a nepalese shamanism and the classic inner asian tradition

8/9/2019 A Nepalese Shamanism and the Classic Inner Asian Tradition

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A Nepalese Shamanism and the Classic Inner Asian TraditionAuthor(s): John T. HitchcockSource: History of Religions, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Nov., 1967), pp. 149-158Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1061768

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John T. Hitchcock A NEPALESESHAMANISM AND THECLASSIC INNERASIAN TRADITION

Although shamanism is a widespread phenomenon, the locusclassicus is Central and North Asia, a result both of its dramaticnature, reported in detail by Russian ethnographers, and of itsreligious centrality in such an immense area.1 For non-Russianscholars, the opportunity to study the shamanism of Central andNorth Asia disappeared, or was severely curtailed, following WorldWar I and, in subsequent years, the religion has been much affectedby policies of the Soviet state.2 In Tibet, there have been no studiesof shamanism comparable to those made further to the north and,even if Tibet soon were to be opened to international scholarly re-search, it is doubtful that shamanism would be found to havesurvived there in its earlier form. The result of contemporarypolitical developments, in sum, has been to remove Inner Asianshamanism as a subject for field investigation, except for a fewscholars with proper national credentials, and to change it mar-kedly or in some places perhaps even to eliminate it. If a version ofthis religion were viable and socially important today in a regionThis paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Nepal in 1960-62 and supportedby the National Science Foundation. I am grateful to the Wenner-Gren Founda-tion for Anthropological Research, Inc., for providing support during the timethe paper was written.1 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York:Bollingen Foundation, 1963), p. 4.2 Henry N. Michael (ed.), Studies in Siberian Shamanism (Toronto: Universityof Toronto Press).

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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Traditionaccessible to international scholarship, it would be a fact of signi-ficance. With this possibility in mind, it is worth raising the ques-tion of whether or not a type of shamanism found in Nepalresembles the type that existed during the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries in Central and North Asia.Inner Asian shamanism is a complex religious phenomenon, andduring the long course of its history it has picked up many ele-ments and dropped others. In his analysis of the religion, Eliadedescribes various patterns he refers to as "classic shamanism,"3with "great shamans"4 or "masters"5 as its practitioners. Thevarious local manifestations of Inner Asian shamanism, those thatappear in the ethnographic descriptions, always were to somedegree decadent either in the sense that various elements of theclassic pattern were absent or in the sense that extraneous elementswere present. Classic shamanism thus is a construct, though onealso held by various Inner Asian peoples who believed it existedin the past and was exemplified by practitioners they sometimesreferred to as "old shamans."6 Whether the religion in this pureform actually ever was realized is a question that need not concernus. Its utility as an analytical tool remains unaffected.The classic practitioner performed within a tradition of belief inthe migratory soul and, having induced a trance by means ofmagico-religious music, he released his soul to journey up to thesky or down to the underworld. While his soul traveled in theother world, he would enact its adventures, miming dramaticallyits encounters with good and evil spirits. Such flights enabled himto divine the future, either because he traveled in a world wherethe future was open to his soul's eye or because the soul could useclairvoyant spirits as informants. In his trance, he also conductedsouls of the dead to the afterworld or souls of sacrificed animals tothe spirit for whom they were intended. It was his technique ofmagic flight, moreover, that enabled the old shaman to performone of his primary functions, that of healing. Since some illnesseswere a result of the soul's straying away from the body or beingstolen, it was the shaman who could effect a cure; for once havingascertained the whereabouts of the lost soul during his seance, hecould brave the perils of the other world to bring it back. Psycho-pompism of this kind and soul journeys to the heavens and theunderworld are amply documented throughout Inner Asia.7

3 Eliade, op. cit., p. 256. 4 Ibid., p. 227.5 Ibid., p. 228. 6 Ibid., pp. 219, 237, 257.7 Ibid., pp. 38, 76, 190-214, 220, 225, 232-33, 237, 247, 254. 150


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Most shamans of Inner Asia called helper spirits to aid them inotherworldly journeys or to give information. But it was charac-teristic of the classic practitioner that he could "communicatewith the dead, 'demons,' and 'nature spirits' without thereby be-coming their instrument."8 Though he might actually embody aspirit so that it could speak through his mouth, he did not lose hisown identity and selfawareness.Belief in the shaman's otherworldly journey explains manyritual elements of the Inner Asian tradition. Symbols of magicalflight were common throughout the area. Among the Altaians ofthe south as well as among the Samoyed of the north, the shamans'caps were decorated with feathers, and even among the Manchus,who had been strongly influenced by Sino-Buddhist culture, theheadgear was made of feathers and imitated a bird. Some peoples,including the Altaians, tried to make the costume as a whole re-semble a bird: The costume of the Soyot might even be con-sidered "a perfect ornithophany."9 Iron disks representing thesun and moon were sewn to the shamans' caftans, and these ob-jects were painted on shamans' storage chests and drums.10 Be-cause of its swiftness, the reindeer provided a characteristic meansof making the shamanic journey, and the hide was used for makingcaftans and drumheads. The horse was similarly used and, amongthe Buryat, the shaman in his trance mounted a hobby horsedecorated with numerous bells.11 When the Yenisei Ostyakshaman leapt during his dance, it was taken as a sign of hisspecial powers: His soul had left the world and was ascending theheavens or going down into the underworld as seer or psycho-pomp.12

Some ascensional elements apparently had been borrowed fromother cultures and religions. A model of a ladder appears fre-quently as a ritual motif, and the suggestion has been made thatit came from the Mithraic mysteries which made use of a ladderhaving seven rungs.13 The number "seven" in this context standsfor the seven celestial regions, a conception deriving ultimatelyfrom Mesopotamia.14 Ladders with nine rungs also appear, and inthe ascensional context the number "nine" also refers to theheavenly spheres, a conception, whatever its ultimate origin, that8 Ibid., p. 6.9 Ibid., pp. 155-57.10Ibid., pp. 149, 151, 172.11 Ibid., pp. 147, 149-50, 156, 171.12Ibid., p. 223.13Ibid., p. 121.14Ibid., p. 15.

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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Traditionis part of classical Indian astronomy.15 In Tibet, both ladders andropes are common ascensional elements.16 In shamanic initiations,the neophyte climbs to the top of a tree under the guidance of analready initiated and proficient shaman.17 Among the Buryat,neophyte shamans make clairvoyant pronouncements from thetops of nine trees, climbing each in turn and making nine notchesat their summits, each symbolizing one of the nine heavens.8l Inthe Altaic tradition, the magic flight-indicated ritually by theshaman's climbing a tree or post notched with seven or nine steps-is conceived of as a journey during which the shaman over-comes seven or nine obstacles, encountering one at each thresholdof the seven or nine heavens he must enter.19With this very condensed conception of classic Inner Asianshamanism in mind, a conception whose core is the soul's magicflight, let us turn to a Nepalese shamanism and see that similaritiesand differences appear. The Nepalese complex is found in theBhuji (birch tree) river valley. Located in west central Nepalsouth of the Dhaulagiri massif, the Bhuji river, plus the adjacentNishi river, form the major northwestern tributaries of the Bari,itself a tributary of the Kali Gandaki. The valley is about a week'strek due west of the bazaar town of Pokhara, which can bereached from Kathmandu by air. Via the trading center of Butwal,it is about a week's trek from the Indian border and about thesame distance from Tibet via the Kali Gandaki and Mustang. TheBhuji valley is settled mostly by members of the Magar andMetalworker castes, each accounting for about a third of the totalnumber of households (740). The basis for subsistence is mixedagriculture, and people living in the upper portion of the valleymigrate some distance during the summer so that they can grazetheir livestock and grow potatoes in alpine pastures and fields.Shamans (jhdkri) are the most important local religious experts;in the valley as a whole, there are twenty of them, fourteen ofwhom are Metalworkers. Four belong to the Magar caste, and theremaining two belong, respectively, to the castes of Newar andMatwala Chetri.I attended seances of both Magar and Metalworker shamans andrecorded portions of a number of the seances on tape as well as on

15A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India (London: Sidgwick & Jackson,1954), p. 491.16Eliade, op. cit., p. 410.17Ibid., pp. 111-15.18 Ibid., pp. 119-20.19 Ibid., pp. 200, 275. 152


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motion-picture film. The recently deceased father of the Magarfamily with whom I was living had been a shaman, and a boy fromhis lineage who lived nearby had inherited his gift and was learningthe technique. This boy and the members of the deceased shaman'sfamily gave me much information, and, although shamanism wasnot a focus of the research, I was able to interview at some lengthtwo Metalworker shamans who were neighbors. On the basis ofdata from these two castes, it is clear that their shamans workwithin the same tradition.Many features of the Bhuji shaman's costume parallel thosefound in Inner Asia. Using the costume of a Metalworker shamanas an example, there was an impressive headdress made of Monalpheasant tail feathers, and fastened to the back of the jacket werewhole skins of both Monal and Kaleej pheasants-both of whichare birds of the high Himalaya. Another obvious ascensionalsymbol on the back of the jacket was two flying squirrels' pelts.Though not made of reindeer hide, the jacket was fashioned fromthe skin of an equally swift animal, the Himalayan mountain goat(ghoral). Two horns of this animal hung from the back of thejacket, and the circular drumhead as well as the thongs securing it

also were made of mountain goat hide. These thongs were lacedusing a horn of the goat as a punch, and the pattern the lacingsformed was said to represent both the horn itself and the feet of abird. Forming a fringe around the bottom of the jacket werecircular and lenticular iron plates, representing the sun and moon.Although the horse did not figure in this shamanic tradition, theanimal seems to have been suggested, for bells were an importantpart of the costume, being interspersed among the iron plates aswell as sewn around the jacket's neck. Riding or pack horses inthe region always wore bells, and the sound was associated withtheir movement.To achieve the trance state during which he acted as diviner andhealer, a Nepalese shaman drummed and sang and frequently, atthe outset, got up and danced. During the all-night course of aseance, he performed a variety of rituals, depending on the needsof his clients. Some of them were long and involved the singing ofsongs that told of the First Shaman and happenings in theGolden Age. One such ritual was done for a client who had to belifted up into the heavens so that he could remove an obstruction(gaunda) that was adversely affecting his life. (This is a differentproblem than an adverse state [dashd] of one's stars [graha]). Whilethe shaman drummed and sang a long narrative song about the153


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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian TraditionFirst Shaman-a song he interrupted periodically with a shout ofHo!-the patient's foot at each shout was moved from notch tonotch along a small piece of wood called a "climbing pole" (lisnu).These poles are used for crossing a wall or for getting from onelevel of a house or barn to another. The model used in this ritualhad nine notches cut into one side and seven cut into the oppositeside.20 During the shaman's song, he shouted sixteen times, andthe client's foot was moved up one side of the lisnu and down theother. When this part of the ritual was complete, the shamanentered a trance state. The client got onto a winnowing tray andhelpers, who were members of his family, lifted him up while theshaman danced underneath, tossing the tray up and down on hisback. The ritual took place on the porch of a house, so that a ropeand an image could be suspended from the ceiling. The image wasa carved wooden model representing the sun and the moon. Sus-pended a little beneath it, there was a lanceolate leaf of theSonchampa tree (Michelia champaca). While being bounced up anddown, the patient grasped the rope to steady himself and bit intothe leaf which hung near his head. When he had bitten it in two,the shaman stepped out from beneath him, and he was lowered tothe ground. The shaman then questioned him:

Did you see the sun and moon?Yes, I saw.Did you see the stars in the sky?I saw.Did you climb the nine steps?I climbed.Did you climb over the obstruction?I climbed.As a part of his initiation, the Nepalese shaman climbs a treeunder the guidance of his teacher or guru. I was unable to observethe ceremony, but obtained a Metalworker's account of his owninitiation. His guru was a Magar from an area two days' walk tothe northwest, an area regarded by the people of the Bhuji valley

as the home of the Original Shaman, and the guru was assisted byhis two sons, both of whom were shamans. The ceremony tookplace on the full-moon day.When the guru had induced a trance by singing and drumming,he was able to see a particular pine tree growing in the forest, and

20 "The Mangar, a Nepalese tribe, use a symbolic stairway by making ninenotches or steps in a stick, which they plant in the grave; by it the dead man'ssoul goes up to heaven." Ibid., p. 487, noted in H. H. Risley, The Tribes andCastes of Bengal, II (Calcutta, 1891-92), p. 75.154


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he sent his two sons to go and get it. After they had made ritualofferings at the foot of the tree and had seen its top shake as theydid so, they chopped it down, stripped it of all branches except fora tuft at the top, and took it back to the center of the village.Here, they planted it upright in a hole. The guru blindfolded hispupil, and his two sons dressed him in his shaman's regalia andhanded him his drum and drumstick. By drumming and singing,the guru again entered a trance and transmitted his condition tohis pupil. After calling on the Snake of Hell and the Sun and theMoon to be witnesses of what was about to happen, the guru,who was shaking as the local shamans always do when they are ina trance state, got up and leaned against the pine tree. His pupilfollowed him, grasped the trunk and shinnied to the top, stillholding his drum and drumstick. The guru next asked himquestions he could answer only by divining the future. Among thequestions was how many years of life remained to the neophyte'smother. When the pupil had shown that he had acquired powers ofdivination, the guru and his sons danced and sang for a time at thefoot of the tree, and then the guru brought the neophyte downgradually by shouting Ho! nine times. At each shout, the pupilslid part-way down, until at the last he touched the ground.During his return to earth, the guru prayed: "Make my pupil asbright as the sun and as beautiful as the moon. Let this be myfame." Following the rest of the ceremony, which involved thesacrifice of a ram and goat, the tree was ceremonially returned tothe forest. A branch was given to the pupil, and he saved it so thatat the time of his burial-on the mountainside rather than by theriver like other people, and sitting up in a tumulus rather thanlying down below ground-it could be set upright between thestones at the peak of his burial mound.In classic Inner Asian shamanism, the practitioner controlsspirits and is not controlled by them. On superficial acquaintance,it might seem that this is not true of the Nepalese shaman, forduring a trance he enacts the characteristics of whatever spirit isinside his body. If it is an arthritic spirit, for example, his handsand fingers become stiff and crooked. And sometimes the in-carnate spirit temporarily overpowers him completely, so that hefalls groaning and twitching to the ground or sits tense andquivering. But eventually he does regain control, sometimes withthe help of water sprinkled over him by some member of theaudience, and it is then he sings and chants, with drum accom-paniment, whatever message the spirit has to deliver. We can be155


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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Traditionsure that his own soul, his own consciousness and personality, havenot been completely obliterated during the trance, no matter howoverpowering the experience may have seemed, because at theconclusion of it he can answer questions from the audience aboutwhat the spirit has said. He does not have to be told. Further con-firmation appears in a shaman's description of what happensduring his trance:

The spirits come like birds, wind, an airplane. They enter my heartand call as from a distance, the way Krishna (a villager) was callingyesterday: "Have you seen my sickle?" At first, the spirit sits on myshoulder, and the shoulder hurts for a bit. Then the spirit enters andthe pain leaves. They may also sit on my knees or over my heart. Mostspirits enter through my nose, some through my ears, eyes, knees,shoulders. I can see them coming. I can tell whether they fell from acliff and died, or whether they died from eating inedible food. Theyfirst come to my basket (the one in which shamanizinggear is carried),then hop over onto me and then go inside. They wear what they werewearing when they died. They are different sizes ...When they enter my nose I get a little smell like excrement, or badmeat, and it feels as if small insects were coming into my nose. When Icall them, they speak into my ear, and I listen. I say what they say.They sing, and I sing. I repeat exactly.The spirit gets the attention of the people by saying, "Listen, youfive people sitting there!"The spirit will say, "You will say I have cheated and deceived you."He means, you think I'm a liar, but you listen; I'm really telling thetruth. He calls the people donkeys because why should he honor themif they don't know anything? If they knew anything, why call thespirit?The spirits speak by turns. The spirit sometimes says, "I'm such andsuch a spirit; tell him (the client) such and such." When I act like theSimpleton Spirit, it means it's that spirit's turn to talk. The others wait.I don't decide what spirit will speak. They decide among themselves.I don't call on any particularspirit to speak. I want differentspirits fordifferent kinds of tasks. (The shaman explained that the spirits decideamong themselves which of their numberhas the neededknowledgeandpower.)When the spirits leave me, I feel as if I had been beaten by someoneall day long. I feel as if my soul had been lost. When they are inside, Ifeel lively.

It is when we consider the journeying of the soul and psycho-pompism that we discover a crucial difference between theNepalese shaman and the classic Inner Asian type. For despite allthe elements of gear and ritual that suggest magic flight, he isearthbound. When discussing his pole climb, the Bhuji valleyshaman did not claim that his soul had ascended to celestial

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realms. Even though blindfolded, he could "see" because his guruhelped him call knowledgeable spirits.21 Such "sight," however,could have been obtained on the ground, and he climbed the poleonly because this is what the First Shaman did.Of all rituals performed by the Nepalese shaman, the one inwhich he lifts the patient up to the moon and stars most stronglysuggests celestial journeying. It looks as if the shaman, at oncepsychopomp and steed, were galloping into the empyrean with hisclient on his back. When questioned, though, the shaman says itis the client alone who makes the journey into the sky. Shamanicpower makes it possible for the client to do this, but in spaceparlance the shaman is the ground controller and not the astro-naut. This is the significance of his questions at the conclusion ofthe ritual: he is asking in effect, "Was I or was I not able to sendyou up into the heavens and to bring you safely back?" Only theslightest hints of ecstatic ascent and descent appear in mymaterials. One such hint was a shaman's saying that when hishelping spirits entered his body, it was "as if a wind had come andblown him into the air." But this was not classic shamanic flight;it was a space journey without destination.The Bhuji valley shaman is a psychopomp, though in a muchnarrower sense than the "great shamans" of Inner Asia. In Nepal,soul-loss is recognized as one of the causes of illness. Sometimes,in sleep, the soul leaves the body of its own accord and wandersaway, into the forest perhaps; or it may leave the body due tofright-a common cause of illness among children. More fre-quently, the soul is enticed or stolen away by the souls of deadpeople, or it may fall under the sway of an evil spirit, especiallythe Graveyard Spirit (masan dokh). But in order to recover thelost soul, the shaman does not make a celestial or infernal journey.After entering a trance to find out whether, in fact, soul-loss is thecause of his client's illness, there are a number of techniques ofrecovery he may follow, including dispatch of a helping spirit tolocate and return the lost soul. But his closest approach to theclassic otherworldly journey is a real terrestrial journey to theburial ground, where he lies on the stones of the grave and calls tothe soul as if it were a child, luring it from the clutches of itscaptor or enticer. It is true that the shaman lying on the graveencounters the spirit world, but it is an encounter at the threshold;it is not a journeying into and through it. Even the helper spirits

21 Among the Tadibei Samoyed, the shaman is blindfolded to indicate that heenters the spirit world by his own inner light. Eliade, op. cit., p. 148.3-H.O.R. 157


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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Traditionof the Nepalese shamans are somewhat earthbound. They are con-ceived of as grazing in various localities. When the shaman calls,they journey across the local countryside, journeys that sometimesare specified in elaborate detail. Similar detail regarding the otherworld, whether celestial or infernal, is notably lacking.Returning now to the question raised at the outset: whetherthere is a Nepalese shamanism closely resembling the shamanismof Central and North Asia, one may answer in the affirmative,subject to two qualifications. The first is that the comparison isbeing made using elements of the classic type, a construct not tobe confused with any particular manifestation of Inner Asianshamanism in all its empirical fullness. The second is that theNepalese example has decadent aspects, the most notable beingits loss of belief in magic and dangerous flight, with associated lossof dramatic enactment.22 On the other hand, this shamanism hasretained many symbols of ascension, even though explaining themby reference to what the First Shaman wore rather than to hispowers of flight. The Nepalese shaman, moreover, controls spiritsrather than being controlled by them; and he attains trancethrough music rather than through mushrooms or tobacco, thedecadent methods used by some of the shamans in Central andNorth Asia.23In conclusion, we may note that the shamanism of the Bhujivalley probably represents one of the most southerly examples ofa shamanism that embodies so many elements of the classic InnerAsian tradition. For as one goes south and west toward Pokhara,shamanism continues to be earthbound, with flights being madeby spirit helpers rather than by shamans themselves, and beginsto lose, in addition, other classic elements. The shamanic drumgives way to a brass plate and finally, in the region south ofPokhara, there is no drum, not even a brass plate. Here, theshamans no longer wear a leather jacket, feathers, or other sym-bols of flight. Nor do they retain self-awareness and control of thespirits embodied during a trance. It would seem that the onlyelement left which strongly suggests the classic ascensional themeof Inner Asia is the way these shamans use the cut boughs of atree. On going into a trance and throughout their seance, theyhold the boughs upright like a bouquet and shake them violently.Here, possibly, though in a different context, is the Inner Asianinitiating tree.

22Ibid., pp. 237, 250, 252-54, 256.23 Ibid., pp. 221, 228, 254.158

a nepalese shamanism and the classic inner asian tradition

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