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
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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).
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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
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328 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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.
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 329
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
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330 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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
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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.
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332 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 333
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
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334 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 335
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.
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336 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 337
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
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338 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 339
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
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340 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
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.
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 341
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
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342 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
a geographically dispersed Manangi community connected and competitive through out their trading history.
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 343
Figure 1: North-South river valleys in Nepal: natural trade routes between Tibet and India. (Furer-Haimendorf 1975: ix)
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PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
life'"
Figure 2: Shared selling space in Kuala Lumpur
rV
Figure 3: Rooming house in Kuala Lumpur
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MANANGI TRADE COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 345
Figure 4: Religious ceremony at home in Kathmandu
Figure 5: Chanting and fasting ritual at a monastery in Kathmandu
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346 PRISTA RATANAPRUCK
Figure 6: Gambling festival in Kathmandu
Figure 7: Social gathering at a religious ceremony in Kathmandu
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