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Buddhist Traditions Among Tibeto-Burman Peoples
Organizer & Chair: Todd T. Lewis, College of the Holy Cross
Discussant: Charles Ramble, Oxford University
Ethnic groups speaking Tibeto-Burman languages have for centuries lived in the mid-montane zone of the central Himalayan region. This dual-frontier zone that reaches across the state of Nepal is one where peoples have relied on mixed agriculture, herding, and trade to subsist in small population settlements. The cultural traditions the peoples in this Indo-Tibetan culture region have been shaped by indigenous shamanism, state Hinduism (since 1769), and long-standing contacts with centers of Buddhism. This panel will explore the various ethnic groups and settings where Buddhist traditions have achieved prominence, where local religious elites have been influenced by and connected to distant centers of Tibetan, Newar, or (most recently) Burmese Buddhism. Each paper will locate a different Tibeto-Burman group within this regional religio-cultural grid; each will explore how different local traditions have been shaped by specific historical contacts, and how groups have negotiated their own unique cultural contingencies to form distinctive Buddhist communities. The panel of scholars will also describe and analyze the powerful impact of recent changes: the 20th Century loss of independent monastic networks centered on the Tibetan plateau and the more recent shifts in the nature of Nepalese rule, as Hindu kingship has confronted calls for secular democracy, expanded rights for “indigenous peoples” (janajati), and Maoist insurgency.
Nature, Buddhism, and Society in Tamang Creation
David Holmberg, Cornell University
This paper examines creation myths of the western Tamang of highland Nepal with particular attention to the place of Buddhism in these myths and their relation to high traditions of Buddhism found in Tibet and elsewhere in Asia. Tamang specialists must recite myths of creation on at least two separate occasions. These recitations are themselves viewed as productive acts setting the stage for a prosperous and orderly world. One recitation occurs preceding the performances of the socially extensive dance dramas known as chhe-chu or mhane shyapa and the other recitation occurs biannually in all Tamang houses on the occasion of the expulsion of the “winnowing-basket-evil” as well as in other communal ritual contexts. At an analytical level, the paper explores theories of myth and the problem of “naturalization” of social order in anthropological theory and the place of Buddhist authority in village life particularly as it relates to the relation between headmen and Buddhist lamas. Thus, through myth, the paper explores the socio-political correlates of Buddhism in a clan based society in village Nepal.
The local and the global in religious texts: Contact, Isolation and Change in the Himalayan Periphery of Tibetan Buddhism
Nicolas Sihlé, University of Virginia
The myth of the absolute remoteness and isolation of the high Himalayan valleys has already been convincingly deconstructed. We still need however to come to terms, theoretically and methodologically, with phenomena of contact, isolation and change in such contexts. As a contribution to this endeavor, I propose in this paper to look at aspects of Tibetan Buddhism on the southwestern rim of the Tibetan cultural area, in Baragaon, a.k.a. Lower Mustang (northern Nepal), where a southwestern Tibetan dialect is spoken. Focusing on a small village-and-temple community of moderately literate tantric priests, this paper will raise the question: How can we approach the articulation between a local socio-cultural universe and the larger world of Tibetan Buddhism (among other larger contexts, such as the Nepalese state for instance)? I will examine in particular a key element situated at this point of articulation: the local corpus of religious (written) texts, and notably tantric ritual manuals with their local appendices, annotations, transformations, and their specific social economy.
”The Right Dharma for Today”: Newar Buddhism, Globalization, and the Theravada Turn
Lauren Leve, University of North Caroline, Chapel Hill
How is Newar Buddhism changing today? And what are the forces behind these transformations? Buddhist practice in Nepal has always taken place in a dynamic social and historical field that has been shaped by regional trends and events. Theravada Buddhism was reintroduced into the Kathmandu Valley in the first half of the twentieth century in part as a result of earlier transformations in Sri Lanka and India. Over the past sixty-some years it has played a key role in modernizing Buddhist practices and sensibilities within the Newar religious and cultural community. More recently, however, neo-liberal political and economic restructuring and associated social changes have begun to impact the ways that Theravada Buddhism is taught, practiced and understood. This paper explores the way that globalization is affecting Nepali Buddhists, Theravada Buddhism there and, by extension, the broader Newar socio-religious field within which it operates. Offering a comprehensive perspective on the changing world and a set of ethical prescriptions for self-formation and the everyday “art of living” within it, Theravada Buddhism makes unique sense to practitioners struggling to operate within the social, political and economic dislocations brought about by globalization in Kathmandu. For devotees, this means that it is “the right dharma for today.”
Daughters Empowered? Competing and Connecting Buddhist Ritual Traditions between Burma and Nepal
Christoph Emmrich, University of Toronto at Mississauga
Buddhist Newar parents have the option of having their pre- and adolescent daughters join either in a series of ritual events called "placing the bar" (barha tayegu) or in a religious practice, generally known as "the female seer" (rishini). The first seems to have been part of Newar ritual life for centuries, is mediated by the senior-most woman of the family and is connected to various religiously marked practices of gendering such as menstruation, marriage and familial seniority. The second was imported to Nepal by the reform-oriented nun Dhammavati from Burma where it represents the female pendant to temporary ordination for boys and is now being practiced in Theravada monasteries around the Kathmandu Valley, involving monastic routine, nun-laypeople interaction and a strong educational ethic. Nowadays, families tend to decide for this second option. This paper tries to compare two very different rituals, connected historically, structurally and ideologically, by looking at the practices of their import, the strategies of their institutionalization and the way the agents involved, - pertaining societies sharing Buddhist traditions, Indo-Aryan scriptural languages and Tibeto-Burman vernaculars, - make sense of them. What makes this development crucial is that we have a case of both borrowing and competition within and across Tibeto-Burman Buddhist traditions. This may help articulate new rifts within regional Buddhist traditions, with rishini being part of an emancipatory agenda of Newar Buddhist women, while at the same time, with Theravada trying to establish itself among other Tibeto-Burman speaking groups in Nepal, setting up alternative networks.