Ritual Paradoxes in Nepal: Comparative Perspectives on Tamang Religion

Author(s): David Holmberg

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Aug., 1984), pp. 697-722
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2057151
Accessed: 19/11/2009 00:42

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=afas.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Association for Asian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Journal of Asian Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
VOL. XLIII, No. 4 JOURNALOFASIANSTUDIES AUGUST1984

Ritual Paradoxesin Nepal:

ComparativePerspectiveson Tamang Religion
DAVID HOLMBERG

N umerous empirical accounts depict the religions of Nepal, like those of other
parts of South and Southeast Asia, as a myriad of religious specialists and ritual
complexes. These accounts show that Magars, Gurungs, Chantels, Thakalis, Newars,
Tamangs, Sunuwars, Sherpas, Rais, Limbus, Tibetan speakers, and the prevalent
Indo-Nepalese Chetri and Bahun (to mention some commonly cited groups) all
engage several types of specialists, distinguishable by a division of labor. The western
Tamang,1 upon whose religious beliefs and practices this essay focuses, employ nine
specialists organized into three complexes associated with three prominent practi-
tioners:2 Buddhist lamas, who preside over rites of death; sacrificial lambu, who
propitiate chthonic divinities and exorcise harmful agents; and "shamanic"bombo,
who resuscitate the living.3

David Holmberg is Assistant Professor of An-
thropology, Asian Studies, and Women's Studies,
Cornell University.
The author resided among the western Tamang
of Nuwakot and Rasuwa districts from 1975 to
1977 and briefly in 1983. His research was sup-
ported by the National Institutes of Mental Health
and Cornell University in affiliation with the Cen-
tre for Nepal and Asian Studies, TribhuvanUniver-
sity, Kirtipur, Nepal. The author thanks Dr. Prayag
Raj Sharma, then Dean of the Centre, his col-
leagues and officials of the Research Division, and
officials of His Majesty's Government of Nepal for
their assistance. He also thanks Michael Allen,
James Boon, Davydd Greenwood, AndrfasHofer, A.
Thomas Kirsch, Kathryn March, P Steven Sangren,
and Robert J. Smith; they all offered helpful criti-
cism and comments on early versions of this article
or the ideas expressed in it.
1 In this article all references to "Tamang"
mean particularly the western Tamang of the locale
where I resided, and who correspond to the Tamang
reportedon by Hofer (1969; 1974; 1981) and Toffin
(1976). For specific details of Tamang history, their
place in Nepal, social structure, ritual and myth,
consult Holmberg (1980) and March (1979).
There is no standard system for transliterating
Tamang, an unwritten language. For the ease of the
reader, I have rendered Tamang with consonant
clusters and vowels that most closely approximate
the pronunciation of English speakers; at the same
time, I havetried to be true to phonology. Retroflexes
are written with capitals, as in lenTeor spirit of
deceased bombo; h, when it appears after a usually
unaspirated consonant, indicates a breathy tone as
in mhangor evil spirit; otherwise breathy tones are
indicated by an h after a vowel; long vowel sounds
are indicated by italics, as in tdpa; all other vowels
areshort. Except in the case of 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 reader that Tamang language
and culture are somehow derivative of textual
traditions. Nepali words are transcribed according
to standard devanagari transliteration. Other lan-
guages are transcribed as they appear in the sources
cited.
2 Other practitioners are gurpa, who chant
specialized Buddhist texts in order to ensure
blessings; shyepompo,who are leaders of devotional
songs; sangtung, who are similar to bombobut per-
form only simple rites; pudari, who conduct all-
Nepali sacrifices; astrologers; and, occasionally
(twice in the last decade), brahman.
3 "Shamanic,"like "shamanism"and "shaman,
has been overused in anthropological literature to
the extent that it has lost interpretive value (Geertz
1973:122). Shamanism may well be an "illusion"in
the same way that "totemism" (Levi-Strauss 1963)
is. In fact, there is strong evidence to counter the
old anthropological saw that shamanism is some
sort of panhuman Ur-religion (cf. Ohnuki-Tierney
1980). Whether one looks to the Tungus (Shiro-
kogoroff 1935)-from whom the term "shaman"
enters Western discourse -or the "elementary"reli-
gions of Australia (Stanner 1959-1963; Elkin
1944) or the Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971),
one finds multiple specialists or, at least, multiple
types of ritual practice.

697
698 DAVID HOLMBERG

With some notable exceptions (see Sagant 1973; Fournier 1978; Samuel 1978a,
1978b; Paul 1979), studies of religion in Nepal concentrate on separate strands in
this variegated web, interpreting each strand as though it were autonomous. For
example, Hitchcock and Jones (1976) in order to escape the view that the religious
situation is a function of the diffusion of Hindu and Buddhist practices into the Nepal
Himalayas, document a "third" category that revolves around indigenous specialists
who become possessed by spirits (p. xii). These excellent ethnographic accounts and
others, though, perpetuate the picture of the religions of Nepal as the accretion of
separable strands. Most studies consider these strands as though they reflect separate
historical periods4 or psychosocial functions,5 repeating explanatory strategies applied
in the study of religious complexity in Southeast Asia (Kirsch 1977:242). In these
reconstructions, the relations among ritual activities that appear simultaneously in a
single society are neglected.
To limit discussion to isolated strands-whether Hinduisms, Buddhisms, spirit
cults, shamanisms, sacrificial cults, or other "folk" practices-precludes consider-
ation of the symbolic logic that connects these apparently disparate practices in
particular cultures, whether Gurung, Tamang, Newar, Indo-Nepalese, Tibetan, or
whatever. Concentration on total religious systems does not prevent comparisons but
relocates the objects of comparison. From such a perspective, the religious systems of
Nepal reveal a common pattern. Such a vantage permits a reassessment of the
historical, 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, and
hierarchy"(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 component
provides a kind of symbolic opposition to Buddhist world-view, its perpetuation is
linked 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 to
Buddhist 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 are the most respected of ritual specialists. Their primary responsi-
bility is to preside over large-scale memorial death feasts that "rescue"the dead into

4For example, Watters (1975:155) observes:
"Manyof the themes of classical shamanism can be
found with varying degrees of modification in other
ethnic groups of Nepal as well, at least in kernel
form . . . . Does this suggest, perhaps, that there
was a proto-tradition of the non-Indic peoples of
Nepal which may have very closely resembled the
classic Inner Asian tradition? The incidence of
Kham-Magar shamanism shows that such a tradi-
tion can and does, in fact, exist in Nepal." This is an
intriguing conjecture, yet one must be cautious in
suggesting that contemporary practices represent
vestiges of a unified prototype. Practices observed
today represent centuries of dynamic intercommu-
nication among groups, which undoubtedly have
transformedprior practices into things quite differ-
ent from what they were. Moreover, it is likely that
complexity in one form or another has been an
essential feature of Himalayan religious systems
since time immemorial (see n. 3). Such attempts to
document original traditions reflect a tendency to
delineate an unique ethnographic presence for each
group. As Allen remarked (1981:168), the image
that emerges in these particularized ethnographic
endeavors is "a mosaic of sub-areas, each with its
own language, customs, and ethnonym" that blinds
us to comparative possibilities. As I argue else-
where (Holmberg 1980:15-51), the ethnic groups
appear to be the products of state formation in
Nepal, and they do not represent specific cultures
that can be traced historically.
5 The mechanistic approaches, like the his-
torical, neglect the relationship between strands;
they explain divergent ritual practices according to
prior social or psychological necessities (see R. L.
Jones 1976a; S. K. Jones 1976).
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 699

rebirth and reestablish order in a local society of patrilineal clans. The relation of
lamas to texts printed in Tibetan script is essential to the understanding of lamaic
ritual authority. Tamang believe that these texts are the words of ancient Buddhas who
bound the world into orderly form through oaths. Lamaic logic asserts that the
autochthonous divinities who rule the earth and the hordes of harmful agents lurking
everywhere in intermediate spaces are subject to the power of the text. Lambunor
sacrificers, on the other hand, entreat divinities honorifically and sacrifice to them
calendrically 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 a
prosperous harvest, wealth, resiliency, and long life. Lambu also expel ghosts and
spirits, who are responsible for hardship, disease, and degeneracy, by coercing them
with sacrificial and other offerings to quit homes and villages.
Superficially,Buddhist ritual and sacrificial ritual could not appear to be more
contradictory; nevertheless, they show key similarities. Both work toward the
affirmation of resolute order in the cosmos. Like lamas, lambu must chant "texts"
(Hofer 1981) in an archaic and obscure form of the Tamang language. On the level we
are considering them, these "oral"formulas have the same effect as lamaic printed
texts. Lamas and lambu, in fact, can replace each other for most propitiatory and
exorcistic functions; together, they fix the cosmos and assure measured relations
between humans and the divine and malevolent forces, confirming that, despite
significant differences, religions of the word, like Buddhism, and those of the act, like
sacrifice, are both concerned with determining order.6
If lamaic and sacrificial rituals construct a world order marked by predictability,
balance, and determinancy, and if they support life by displacing evil potentialities,
bombo's rituals, which I call "soundings"(because Tamang say bombo"sound"),counter
or deconstruct that creation. Bombodwell on the alien, unpredictable, and indetermi-
nate in human experience. Although Tamang say that the bombo"revivesthe living,"
in ritual practice bomborarelycomplete cures themselves; this is the work of lamas and
lambu.When bombocall shadow souls, resuscitate life-force, "reveal"sources of distress
by "going into the divine," or when they carrydivinities or harmful agents on and in
their bodies, they "unveil" an aspect of the cosmos that lamas and lambuattempt to
displace. Soundings revel in irresolvabilities (Holmberg 1983) and deal with the
preconditions and meanings of malaise; they are not the resolute events commonly
reported.
The outline presented in this article is not exhaustive or definitive. Other sorts of
ritual occur, and the Tamang religious system is changing. Furthermore, each facet of
the ritual system has the capacity to appropriatethe others, either partially or totally,
expressing the same oppositions observed in the total field; this is particularly true of
the lamaic (cf. Paul 1979). On the level of the total system, however,the determinate
rituals of lama and lambu in opposition to the soundings of the bomboform an
elementary structure common to the religious systems of Nepal.

6
Herrenschmidt (1982a) proposes two ideal
types of sacrifice, brahmanic and testamentary. The
former depends on the act and the latter on words.
Until recently, in fact, sacrifices were part and
parcel of Tamang Buddhist death rites (cf. Hofer
197 lb:22). Moreover,some Tamangtranslate damla
tcpa as "to cut an oath." I would not, though,
want to overexaggerate the associations of Bud-
dhism and sacrifice; they are distinct in several
important ways. Forexample, using Kirsch's typol-
ogy (1977: 260), the lamaic is "otherworldly" in
orientation and focuses on the "whole society"
whereas the sacrificial is "thisworldly" and focuses
on lower-level sociopolitical orders. Following
Herrenschmidt, the relation between divinities,
humans, and cosmic order is different in these
two systems. Both, though, are "determinate" in
worldview, and their rituals are, above all else,
"standard-routine."It is on this level that I consider
them similar.
700 DAVID HOLMBERG

This structure, though, is not closed into a coherent and tensionless field. What
emerges through an examination of the Tamang field is the juxtaposition of contrary
orders, not consistent order. A final, totalizing picture of Tamang religion never takes
form; 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 From
this point of view, the field, like a kaleidoscope, never resolves into an image
composed of all its variants. Nevertheless, by examining relations among the sym-
bolic constructions of ritual components, a logic of differences that form a total field
can be abstracted.
Tamang religious complexity, then, is not simply the residue of an irretrievable
history or the conglomeration of fragmented functions; it results from cultural
processesthat create paradoxes. These paradoxesare condensed in a myth about a lama
and a bombowho go on a competitive pilgrimage. This myth is an intriguing artifact.
Within it, the Tamang themselves, in a discourse that we may call indigenous, reflect
on the same problems that have inspired the Western study of syncretism in Buddhist
societies, and through it the Tamang reveal the dynamics of their religious structure.
Before examining this myth, however, an elaboration of the meaning of lamas and
binding oaths and of bomboand shamanic soundings is necessary.

Tamang Buddhism

The Tamang, the largest Tibeto-Burman population in Nepal, are a clan-based

society who live for the most part in the mid-hills of Nepal that surround Kathmandu
and in the Kathmandu valley proper. The Tamang have been enmeshed in the Hindu
state of Nepal for centuries, and they have had important historical relations with
Tibetan Buddhist populations to the north. They call themselves "Lamas"to outsiders,
who, in turn, address them honorifically as "Lama."By calling themselves Lamas, the
Tamang declare themselves Buddhist, and they set themselves off from the Hindu
society that surroundsthem and in which respect for the brahman, not the lama, is an
important distinguishing feature.8 Although in some contexts lama may refer to any
Tamang, it has a more specific meaning in Tamang culture. Just as the brahman in
Hindu society is comprehensible only within the hierarchyof castes and in relation to
both the renouncerand the "shaman,"lamas among Tamangmust be perceived in the
context of Tamang society and in the complementarity of lamal/ambulbombo.
Although lamas participate in numerous austere retreatsand once a year perambu-
late through villages begging grain, they are not celibate renouncerslike the monks of
Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Tibet. Monks and nuns are known, but monasticism is not a
fact of western Tamang life. Tamang lamas are married householders who farm like
their 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 in
seeing 'culture' as holistic significant form is to
'over-literalize' the facts at hand. The investigator
attracted by bound, multivocal, sensory rich pro-
ductions only derives full satisfaction if he can
finally abstract and completely interrelate the total
range of components." In an essay on festivals in
Andhra, Herrenschmidt (1982b) makes a related
point; he demonstrates that unitary reconstruction
of a village festival cycle may be impossible and that
we are confronted with multiple points of view. I
am working from a similar point of view and am
concerned with the relations between differences
more than constructing a final, grammatical struc-
ture of the Tamang religious field.
8 My concern here is not ramifications of the
opposition of Buddhist/Hindu or lama/brahman in
Hindu or Tamang ideologies. An all-Nepal vantage
metonymically opposes lama/brahman, both of
which resonate metaphorically for members of these
societies. These complementarities cannot be elabo-
rated here (see Bista 1972; Sharma 1978).
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 701

texts, display scroll paintings, and employ ritual implements. At these times,
villagers address them by the honorific sangkye,the word for Buddha. In everydaylife
as well, villagers use honorific speech when talking to lamas and serve them food and
drink with special signs of respect. In many villages, local lamas maintain small
temples that house brightly painted clay images of Guru Rhimborotshe (Sanskrit:
padmasambhava;Tibetan: gu ru rin po che)and other prominent Buddhas. Significant
rituals, however, rarely focus on these temples. For instance, memorial death feasts
-the essential Buddhist rite among Tamang-occur at brilliantly decorated altars
erected in empty fields.
In the villages where I resided, Tamang spoke of two kinds of lama: "ancient"and
"hunter"lamas. Ancient lamas claim patrilineal descent from lamas back to a time
when their ancestors reputedly came down from monastic communities surrounding
Kyirong, Tibet. Ancient lamas call other lamas, those who are not the direct
descendants of lamas, hunter lamas. Most often, hunter lamas, following routinized
Buddhist patterns, say they pursued training because of disaffection with suffering
and 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 that
they undertook training for the same reasons as hunter lamas.
To become a lama, one must attend retreats, the first of which constitutes an
initiation. Severalprospective lamas jointly invite a lopanor guru, who cannot be the
father of any of the novices, to conduct a retreat in the forests or high promontories
above the village. Lopanor masters may be regionally noted experts, but sometimes
they come from distant places such as the Kathmandu valley, Bhutan, or Tibet.
During retreats, which last from several weeks to several months, the lopanallows no
contact between the novices and other villagers. According to some lamas, the lopan
performs mock rites of death during the first retreat and initiates the novices to
lamahood. Students spend their days performing incessant obeisances to the Buddhas
and 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, absorb mantras or formulaic incantations, learn to
construct altars and to mould dough images of the Buddhist pantheon, and acquire
experience in simple ritual procedures.
After leaving initiatory retreats, novice lamas continue to study on their own and
with other lamas in their home villages. Above all, they refine their abilities through
practical experience gained by joining accomplished lamas in rituals, at first beating
drums, clanging cymbals, running errands, performing menial ritual tasks, and
serving the superior lamas. Later, after attending advanced retreats, which familiarize
them 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 legitimacy
and a primary function of retreats. As a lama masters a text, the lopaneither inscribes
missing or secret passages in the text using red ink or the student commits the
missing passage to memory. This at once activates the text and authorizes the lama in
its application. From lay perspective, lamas acquire arcane powers in the secrecy of
retreats, which, although normally employed for benevolent service, may be applied
for 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
702 DAVID HOLMBERG

values of renunciation common to other Buddhist societies. Lamas are conversant

with these refined forms of religious action but claim that they are but one possible
path. Their affiliation with more literate expressions is also evident in their valuation
of texts. Although lamas can rarely translate the Tibetan language of the texts, they
and other Tamang impute important meanings to them. When lamas chant texts,
they bind oaths.

Lamas and Binding Oaths

Although their relation to texts authorizes lamas to practice, lamas do not "read"
texts for pedagogical purposes; lamas cannot translate the Tibetan words of their
texts. Texts are chanted and the lamas learn a paralanguage associated with texts:
proper pronunciation, cadence, gestures, secret passages, and ritual acts closely
related to particular moments in the recitation of a text. Texts and their paralanguage
are 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, for
other Tibetan Buddhists.9 'Among the Tibetans, grapholatry is more real than
idolatry" (Ekvall 1964:114).
Tamang believe texts are the words of primordial Buddhas who brought order to
the cosmos by binding oaths. Tamang myths regularly repeat the refrain"the Buddhas
bound an oath," as in these examples from a version of creation:
The Buddhaof within {NhangkaiSangkyel
Bound an earthoath to the earth,
A rock oath to the rock,
A wateroath to the water.

After binding water,

Oaths to those who move and feel were bound.
The male and the femaleof humankindwere oathbound.
The femalesof humankindwereoathbound
Within the mountainLapsangKarpo.

They were bound to stay in the Lo Demo river.

The males of humankindwereoathbound
Within the mountainLari,
Within the hill Ganhrejung.
They were bound to stay in the hill Sati.

A mouth oath, a heart-mindoath

To exchangein marriage,
To exchangeheartsand minds,
To exchangemouths
Within the nine territorieswas claspedround.

Among the mythic Buddhas, Guru Rhimborotshe embodies the essential characteris-
tics of the Buddhas and is important to an understanding of lamaic ritual. Guru
Rhimborotshe 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 the

9 Writing has important technological and writing. In contemporary Nepal, Nepali is the
sociopolitical consequences (see Goody 1968). language of the state and facility with the written
However, I am concerned exclusively with sacred word has important consequences (Caplan 1970).
RITuAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 703

ar thoeial'ikdt hs nin udhstruhasre flpno uu

lamachantinglong-lifebook
'Thmang

divinities and their awful power to submit to Buddhist law. He banished and tied up
all kinds of evil in entwining formulas. Lamas now say that Guru Rhimborotshe
resides in a western heaven where he is taming cannibal fiends. Contemporarylamas
704 DAVID HOLMBERG

who stretch back to time immemorial. Many lamas even hint that they are incarna-
tions of past lamas. Moreover,synchronically, they are the earthbound representatives
of 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 empower printed talismans to
keep harm at bay; they attach woodblock prints with powerful mantras and symbols
to the doors and windows of houses, thereby protecting them from the onslaught of
evil forces; they fly prayerflags; they dispense printed medicines; they chant binding
texts to contain water sprites and earth divinities. Above all, lamas are the directors of
memorial death feasts where textual authority allows them to erase demerit, to
conscript the soul to rebirth and karmic law, and to bind the soul over to the
Buddhas.
This relation to texts and their power has innumerable correlates in other
Buddhist societies and particularly in Tibetan Buddhist societies. For instance, Ekvall
(1964:105) notes the following Tibetan beliefs and practices:
By a strange working of the law of association,the written or printed letters
themselveson any paper,even when the meaningis unknown,are also sometimes
called CHos [religion; law] by the illiterate and accordedworshipfulcare and
treatmentby all. A devout Tibetanscholarwill reverentlytouch his head with a
Tibetanbook, evenwhen he knowsit is secularin subjectmatter,becausethe letters
in themselvesretainsomethingof religion.
Pignede (1966:389) remarks that the Gurungs likewise value the letter:
Gurungshave a great deal of respectfor that which is written. We have seen the
importancegiven to the fact that the books of the pucuand the klihbrihad been
burned.On the otherhand, the lamaandthe brahmanreadtheirprayersandconsult
written horoscopesdecoratedwith illuminations.ManyGurungshave horoscopes
madefor them by brahmansand, even though they often can not understandthem,
they are proud to unroll the scroll of paper coveredwith letters, numbers,and
multicoloredfigures.
Similar observations have been made throughout Nepal (see Caplan 1970:69), and
Tambiah (1968) has demonstrated the importance of texts in Thai Buddhist ritual.
Thus lamas distinguish themselves from bomboby their possession of texts and
their adherence to respected teachers. In private, they say that bombolie and deceive
because they have no texts. Bombo, for their part, play down their association
with gurus or particular"shamanic"lines and often claim that they are "selfgenerated."
In practice, lamas and bombojoin together for several rites confirming their
complementarity.

Bombo and Soundings

Like lamas, an ancient bomboonce had texts but reputedly threw them in the fire
and ate the ashes. Bombosound because they are charged by a visceral motivation
whereby words exude from their mouths. One bomboremarked, "The bombodoes not
stay in seclusion like the lama. You cannot say just what the lopansays;you must learn
by yourself. The lama just learns ka, kha, ga, ca, cha, ja [the beginning letters of the
Tibetan syllabaryl." Bomboare inspired to sound by a host of divinities, spirits, and
harmful agents who seize, alight on, and enter their bodies, making them shake in
possession. Seizure by lenTe is what compels someone to become a bombo.
LenTeare the spirits of deceased bombo who, in spite of lamaic death rites, are not
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 705

reborn. They reside in intermediate heavens in the high reaches of the Himalayas.
LenTecravereinvolvement in the world and grasp lineal descendants in either the male
or female line. 10Those so struck can reputedly eat coals and carry red hot fire grates
on their heads without being burned; one afflicted man was reported to have flown
about the village. All whom lenTegrasp become violently ill. By agreeing to become a
bomboand honoring the lenTe,one can convert the lenTeto allies, thereby tempering
the uncontrollable afflictions.
A lopan or guru teaches the bombothe techniques needed to honor lenTeand to
enter into other sorts of possession. Bomboare the only ones in Tamang society who
become possessed, and as Hofer (1974:151) observes, "The Tamang shaman is not a
passive vessel of the possessing agent. A state of possession is rather controlled than
simply 'endured' by him." Bomboentice multitudes of divinities, spirits, and harmful
agents to attend soundings. As they arrive at a seat in the altar, the divinities pulse
through the bombowho shudder, clanging bells that they have wrapped around their
torsos, and rattling their drums. During exorcistic sequences, harmful agents enter
their bodies and the bombomay call out, "Eat my flesh; suck my blood; crunch my
bones! Flesh food, chew, chew! Blood food, suck, suck! Bone food, crunch, crunch!"
One bombocalls 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 havedressed.
When breathing,moving beings sleep,
When the sun sleeps,
I dress [as a) bombo.
Come take my bombo'sbody!
Come take a golden horse!
Come takea silver horse!
By the sky trail let's fly.

Bombo"carry,""steal off" like a sack of grain, and "playfully toss" divinities and
spirits as they alight or "perch."They share their cups, plates, food, and seats with
divinities. They tease, trick, and deceive harmful agents. Bombohave knowledge
acquired from their lopan and an inner strength that allows them to suspend these
beings on and in their persons without being taken over by them; when bombo
shudder, it is a sign of strength or power, power which derives from their lopan, from
their knowledge, from their lenTe,and from the water of high-altitude lakes. They
generate an internal energy which equals that of the possessing agents; thus, as one
bomboremarked, when he gets too old to shake he must stop sounding. The only
uncontrolled possessions are the initial seizures by lenTe. When this happens, the
whole edifice of Tamang ritual works to contain this possibility by encouraging the
afflicted to become a bombo.
Along with powers of possession, bombohave revelatorysight. Bomboritually "open
up" and reveal, whereas lambuand lamas shut down and put out of sight. If bombodo
certain exorcisms of the lambu, they lose this sight. The unique revelatorypower of
bombois associatedwith their necessaryrelationship to tsen, divinities or sprites closely
associated with women, who mediate between humans and the divine and who are

10
Some Tamangcall spirits who attack through
a female connection shyulTo.
706 DAVID HOLMBERG

ILI

prcIce utproal oo sn hrb,te eoe sigh liketa ftete

anI esetv rmi ewe. hsbmoaeal ortiv lotsawsul

Bombo
at the conclusion of an all-night-long sounding

said to "see things differently" from humans (Holmberg 1983). What is small for
humans is large for tsen; what tsen can see, humans cannot. All bombo,in order to
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 707

(bla), to reveal the condition of life-force (so), to "open up" sources of affliction, and to
unveil the faces of divinities.
Humans have nine bla (shadow souls), all but one of which can stray from the
body. Tamang believe that wandering bla dream our dreams, and thus Tamang are
always careful to call out the names of people before waking them. Otherwise the
roaming bla will not return to the body. Bla are commonly lost in this way. Bla may
also be lost in moments of fright: when thunder bolts crash; when feet trip on
precipitous trails; when one encounters fighting dogs or bulls; or when one happens
upon demons or spirits in the forest, at crossroads, in high pastures, or in the village
at night.
Once separated from the body, bla may take refuge in all sorts of intermediate
places or may be captured by harmful spirits. Loss of bla leads to a generalized
weakened state that leaves one open to the attack of a variety of malevolent forces. If
one has been sick or uneasy for long periods of time and the ministrations of lamas
and the endeavors of lambu have been to no avail, one must call a bomboto perform a
sounding and call back the bla from whereverit may be. In calling back bla, one bombo
searches in these and many more places:
Abovea great rock,
Abovea great tree,
Abovea great cliff,
Abovea great landslide,
Abovea crevasse
In a low hoveringcloud,
In a circling wind,
In a great bolt,
In a great lightning flash,
In the mid-sky,
In the puddlesof a marsh.

In a place [heaven]of the living,

In a place of the dead,
In the hand of an evil lama,
In the handof an evil Bombo,
In the high pastures,and so on.

In a place [heaven]of the homeless

In a place of confusion
In a place of distress,
In a place of rumorousgossip
In a place of cannibals,
In a place of closed mouths,
In a place of licentioussex.
Once discovered and called from these intermediate places, bla are reaffixedto people
by the bombo.At the time of death, lamas separate the nine bla from the body and
conjoin them into a unitary bla that is reborn.
So (life-force), on the other hand, dies with the body. About age twelve, an
individual develops a so that grows up through the torso like a tree. On a heavenly
hill, the whereabouts of which only bombocan reveal, there is a so dungma(life-force
tree) that is directly linked to the condition of the so in the body. When the branches
break, the trunk rots, or it bends over, this heavenly tree is reflecting the condition of
the bodily so. During soundings, bombo reveal the condition of the sodungmaand they
erect a sapling outside of the house, resuscitating weakened life-force.
708 DAVID HOLMBERG

Just as the retrieval of bla and the revival of so depend on unique powers of sight,
likewise divination or general revelation depends on these powers. In the middle of
soundings, bombo"go into the divine" and make apparent the sources of distress. One
bombodescribed a journey as follows:
When you arriveto curesomeone,it is like a chainthere, a placeof chains. As you
go, you must say, "Ohguardians!Lookbehindme, look in front of me, look from
yourheart-mind.I havecometo this place. This personis afflictedin such-and-such
a way. Youask them to revealthose places, to releasethose iron chains. You say,
"Let'sgo revealall those places."
After falling into silence and with eyes closed, the bombosees dreamlike signs in
bursting flashes against a dark void. Upon descending from the heavens, the bombo
interprets these enigmatic signs for whomever has requested revelation. When bombo
tell their revelations, they rarelygive specific reasons for the cause of distress; instead
they list sets of possibilities. Bombohedge their revelatory bets and always remain
ambiguous about the validity of their visions. One bomboremarked, "Bombocan say
nothing for sure. When they go into the divine [reveall, they do not know what hits
them. They do not see with their own eyes. They only know by a sensation which
comes around the heart."Significantly, the bombonever performsspecific cures for the
ailments revealed; it is always the lambu or the lama who puts things in order by
propitiating neglected divinities, banishing evil agents, or binding divinities and
harmful agents to oaths. Soundings are suspensions in which enigmatic divinities and
harmful agents erupt, temporarily unbound. Bombomediate by moving between
earth and heavens, from human to divine vision, and by carrying divinities and spirits
on and in their bodies, thus deconstructing the fixed separation effected through
lamaic and sacrificial rituals.
Soundings play out in counterpoint to lamaic and sacrificialorderand determinacy.
Bombosound because they are possessed by lenTeupon whom previous death chants
were unsuccessful and the exorcisms of lambuare ineffective. Through the memorial
death feasts, in which bomboare subject to certain restrictions, the complementarity of
lamaic and shamanic ritual communications and a dynamic tension in the religious
field becomes apparent.

Memorial Death Feasts

It is not surprising that the most important and only essential Buddhist rites
occur at the time of death. Like other Buddhists, Tamang elaborate social and cosmic
orders in referenceto death. " Tamang death is social creation. In fact, marriagerites,
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 the
water with which she will wash the faces of dead parents and siblings. Memorial death
feasts declare clan relations actualized through marriages, and thus memorial death
feasts are performed only for adult men and women. 12 In fact, memorial death feasts

1
Death is an occurrence rife with reflective
potential in Buddhist thought. One need only
mention the centrality of karma,merit/demerit,
otherworld, and so forth to Hindu-Buddhist thought
(O'Flaherty 1980; Keyes and Daniels 1983).
12 Children who die unmarried (and therefore
without full social identity) are "thrown out" or
buried. If an adult woman dies unmarried, some
man must marry her so that the proper categories of
kin may be defined before memorial death feasts can
proceed. The essential categories of kin are present
in the case of the death of an unmarried man.
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 709

are often the context in which couples elope, a favorite form of marriage. The
memorial death feasts are the most extensive social rites, and Tamang congregate
many times during the dry season to sever relations with the dead, pass the dead
into rebirth, and reaffirm social 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 of
numerous patricians. Tamang prefer that cross-cousins (mother's brother's children or
father'ssister's children) marry,and the Tamang marriagesystem is built on principles
of restricted exchange (Levi-Strauss 1969:29-229). After a marriage, patterned
obligations devolve on members of opposed patriclans. Marriageforms a circle of kin
the extent and structure of which are announced through obligatory exchanges of
goods 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 memorial
death feasts (gral), occur months later, usually in the dry season when field labor and
other obligations are not pressing and stocks of grain for feasting are high. Most
Tamang households attend between ten and fifteen three-day memorial death feasts
each year.They go in a variety of capacities, depending on their kin relationship to the
deceased and to the sponsors (usually the sons of the deceased). If they go in the party
of the mha (literally, sister's husbands) or "wife receivers," they must labor for the
sponsors and treat them with deference. If they go in the party of the ashyang-shyangpo
(literally, mother's brothers-wife's brothers) or "wife givers," they give gifts of cloth
and food "to expel the grief" of mourners (sons, daughters, spouses, and parents of
the deceased) who stand in the relation of sister's children or sister's husband to the
ashyang-shyangpo; they also jointly contribute a special piece of cloth to adorn the altar.
Sponsors must accord them special respect. If they go as busingor anoninchen(clan
sisters), they offer cloth to adorn the altar and special food to the deceased, and they
wail in grief. If they go simply as members of the extended circle of kin, they make
contributions of grain and money to help defray expenses for the feast.
Although complex in detail, these exchanges of goods and services declare the
order of a local society. 14 In any one feast, a specific set of relations between patriclans
takes form, and over a dry season and over several years in the calculus of thousands of
exchanges the total order of a local society is expressedand reexpressed.1 The death of

13 This was roughly a network of fifteen villages
for the region where I worked.
14 All affinal and consanguinial kin (that is,
everyone who can trace a trail of relationship) give
set amounts of grain and money. Close patrilineal
kin give more substantial contributions. There is
no direct gain or loss, cost or benefit, in these
"gifts."All the contributions (including the money,
which is used to purchase meat) are consumed at the
feast as food or alcohol. Moreover, contributors
receive precise equivalent contributions when they
become the sponsors of memorial death feasts. At
the time of cremation, real and classificatory mha
perform the polluting and menial tasks associated
with death except washing the face of the corpse,
which is done by daughters or sisters of the deceased.
Mha prepare the body for cremation, carry the
corpse to the cremation grounds, build the funeral
pyre, purify the house of the deceased, and care for
the bereavedfor severaldays after the death. Months
later, in memorial death feasts, mba again serve
their shyangpo:they do the hard labor, carryan effigy
of the deceased to the altar, cook and serve the
feasting foods, and a special "grasping" mba must
tend to the effigy of the deceased until it is
cremated. Depending on whether a man or woman
has died, come the ashyangand/or the shyangpo.The
ashyang-shyangpo,as the Tamang refer to them
collectively, give a special piece of cloth for adorn-
ing the altar and make special gifts of cloth and
foods to their sister's children and sister's spouse,
respectively, to "expel" grief. Some gral may require
several different sets of ashyang-shyangpo.
15 Although from the perspective of a male
individual a tripartite order of clans is apparent
-one's own, one's sister's husband's (mba), and
one's wife's brother's (shyangpo)-in fact, this is a
doubling of the relation mhalshyangpo.Women have
more ambiguous affiliations than men. They retain
close relations to members of their natal clan and
710 DAVID HOLMBERG

an adult who is linked into an extensive web of relations brings the very order of
society 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 relationships
between the living and the dead. Immediately after death, lamas ritually combine the
nine bla into a unitary bla and separate it from the body. After cremation rites, lamas
and villagers turn their attention to the bla that does not fully separatefrom the living
until the conclusion of the memorial death feast. In the interim between cremation
and the conclusion of the death feasts,the bla hovers in the vicinity of the village and
its former home. It is disoriented, motherless, homeless, and hungry; it craves
association with kinsfolk. Although not a ghost (shyingo)in the strict sense, it is
perilously close to being one. Indeed it acts like a ghost, and during the interim
Tamang must feed the bla whenever they feast lest the bla attack them.
Although the main sequences of a memorial death feast occur at an altar
constructed in an empty dry field near the house of the deceased, lamas conduct
preliminary rites in the homes of the deceased, where they call the bla and bind it to
an effigy or mock body. Coresidents of the deceased then feed the bla a final meal.
The following day, the effigy is removed to the area of the brightly adorned altar, the
palace of the Buddhas, which will become the new home of the bla, symbolically
announcing the movement of the bla from this to the other world. The guests gather
for 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 as
fifteen nearby villages, offer food, liquor, and other gifts to the effigy. After a portion
of each offering is allotted to the deceased, the remainder is placed in large baskets
and flasks and divided among everyone except bombo.Things take on a festive air as
hosts and guests await another feast. Led by song specialists, people sing and dance
around the altar to honor the Buddhas and to benefit the deceased. Into the night
young men and women engage in poetic song contests and courtship play. Mha
distribute large quantities of liquor, rice, and meat to the guests.
An array of lamaic rites parallels these commensal occasions. Tamang call these
feasts gral or "rescue," for lamas are thought to save the deceased from a perpetual
intermediacy and an unpleasant rebirth. Success depends upon the invocation of oaths
and texts. At the height of the feast, while guests are heaping their offerings to the
bla, lamas "apply" the blessings of Chenreshih (Tibetan: spyan ras gzigs; Sanskrit:
ava/okite&vara),the compassionate and mothering boddhisattva, as daughters and clan
sisters wail with untied hair. In response to each measured lamaic verse, the guests
sing back in tearful chorus the pervasive Himalayan mantra, Ongsongmanepemehung
hri, 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 a
fortunate rebirth.
Lamas finally sever the bla from its attachment to the living,and they turn it over
to the Buddhas and the play of karmic law by displaying iconographic cards and
chanting a text called nebar.16 As one lama explained,

play an important role in their husband's clans.

Rinpoche 1975), Tamang insist that this book need
Tamangsociety in its formal expression is patrifocal,
only be read when someone is having difficulty
and men are more fixed in their associations than are
dying. Tamang obviously ignore the "high" tradi-
women. However, men retain complex relations,
tion rule of rebirth after a forty-nine-day intermedi-
the most obvious of which is the relation to their
ate period. One knowledgeable lama, though, in-
sister's children. formed me that the reason for the high infant
16 Although this text is ritually homologous to
mortality rate among Tamang was that during the
TheTibetanBookof theDead (Evans-Wentz1974; gral lamas called bla that had already been reborn.
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 711

[The cards]are instructionsfor the bla. They informthe bla of the differentlives it
can take. They tell the bla which are good lives to take and which are bad: "You
should be like this." It is training after death. Lamascannot take people to the
heavens;they can only tell the way:"Youareon yourown. Don'tlingeron the way;
don'tstop halfway.Don'tstaywith the ghostsandharmfulagents."The bookwe read
is 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"the
letters 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 written
the name of the deceased. Lamas conscript the bla to this printed page and burn it,
annihilating relations between the living and the dead. Mha remove the effigy to the
edge of the village and cremate it.
Final rites of the gral occur the following morning, when the ashyang-shyangpo
expel the grief of the mourners-spouse, children, siblings, and parents of the
deceased. This is accomplished by gifts of new cloth and offerings of food that have
been denied the mourners since the time of death. In conclusion, lamas call down
blessings on the houses of the sponsors.
The social and religious registers of the death feasts simultaneously reimpose
social and cosmic order on the disruptions of death. Behind the regeneration of ideal
orderand continuity, though, hovers an opposed world of malevolency,and the orders
imposed by death feasts are tenuous. On the borders of this lamaic domain exists its
logical opposite, a world of awful ghosts, evil spirits, and alien divinities.

Counterorders

Tamang usually explain morbidity, malaise, degeneracy, and hardships of all

sorts as the effects of activity by harmful agents. These agents-whether stinging
local ghosts, villainous regional spirits, rarified cosmic evils, or temperamental
divinities-violate in image the order of things theoretically established in lamaic or
sacrificial ritual. In fact, ghosts (shyingo),as well as many other evil spirits, are the
dead for whom the chants of lamas and the exchanges of the memorial death feasts
were unsuccessful; they have not passed into rebirth.
For the most part, ghosts are those who died an unusual or anomolous death and,
like other harmful agents, they reside in a permanent intermediacy, homologous to
that of the bla between the moment of death and the conclusion of the memorial
death feast. They are craving, homeless, kinless, wandering, and desirous, and they
havebeen wrenched from life by accident, murder,suicide, sorcery,difficult childbirth,
or when wandering alone. Those who were avaricious or jealous in life are likely to
become ghosts, wrenched as they were from worldly wealth. Bla also become ghosts
when lamas do not follow procedures correctly in the performanceof death rites.
Unlike humans, ghosts and harmful agents are unwanted guests; they offend
against 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; lamas
and lambuprovide substitute offerings to satisfy and to expel them. For these efforts,
however, humans get nothing in return but hardship. During memorial death
feasting, lamas attempt to keep the bla from joining this society of fiends by
supervising 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 in
the ways bombo and lamas call b/a.
712 DAVID HOLMBERG

At regular intervals during memorial death feasts, lamas must call the bla. It has a
tendency to stray and is perpetually in danger of becoming part of the world of
harmful agents. Unlike bombo,lamas call the bla "by the book," as one lama put it.
They close their eyes, chant special mantras, place their hands in particular binding
gestures, and call the bla, which comes as pure emanation, "white like milk, clear like
water," in contrast to ghosts who come with wild hair, bloody faces, and fierce
expressions. When queried about lamaic techniques of bla calling, one lama answered
that the power lies with the letter. He drew the first letter of the Tibetan syllabary in
the 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 the
one hand, the letter separates the bla from teeming malevolency; on the other, the
letter consigns it to the measured and determinate order of the Buddhas. Bombo,
ratherthan hooking the bla out of the intermediate world, delve into "heavens"of the
homeless, confusion, distress, gossip, cannibal fiends, licentious sex, closed mouths,
and other harmful agents and enigmatic divinities. They do not displace and separate
humans from malevolent spirits and an alien divine; they suspend these beings in
reflectiverelief. Bomboare inspired to sound by lenTe,who, like ghosts, are beyond the
sway of lamaic authority; they result from inherent lamaic failure and reside in
the intermediate spaces of secret heavens (beyhul)in the high Himalayas.
Several practices mark the opposition between lamas and bombo.Bombowill not
directly receive the blessings of lamas; bombotake the blessings on the thumb and
themselves apply them to the forehead. More importantly, bombocannot touch
corpses, enter the houses of those recently deceased, or consume food communally
offered to the bla-a requirement of all other villagers. Contact with death would
sully the life-reviving bombo,the exposer of a terrific malevolence and an enigmatic
divine, and submission to lamaic authority would make it impossible for bomboto
practice.

Rational Irresolution of a Ritual Field

In an overview of the rituals of lama and bombo,contrary reconstructions appear.

Each alone is merely a partial expression of the field. This complementarity is the
subject of a myth through which Tamang make apparentan irresolvablecontradiction
and a logic in their ritual system. Myth can be helpful in the analysis of ritual:
Mythand ritualdo not alwayscorrespondto eachother.Nevertheless,they complete
each other in domainsalreadypresentinga complementarycharacter.The value of
the ritualas meaningresidesin instrumentsand gestures;it is a para-language.
The
myth, on the other hand, manifestsitself as a meta-language;it makes full use
of discoursebut does so by situating its own significantoppositionsat a higher
level of complexity than that requiredby language operating for profaneends
(Levi-Strauss1976:66).
By operating on a more encompassing level than ritual, the myth recounted below
allows a fleeting glance at the system of differences that form the total field, a field
which from the vantage of each ritual component appears irrevocablyfragmented.
The myth is widely known in Nepal and Tibet, and versions of it have been
recorded among Sherpa (Ortner 1978b), Gurung (Pignede 1966:387-88), and in
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 7 13

Tibetan literature (Das 1881; Milarepa 1970). It has been noted among Tamang from
several areas of Nepal (Hofer 1975; Peters 1981); western Tamang regularly recite it
when asked the difference between specialists; and bomboformally recite it (or, at least,
cryptically referto it) at the time of the erection of the so dungma.The main characters
in the myth are primordial brothers-Kalten Sangkye, a lama, and Dungsro Bon, a
bombo.
A lama recounted this version of the myth:

In a time of only earthand stones, therewere two brothers.The older brother

wasa lama, KaltenSangkye,and the youngerbrotherwasa bombo, DungsroBon. At
that time, DungsroBon did all things. He curedpeople;he expelledthe dead;and
he performedthe gral [rescue].The lamadid 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,called the dead, that the dead appearedto the community,and ate
their food offerings.Kalten Sangkyetold his wife that it was all a trick and that
those who actuallycome to eat the offeringswereevil spirits and ghosts.
He told his wife to takehis dorje[symbolof truth and power],and to displayit
when DungsroBon calledthe blaof the deceased.If it wasan evil spirit that came, it
would be destroyed,and if it was the bla, it would come underthe careand protec-
tion of the Buddhas.
The wife went, and at the appropriatetime she displayedthe dorje.It was
revealedto be evil spirits that came to eat the offeringsof food. DungsroBon was
humiliated. He was made speechless.
The bombo said to his brother,"Youhavemademe out to be a senseless,drunken
fool. Youhavemademe yourrivalandnowwe must havea competition.Let'sgo on a
pilgrimageto TshomhamhoNgyingtso [a high mountainlake].Youhaveneverbeen
on pilgrimagebefore."
The bombo set off on the three-daytrail to the high mountainlake. His people
went with him, carryinghis drum, his altar,and-some snacksfor the way.
The lamasat at homealone. His daughterbecameworriedand said, "Father,the
other has left on the competition. Why are you staying here?They left three days
ago, and they haveprobablyalreadyarrived."The lamaaskedhis daughterto cook
him some soup. Then he transformedhimself into a bird and flew up to Tshom-
hamhoNgyingtso. Therehe planted his staff.
The lamaperchedin the centerof the lake.The bombo arrivedand lookedinto the
lake. He saw nothing therebut a vulture.Then, wonderingwhat the vulturewould
do, he threwthings at it, trying to driveit away.The lamathoughtto himself, 'Aha,
he would do a thing like that to me. He must not recognizeme." The bombo was
thinking to himself, "Myolderbrotheris belowand has not yet arrived."The bombo
threw more things at the vulture.
This time Kalten Sangkyebecameangry at his youngerbrother.He took his
spoon, dipped it in the water,and flippedthe lakeover,drivingDungsroBon down
into the midst of the lake. The lama thought he had finishedoff DungsroBon and
returnedto his home.
Kalten Sangkye'sdaughter,out of affectionfor her father,had gone to the lake,
but when she arrived,he had left, descendingby a differenttrail fromhers. All she
heardwas the soundof a drumbeating. She lookedoverand down into the lakeand
sawDungsroBon dancingand beatinghis drum. Shewonderedwhat hadhappened.
Threedayswent by while she looked. Up from the midst of the lake, DungsroBon
sent the curse of the porcupine quill and ruined the eyes of Kalten Sangkye's
daughter.
Kalten Sangkye came and tried to cure his daughter. He consulted his books and
blew his mantras onto her, but could not find the cure. Finally, he called out to his
714 DAVID HOLMBERG

brotherwho wasstill dancingand beatinghis drumwhile lodgedin the midst of the

earth. The lama said, "Lookhere, big man. Don't call yourselfDungsro Bon
anymore.Call yourselfNharu Bon. Chantonly for the living. I will give you five
rupeesand nine level measuresof grain if you cure my daughter'seyes."He then
extractedthe bombo from the midst of the lake.
The lamathen boundthe followingoath:"Look,I will takecareof the deadand
you will take care of the living." Bombonow go crazyif they eat the food of the
communalfeastat a gral. The bombo cannottouchthe deadeither.The portionswere
divided betweenlama and bombo.
On one level, the myth clearly confirms ritual reality. In fact, lamas recount it to
legitimate their authority over death rites and their superiority over bombo. Rational-
ized Tibetan variants exclusively declare this ascendency of Buddhism: "When Naro-
Bon-chhun was attempting to rise above the neck of Tesi [the mountain}, he fell down
and his tambourine rolled down towards the southern valley of Tesi"(Das 1881:210).
Yet, even the lama's version recounted above leaves a place for the bombo,a place
embellished in other Tamang versions.
For instance, one respected bomboopened the myth with an inversion of the
relation of the brothers:
In ancienttimes, DungsroBon and KaltenSangkyedid battle for threeyears.The
lamasaid to his brother,"Youwill takecareof the living, and I will takecareof the
dead."The bombo responded,"Iwill not stayundermy youngerbrother'sorder."The
bombo did not obey the lama, so the lamasaid, "Wetwo must go to Palkutang.We
will meet there."The bombo went ahead. Along the way he expelled the dead, he
called the bla, and he performedthe gral.
Bomboalso add greater detail to the events surrounding the bombo'semergence
from the lake:
Troubleand confusionovercameKalten Sangkye.He sat with his eyes closed and
meditatedto revealthe causeof his daughter'saffliction.He knew that if Dungsro
Bon did not emergehis daughter'seyeswould crackand break.So KaltenSangkye
placeda tall palmtreeanda cedartreeassodungma.He [erectedthe wrongspeciesof
tree]as a jokeand to trickDungsroBon. Then he placedthe saplingof the chestnut
tree, and DungsroBon emergedfrom the centerof the earthbeating his drum.
Other variants even find a place for the lambu:One lamburecounted the following
additional events: "[After the bombo emerged from the water}, they argued again.
Kalten Sangkye put Dungsro Bon back into the earth. Traveling within 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 to
Parping Godavari [a placel and stayed there, becoming the [evil spiriti Aktung
Mhang."7 Lambu,joining forces with lamas, ritually expel this evil spirit when it
attacks humans. The association of the functions of lama and lambuin this variant
point to a commonality between lambuand lamas as opposed to the bombo.
The Tamang versions, in contrast to rationalized Buddhist versions (which the
Tamang know), do not charterone practice absolutely over another, and a problematic
picture of the religious system emerges. The bombois not defeated and continues to
drum and dance incessantly in the middle of the earth. The question of who is the
deceiver and who is the fool is never resolved. It is the bombowhen he performs the

17 This is just one version of the origin of

Aktung Mhang.
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 7 15

Bomboon pilgrimage

memorial death feast, and then it is the lama when he tries to deceive the bombowith
improper life-force trees. After defeating the bombo,the lama must submit to his
demands. These versions, whether taken singly or in combination, are not only a
complex confirmation of ritual reality but expressions that reveal the dynamics of
Tamang religion.
Examination revealsthat events in the myth, in fact, do not conform to the actual
division of labor between lama and bombo.Like many myths (Levi-Strauss 1967), this
one poses direct contradictions and inversions of ritual conventions. Its power for
Tamang derives from presenting impossibilities: the bombobecomes a lama and the
lama becomes a bombo.In all Tamang versions, the bomboperforms death rites; he
expels the dead and feeds the dead. Likewise, the bombo'sname is Dungsro Bon, who,
Tamang say, sounded in the daylight like a lama, in contrast to present-day bombo
who, except during pilgrimages, only sound at night. On the other hand, Kalten
Sangkye becomes a bombowhen he transformshimself into a bird and flies to the high
mountain lake; it is bombo,not lamas, who wear the feathersof the impeyan pheasant
or peacock when on pilgrimage and who adorn their altars with images of flight.
Moreover,the lama, again like a bombo,tries to cure his daughter, and he plants the
life-force tree to remove his brother from the earth and lake.
These conflicting messages direct us to consider the myth as more than a
mechanism for rephrasing a prior ritual necessity. The mythic disruption of ritual
reality plays on, but does not resolve the opposition between lama and bombo. The
variants of this myth "speculate on insurmountable contradiction" (Levi-Strauss
1968:30; see also 1967:229-30; 1976:65-67) just as the variants of Shiva myths
expose an essential paradox in Hindu worldview (O'Flaherty 1973). The Tamang
myth counterpoises a death-oriented lama to a life-reviving bombo,a binder of oaths to
an irrepressible drum beater, sociality to asociality, the power of Buddhist moral
dominion to the possibility of amoral evil, order to counterorder, determinacy to
716 DAVID HOLMBERG

indeterminacy. The myth rescues the bombo,a mediator, at the same moment that it
asserts oathbound lamaic order and the exorcistic powers of lambu. Paradoxically,the
myth concludes with the irrepressible bombooathbound to be in practice unbound.
These observations suggest the following propositions, which would reorient our
view 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 (or
sacrifice)declare determinate orders in the cosmos, displacing the forces of indetermi-
nacy and the counterworld of "shamanic" rituals, they implicitly announce their
reality. Rather than being irrational, then, ritual complexity and contradiction are as
much the functions of logical tensions as they are of historical evolvements. The myth
is not just the expression of a real conlict between bomboand lamas over ritual
dominion. Rather, it acknowledges that they go hand in hand and that ritual
contradictions, like orthodoxies and heterodoxies historically, may be a function of
religious cultures in general.

Comparative Possibilities

This tension is not unique to the Tamang. Throughout South and Southeast Asia
the religious situation reveals similar patterns. Accounts of Indian religions stress the
simultaneous practice of multiple specialists (Dumont and Pocock 1959b; Rahmann
1959; Dumont 1970b; Wadley 1976; Babb 1975). In the Hindu Himalayas,
brahmanical priests are opposed to shamans (Berreman 1964). The interpretation of
multifaceted ritual systems has been focal in discourse on the Theravada Buddhist
societies 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 possession
along with brahmans among Hindu populations in central and western Nepal
respectively (see also Hofer 1973). Magar religion includes at least shamans, puj&ri,
and brahmans, the latter indispensable in rites of death (Hitchcock 1966; Watters
1975; Jest 1976). The Chantel employ both brahmans and shamans (Michl 1976).
Thakali religion involves not only lamas and brahmans but dromor shamans (Jest
1976; Greve 1981-1982) and jhakhri (Greve 1981-1982). Any attempt to come to
terms with Gurung religion requires attention to the interrelations of lamas,
brahmans, pucu, khlibri, dhame,jhAkhri, and pujari (Pignede 1966; Messerschmidt
1976a, 1976b). Sunuwar society includes naso (priests) and puimboand ngiami (male
and female shamans) (Fournier 1976, 1978). Sherpa-Tamangof Helambu and Tamang
of Langtang (Hall 1978), like their neighbors, the western Tamang, recognize at least
lamas and bombo.Eastern Tamang engage lamas, bombo,and dhami(Fiirer-Haimendorf
1956; Lama 1959; Miller 1979; Peters 1981) and brahmans(Mazudon 1973). Sherpa
society of Solu-Khumbu includes male and female monastics, village lamas, and male
and female shamans (Furer-Haimendorf 1955, 1972; Ortner 1978a; Paul 1976, 1982;
March 1979); Sherpa society increasingly engages Tamang and Kami shamans for
curative service as its Buddhism rationalizes (Paul 1976). Thulung Rai employ tribal
priests and jhakhri (Allen 1976). Limbu recognize yebalyema(male and female
shamans), samba(specialists in oral tradition), and mangbawho deal with the spirits of
those who have died violent deaths (R. L. Jones 1976b); Sagant (1973) analyzes the
relations of two Limbu priests. These patterns are not confined to the hill populations
of Nepal. Newari and other urban groups consult not only Hindu and Buddhist
functionaries and renouncers but an arrayof shamanic healers (Okada 1976); Slusser
(1982) has demonstrated the plural components of Newari religious cosmology. As
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 717

one moves eastward out of Nepal, complexity continues to be the important ethno-
graphic observation. Religious systems in Darjeeling and Kalimpong are marked by
multiple practitioners and ritual domains (MacDonald 1975). The religious system of
the Lepcha includes several specialists (Gorer 1938). Greater Tibetan religion main-
tains shamanic practitioners in conjunction with monastic renouncers and village
lamas (Stein 1972; Berglie 1976; Samuel 1978a, 1978b; Paul 1982).
This review does not do justice to the ethnographic richness of all of these
expressions. Nevertheless, an inescapable pattern of multifaceted religious systems
has emerged. The configurations must be valued as an important observation on the
religious situation in Nepal, which directs us to reframe the image of Nepal as the
simple agglomeration of disparate groups. As Dumont has remarked in reference to
the apparent diversity of India: "The moment we get from haphazard notes to
exhaustive, intensive study, and from isolated features to sets of relations between
features, the empirical diversity recedes"(Dumont 1970a:5). One might tentatively
conclude that most religious systems of Nepal combine and recombine rituals of the
word (whether Buddhist or Hindu), rituals of the sacrificial act, and rituals of
specialists 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 other
Hindu and Buddhist communities of greater Nepal. The relationship between these
components-whether or not they all find expression in particular religious systems
-should be the emphasis of comparative research. From that perspective, the
religious systems of Nepal emerge as combinations and permutations of a more
encompassing field.
Finally, although it may appear that the Tamang have only a degraded form of
Buddhism, a simple stratum superimposed on folk bedrock, Tamang religion, in fact,
holds much in common with its more "prestigious" counterparts (Dumont and
Pocock 1959a:44-45; cf. Obeyesekere 1963; Kirsch 1972). As the symbology of the
memorial death feasts demonstrates, Tamang hold views commensurate with rational-
ized renditions of merit/demerit, karma, suffering, and thisworld/otherworld. Despite
their distinctively traditionalizing or mythologizing idiom (Weber 1969), the Tamang
value words and texts in a fashion similar to "high" styles. The usual tendency is to
view a religious system such as that of the Tamang from the perspective of philosophi-
cally oriented Mahayana/VajrayanaBuddhisms of Tibet or Theravada Buddhisms of
Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. I would suggest that the converse perspective lends
itself 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 rationalized
elaborations. Just as the Tamang retain elements of rationalized Buddhisms in their
religious system, rationalized systems retain something of the mythological or
traditional. All this points to a more extensive comparative endeavor, such as that
suggested by Ortner when she alludes to the possibility that SherpaBuddhism may be
more orthodox than Thai Buddhism (Ortner 1978a: 157-59), and that suggested by
Tambiahwhen he invokes The TibetanBookof theDead in the conclusion to his study of
Thai religion (Tambiah 1970:377).

List of References

Allen, Nicholas. 1976. "ShamanismAmong the Thulung Rai." In Spirit Possession in

theNepal Himalayas, ed. John T. Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 124-140. New
York: International Publications Service.
. 1981. "The Thulung Myth of the Bhume Sites and Some Indo-Tibetan
718 DAVID HOLMBERG

Comparisons."In Asian Highland Societies,ed. Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf,

pp. 168-82. New Delhi: Sterling.
Ames, Michael M. 1964. "MagicalAnimism and Buddhism: A StructuralAnalysis of
the Sinhalese Religious System," In Aspectsof Religionin SouthAsia, ed. EdwardB.
Harper, pp. 21-52. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Babb, Lawrence A. 1975. The Divine Hierarchy.PopularHinduism in CentralIndia.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Berglie, Per-Arne. 1976. "PreliminaryRemarkson Some Tibetan 'Spirit-Mediums'in
Nepal. Kailash. A Journal of Himalayan Studies4. 1:85 -108.
Berreman, Gerald D. 1964. "Brahminsand Shamans in PahariReligion." In Religion
in SouthAsia, ed. EdwardB. Harper, pp. 53-69. Seattle: University of Washing-
ton Press.
Bista, Dor Bahadur. 1972. Peopleof Nepal. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar.
Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry,editors. 1982. Death and the Regeneration of Life.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boon, James. 1973. "FurtherOperations of Culture in Anthropology: A Synthesis of
and for Debate." In TheIdea of Culturein theSocialSciences,ed. Louis Schneider and
Charles M. Bonejan, pp. 1-32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burke, Kenneth. 1970. TheRhetoricof Religion.Studiesin Logology.Berkeley:University
of California Press.
Caplan, Lionel. 1970. Land and Social Changein East Nepal. A Studyof Hindu-Tribal
Relations.Berkeley: University of California Press.
Das, S. C. 1881. "Dispute between a Buddhist and a Bon-po Priest for the Possession
of Mt. Kailas and the Lake of Manasa."Journal of the Asiatic Societyof Bengal
1:206-11.
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Baltimore:John Hopkins University Press.
Dumont, Louis. 1970a. "Towarda Sociology of India." In his Religion, Politics, and
Historyin India, pp. 1-28. The Hague: Mouton.
. 1970b. "World Renunciation in Indian Religions." In his Religion, Politics,
and Historyin India, pp. 3 3-60. The Hague: Mouton.
. 1970c. HomoHierarchicus.An Essayon the CasteSystem.Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Dumont, Louis, and David Pocock. 1959a. "On the Different Aspects or Levels of
Hinduism." Contributionsto Indian Sociology3:40-54.
. 1959b. "Possessionand Priesthood."Contributions to IndianSociology3:55-74.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965. TheElementary Formsof theReligiousLife. New York:The Free
Press.
Ekvall, Robert. 1964. ReligiousObservances in Tibet. Patternsand Function. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Eliade, Mircea. 1974. Shamanism.Archaic Techniquesof Ecstasy. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Elkin, A. P 1944. AboriginalMen of High Degree.New York: St. Martin's.
Evans-Wentz, W Y 1974. The TibetanBookof the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Fournier, Alain. 1976. 'A Preliminary Report on the Puimbo and the Ngiami: The
SunuwarShamans of Sabra."In Spirit Possession in theNepal Himalayas, ed. John T.
Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 100-123. New York:International Publications
Service.
. 1978. "The Role of Priest in Sunuwar Society."In HimalayanAnthropology,
ed. James Fisher, pp. 167-78. The Hague: Mouton.
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 719

Fiurer-Haimendorf,Christoph von. 1955. "Pre-Buddhist Elements in Sherpa Belief

and Ritual." Man 55.61:49-52.
- 1956. "EthnographicNotes on the Tamangsof Nepal." EasternAnthropologist
9.3-4:166-77.
. 1966. "CasteConcepts and Status Distinction in Buddhist Communities in
Western Nepal." In Casteand Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon, ed. Christoph von
Fiurer-Haimendorf,pp. 140-60. New Delhi: Sterling.
. 1972. The Sherpasof Nepal. BuddhistHighlanders.London: John Murray.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Religion as a Cultural System." In his The Interpretation of
Cultures,pp. 87-125. New York: Basic Books.
Gombrich, Richard. 1971. Preceptand Practice. TraditionalBuddhismin the Rural
Highlands of Ceylon.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goody, Jack R., editor. 1968. Literacyin TraditionalSocieties.Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gorer, Geoffrey. 1938. Himalayan Village. An Accountof the Lepchasof Sikkim. New
York: Basic.
Greve, Reinhard. 1981-1982. 'A Shaman'sConcept of Illness and Healing Ritual in
the Mustang District, Nepal." Journal of the Nepal ResearchCentre5.6:99-124.
Hall, Andrew. 1978. "Preliminary Report on the Langtang Region." Contributions to
NepaleseStudies5.2:51-68.
Herrenschmidt, Olivier. 1982a. "Sacrifice,Symbolic or Effective?"In BetweenBelief
and Transgression.' Essaysin Religion,History,and Myth, ed. Michel Izard and Pierre
Smith, pp. 24-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1982b. "Quelles Fetes pour Quelles Castes?"L'Homme22.3:11-30.
Hertz, Robert. 1960. Death and the Right Hand. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press.
Hitchcock, John. 1966. The Magars of Banyan Hill. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
1976. "Introduction."In Spirit Possession in theNepal Himalayas, ed. John T.
Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. xii-xxviii. New York:International Publications
Service.
Hitchcock, John T. and Rex L. Jones, editors. 1976. Spirit Possessionin the Nepal
Himalayas. New York: International Publications Service.
Hofer, Andra's. 1969. "Preliminary Report on Field Research in a Western Tamang
Group, Nepal." Bulletin of the InternationalCommittee and
for UrgentAnthropological
EthnologicalResearch,Vienna 1 1: 17-3 1.
197 la. "Notes sur le Culte du Terroirchez les Tamangdu Nepal." In Langues
et Techniques, in Honourof AndreHandicourt,ed. J. M.
Natureet Sociiti. Contributions
C. Thomas and L. Bernot, pp. 147-56. Paris: Klincksieck.
197 lb. "Some Non-Buddhist Elements in Tamang Religion." Vasudha
4: 17-23.
.1974. "Is the 'bombo'an Ecstatic? Some Ritual Techniques of Tamang
Shamanism." In Contributionsto the Anthropologyof Nepal, ed. Christoph von
Fiurer-Haimendorf,pp. 168-82. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips.
. 1975. "Urgyen Pema und Tusor [recte: Diusurl Bon: Eine Padmasambhava-
Legende der Tamang, Nepal." In Miheliche Uberlieferungen in Sidasien, ed. Her-
mann Berger. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH.
- 1981. TamangRitual TextsI: PreliminaryStudiesin theFolkReligionof an Ethnic
Minorityin Nepal. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Hofer, Andra's,and Bishnu P Shrestha. 1973. "Ghost Exorcism Among the Brahmans
of Central Nepal." CentralAsiatic.Journal 17:51-77.
720 DAVID HOLMBERG

Holmberg, David. 1980. "Lama,Shaman, and Lambu in Tamang Religious Practice."

Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University.
. 1983. "ShamanicSoundings: Femaleness in the Tamang Ritual Structure."
Signs.'Journal of Womenin Cultureand Society.9. 1(Autumn).
Huntington, Richard, and Peter Metcalf. 1979. Celebrations of Death. TheA'nthropology
of MortuaryRitual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jest, Corneille. 1976. "Encounterswith Intercessors in Nepal." In Spirit Possession in
theNepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 294-308. New
York: International Publications Service.
Jones, Rex L. 1976a. "Spirit Possession and Society in Nepal." In Spirit Possession
in the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 1-11.
New York: International Publications Service.
. 1976b. "Limbu Spirit Possession and Shamanism."In Spirit Possession in the
Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 29-53. New
York: International Publications Service.
Jones, Shirley Kurz. 1976. "LimbuSpirit Possession:A Case Study."In SpiritPossession
in theNepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 22-28. New
York: International Publications Service.
Keyes, Charles E, and E. Valentine Daniel, editors. 1983. Karma.'An Anthropological
Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kirsch, A. Thomas. 1972. "The Thai Buddhist Quest for Merit." In SoutheastAsia.'
The Politicsof National Integration,ed. John T McAlister, Jr., pp. 188-20 1. New
York: Random House.
. 1977. "Complexity in the Thai Religious System: An Interpretation."
Journal of Asian Studies36.2:241-66.
Lama, Santabir. 1959. TambaKaiten Hvai Rimthim. Darjeeling.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1963. Totemism.Boston: Beacon.
. 1967. "Structureand Dialectics." In his StructuralAnthropology vol. 1. New
York: Anchor.
. 1968. "The Story of Asdiwal." In TheStructuralStudyof Myth and Totemism,
ed. Edmund Leach, pp. 1-47. London: Tavistock.
1969. The ElementaryStructuresof Kinship. Boston: Beacon.
1976. "ComparativeReligions of Nonliterate Peoples."In StructuralAnthro-
pology,vol. 2, pp. 60-67. New York: Basic.
MacDonald, Alexander. 1975. "The Healer in the Nepalese World." In his Essayson
the Ethnologyof Nepal and South Asia, pp. 113-28. Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak
Bhandar.
March, Kathryn. 1979. "The Intermediacy of Women: Female Gender Symbolism
and the Social Position of Women Among Tamangs and Sherpas of Highland
Nepal." Ph.D dissertation, Cornell University.
. 1983. "Hospitality, Women, and the Efficacy of Beer." Department of
Anthropology and Women's Studies Program, Cornell University. Typescript.
. 1984. "Weaving, Writing, and Gender: Metaphors of Continuity and
Exchange." Man (n.s.) 18.4:729-44.
Mazudon, Martine. 1973. PhonologieTamang.Paris:Societe d'Etudes Linguistiques et
Anthropologiques de France.
Messerschmidt, Donald A. 1976a. "EthnographicObservations of Gurung Shaman-
ism in Lamjung District." In Spirit Possessionin the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T
Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 197-213. New York:International Publications
Service.
RITUAL PARADOXES IN NEPAL 721

* 1976b. The Gurungsof Nepal. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips.

Michl, Wolf D. 1976. "Notes on the jhakhri of Ath Hajar Parbat/Dhaulagiri
Himalaya." In Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T. Hitchcock and
Rex L. Jones, pp. 153-64. New York: International Publications Service.
Milarepa. 1962. TheHundredThousandSongsof Milarepa.Trans. Garma C. C. Chang.
New York: Harper & Row.
Miller, CasparJ. 1979. Faith Healersin the Himalayas. Kirtipur, Nepal: Centre for
Nepal and Asian Studies.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1963. "The Great Tradition and the Little in the Perspective
of Sinhalese Buddhism."Journal of Asian Studies22.2:139-68.
. 1966. "The Buddhist Pantheon in Ceylon and Its Extensions." In Anthropo-
logicalStudiesof TheravadaBuddhism,ed. Manning Nash, pp. 1-26. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University, Southeast Asia Studies Cultural Report Series.
1969. "The Sanni Demons: Collective Representationsof Disease in Ceylon."
Comparative Studiesin Societyand History 11.2:174-216.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. 1973. Asceticismand Eroticismin the Mythologyof Siva.
London: Oxford University Press.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, editor. 1980. Karma and Rebirthin Classical Indian
Traditions.Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1980. "Shamans and Imu: Among Two Ainu Groups:
Towarda Cross-Cultural Model of Comparison."Ethos8.3:204-8.
Okada, Ferdinand. 1976. "Notes on Two Shaman-Curersin Kathmandu."Contributions
to NepaleseStudies3(special issue):107-12.
Ortner, Sherry. 1978a. SherpasThroughTheirRituals. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
. 1978b. The Decline of Sherpa Shamanism. Mimeographed.
Paul, Robert. 1976. "Some Observations on SherpaShamanism."In Spirit Possession in
the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 141-5 1. New
York: International Publications Service.
. 1979. "Dumje: Paradox and Resolution in Sherpa Ritual Symbolism."
AmericanEthnologist6.2:274-304.
. 1982. The TibetanSymbolicWorld:PsychoanalyticExplorations.Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
Peters, Larry.1981. Ecstasyand Healingin Nepal. Malibu, Calif.: Undena Publications.
Pignede, Bernard. 1966. Les Gurungs: Une PopulationHimalayennedu Nepal. Paris:
Mouton.
Rahmann, Rudolf. 1959. "Shamanistic and Related Phenomena in Northern and
Middle India." Anthropos54:681-760.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo. 1971. AmazonianCosmos:TheSexualand ReligiousSymbol-
ism of the TukanoIndians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rinpoche, Guru (according to Karma Lingpa). 1975. The TibetanBook of the Dead:
TheGreatLiberationThroughHearingin theBardo. Trans. FrancescaFreemantleand
Chogyam Trungpa. Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala.
Sagant, Ph. 1973. "PretresLimbu et Categories Domestiques." Kailash: A Journal of
HimalayanStudies 1. 1:41-75.
Samuel, Geoffrey. 1978a. "Religion in Tibetan Society: A New Approach. Part One:
A Structural Model." Kailash: A Journal of HimalayanStudies6.1:45-67.
. 1978b. "Religion in Tibetan Society: A New Approach. Part Two: The
Sherpas of Nepal: A Case Study." Kailash: A Journal of Himalayan Studies
6.2:99-114.
722 DAVID HOLMBERG

Sharma, Prayag Raj. 1978. "Nepal: Hindu Tribal Interface."Contributions to Nepalese

Studies6. 1:1-14.
Shirokogoroff,S. M. 1935. Psychomental Complexof the Tungus.London: Trubner.
Slusser, Mary Shepherd. 1982. Nepal Mandala. A Cultural Historyof the Kathmandu
Valley.VolumeI.' Text. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Spiro, Melford. 1967. BurmeseSupernaturalism. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Stanner, W E. H. 1959-1963. On AboriginalReligion. Oceania Monograph no. 11.
Sydney: University of Sydney.
Stein, R. A. 1972. TibetanCivilization. London: Faber & Faber.
Stone, Linda. 1976. "Concepts of Illness and Curing in a Central Nepal Village."
Contributionsto NepaleseStudies6(special issue):55-80.
Tambiah, StanleyJ. 1968. "Literacyin a Buddhist Village in Northeast Thailand." In
Literacyin TraditionalSocieties,ed. Jack R. Goody, pp. 86-131. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
. 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults of Northeast Thailand. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Toffin, Gerard. 1976. "The Peoples of the Upper Ankhu Khola Valley."Contributions
to NepaleseStudies3. 1:34-46.
Wadley, Susan S. 1976. "The Spirit 'Rides' or the Spirit 'Comes': Possession in a
North Indian Village. In The Realmof the Extra-Human.Agentsand Audiences,ed.
Agehananda Bharati, pp. 233-52. The Hague: Mouton.
Watters, D. 1975. "Siberian Shamanistic Traditions Among the Kham Magar of
Nepal." Contributionsto NepaleseStudies2. 1:123-68.
Weber,Max. 1969. TheSociologyof Religion.Trans. Ephraim Fischoff. Boston: Beacon.
Winkler, Walter. 1976. "Spirit Possession in FarWestern Nepal." In SpiritPossessionin
the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John T Hitchcock and Rex L. Jones, pp. 244-62. New
York: International Publications Service.