Rituals of Ethnicity. Sara Shneiderman
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and originalities indicate a convergence of Thangmi worldviews around what we might call the sacred originary, recalling Godelier’s statement that “the sacred is a certain kind of relationship with the origin” (1999:169). It is not shared descent per se but knowledge of a shared myth of it that works as a universal marker of belonging throughout the transnational Thangmi community by pointing toward the original as that which imbues the sacred object of identity with its power.
The differences I observed in relationships to and expressions of the original—which I had initially thought indexed country-specific responses to the particular politics of recognition encountered in India and Nepal, respectively—were in fact not determined exclusively by political and economic particularities in each country but rather more by educational and generational positionalities that entailed different techniques for controlling and deploying originary power. That a shared narrative of origin constituted the power of Thangminess was so taken for granted it was almost never stated explicitly. It therefore took me a long time to understand this fact. Rather, the question up for public debate within the Thangmi community was how to best marshal that sacred power in the service of competing agendas; so it was these divides that appeared most evident to me.
Orality:Literacy—Myth:Science
Understanding the relationship between oral traditions of shamanism and literate traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism has been a central concern of Himalayan anthropology since its inception (Berreman 1964; Fisher 2001; Holmberg 1989; Mumford 1989; Ramble 1983; Samuel 1993; Ortner 1989, 1995), and relates to broader anthropological debates over the cultural causes and effects of orality and literacy (Ahearn 2001; Goody 1986, 2000; Ong 1982; Redfield 1960). The contemporary power struggle between Thangmi gurus and activists, who respectively wield the power of orality and textuality within the single ritual system of “Thangmi dharma,” offers a new set of insights on this classical theme. The question in the Thangmi case is not whether shamans will disappear or be subsumed by an encroaching literate tradition but whether activists will succeed in appropriating the orally embodied power of their own shamans.
Gurus (and indirectly their adherents) access originary power by propitiating territorial deities through a set of oral recitations that recount origin myths in a ritual register of the Thangmi language. The purposes of these recitations are twofold. First is to secure divine recognition of the special relationship between Thangmi and their territory. Such divine recognition is necessary to ensure a range of positive pragmatic effects, such as good harvests and the continued survival of the community. Second is to reproduce a form of “mythical thought” (Lévi-Strauss 1979:6, [1973] 1987:173, 184) that effects an inseparable link between Thangminess and the oral transmission of cultural knowledge. Such mythical thought is conceptualized by members of the Thangmi community—both guru and activist—to exist in opposition to scientific thought, with its reliance on written transmission. The efficacy of a guru’s practice depends upon his power to recite the correct propitiation chants in an embodied manner defined by its orality. In this formulation, lay Thangmi cannot access originary power directly and instead must rely upon their guru to mediate it for them when necessary.
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