologically ori-ented specialists. Such equivalents might erron-eously suggest to the readerthat Tamang languageand culture are somehow derivative of textualtraditions. Nepali words are transcribed accordingto standard devanagari transliteration. Other lan-guages are transcribedas they appearin the sourcescited.2 Other practitioners are gurpa, who chantspecialized Buddhist texts in order to ensureblessings; shyepompo, ho are leaders of devotionalsongs; sangtung,who are similar to bombo ut per-form only simple rites; pudari, who conduct all-Nepali sacrifices; astrologers; and, occasionally(twice in the last decade), brahman.3 "Shamanic," ike "shamanism"and "shaman,has been overused in anthropological literature tothe extent that it has lost interpretive value (Geertz1973:122). Shamanismmay well be an "illusion" nthe same way that "totemism" (Levi-Strauss 1963)is. In fact, there is strong evidence to counter theold anthropological saw that shamanism is somesort of panhuman Ur-religion (cf. Ohnuki-Tierney1980). Whether one looks to the Tungus (Shiro-kogoroff 1935)-from whom the term "shaman"enters Westerndiscourse -or the "elementary" eli-gions of Australia (Stanner 1959-1963; Elkin1944) or the Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971),one finds multiple specialists or, at least, multipletypes of ritual practice.

697


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698 DAVID HOLMBERGWith some notable exceptions (see Sagant 1973; Fournier 1978; Samuel 1978a,1978b; Paul 1979), studies of religion in Nepal concentrate on separate strands inthis variegated web, interpreting each strand as though it were autonomous. Forexample, Hitchcock and Jones (1976) in order to escape the view that the religioussituation is a function of the diffusion of Hindu and Buddhist practices into the NepalHimalayas, document a "third"category that revolves around indigenous specialistswho become possessed by spirits (p. xii). These excellent ethnographic accounts andothers, though, perpetuate the picture of the religions of Nepal as the accretion ofseparable strands. Most studies consider these strands as though they reflect separatehistorical periods4 or psychosocial functions,5 repeating explanatorystrategies appliedin the study of religious complexity in Southeast Asia (Kirsch 1977:242). In thesereconstructions, the relations among ritual activities that appearsimultaneously in asingle society are neglected.To limit discussion to isolated strands-whether Hinduisms, Buddhisms, spiritcults, shamanisms, sacrificial cults, or other "folk"practices-precludes consider-ation of the symbolic logic that connects these apparently disparate practices inparticular cultures, whether Gurung, Tamang, Newar, Indo-Nepalese, Tibetan, orwhatever.Concentration on total religious systems does not prevent comparisons butrelocates the objects of comparison. From such a perspective, the religious systems of

Nepal reveal a common pattern. Such a vantage permits a reassessment of thehistorical, sociological, and psychological dimensions of ritual in Nepal.Among western Tamang, Buddhist, sacrificial, and shamanic practices are logi-cally interrelated, forming a religious field characterized, as Tambiah has demon-strated for Thai religion, by relations of "opposition, complementarity, linkage, andhierarchy" 1970:2). No aspect of Tamang religion can be isolated from the others;each derives its meaning from its position within a superordinate system. Kirsch,writing again about Thai religion, has proposed: "If the animistic componentprovides a kind of symbolic opposition to Buddhist world-view, its perpetuation islinked closely to the perpetuation of Buddhism" (1977:260). In Tamang religion,Buddhist lamas attempt to determine the world into a final order by binding it toBuddhist words; bombo,on the other hand, expose indeterminacy in the cosmos.This article focuses primarily on these two practitioners and their rituals; the lambu,whose rituals have the same effect as those of the lama, I discuss only secondarily.Buddhist lamas arethe most respected of ritual specialists. Their primary responsi-bility is to preside over large-scale memorial death feasts that "rescue" he dead into

4For example, Watters (1975:155) observes:"Many of the themes of classical shamanism can befound with varying degrees of modification in otherethnic groups of Nepal as well, at least in kernelform . . . . Does this suggest, perhaps, that therewas a proto-tradition of the non-Indic peoples ofNepal which may have very closely resembled theclassic Inner Asian tradition? The incidence ofKham-Magar shamanism shows that such a tradi-tion can and does, in fact, exist in Nepal." This is anintriguing conjecture, yet one must be cautious insuggesting that contemporary practices representvestiges of a unified prototype. Practices observedtoday represent centuries of dynamic intercommu-nication among groups, which undoubtedly havetransformed prior practices into things quite differ-ent from what they were. Moreover, it is likely thatcomplexity in one form or another has been an

essential feature of Himalayan religious systemssince time immemorial (see n. 3). Such attempts todocument original traditions reflect a tendency todelineate an unique ethnographic presence for eachgroup. As Allen remarked (1981:168), the imagethat emerges in these particularized ethnographicendeavors is "a mosaic of sub-areas, each with itsown language, customs, and ethnonym" that blindsus to comparative possibilities. As I argue else-where (Holmberg 1980:15-51), the ethnic groupsappear to be the products of state formation inNepal, and they do not represent specific culturesthat can be traced historically.

5 The mechanistic approaches, like the his-torical, neglect the relationship between strands;they explain divergent ritual practices according toprior social or psychological necessities (see R. L.Jones 1976a; S. K. Jones 1976).


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 699rebirth and reestablish order in a local society of patrilineal clans. The relation oflamas to texts printed in Tibetan script is essential to the understanding of lamaicritual authority. Tamangbelieve that these texts arethe words of ancient Buddhas whobound the world into orderly form through oaths. Lamaic logic asserts that theautochthonousdivinities who rule the earth and the hordesof harmfulagents lurkingeverywhere in intermediate spaces are subject to the power of the text. Lambunrsacrificers,on the other hand, entreat divinities honorifically and sacrifice to themcalendrically to bring rain, to stave off earthquakes, landslides, violent winds, hail,and tempests, and to keep evil influences at bay, thereby assuring such blessings as aprosperous harvest, wealth, resiliency, and long life. Lambualso expel ghosts andspirits, who are responsible for hardship, disease, and degeneracy,by coercing themwith sacrificial and other offerings to quit homes and villages.

Superficially,Buddhist ritual and sacrificial ritual could not appear to be morecontradictory; nevertheless, they show key similarities. Both work toward theaffirmation of resolute order in the cosmos. Like lamas, lambumust chant "texts"(Hofer 1981) in an archaic and obscure form of the Tamang language. On the level weare considering them, these "oral"formulas have the same effect as lamaic printedtexts. Lamas and lambu, in fact, can replace each other for most propitiatory andexorcistic functions; together, they fix the cosmos and assure measured relationsbetween humans and the divine and malevolent forces, confirming that, despitesignificantdifferences,religions of the word, like Buddhism, and those of the act, likesacrifice,are both concerned with determining order.6

If lamaic and sacrificial rituals construct a world order markedby predictability,balance, and determinancy, and if they support life by displacing evil potentialities,bombo'situals, which I call "soundings" becauseTamang say bombo sound"),counteror deconstruct that creation. Bombo well on the alien, unpredictable, and indetermi-nate in human experience. Although Tamang say that the bombo revives he living,"in ritual practice bomboarelycomplete curesthemselves; this is the work of lamas andlambu.When bombo all shadow souls, resuscitate life-force, "reveal"ources of distressby "going into the divine," or when they carrydivinities or harmful agents on and intheir bodies, they "unveil"an aspect of the cosmos that lamas and lambuattempt todisplace. Soundings revel in irresolvabilities (Holmberg 1983) and deal with thepreconditions and meanings of malaise; they are not the resolute events commonlyreported.The outline presented in this article is not exhaustiveor definitive. Other sorts ofritualoccur, and the Tamangreligious system is changing. Furthermore,each facet ofthe ritual system has the capacity to appropriatethe others, either partially or totally,expressingthe same oppositions observedin the total field; this is particularlytrue ofthe lamaic (cf. Paul 1979). On the level of the total system, however,the determinaterituals of lama and lambu in opposition to the soundings of the bombo orm anelementarystructure common to the religious systems of Nepal.

6 Herrenschmidt (1982a) proposes two idealtypes of sacrifice, brahmanicand testamentary.Theformerdepends on the act and the latter on words.Until recently, in fact, sacrifices were part andparcel of Tamang Buddhist death rites (cf. Hofer197 lb:22). Moreover, ome Tamangtranslatedamlatcpa as "to cut an oath." I would not, though,want to overexaggerate the associations of Bud-dhism and sacrifice; they are distinct in severalimportantways. Forexample, using Kirsch'stypol-

ogy (1977: 260), the lamaic is "otherworldly" inorientation and focuses on the "whole society"whereas the sacrificial is "thisworldly"and focuseson lower-level sociopolitical orders. FollowingHerrenschmidt, the relation between divinities,humans, and cosmic order is different in thesetwo systems. Both, though, are "determinate" inworldview, and their rituals are, above all else,"standard-routine." t is on this level that I considerthem similar.


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700 DAVID HOLMBERGThis structure, though, is not closed into a coherent and tensionless field. Whatemerges through an examination of the Tamang field is the juxtaposition of contraryorders, not consistent order.A final, totalizing picture of Tamangreligion never takesform; the field can be conceived only through the apperception of severalvantages-those of the different ritual specialists that may be brought to bear on it.7 Fromthis point of view, the field, like a kaleidoscope, never resolves into an imagecomposed of all its variants. Nevertheless, by examining relations among the sym-bolic constructions of ritual components, a logic of differences that form a total fieldcan be abstracted.Tamang religious complexity, then, is not simply the residue of an irretrievablehistory or the conglomeration of fragmented functions; it results from culturalprocessesthat createparadoxes.These paradoxesarecondensed in a myth about a lamaand a bombowho go on a competitive pilgrimage. This myth is an intriguing artifact.Within it, the Tamang themselves, in a discoursethat we may call indigenous, reflecton the same problems that have inspired the Westernstudy of syncretism in Buddhistsocieties, and through it the Tamangrevealthe dynamics of their religious structure.Before examining this myth, however, an elaboration of the meaning of lamas andbinding oaths and of bombo nd shamanic soundings is necessary.

Tamang BuddhismThe Tamang, the largest Tibeto-Burman population in Nepal, are a clan-basedsociety who live forthe most part in the mid-hills of Nepal that surround Kathmanduand in the Kathmandu valley proper.The Tamanghave been enmeshed in the Hindustate of Nepal for centuries, and they have had important historical relations withTibetan Buddhist populations to the north. They call themselves "Lamas"o outsiders,who, in turn, addressthem honorificallyas "Lama."By calling themselves Lamas, theTamang declare themselves Buddhist, and they set themselves off from the Hindusociety that surroundsthem and in which respectforthe brahman, not the lama, is animportant distinguishing feature.8Although in some contexts lama may refer to anyTamang, it has a more specific meaning in Tamangculture. Just as the brahman inHindu society is comprehensible only within the hierarchyof castes and in relation toboth the renouncerand the "shaman," amasamong Tamangmust be perceivedin thecontext of Tamang society and in the complementarity of lamal/ambulbombo.Although lamas participatein numerous austereretreatsand once a year perambu-late through villages begging grain, they arenot celibate renouncers ike the monks ofSri Lanka,Thailand, or Tibet. Monks and nuns are known, but monasticism is not afact of western Tamang life. Tamang lamas are married householders who farm liketheir kinsfolk, although they avoid plowing. During ritual, they don red robes, chant

As Boon remarks (1973:16), "The danger-ous tendency in studies of significant forms and inseeing 'culture' as holistic significant form is to'over-literalize'the facts at hand. The investigatorattracted by bound, multivocal, sensory rich pro-ductions only derives full satisfaction if he canfinally abstractand completely interrelate the totalrange of components." In an essay on festivals inAndhra, Herrenschmidt (1982b) makes a relatedpoint; he demonstrates that unitary reconstructionof a village festival cycle may be impossible and thatwe are confronted with multiple points of view. I

am working from a similar point of view and amconcerned with the relations between differencesmore than constructing a final, grammatical struc-ture of the Tamang religious field.

8 My concern here is not ramifications of theopposition of Buddhist/Hindu or lama/brahmaninHindu or Tamangideologies. An all-Nepal vantagemetonymically opposes lama/brahman, both ofwhich resonatemetaphorically for members of thesesocieties. These complementarities cannot be elabo-rated here (see Bista 1972; Sharma 1978).


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 701texts, display scroll paintings, and employ ritual implements. At these times,villagers address them by the honorific sangkye, he word for Buddha. In everyday ifeas well, villagers use honorific speech when talking to lamas and serve them food anddrink with special signs of respect. In many villages, local lamas maintain smalltemples that house brightly painted clay images of Guru Rhimborotshe (Sanskrit:padmasambhava; ibetan: gu ru rin po che) and other prominent Buddhas. Significantrituals, however, rarely focus on these temples. For instance, memorial death feasts-the essential Buddhist rite among Tamang-occur at brilliantly decorated altarserected in empty fields.

In the villages where I resided, Tamang spoke of two kinds of lama: "ancient"and"hunter" amas. Ancient lamas claim patrilineal descent from lamas back to a timewhen their ancestors reputedly came down from monastic communities surroundingKyirong, Tibet. Ancient lamas call other lamas, those who are not the directdescendants of lamas, hunter lamas. Most often, hunter lamas, following routinizedBuddhist patterns, say they pursued training because of disaffection with sufferingand a concern with religious truth. Lamahood is also an avenue to prestige and,sometimes, to power. Just as hunter lamas claim distant ancestors who were lamas,ancient lamas, in addition to their claim of hereditary legitimacy, usually say thatthey undertook training for the same reasons as hunter lamas.To become a lama, one must attend retreats, the first of which constitutes aninitiation. Several prospective lamas jointly invite a lopanor guru, who cannot be thefather of any of the novices, to conduct a retreat in the forests or high promontoriesabove the village. Lopanor masters may be regionally noted experts, but sometimesthey come from distant places such as the Kathmandu valley, Bhutan, or Tibet.During retreats, which last from severalweeks to severalmonths, the lopanallows nocontact between the novices and other villagers. According to some lamas, the lopanperforms mock rites of death during the first retreat and initiates the novices tolamahood. Students spend their days performing incessant obeisances to the Buddhasand their lopan; they drill the letters of the Tibetan script and their pronunciation,repeat elementary texts, memorize the meaning of ritual symbols painted on icono-graphic cards and scroll paintings, absorbmantrasor formulaic incantations, learn toconstruct altars and to mould dough images of the Buddhist pantheon, and acquireexperience in simple ritual procedures.After leaving initiatory retreats, novice lamas continue to study on their own andwith other lamas in their home villages. Above all, they refine their abilities throughpractical experience gained by joining accomplished lamas in rituals, at first beatingdrums, clanging cymbals, running errands, performing menial ritual tasks, andserving the superior lamas. Later,after attending advancedretreats, which familiarizethem with special texts and procedures, and after accumulating texts, paintings,paraphernalia, and experience, they gain status in the community.Mastery of the recitation and application of texts is critical to lamaic legitimacyand a primaryfunction of retreats. As a lama mastersa text, the lopaneither inscribesmissing or secret passages in the text using red ink or the student commits themissing passage to memory. This at once activates the text and authorizes the lama inits application. From lay perspective, lamas acquire arcanepowers in the secrecy ofretreats, which, although normally employed for benevolent service, may be appliedfor malevolent ends.Lamas, then, through regular oscillation from immersion in daily life to retreat,from non-ritual to ritual contexts, and through their annual nod to cenobitism,re-create the institutional separation of lay and monastic communities and reexpress


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702 DAVID HOLMBERGvalues of renunciation common to other Buddhist societies. Lamas are conversantwith these refined forms of religious action but claim that they are but one possiblepath. Their affiliation with more literate expressions is also evident in their valuationof texts. Although lamas can rarelytranslate the Tibetan language of the texts, theyand other Tamang impute important meanings to them. When lamas chant texts,they bind oaths.

Lamas and Binding OathsAlthough their relation to texts authorizes lamas to practice, lamas do not "read"texts for pedagogical purposes; lamas cannot translate the Tibetan words of theirtexts. Texts are chanted and the lamas learn a paralanguage associated with texts:proper pronunciation, cadence, gestures, secret passages, and ritual acts closelyrelated to particular moments in the recitation of a text. Texts and their paralanguageare ritually effective. Tamang value texts metaphorically (Derrida 1976; Burke 1970);the metaphoric meanings are the message for Tamang as they are, at least in part, forother Tibetan Buddhists.9 'Among the Tibetans, grapholatry is more real thanidolatry" (Ekvall 1964:114).Tamang believe texts are the words of primordial Buddhas who brought order tothe cosmos by binding oaths. Tamang myths regularly repeatthe refrain "theBuddhasbound an oath," as in these examples from a version of creation:

The Buddhaof within {NhangkaiSangkyelBoundan earth oath to the earth,A rock oath to the rock,A wateroath to the water.Afterbinding water,Oaths to those who move and feel were bound.The male and the femaleof humankindwereoathbound.The femalesof humankindwereoathboundWithin the mountainLapsangKarpo.Theywereboundto stay in the Lo Demo river.The males of humankindwere oathboundWithin the mountainLari,Within the hill Ganhrejung.Theywere bound to stay in the hill Sati.A mouthoath, a heart-mindoathToexchange n marriage,Toexchangeheartsand minds,ToexchangemouthsWithin the nine territorieswasclaspedround.

Among the mythic Buddhas, Guru Rhimborotshe embodies the essential characteris-tics of the Buddhas and is important to an understanding of lamaic ritual. GuruRhimborotshe passed through Tamang territory on his way to Tibet, taming moun-tain and earth divinities and defeating the forces of evil as he went. He bound the9 Writing has important technological andsociopolitical consequences (see Goody 1968).However, I am concerned exclusively with sacred

writing. In contemporary Nepal, Nepali is thelanguage of the state and facility with the writtenword has important consequences (Caplan 1970).


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RITuAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 703

'Thmangamachanting ong-lifebookdivinities and their awful power to submit to Buddhist law. He banished and tied upall kinds of evil in entwining formulas. Lamas now say that Guru Rhimborotsheresides in a western heaven where he is taming cannibal fiends. Contemporary lamas

ar thoeial'ikdt hs nin udhstruhasre flpno uu


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704 DAVID HOLMBERGwho stretch back to time immemorial. Many lamas even hint that they are incarna-tions of past lamas. Moreover,synchronically,they are the earthboundrepresentativesof the primordial Buddhas who now reside in heavens at various stages of remove.Like the Buddhas of myth, lamas reimpose the order of the Word in the world.They etch Tibetan letters and mantras into rocks; they empowerprinted talismans tokeep harm at bay; they attach woodblock prints with powerful mantrasand symbolsto the doors and windows of houses, thereby protecting them from the onslaught ofevil forces; they fly prayer flags; they dispense printed medicines; they chant bindingtexts to contain water sprites and earthdivinities. Aboveall, lamasare the directorsofmemorial death feasts where textual authority allows them to erase demerit, toconscript the soul to rebirth and karmic law, and to bind the soul over to theBuddhas.

This relation to texts and their power has innumerable correlates in otherBuddhist societies and particularlyin Tibetan Buddhist societies. Forinstance, Ekvall(1964:105) notes the following Tibetan beliefs and practices:By a strangeworking of the law of association,the written or printed lettersthemselveson any paper,evenwhen the meaning s unknown,arealso sometimescalled CHos[religion; law] by the illiterate and accordedworshipfulcare andtreatmentby all. A devoutTibetanscholarwill reverentlyouch his headwith aTibetanbook,evenwhen he knows t is secularn subjectmatter,becausehe lettersin themselves etainsomethingof religion.

Pignede (1966:389) remarks that the Gurungs likewise value the letter:Gurungshavea greatdeal of respectfor that which is written. We have seen theimportance iven to the fact that the booksof the pucuand the klihbrihad beenburned.On theotherhand, the lamaand the brahman ead heirprayersndconsultwrittenhoroscopesdecoratedwith illuminations.ManyGurungshavehoroscopesmadeforthemby brahmans nd, eventhoughtheyoftencannot understandhem,they are proudto unroll the scroll of papercoveredwith letters, numbers,andmulticolored igures.

Similar observations have been made throughout Nepal (see Caplan 1970:69), andTambiah(1968) has demonstrated the importance of texts in Thai Buddhist ritual.Thus lamas distinguish themselves from bombo y their possession of texts andtheir adherence to respected teachers. In private, they say that bomboie and deceivebecause they have no texts. Bombo, for their part, play down their associationwith gurus orparticular"shamanic" ines and often claim that they are "selfgenerated."In practice, lamas and bombojoin together for several rites confirming theircomplementarity.

Bombo and SoundingsLike lamas, an ancient bombo nce had texts but reputedly threw them in the fire

and ate the ashes. Bombo ound because they are charged by a visceral motivationwhereby words exude from their mouths. One bomboemarked, "The bombo oes notstay in seclusion like the lama. You cannot say just what the lopansays; you must learnby yourself. The lama just learnska, kha, ga, ca, cha, ja [the beginning letters of theTibetan syllabaryl."Bomboare inspired to sound by a host of divinities, spirits, andharmful agents who seize, alight on, and enter their bodies, making them shake inpossession. Seizure by lenTe is what compels someone to become a bombo.

LenTeare the spirits of deceased bomboho, in spite of lamaic death rites, are not


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 705reborn. They reside in intermediate heavens in the high reaches of the Himalayas.LenTe rave reinvolvement in the world and grasp lineal descendants in either the maleor female line. 10Those so struck can reputedly eat coals and carry red hot fire grateson their heads without being burned; one afflicted man was reported to have flownabout the village. All whom lenTe rasp become violently ill. By agreeing to become abombo nd honoring the lenTe,one can convert the lenTe o allies, thereby temperingthe uncontrollable afflictions.

A lopan or guru teaches the bombo he techniques needed to honor lenTeand toenter into other sorts of possession. Bombo re the only ones in Tamang society whobecome possessed, and as Hofer (1974:151) observes, "The Tamangshaman is not apassive vessel of the possessing agent. A state of possession is rathercontrolled thansimply 'endured'by him." Bombo ntice multitudes of divinities, spirits, and harmfulagents to attend soundings. As they arrive at a seat in the altar, the divinities pulsethrough the bombowho shudder, clanging bells that they have wrapped around theirtorsos, and rattling their drums. During exorcistic sequences, harmful agents entertheir bodies and the bombomay call out, "Eat my flesh; suck my blood; crunch mybones! Flesh food, chew, chew! Blood food, suck, suck! Bone food, crunch, crunch!"One bombo alls out to furies who lead him to the heavens:

In the midst of the sun rays,A costumedbombo, I am not.In the midst of the moon rays,I have dressed.When breathing,moving beings sleep,When the sun sleeps,I dress [asa) bombo.Cometake my bombo'sbody!Cometake a golden horse!Come takea silverhorse!By the sky trail let's fly.

Bombo"carry,""steal off" like a sack of grain, and "playfully toss"divinities andspirits as they alight or "perch."They share their cups, plates, food, and seats withdivinities. They tease, trick, and deceive harmful agents. Bombohave knowledgeacquired from their lopanand an inner strength that allows them to suspend thesebeings on and in their persons without being taken over by them; when bomboshudder,it is a sign of strength or power, power which derives from their lopan, fromtheir knowledge, from their lenTe,and from the water of high-altitude lakes. Theygeneratean internal energy which equals that of the possessing agents; thus, as onebombo emarked, when he gets too old to shake he must stop sounding. The onlyuncontrolled possessions are the initial seizures by lenTe.When this happens, thewhole edifice of Tamang ritual works to contain this possibility by encouraging theafflicted to become a bombo.

Along with powersof possession, bombo averevelatorysight. Bombo itually "openup"and reveal,whereas lambuand lamas shut down and put out of sight. If bombo ocertain exorcisms of the lambu, they lose this sight. The unique revelatory power ofbombos associatedwith their necessaryrelationshipto tsen,divinities or sprites closelyassociated with women, who mediate between humans and the divine and who are10 Some Tamangcall spirits who attack througha female connection shyulTo.


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706 DAVID HOLMBERG

ILI

Bombot the conclusion of an all-night-long sounding

said to "see things differently" from humans (Holmberg 1983). What is small forhumans is large for tsen;what tsen can see, humans cannot. All bombo, n order to

prcIce utproal oo sn hrb,te eoe sigh liketa fteteanI esetv rmi ewe. hsbmoaeal ortiv lotsawsul


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 707(bla), to reveal the condition of life-force (so), to "open up"sourcesof affliction, and tounveil the faces of divinities.Humans have nine bla (shadow souls), all but one of which can stray from thebody. Tamang believe that wandering bla dream our dreams, and thus Tamang arealways careful to call out the names of people before waking them. Otherwise theroaming bla will not return to the body. Bla are commonly lost in this way. Bla mayalso be lost in moments of fright: when thunder bolts crash; when feet trip onprecipitous trails; when one encounters fighting dogs or bulls; or when one happensupon demons or spirits in the forest, at crossroads,in high pastures, or in the villageat night.

Once separated from the body, bla may take refuge in all sorts of intermediateplaces or may be captured by harmful spirits. Loss of bla leads to a generalizedweakenedstate that leaves one open to the attack of a variety of malevolent forces. Ifone has been sick or uneasy for long periods of time and the ministrations of lamasand the endeavors of lambu have been to no avail, one must call a bomboo performasounding and call back the bla from wherever t may be. In calling back bla, one bombosearches in these and many more places:

Abovea greatrock,Abovea greattree,Abovea greatcliff,Abovea greatlandslide,Abovea crevasseIn a low hoveringcloud,In a circlingwind,In a great bolt,In a greatlightning flash,In the mid-sky,In the puddles of a marsh.In a place[heaven]of the living,In a placeof the dead,In the handof an evil lama,In the hand of an evil Bombo,In the high pastures,andso on.In a place[heaven]of the homelessIn a placeof confusionIn a placeof distress,In a placeof rumorous ossipIn a placeof cannibals,In a placeof closedmouths,In a placeof licentioussex.

Once discoveredand called from these intermediate places, bla are reaffixedto peopleby the bombo.At the time of death, lamas separate the nine bla from the body andconjoin them into a unitary bla that is reborn.So (life-force), on the other hand, dies with the body. About age twelve, anindividual develops a so that grows up through the torso like a tree. On a heavenlyhill, the whereabouts of which only bombo an reveal, there is a so dungma life-forcetree) that is directly linked to the condition of the so in the body. When the branchesbreak, the trunk rots, or it bends over, this heavenlytree is reflecting the condition ofthe bodily so. During soundings, bomboeveal the condition of the so dungmand theyerect a sapling outside of the house, resuscitating weakened life-force.


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708 DAVID HOLMBERGJust as the retrievalof bla and the revival of so depend on unique powersof sight,likewise divination or general revelation depends on these powers. In the middle ofsoundings, bombo go into the divine"and make apparent the sources of distress. Onebombo escribed a journey as follows:

When youarrive o cure someone, t is like a chainthere,a placeof chains. As yougo, you must say,"Ohguardians!Lookbehindme, look in front of me, look fromyourheart-mind. havecometo this place.This person s afflicted n such-and-sucha way. You ask them to reveal hose places, to release hose iron chains.You say,"Let's o revealall those places."After falling into silence and with eyes closed, the bomboees dreamlike signs inbursting flashes against a dark void. Upon descending from the heavens, the bombointerprets these enigmatic signs for whomever has requested revelation. When bombo

tell their revelations, they rarely give specific reasonsfor the cause of distress; insteadthey list sets of possibilities. Bombohedge their revelatorybets and always remainambiguous about the validity of their visions. One bombo emarked, "Bombo an saynothing for sure. When they go into the divine [reveall, they do not know what hitsthem. They do not see with their own eyes. They only know by a sensation whichcomes around the heart."Significantly, the bombo everperformsspecific cures for theailments revealed; it is always the lambuor the lama who puts things in order bypropitiating neglected divinities, banishing evil agents, or binding divinities andharmfulagents to oaths. Soundings are suspensions in which enigmatic divinities andharmful agents erupt, temporarily unbound. Bombomediate by moving betweenearth and heavens, from human to divine vision, and by carryingdivinities and spiritson and in their bodies, thus deconstructing the fixed separation effected throughlamaic and sacrificial rituals.Soundings play out in counterpointto lamaicand sacrificialorder and determinacy.Bombo ound because they are possessed by lenTeupon whom previous death chantswere unsuccessfuland the exorcisms of lambuare ineffective. Through the memorialdeath feasts, in which bomboresubject to certainrestrictions, the complementarity oflamaic and shamanic ritual communications and a dynamic tension in the religiousfield becomes apparent.

Memorial Death FeastsIt is not surprising that the most important and only essential Buddhist ritesoccur at the time of death. Likeother Buddhists, Tamangelaboratesocial and cosmicordersin reference o death. " Tamangdeath is social creation. In fact, marriage rites,unlike Hindu practices, are unelaborate, and the ritual exchanges of marriage an-nounce death. When a woman marries, she receives from her natal kin a hoe and a

sickle, which will clear her cremation site, and a bronze bowl, which will hold thewaterwith which she will wash the faces of deadparentsand siblings. Memorialdeathfeasts declare clan relations actualized through marriages, and thus memorial deathfeasts are performedonly for adult men and women. 12 In fact, memorial death feasts

1 Death is an occurrence rife with reflectivepotential in Buddhist thought. One need onlymention the centrality of karma,merit/demerit,otherworld,and so forthto Hindu-Buddhist thought(O'Flaherty 1980; Keyesand Daniels 1983).12 Children who die unmarried (and therefore

without full social identity) are "thrown out" orburied. If an adult woman dies unmarried, someman must marryher so that the proper categoriesofkin may be defined before memorial death feasts canproceed. The essential categories of kin are presentin the case of the death of an unmarried man.


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 709are often the context in which couples elope, a favorite form of marriage. Thememorial death feasts are the most extensive social rites, and Tamang congregatemany times during the dry season to sever relations with the dead, pass the deadinto rebirth, and reaffirmsocial order among the living.Tamang social structure is formed through the relations of exogamous patriclans.On its highest orders,13 Tamang society is divided into two halves composed ofnumerouspatricians. Tamangpreferthat cross-cousins(mother's brother'schildren orfather'ssister's children) marry,and the Tamang marriagesystem is built on principlesof restricted exchange (Levi-Strauss 1969:29-229). After a marriage, patternedobligations devolve on members of opposed patriclans. Marriageforms a circle of kinthe extent and structure of which are announced through obligatory exchanges ofgoods and services in memorial death feasts, as is common elsewhere in death rites(Hertz 1960; Huntington and Metcalf 1979; Bloch and Parry 1982).Tamang cremate the bodies on the day of death. Major death rites, the memorialdeath feasts (gral), occur months later, usually in the dry season when field labor andother obligations are not pressing and stocks of grain for feasting are high. MostTamang households attend between ten and fifteen three-day memorial death feastseachyear.They go in a varietyof capacities, depending on their kin relationship to thedeceasedand to the sponsors(usually the sons of the deceased). If they go in the partyof the mha (literally, sister's husbands) or "wife receivers," they must labor for thesponsorsand treat them with deference. If they go in the partyof the ashyang-shyangpo(literally, mother's brothers-wife'sbrothers)or "wife givers," they give gifts of clothand food "to expel the grief" of mourners (sons, daughters, spouses, and parents ofthe deceased)who stand in the relation of sister's children or sister's husband to theashyang-shyangpo;hey also jointly contribute a special piece of cloth to adornthe altar.Sponsors must accord them special respect. If they go as busing or anoninchenclansisters), they offer cloth to adorn the altar and special food to the deceased, and theywail in grief. If they go simply as members of the extended circle of kin, they makecontributions of grain and money to help defray expenses for the feast.Although complex in detail, these exchanges of goods and services declare theorderof a local society.14 In any one feast, a specific set of relations between patriclanstakesform, and over a dry season and overseveralyearsin the calculus of thousands ofexchangesthe total order of a local society is expressedand reexpressed.1 The death of

13 This wasroughly a network of fifteen villagesfor the region where I worked.14 All affinal and consanguinial kin (that is,everyone who can trace a trail of relationship) giveset amounts of grain and money. Close patrilinealkin give more substantial contributions. There isno direct gain or loss, cost or benefit, in these"gifts." All the contributions (including the money,which is used to purchase meat) areconsumed at thefeast as food or alcohol. Moreover, contributors

receive precise equivalent contributions when theybecome the sponsors of memorial death feasts. Atthe time of cremation, real and classificatory mhaperform the polluting and menial tasks associatedwith death except washing the face of the corpse,which is done bydaughters or sistersof the deceased.Mha prepare the body for cremation, carry thecorpse to the cremation grounds, build the funeralpyre, purify the house of the deceased, and careforthe bereaved or several days after the death. Months

later, in memorial death feasts, mba again servetheirshyangpo:hey do the hard labor,carryan effigyof the deceased to the altar, cook and serve thefeasting foods, and a special "grasping"mba musttend to the effigy of the deceased until it iscremated. Depending on whether a man or womanhas died, come the ashyangand/or the shyangpo.Theashyang-shyangpo,as the Tamang refer to themcollectively, give a special piece of cloth for adorn-ing the altar and make special gifts of cloth andfoods to their sister's children and sister's spouse,respectively, to "expel"grief. Somegral may requireseveraldifferent sets of ashyang-shyangpo.

15 Although from the perspective of a maleindividual a tripartite order of clans is apparent-one's own, one's sister's husband's (mba), andone's wife's brother's (shyangpo)-in fact, this is adoubling of the relation mhalshyangpo.Women havemore ambiguous affiliations than men. They retainclose relations to members of their natal clan and


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710 DAVID HOLMBERGan adult who is linked into an extensive web of relations brings the very order ofsociety into question. These feasts redeclareorder in the breach of death, and they are"positive" rites in the Durkheimian sense (Durkheim 1965:337-428).

Death is not only about order among the living; it also concerns relationshipsbetween the living and the dead. Immediately afterdeath, lamas ritually combine thenine bla into a unitary bla and separateit from the body. After cremation rites, lamasand villagers turn their attention to the bla that does not fully separatefrom the livinguntil the conclusion of the memorial death feast. In the interim between cremationand the conclusion of the death feasts,the bla hovers in the vicinity of the village andits former home. It is disoriented, motherless, homeless, and hungry; it cravesassociation with kinsfolk. Although not a ghost (shyingo) n the strict sense, it isperilously close to being one. Indeed it acts like a ghost, and during the interimTamang must feed the bla whenever they feast lest the bla attack them.Although the main sequences of a memorial death feast occur at an altarconstructed in an empty dry field near the house of the deceased, lamas conductpreliminary rites in the homes of the deceased, where they call the bla and bind it toan effigy or mock body. Coresidents of the deceased then feed the bla a final meal.The following day, the effigy is removed to the areaof the brightly adornedaltar, thepalace of the Buddhas, which will become the new home of the bla, symbolicallyannouncing the movement of the bla from this to the other world. The guests gatherfor two large feasts, one focusing on the dead and the other on the living.Residents of the village, and usually a large number of people from as many asfifteen nearbyvillages, offerfood, liquor, and other gifts to the effigy. After a portion

of each offering is allotted to the deceased, the remainder is placed in large basketsand flasks and divided among everyoneexcept bombo.Things take on a festive air ashosts and guests await another feast. Led by song specialists, people sing and dancearound the altar to honor the Buddhas and to benefit the deceased. Into the nightyoung men and women engage in poetic song contests and courtship play. Mhadistribute large quantities of liquor, rice, and meat to the guests.An array of lamaic rites parallels these commensal occasions. Tamang call thesefeasts gral or "rescue,"for lamas are thought to save the deceased from a perpetualintermediacyand an unpleasant rebirth. Successdepends upon the invocation of oathsand texts. At the height of the feast, while guests are heaping their offerings to thebla, lamas "apply" the blessings of Chenreshih (Tibetan: spyan ras gzigs; Sanskrit:ava/okite&vara),he compassionateand mothering boddhisattva, as daughters and clansisters wail with untied hair. In response to each measured lamaic verse, the guestssing back in tearful chorus the pervasiveHimalayan mantra, Ongsongmanepemehunghri, juxtaposing dissonant grief and the continuity of Buddhist order. These chants"erase"the demerit accumulated by the bla in life, and they work to reassure afortunate rebirth.Lamasfinally sever the bla from its attachment to the living,and they turn it overto the Buddhas and the play of karmic law by displaying iconographic cards andchanting a text called nebar. 6 As one lama explained,

play an important role in their husband's clans.Tamang society in its formalexpression is patrifocal,andmen aremore fixed in their associations than arewomen. However, men retain complex relations,the most obvious of which is the relation to theirsister's children.16 Although this text is ritually homologous toTheTibetanBookof theDead (Evans-Wentz 974;

Rinpoche 1975), Tamanginsist that this book needonly be read when someone is having difficultydying. Tamang obviously ignore the "high" tradi-tion rule of rebirth aftera forty-nine-day intermedi-ate period. One knowledgeable lama, though, in-formed me that the reason for the high infantmortality rate among Tamang was that during thegral lamas called bla that had already been reborn.


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 711[Thecards]areinstructions orthe bla. They inform he blaof the different ives itcan take. They tell the bla which aregood lives to take and which arebad: "Youshould be like this."It is training afterdeath. Lamascannottake people to theheavens;heycanonly tell the way:"You reon yourown. Don't ingeron the way;don'tstophalfway.Don'tstaywith theghosts andharmful gents."Thebookwe readis the nebar.

The text, like the cards, describes the trail to the heavens of the Buddhas, who,lamas say, select a rebirth for the deceased. The bla "hears"and "understands" heletters and cards through the power of the Buddhas. Finally, lamas remove a wood-block print that has been attached to the head of the effigy and upon which is writtenthe name of the deceased. Lamasconscript the bla to this printed page and burn it,annihilating relations between the living and the dead. Mha remove the effigy to theedge of the village and cremate it.Final rites of the gral occur the following morning, when the ashyang-shyangpoexpel the grief of the mourners-spouse, children, siblings, and parents of thedeceased. This is accomplished by gifts of new cloth and offerings of food that havebeen denied the mourners since the time of death. In conclusion, lamas call downblessings on the houses of the sponsors.The social and religious registers of the death feasts simultaneously reimposesocial and cosmic order on the disruptions of death. Behind the regenerationof idealorder and continuity, though, hoversan opposed world of malevolency, and the ordersimposed by death feasts are tenuous. On the borders of this lamaic domain exists itslogical opposite, a world of awful ghosts, evil spirits, and alien divinities.

CounterordersTamang usually explain morbidity, malaise, degeneracy, and hardships of allsorts as the effects of activity by harmful agents. These agents-whether stinginglocal ghosts, villainous regional spirits, rarified cosmic evils, or temperamentaldivinities-violate in image the order of things theoretically established in lamaic orsacrificial ritual. In fact, ghosts (shyingo),as well as many other evil spirits, are thedead for whom the chants of lamas and the exchanges of the memorial death feastswere unsuccessful; they have not passed into rebirth.Forthe most part, ghosts are those who died an unusual or anomolous death and,like other harmful agents, they reside in a permanent intermediacy, homologous tothat of the bla between the moment of death and the conclusion of the memorialdeath feast. They are craving, homeless, kinless, wandering, and desirous, and theyhavebeenwrenchedfrom life by accident, murder, suicide, sorcery,difficult childbirth,or when wandering alone. Those who were avaricious or jealous in life are likely tobecome ghosts, wrenched as they were from worldly wealth. Bla also become ghostswhen lamas do not follow procedurescorrectly in the performanceof death rites.Unlike humans, ghosts and harmful agents are unwanted guests; they offendagainst the principles of commensal reciprocity that are stressed in Tamang social

and ritual life. Famished and in isolation, they grasp and feast on human flesh; lamasand lambuprovide substitute offerings to satisfy and to expel them. For these efforts,however, humans get nothing in return but hardship. During memorial deathfeasting, lamas attempt to keep the bla from joining this society of fiends bysupervising a moral feast. The effort often fails; humans are only temporarily pro-tected from asocial feasting at the margins of death rites. This potential asocial feast,suppressed by lamas, becomes the center of soundings, an opposition made clear inthe ways bombond lamas call b/a.


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712 DAVID HOLMBERGAt regularintervalsduring memorial death feasts, lamas must call the bla. It has atendency to stray and is perpetually in danger of becoming part of the world of

harmful agents. Unlike bombo, amas call the bla "by the book," as one lama put it.They close their eyes, chant special mantras, place their hands in particular bindinggestures, and call the bla, which comes as pure emanation, "white like milk, clearlikewater," in contrast to ghosts who come with wild hair, bloody faces, and fierceexpressions.When queried about lamaic techniques of bla calling, one lama answeredthat the power lies with the letter. He drew the first letter of the Tibetan syllabaryinthe dust of the earth and added a hook to the top:

The lama explained that letters of their books and words of their chants hook the bla,bringing them under the sway of Buddhist law and the power of the Buddhas:on theone hand, the letter separates the bla from teeming malevolency; on the other, theletter consigns it to the measured and determinate order of the Buddhas. Bombo,rather than hooking the bla out of the intermediate world, delve into "heavens" f thehomeless, confusion, distress, gossip, cannibal fiends, licentious sex, closed mouths,and other harmful agents and enigmatic divinities. They do not displace and separatehumans from malevolent spirits and an alien divine; they suspend these beings inreflectiverelief. Bombo re inspired to sound by lenTe,who, like ghosts, are beyond thesway of lamaic authority; they result from inherent lamaic failure and reside inthe intermediate spaces of secret heavens (beyhul) n the high Himalayas.

Severalpractices mark the opposition between lamas and bombo.Bombowill notdirectly receive the blessings of lamas; bomboake the blessings on the thumb andthemselves apply them to the forehead. More importantly, bombocannot touchcorpses, enter the houses of those recently deceased, or consume food communallyofferedto the bla-a requirement of all other villagers. Contact with death wouldsully the life-reviving bombo, he exposer of a terrific malevolence and an enigmaticdivine, and submission to lamaic authority would make it impossible for bombo opractice.Rational Irresolution of a Ritual Field

In an overviewof the rituals of lama and bombo, ontraryreconstructionsappear.Each alone is merely a partial expression of the field. This complementarity is thesubject of a myth through which Tamangmake apparentan irresolvablecontradictionand a logic in their ritual system. Myth can be helpful in the analysis of ritual:Mythandritualdo notalways orrespondo eachother.Nevertheless, heycompleteeachotherin domainsalreadypresentinga complementaryharacter.The value ofthe ritualas meaningresides n instruments ndgestures; t is apara-language.hemyth, on the other hand, manifests tself as a meta-language;t makesfull useof discoursebut does so by situating its own significantoppositionsat a higherlevel of complexity than that requiredby language operatingfor profaneends(Levi-Strauss976:66).

By operating on a more encompassing level than ritual, the myth recounted belowallows a fleeting glance at the system of differences that form the total field, a fieldwhich from the vantage of each ritual component appearsirrevocably fragmented.The myth is widely known in Nepal and Tibet, and versions of it have beenrecorded among Sherpa (Ortner 1978b), Gurung (Pignede 1966:387-88), and in


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 7 13Tibetan literature (Das 1881; Milarepa 1970). It has been noted among Tamang fromseveral areasof Nepal (Hofer 1975; Peters 1981); western Tamang regularly recite itwhen askedthe differencebetween specialists; and bomboormally recite it (or, at least,cryptically refer to it) at the time of the erection of the sodungma.The main charactersin the myth are primordial brothers-Kalten Sangkye, a lama, and Dungsro Bon, abombo.A lama recounted this version of the myth:

In a time of only earthandstones, there were two brothers.The older brotherwasa lama, KaltenSangkye,and theyoungerbrotherwasa bombo, ungsroBon. Atthat time, DungsroBon did all things. He curedpeople;he expelledthe dead;andhe performed he gral [rescue].The lama did nothing.One day,the lama'swife chided her husband,asking him what good he was,why he did nothing, and why he had nothing. She told him that Dungsro Bon,the bombo, alled the dead, that the dead appeared o the community, and atetheir food offerings.Kalten Sangkye old his wife that it was all a trick and thatthose who actuallycome to eat the offeringswereevil spirits andghosts.He told his wife to take his dorjesymbolof truth andpower],and to display twhenDungsroBoncalledthe bla of thedeceased. f it was an evilspiritthatcame,itwould be destroyed,andif it was the bla, it would come under he careandprotec-tion of the Buddhas.The wife went, and at the appropriateime she displayedthe dorje.It wasrevealed o be evil spiritsthat came to eat the offeringsof food. DungsroBon washumiliated. He was madespeechless.Thebomboaid to his brother,"You avemademe out to be a senseless,drunkenfool. Youhavemademe yourrivalandnowwemust haveacompetition.Let'sgo on apilgrimage o TshomhamhoNgyingtso[a high mountain ake].Youhaveneverbeenon pilgrimagebefore."The bomboet off on the three-day rail to the high mountain ake. His peoplewent with him, carryinghis drum, his altar,and- omesnacks orthe way.Thelamasat at home alone.His daughterbecameworried ndsaid, "Father,heotherhas left on the competition.Why areyou stayinghere?Theyleft threedaysago, and they haveprobablyalreadyarrived." he lama askedhis daughter o cookhim some soup. Then he transformed imselfinto a bird and flew up to Tshom-hamhoNgyingtso. There he plantedhis staff.Thelamaperchedn thecenterof the lake. Thebomborrived ndlooked nto thelake.He sawnothingtherebut a vulture. Then,wonderingwhat thevulturewoulddo, he threw hingsat it, tryingto drive t away.Thelama houghtto himself, 'Aha,he would do a thing like that to me. He must not recognizeme." The bombo asthinkingto himself,"Myolderbrother s belowand has not yet arrived." hebombothrewmorethings at the vulture.This time Kalten Sangkyebecameangryat his youngerbrother.He took hisspoon, dippedit in the water,andflipped he lakeover,drivingDungsroBon downinto the midst of the lake. The lamathoughthe had finishedoffDungsroBon andreturned o his home.KaltenSangkye's aughter,out of affection or herfather,hadgone to the lake,but whenshearrived,he hadleft, descendingby a different railfromhers.All sheheardwas the soundof a drumbeating.She lookedoverand down into the lakeandsawDungsroBondancingandbeatinghis drum.Shewonderedwhat hadhappened.Threedayswent by while she looked.Up from the midst of the lake,DungsroBonsent the curse of the porcupine quill and ruined the eyes of Kalten Sangkye'sdaughter.Kalten Sangkye came and tried to cure his daughter. He consulted his books andblew his mantras onto her, but could not find the cure. Finally, he called out to his


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714 DAVID HOLMBERGbrotherwhowasstill dancingandbeatinghis drumwhile lodged n themidst of theearth. The lama said, "Lookhere, big man. Don't call yourselfDungsro Bonanymore.Call yourselfNharu Bon. Chantonly for the living. I will give you fiverupeesand nine level measuresof grain if you curemy daughter's yes."He thenextracted he bomboromthe midst of the lake.The lamathenboundthe followingoath:"Look, will takecareof the deadandyou will takecareof the living."Bombo ow go crazy f they eat the food of thecommunal eastat a gral.Thebomboannot ouch thedeadeither.Theportionsweredivided between ama andbombo.

On one level, the myth clearly confirmsritual reality. In fact, lamas recount it tolegitimate their authority overdeath rites and their superiority overbombo.ational-ized Tibetan variantsexclusively declare this ascendencyof Buddhism: "When Naro-Bon-chhun was attempting to rise abovethe neck of Tesi[the mountain}, he fell downand his tambourine rolled down towardsthe southern valley of Tesi"(Das 1881:210).Yet, even the lama's version recounted above leaves a place for the bombo, placeembellished in other Tamang versions.For instance, one respected bombopened the myth with an inversion of therelation of the brothers:

In ancienttimes, DungsroBon and Kalten Sangkyedid battleforthreeyears.Thelamasaid to his brother,"Youwill takecareof the living, andI will takecareof thedead."Thebomboesponded,"I will not stayundermy youngerbrother's rder." hebomboid not obeythe lama,so the lamasaid, "We wo mustgo to Palkutang.Wewill meet there."The bombo ent ahead.Along the wayhe expelledthe dead, hecalledthe bla, and he performedhegral.Bombo lso add greater detail to the events surrounding the bombo'smergencefrom the lake:Troubleand confusionovercameKalten Sangkye.He sat with his eyesclosedandmeditated o reveal he causeof his daughter's ffliction.He knew that if DungsroBon did not emergehis daughter's yeswould crackand break.So KaltenSangkyeplaceda tallpalmtreeanda cedar reeas sodungma.He [erected hewrongspeciesoftree]asa jokeand to trickDungsroBon. Thenhe placed hesaplingof the chestnuttree, andDungsroBon emerged romthe centerof the earthbeatinghis drum.

Other variants even find a place for the lambu:One lambuecounted the followingadditional events: "[After the bombomerged from the water}, they argued again.Kalten Sangkye put Dungsro Bon back into the earth. Travelingwithin the earth,Dungsro Bon went to Gang GangDe [a placel and came out again. With his dorje,Kalten Sangkye made him dissolve into the earth again. Then Dungsro Bon went toParping Godavari [a placel and stayed there, becoming the [evil spiriti AktungMhang."7 Lambu,oining forces with lamas, ritually expel this evil spirit when itattacks humans. The association of the functions of lama and lambun this variantpoint to a commonality between lambu nd lamas as opposed to the bombo.The Tamang versions, in contrast to rationalized Buddhist versions (which theTamangknow), do not charter one practiceabsolutely overanother,and a problematicpicture of the religious system emerges. The bombos not defeated and continues todrum and dance incessantly in the middle of the earth. The question of who is thedeceiver and who is the fool is never resolved. It is the bombowhen he performsthe

17 This is just one version of the origin ofAktung Mhang.


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 7 15

Bombo n pilgrimage

memorial death feast, and then it is the lama when he tries to deceive the bombowithimproper life-force trees. After defeating the bombo, he lama must submit to hisdemands. These versions, whether taken singly or in combination, are not only acomplex confirmation of ritual reality but expressions that reveal the dynamics ofTamang religion.Examination reveals that events in the myth, in fact, do not conform to the actualdivision of labor between lama and bombo.Like many myths (Levi-Strauss1967), thisone poses direct contradictions and inversions of ritual conventions. Its power forTamang derives from presenting impossibilities: the bombo ecomes a lama and thelama becomes a bombo. n all Tamang versions, the bombo erforms death rites; heexpels the dead and feeds the dead. Likewise, the bombo's ame is Dungsro Bon, who,Tamang say, sounded in the daylight like a lama, in contrast to present-day bombowho, except during pilgrimages, only sound at night. On the other hand, KaltenSangkyebecomes a bombowhen he transformshimself into a bird and flies to the highmountain lake; it is bombo,not lamas, who wearthe feathersof the impeyan pheasantor peacock when on pilgrimage and who adorn their altars with images of flight.Moreover,the lama, again like a bombo,ries to cure his daughter, and he plants thelife-force tree to remove his brother from the earth and lake.

These conflicting messages direct us to consider the myth as more than amechanism for rephrasing a prior ritual necessity. The mythic disruption of ritualreality plays on, but does not resolve the opposition between lama and bombo. Thevariants of this myth "speculate on insurmountable contradiction" (Levi-Strauss1968:30; see also 1967:229-30; 1976:65-67) just as the variants of Shiva mythsexpose an essential paradox in Hindu worldview (O'Flaherty 1973). The Tamangmyth counterpoisesa death-oriented lama to a life-reviving bombo, binder of oaths toan irrepressible drum beater, sociality to asociality, the power of Buddhist moraldominion to the possibility of amoral evil, order to counterorder, determinacy to


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716 DAVID HOLMBERGindeterminacy. The myth rescues the bombo, mediator, at the same moment that itasserts oathbound lamaic order and the exorcistic powers of lambu.Paradoxically, hemyth concludes with the irrepressiblebombo athbound to be in practice unbound.

These observationssuggest the following propositions, which would reorient ourview of the Himalayan interface of Hindu/Buddhist/indigenous and alter our percep-tion of function and historical events. At the same time that rituals of the word (orsacrifice)declare determinate ordersin the cosmos, displacing the forces of indetermi-nacy and the counterworld of "shamanic"rituals, they implicitly announce theirreality. Rather than being irrational, then, ritual complexity and contradiction are asmuch the functions of logical tensions as they areof historical evolvements. The mythis not just the expression of a real conlict between bomboand lamas over ritualdominion. Rather, it acknowledges that they go hand in hand and that ritualcontradictions, like orthodoxies and heterodoxies historically, may be a function ofreligious cultures in general.

Comparative PossibilitiesThis tension is not unique to the Tamang. Throughout South and Southeast Asiathe religious situation reveals similar patterns. Accounts of Indian religions stress thesimultaneous practice of multiple specialists (Dumont and Pocock 1959b; Rahmann

1959; Dumont 1970b; Wadley 1976; Babb 1975). In the Hindu Himalayas,brahmanicalpriests are opposed to shamans (Berreman 1964). The interpretation ofmultifaceted ritual systems has been focal in discourse on the TheravadaBuddhistsocieties of Southeast Asia (Spiro 1967; Tambiah 1970; Kirsch 1977) and Sri Lanka(Ames 1964; Gombrich 1971; Obeyesekere 1966, 1969).Similar examples abound in the ethnography of Nepal (see Bista 1972). Stone(1976) and Winkler (1976) have noted the activity of ritual specialists in possessionalong with brahmans among Hindu populations in central and western Nepalrespectively (see also Hofer 1973). Magar religion includes at least shamans, puj&ri,and brahmans, the latter indispensable in rites of death (Hitchcock 1966; Watters1975; Jest 1976). The Chantel employ both brahmansand shamans (Michl 1976).Thakali religion involves not only lamas and brahmans but dromor shamans (Jest1976; Greve 1981-1982) and jhakhri (Greve 1981-1982). Any attempt to come toterms with Gurung religion requires attention to the interrelations of lamas,brahmans, pucu, khlibri, dhame,jhAkhri, and pujari (Pignede 1966; Messerschmidt1976a, 1976b). Sunuwar society includes naso(priests) and puimboand ngiami (maleand female shamans) (Fournier 1976, 1978). Sherpa-Tamangof Helambu and Tamangof Langtang (Hall 1978), like their neighbors, the western Tamang, recognize at leastlamas and bombo.EasternTamang engage lamas, bombo, nd dhami(Fiirer-Haimendorf1956; Lama 1959; Miller 1979; Peters 1981) and brahmans (Mazudon 1973). Sherpasociety of Solu-Khumbu includes male and female monastics, village lamas, and maleand female shamans(Furer-Haimendorf1955, 1972; Ortner 1978a; Paul 1976, 1982;March 1979); Sherpa society increasingly engages Tamang and Kami shamans forcurativeservice as its Buddhism rationalizes(Paul 1976). Thulung Rai employ tribalpriests and jhakhri (Allen 1976). Limbu recognize yebalyema(male and femaleshamans),samba specialists in oral tradition), and mangbawho deal with the spirits ofthose who have died violent deaths (R. L. Jones 1976b); Sagant (1973) analyzes therelations of two Limbu priests. These patterns are not confined to the hill populationsof Nepal. Newari and other urban groups consult not only Hindu and Buddhistfunctionaries and renouncers but an arrayof shamanic healers (Okada 1976); Slusser(1982) has demonstrated the plural components of Newari religious cosmology. As


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RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 717one moves eastward out of Nepal, complexity continues to be the important ethno-graphic observation. Religious systems in Darjeeling and Kalimpong are marked bymultiple practitioners and ritual domains (MacDonald 1975). The religious system ofthe Lepcha includes several specialists (Gorer 1938). Greater Tibetan religion main-tains shamanic practitioners in conjunction with monastic renouncers and villagelamas (Stein 1972; Berglie 1976; Samuel 1978a, 1978b; Paul 1982).This review does not do justice to the ethnographic richness of all of theseexpressions. Nevertheless, an inescapable pattern of multifaceted religious systemshas emerged. The configurations must be valued as an important observation on thereligious situation in Nepal, which directs us to reframe the image of Nepal as thesimple agglomeration of disparate groups. As Dumont has remarkedin referencetothe apparent diversity of India: "The moment we get from haphazard notes toexhaustive, intensive study, and from isolated features to sets of relations betweenfeatures, the empirical diversity recedes"(Dumont 1970a:5). One might tentativelyconclude that most religious systems of Nepal combine and recombine rituals of theword (whether Buddhist or Hindu), rituals of the sacrificial act, and rituals ofspecialists such as the bombo.To these three must be added a fourth, the renunciatory,which is only minimally developed in Tamang religion but is elaborated in otherHindu and Buddhist communities of greater Nepal. The relationship between thesecomponents-whether or not they all find expression in particular religious systems-should be the emphasis of comparative research. From that perspective, thereligious systems of Nepal emerge as combinations and permutations of a moreencompassing field.

Finally, although it may appear that the Tamang have only a degraded form ofBuddhism, a simple stratum superimposedon folk bedrock, Tamang religion, in fact,holds much in common with its more "prestigious" counterparts (Dumont andPocock 1959a:44-45; cf. Obeyesekere 1963; Kirsch 1972). As the symbology of thememorial death feastsdemonstrates, Tamanghold views commensurate with rational-ized renditions of merit/demerit, karma, suffering, and thisworld/otherworld.Despitetheir distinctively traditionalizing or mythologizing idiom (Weber 1969), the Tamangvalue words and texts in a fashion similar to "high" styles. The usual tendency is toview a religious system such as that of the Tamangfrom the perspectiveof philosophi-cally oriented Mahayana/Vajrayana uddhisms of Tibet or TheravadaBuddhisms ofSoutheast Asia and Sri Lanka. I would suggest that the converse perspective lendsitself to comparative reflection. In their version of the myth about a lama and a bombo,the Tamang bring a full field into relief and can comment on more rationalizedelaborations. Just as the Tamang retain elements of rationalized Buddhisms in theirreligious system, rationalized systems retain something of the mythological ortraditional. All this points to a more extensive comparative endeavor, such as thatsuggested by Ortner when she alludes to the possibility that SherpaBuddhism may bemore orthodox than Thai Buddhism (Ortner 1978a: 157-59), and that suggested byTambiahwhen he invokes The TibetanBookofthe Dead in the conclusion to his study ofThai religion (Tambiah 1970:377).

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Nepal - Comparative Perspectives on Tamang Religion