Gaden
Relief Projects
Helping
Tibetans preserve their unique culture.
Zangskar
|
The
Smyung gnas Fast in Zangskar:
How Liminality Depends on Structure
By Kim Gutschow
SMYUNG
GNAS IN ZANGSKAR
"In
short, whatever physical and mental sufferings arise
At all times of abiding in the fast,
Thinking that the suffering of all migrators be purified by
this,
May I voluntarily accept the sufferings with the thought to
bring benefit and happiness [to others]..."
It is 2:30
a.m. and the snow falls softly as the lonesome sound of the conch
floats out over the nunnery rooftops, muffled in snow. One by
one, figures emerge from the individual stone cells, straggling
through the thin snowdrifts. The figures move as if pulled by
invisible threads which converge at the doorway of the ancient
temple where the door stands open in expectation of the coming
rite. Odd pairs of shoes are already piled outside the door to
signal the presence of those inside. The bundled figures, mostly
women, squeeze through the narrow, low doorway of the temple which
is lit softly from within by butter lamps. A huge stucco statue
of the 'Eleven Faced One' (bcu gcig zhal) upon whom they will
meditate over the three day fast looms at the front of the room.
After prostrating three times, they settle into a cross-legged
position inside the dark and dank temple. The tightly pressed
bodies slumped against each other afford some comfort against
the numbing cold of the temple walls, I notice. On the right side
of the temple is a raised platform where four monks sit in a row,
shrouded in heavy maroon robes with their heads bowed in drowsy
meditation. They have spent the night in the temple, after finishing
the preparation of the altar offerings (mchod pa byang byes) which
are arrayed amidst the ethereal glow of butter lamps. When all
the participants have arrived, the chantmaster (dbu mdzad) begins
a deep, sonorous chant which signals the start of the ritual.

Why have
these women gathered in this 10th century temple founded by the
famous translator Rinchen Zangpo in Karsha, Zangskar? They are
performing the smyung gnas fasting rite which was founded by a
10th century Kashmiri nuns known as dGe long ma dpal mo (Bhikshuni
Laksmi in Sanskrit). Although born a princess into a royal Kashmiri
family, she became a devout practitioner of Buddhism and sought
desperately to avoid an impending marriage. Tricking her father
and brother into giving her a rich dowry (an elephant loaded with
gold), she fled to a monastery instead. Although the monks were
all too keen to accept her gold, they turned out to be rather
unkind hosts. While she distinguished herself in monastic debates
and eventually became the abbot of the monastery, they grew suspicious
when she was struck with leprosy and withdrew to a retreat chamber.
As rumours circulated about blood dripping through the floor of
her cell, jealous monks suspected her of having a miscarriage
or abortion. Although she was a fully ordained nun (dge long ma)
and they had no proof of their unrelenting accusations, they threw
her out of the monastery. She wandered without food or shelter
until she found a cave where she prayed to Avalokitesvara for
guidance. After practicing austerities for many years, she gained
enlightenment when she attained a vision of the 11-Faced, Avalokitesvara
in his dazzling thousand-armed manifestation. As he offered her
a drink of nectar from the sacred vessel (bum pa) he carries in
one of his many arms, she was cured immediately of her leprosy.
In gratitude, she composed a song of ecstatic liberation which
is still recited by practioners of Tibetan Buddhism a millenium
later.
As Turner
noted: "What the prophet and his [sic] followers actually did
becomes a behavioral model to be represented in stereotyped and
selected liturgical form..."
The fasting
rite which dGe long ma dpal mo founded is known throughout the
Himalayan region where Tibetan Buddhism is practiced. It remains
one of the most popular communal lay practices for removing defilements
and making merit in hopes of a better rebirth. An impressive lineage
of teachers (including the 5th and 7th Dalai Lamas) in Tibet and
Nepal have composed liturgies for the rite. However a full exegesis
of the fasting rite and a translation of her biography (rnam thar)
are lacking. She receives short shrift in classical sources such
as the Blue Annals (1949: 1007) where Gzhon nu dpal spends only
three lines on dGe long ma dpal mo but devotes considerable space
to later male proponents of the rite she initiated. The rite remains
exceedingly popular in Ladakh and Zangskar, two regions of the
Indian Himalaya only several hundred kms from Kashmir, where the
founding nun was born. In central and northern Zangskar alone,
eighteen different smyung gnas fasts are held every year. In the
single Zangskari village of Karsha (pop. 438), three fasts are
held every year. Most fasts are held during auspicious months
(such as the 1st and 4th Tibetan lunar months) and days (i.e.
the full and new moons). Merit accumulated during these times
is multiplied one hundred-thousandfold.
"Spare
fast that with the Gods doth diet..."
John Milton
"Fasting
is useful for expelling demons, excluding evil thoughts, remitting
sins, mortifying vices, giving certain hope of future goods,
and a foretaste [perceptio] of celestial joys..."
Guenther of Paris
The notion
that fasting bring the practitioner closer to divinity is as old
as the Vedas and found in religious traditions throughout the
world. In the Vedic era, the sacrificiant commonly fasted before
the full moon, as a means to purify his body and mark of respect
for the deities who were being propitiated. In Medieval Europe,
fasting signified a means to control or subdue the innate passions
of feminine sexuality, as well as to renounce society's control
over the female body. Rather than trace the history of fasting
in this essay, I shall interpret one fasting rite in Zangskar,
Northwest India.
In applying
Victor Turner's notions of liminality to the smyung gnas fasting
rite, I will show how liminality signifies both the destruction
and creation of structure. While the practioners of the rite experience
a radical dissolution of structure, the organizers of the same
rite are involved in extensive affirmation of that same structure.
The creation of liminality requires elaborate manipulations of
reciprocity, kinship, and household organization. Just as normative
frames are abolished and the liquified state of communitas is
created, an extraordinary nexus of structural relations is also
taking place. To find structure within the ritual process is not
surprising; however, the extent and the significance of this structure
goes far beyond what Turner theorized.
A Zangskari
rite dedicated to the abolishment of normative and structural
relations between members of society becomes an occasion for the
most dramatic affirmation of those same relations. How can a three
day fasting rite initiate one of the most extensive mobilizations
of food, fuel, and labor in the Zangskari ritual calendar? The
smyung gnas fast held at Karsha monastery (with 300 to 500 participants)
brings together more butter, beer, and barley than any other lay
rite or celebration in Zangskar. Although the participants consume
symbolic, communal meals during the rite, this is only a slight
portion of the food and beer alloted for the month long festivities.
Most of the food and beer is consummed during elaborate reciprocal
feasts between sponsors, donors, and monastic beneficiaries of
the rite. While the fasting practioners have renounced commensality
and sociality, the organizers, officiants, and donors of the rite
are fully engaged in those same principles.
The smyung
gnas fast has been interpreted by previous theorists in a many
ways. Ortner (1978) likens the emphasis on generalized altruism
as a means of identifying or merging with Avalokitesvara or Chenrezig
(spyan ras gzigs) whose maternal care is intended to supplant
the familial and parental connections the participant has cast
off. March (1979) sees the ritual as an attempt to cure or avoid
sickness and disease while Schlaginweit (1863) emphasizes the
atonement of sins. The Zangskari fasters whom I interviewed did
not stress identification with the deity nor with the founding
nun but described the rite as a means to remove sin (sdig pa)
and defilements (grib) in hopes of attaining a better rebirth.
"When
a fortunate being abides in the fast,
If the body becomes hot, cold, or exhausted,
May the karma to be reborn in hell by the power of hatred
Be purified and the door to rebirth in hell be closed.
If by
abiding in the fast, experiencing the the sufferings of hunger
and thirst,
And enduring the hardship of abstaining from food and drink,
May the karma to be reborn as a hungry ghost by the power of
greed,
Be purified and the door to rebirth as a hungry ghost be closed.
If one
avoids deliriousness, mental sinking, lethargy, and sleep,
While abiding in the fast without mental distractions,
May the karma to be reborn as an animal by the power of ignorance,
Be purified and the door to animal rebirth be closed..."
The participants
in the fast pray to avoid rebirth in one of the lower three realms
of rebirth (i.e. hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animals) which
lie immediately below the human realm. Since women represent a
lower rebirth (skyed sman) and are more likely to be reborn as
animals, they comprise a large percentage of the fasting practioners.
In two smyung gnas rites I partook of at Karsha nunnery (1994
and 1995), women comprised over three fourths of the participants.
Women's bodies are innately polluted (grib can) by menstruation
and childbirth. In broader moral terms, women represent insatiable
attachment, worldly desires, and uncontrollable passions. This
conception is instantiated in myths of the intensely beautiful,
sman mo deities who seduce and then kill lonely male travelers.
The smyung gnas rite is believed to purify and thus 'liberate'
(sgrol byes) women from both their negative karma and defiled
body. A common proverb suggests that one will be interrogated
about fasting experiences when one reaches the bar do or the intermediate
state after death.

A PARTICIPANT-OBSERVER
VIEW OF THE FAST
On the first
morning of the rite when the chantmaster had finished reading
the liturgical text, the senior most officiating monk (in this
instance, the abbot of Karsha monastery) briefly explained its
meaning. He noted that we carry our sins, bad karma, and defilements
like a basket full of dung which gets heavier and heavier as we
go along. Through our own efforts, we might cast off this load
as if setting down a heavy basket. He warned us not to think of
our hunger or thirst in the coming days, but to focus our minds
on compassion. Then the ritual began in earnest. In unison, we
all rose up and began to recite and prostrate simultaneously,
dedicating ourselves and the merit gained in this rite to the
elimination of suffering for all sentient beings. Next, the monks
performed a mandala (a three-dimensional model of the universe)
out of rice in their laps, and we prostrated while reciting the
ecstatic offering hymn 21 times. After we prayed and prostrated
a third time, the monks then performed an ablution (khrus) in
which saffron water is poured over a brass mirror (me long) while
beings of the six realms of existence are invited to come and
cleanse themselves. Each person drank a drop or two of the ablution
water which symbolized blessing (sbyin rlabs) and purification
(gtsangs par byo byes) in emulation of the founding nun's vision
of Chenrezig.
The officiating
monks recited a few more lines of text before concluding the morning
prayers. We were permitted a brief intermission to stretch our
legs and circumambulate the temple. After the cool darkness of
the windowless temple, the village landscape below appeared bright,
harsh, and slightly unreal. The tiny villagers toiling in the
fields seemed immeasurably distant; as remote as if seen from
an airplane window. As we circumambulated the temple chatting
about news from distant villages (who was getting married to whom,
who had died, and who had given birth), I fell into step besides
a group of Zangskari women and girls. One woman explained that
she was performing her 15th smyung gnas fast in order appease
the evil affects of karma accumulated in this life. She was a
'fallen' nun who had gotten pregnant by a monk at the nearby monastery.
She and her lover had been driven out of the village and had lived
in exile in a neighboring district for several years. Other reasons
given for doing a smyung gnas were: to get out of the house, to
purify the bad karma of a child's death, and to visit the shops
in Karsha village.
After the
short break, we filed back into the temple for another set of
recitations, prostrations, mandala, and ablutions, punctuated
sweet and salty tea. Village men had been pressed into service
as cooks and bearers. Quickly and efficiently, they served us
each a precise portion of pa ba dough, clarified butter, a dollop
of buttermilk (ta ra), three flat breads (gro dkar), and a measure
('bre) of roasted barley flour (tsam pa). After polishing off
the meal, we each mixed the last bit of tea with tsam pa in our
cups in order to make a portion of dough which we rubbed over
our bodies before squeezing it throught the palm of the left hand
in order to make an irregular shape or chang bu. When the chang
bu are collected, carried outside, and tossed off the cliff as
symbolic food for the demons, defilements (grib )are removed from
the body. Through these actions, the fasting participants symbolically
move into the ascetic realm.
After lunch,
we performed a large circumambulation (skor ba) of Karsha's fields,
village, and monastic sites. The circumambulation transforms the
landscape into a sacred mandala or cosmogram, which is imbued
with religious meaning and symbolism. The route is a precise explication
of how a landscape may be considered a didactic message for the
faithful and knowledgeable pilgrim. Ani Padma showed us the self-manifesting
(rang byon) Maitreya Buddha high in the cliff above Karsha village.
In the boulders near the cremation grounds at the eastern (downstream)
end of the village, she found the self-arisen images of a crow,
bones, and mustard seeds as well as the rounded hollows which
were the cups from which the hungry ghosts ( yi dvags) could drink
their portion of clarified butter. Esoteric and mundane reality
were superimposed upon each other like a palimpset.
After we
climbed up the steep western cliff face to the nunnery, we returned
to the cool comfort of the darkened temple for third set of recitations
and prostrations. After the final evening ablution, the presiding
abbot gave a sermon explaining how we should meditate, move, and
sleep for the next 36 hours. We were to remain silent (except
while praying) and to abstain from any food or drink. We should
even avoid swallowing our own spittle. One friend cautioned:
"You
must try not to feel sleepy or hungry during the prostrations.
If you fall asleep you will be reborn as a donkey [i.e. as a
sign of how 'unawake' or ignorant you are] and if you feel hungry
you will be reborn as a cow [i.e. a sign of how simple mindedly
you are attached to your stomach]."
The abbot
had given us instructions on the yoga of sleeping specifying the
posture, the last thought to have upon going to sleep, and the
first thought to have upon rising. Falling into my bed in an exhausted
stupor, I barely had time to pray not to oversleep the next morning.
Long before
dawn, I awoke to a gentle shake of my shoulders. After hastening
to the temple where the others were gathered, we performed three
sets of recitations, prostrations, a mandala, and an ablution
just as the day before, this time without food, tea, or talk.
The silence was a bit uncanny; ordinarily chit chat would flow
like water between such densely clustered bodies. By the third
morning, the forlorn sound of the conch and the pale moon setting
on the purple western horizon was familiar. The meditation were
having their visceral as well as mental effect. While the prayers
were recited so hastily as to be nearly incomprehensible, their
underlying import had begun to pervade the very pores of our bodies.
After one
set of prayers, the last drops of ablution water were distributed
around the room to bodies humbly bowed to receive them. Miraculously,
the servers appeared, bearing flasks of steaming hot tea and plates
of tsam pa. When we each had received tea and a handful of tsam
pa, we recited an offering song (mchod pa) as thanks for the food
we were about to take. Collectively, we each bowed our heads to
the bowls of tea and took that indescribably delicious sip of
hot sweet nectar. The servers then brought fried breads (khu ra),
salty tsam pa porridge (thug pa or thug skyang), sweet rice ('bras
sil), endless rounds of salt tea, and finally another measure
('bre) of tsam pa as a symbolic blessing (sbyin rlabs) for having
completed the fast. The food was too rich a repast. I understood
how meditators could subsist on a few morsels of food a day. When
the abbot finished his prayers, we took a closing vow and asked
forgiveness for any inadvertent mistakes committed in the course
of the ritual.
Stepping
out into the scorching daylight was to be burnt by fire. In retrospect,
the rigors of the fast were transformed into a luxurious escape
from desire. As the worldly sphere rushed in, one had no choice
but to submit its mundane demands. Some women were sent to fetch
barley flour while a few men purchased the requisite candies and
biscuits which were needed for the communal offering (tshogs),
which are consumed by the practitioners at the close of most Buddhist
rites of blessing (but not exorcisms). After partaking of the
communal meal, we gathered in the courtyard in front of the temple
to engage in a customary bonding ceremony in which one finds a
religious soulmate. Each participant placed a bangle, ring, or
some personal item in a brass plate which then was passed to the
presiding abbot. He drew items from the plate, two at a time,
whose owners were thus declared to be 'religious brethren' (chos
spun). The chos spun are considered helpmates in this lifetime
as well as the only individuals whom one will recognize in the
intermediate state (bar do) after death. Later that afternoon,
a larger offering cake (tshogs) and long life pills (tshe ril)
were served at the long life initiation (tshe dbang) held annually
in the nunnery courtyard.
HOW DOES
SMYUNG GNAS REPRESENT LIMINALITY?
The fasting
ritual is a classic example of a rite of passage whose three stages
were defined by Van Gennep: separation, limen (or threshhold),
and re-aggregation. The ritual process of fasting takes participants
to a time out of time where ordinary conventions and codes are
abandoned, before returning the participants to society imbued
with fundamental insights and new status. By undergoing a necessary
hardship (fasting) practitioners move into a purified or higher
state. Three major characteristics of liminality may be identified:
( 1) voluntary poverty or an abolishment of status, rank, and
hierarchy; (2) sensory deprivation, abstention of sociality, and
total obedience; and (3) sacred initiation into Buddhist notions
of renunciation and withdrawal.
The smyung
gnas rite presents a unique organization of space within the temple
room where the practioners have gathered. The fasting participants
not only come together in one room where they sit on the same
hard and cold floor, but also abandon the basic hierarchies of
space so important in most Zangskari transactions, whether public
or private. The spatial anonymity of the fast is opposed to the
spatial codes normally in effect. In most public and private gatherings,
strict norms regulate the type of room, the quality of rugs and
furniture, as well as the porcelain, silverware, and food offered
to each guest. Ordinarily, guests are received and treated in
a manner as befits their station and rank relative to the host.
The absence of rugs or furniture for the fasting participants
indicates a status leveling which is emblematic of liminality
during the ritual process.
Strikingly,
the temple space where participants gather is not organized in
accordance with the most fundamental principles of Zangskari rank
and order. Seating orders or gral are a basic and defining feature
of any formal events or gathering in Zangskar. A few basic principles
of rank are maintained:
(1) Monastic
celibates (monks and nuns according to seniority and status).
(2) Aristocrats and other honored members of lay society (doctors
or am chi ).
(3) Lay men and then women in descending age.
Most rooms
are arranged with two such seating rows whose head (mgo) is furthest
from and whose tail ('jug) is nearest to the door. In contrast,
during the fasting rite there are no visible rows or other formal
divisions of gender or rank. Although the monks are seated above
and separate from participants the men and women are randomly
arrayed in the temple space. Distinctions between the sexes lapse
as men and women are randomly integrated and perform identical
ritual observances. Since most participants maintain the same
seating spot over the three day rite, the lack of seating order
is neither accidental nor oversight. Randomization between young
and old as well as the two genders is deliberate. When the tea
bearers serve young before old or women before men, they contradict
the ordinary but profound hierarchies of male over female and
age over youth. Ideally, rank, property, and gender distinctions
do not intrude into the fast. In practice, women wear a modest
display of jewelry and their turquise headdresses in order to
honor the deities being propitiated.
The Tantric
visualizations and the symbolic potency of the fasting experience
cleanse the 'doors of perception' and bring the practioner into
an heightened state of awareness. The auditory, visual, and olfactory
aspects of the rite are polysemic symbols which cleanse the practitioners
dull senses and prepare them for new levels of awareness. The
sensory deprivation of sitting in a cool, darkened, and quiet
temple for three days, fasting, praying, and prostrating creates
an altered state of consciousness in the practitioner. The absence
of food add a slightly hallucinogenic state. The towering statue
of Chenrezig looming at the front of the temple slowly impresses
itself upon the mind's eye. The smell and sight of the flickering
butter lamps remind the practitioners of impermanence. Although
they die one by one, they miraculously alight when refilled. They
provide comforting warmth, yet the flickering shadows cast on
the cold walls are illusory reminders of attachment and emptiness.
The offering cakes and bowls filled with water, barley corns,
incense, and dried flowers are offerings made to sentient beings
of the six realms of existence whose assistance is enjoined upon
in the course of the ritual. The ablution water is visualized
as a mystical substance which washes away sin and defilement.
"The
wisdom (mana) that is imported in sacred liminality is not just
an aggregation of words and sentences; it has ontological value,
it refashions the very being of the neophyte..."
More than
most other rites attended by laypeople (i.e. intiations, teachings,
monastic dances, or pilgrimages), the smyung gnas fast incorporates
its teachings in immediate and visceral ways. The physical isolation
of living at the nunnery reinforces the vows of celibacy and temperance.
The most dramatic marker of this monastic setting is the prohibition
against song and dance so common to most village festivals. The
coolness and physical isolation of the temple from the village
concerns afford a respite from the heat of the day as much as
from the inexorable duties and desires of village life. As the
ritual progresses, the abstentions from commensality become more
severe. All social intercourse is severed and the participants
are forbidden to speak, eat, and drink for 36 hours.
The denial
of commensality signals a sharp removal from the mundane sphere
for most practioners. However, this removal is not intended to
be permanent. The rite neither proseletizes nor urges the participants
to become monastics or abandon their families. The abandonment
of ordinary Zangskari norms of hospitality does prod practitioners
to reflect on the contrast between their own social norms and
a deeper Buddhist ethos. A profound paradox emerges. Universal
compassion demands that enemies and friends of all rank be treated
alike. In contrast, Zangskari hospitality requires detailed attention
to difference: whether it be the seat or rug given, or the type
of bowl and food offered. Non-attachment is opposed to the pragmatic
and calculated reciprocity which underlies Zangskari social ethics.
How are these conflicts resolved in the course of the rite? In
Buddhist philosophy, mundane action and ultimate renunciation
represent, respectively, conventional and absolute truths. As
lay villagers sojourn in the monastic realm, the the distance
between the two levels is collapsed.
"We
are presented, in such rites [of liminality] with a 'moment
in and out of time,' and in and out of secular social structure,
which reveals, however fleetingly, some recognition (in symbol
if not always in language) of a generalized social bond that
has ceased to be and has simultaneously yet to be fragmented
into a multiplicity of structural ties."
During the
course of the rite, the practitioner is removed from her daily
habitus of duties and obligations to household and kin. Most women
I interviewed were keenly aware of the household obligations they'd
left behind and their inevitable return to this bondage. Women
are the anchors to which the household is tied and upon whom children,
husbands, and livestock depend for their daily feed. Few women
have the chance to travel or study for longer periods outside
their marital villages. In contrast, men are expected to trade,
travel, seek their fortunes in distant places although it is hoped
they will return to the hearth to share their earnings and stories.
While women often express a wish to do smyung gnas , they regret
that nobody can take their place and so they miss the chance to
do so.
HOW LIMINALITY
DEPENDS UPON STRUCTURE
Contrary
to Turner's theory that the liminal moment is temporarily and
spatially opposed to the normative and structural frames of society,
I suggest that the exercise of liminality simultaneously denies
and affirms structure. What does Turner mean by structure? Roughly
put, structure is a patterned arrangement or of roles, statuses,
moral codes, and jural norms as well as the processes or ordered
regularities by which these are related. Turner's notion of structure
is neither empirical nor fixed; it is an ordered regularity which
permeates social life and institutional forms but remains in continual
and creative flux.
Turner spoke
of liminality (or communitas, a closely related concept) as the
emptiness which holds society together, just as the hole at the
center of the chariot wheel holds the spokes in place. While Turner
was interested in how structure depends on liminality, I focus
on how liminality depends on structure. The fasting rite depends
upon an elaborate mobilization of the very norms that the practioners
are renouncing: i.e. hierarchy, social reciprocity, and hospitality.
Every aspect of the rite, from food to fuel to labor, demands
a formalized commensality between donors (sbyin bdag) and sponsors
(gnyer pa) which depends on principles of hiearchy as well as
allegiance to kin, village, and clergy.
In order
to show how liminality depends on structure, I contrast two fasts
held annually in Karsha village: at the nunnery and at the monastery.
The monastic smyung gnas fast involves ten times as many participants
as the nunnery's fast; however, the difference is more than simply
a matter of scale. The monastic rite reveals century-old patron
client relations between the monastery and villages which are
conspicuously absent in the case of the nunnery. While the events
of the monastic fast stretch over a month, the nunnery's fast
never lasts more than a week. Both fasts brings people from all
over Zangskar to make merit, visit with friends, and make purchases,
or fix trade and wedding negotiations. While both fasts are held
during the Great Prayer Festival (smon lam chen mo) of their respective
institution, only the monastic fast will receive an excess of
donations which are then used to sponsor the monks prayers at
this time.
DONATIONS
AND SOLICITATIONS
The monastery's
fast involve tremendous resources of butter, barley, fuel, and
labor which represent historical links of patronage. Before the
Dogra invasion of 1834, the byang ngos or 'northern' region which
lies north of the Doda River (spanning some 85 kms from Abran
to Rinam) was under the jurisdiction of the King of Padum and
the Minister (blon po) of Karsha. Through gifts by the king and
noble families, the monastery acquired considerable land in this
region which is still leased out to villagers. During the fast,
these villages have unique obligations in the form of grain and
labor taxes (skyed dang u lag). More than a century ago, Karsha
monastery gave each household in this region a monetary loan of
1 Dolo, a British silver dollar used during the Raj. As interest
(skyed) on this 'loan', each household still pays ten kilos of
barley to the monastery every year. This barley provides the beer
which donors drink after bringing donations to the festival. Excepting
the few houses who have repaid the loan, there are roughly 175
houses in 23 villages and hamlets which pay this barley tithe.
The two households who serve as sponsors for the monastery's annual
fast are only chosen from the byang ngos region.
Two sponsors
or gnyer pa who organize the fasts at the nunnery and the monastery
solicit donations of food, cash, and kind the length and breadth
of Zangskar. The sponsor's hold 'begging beers' (long chang) for
months beforehand in order to solicit donations for the upcoming
fast. An entire village is invited to drink barley beer (chang)
at these parties. The sponsor waits until his guests are sufficiently
inebriated before inviting them one by one to stand up and pledge
a donation. Months later, the donors travel on foot or horseback
from distant valleys to deliver their promised goods as well as
catch up on the latest gossip and purchase items unavailable where
they live.
While the
nunnery's fast required only ten such begging beers, the monastery's
fast involved forty two beers in 1995. The fruits of these begging
beers are varied: the Muslims in Padum donated over 3000 rupees
and 1000 kg of barley which was roasted and ground into flour
(tsam pa) in Abran. The Muslims can afford to be generous with
their barley since they do not drink chang like the Buddhists
and so have an excess of this crop. In Lungnag valley where grain
is short but butter plentiful, the sponsors received 30 kg butter
alone. Elsewhere donations include: butter, barley, money, and
other food items as well as pledges to for monetary gifts ('gyeb
) during the monks Great Prayer Festival. While the monastic fast
requires four times as many begging beers as the nunnery's fast
does, the donations collected are up to tenfold as Table 1 shows.
Table
1: Expenditures and Collections for the Fast
| |
Nunnery
1994 |
Nunnery
1995 |
Monastery
1994 |
| Goods
Bought |
|
|
|
| Butter,
Ghee, Lard (kg) |
32
|
43
|
?
|
| Ration
Flour (kg) |
20
|
40
|
600
|
| Rice
(kg) |
20
|
40
|
400
|
| Meat
(Rs) |
1000
|
1500
|
7000 |
| Oil
(kg) |
2
|
2
|
15
|
| Kerosene
(L) |
30
|
40
|
220 |
| Sugar
(kg) |
5
|
6
|
50
|
| Salt
(kg) |
10
|
10 |
40 |
| Dried
Apricots (kg) |
1
|
2
|
100
|
| Blessing
Scarves (#) |
28
|
35
|
2000 |
| Tibetan
(Green) Tea (kg) |
?
|
3
|
32 |
| Black
Tea (kg) |
0.6
|
0.7
|
5
|
| Goods
Solicited |
|
|
|
| Beer
(kg barley) |
105
|
105
|
1500
|
| Home-made
Flour (kg) |
200
|
120
|
1700
|
| Flat
Breads (bushels) |
6
|
6
|
40
|
| Wood
Loads (60 kg) |
60
|
60
|
?
|
| Butter
and Lard (kg) |
31.6
|
22
|
930
|
| Money
(Rs) |
5733
|
5302
|
35,000
|
|
The firewood
is a precious and non-renewable resource in Zangskar. Strict rules
regulate how much firewood can be collected in different uncultivated
lands, which each 'belong' to a specific village whose members
have sole rights for foraging in those areas. Fuel is solicited
both nunnery and monastery fasts with an obligatory beer fest.
For the nunnery's fast, every main and subsidiary house (khang
chen and khang chung) is requrired to send one load of firewood
to the sponsors.
Fuel for
the monastery's fast is collected in early springtime, some ten
months before the actual event. Enough wood is needed to fire
hearth fires continuously for more than two months while cooking
the barley beer and feeding the donors. The sponsors for the fast
use the springtime circumambulation of the fields ('bum 'khor)
in order to solicit such prodigious quantities of firewood from
the neighboring five village region (yul gsum lnga) Following
in the tracks of a party of monks on horseback, the sponsors announce:
four days hence, whosoever shows up with a load of wood is invited
to drink beer. When the villagers arrive on the appointed day
with heavy loads of thistlewood on their back, they are greeted
with a hearty meal and enough barley beer to ensure that all become
sufficiently drunk. As the beer flows like water, the tired villagers
forget the hardship of going down to the riverbed, digging out
the thistlewood (tsher ma) with unweildy pick axes, and bearing
the awkward loads to Karsha. Altogether, nearly 200 loads of wood
are collected.
The fasts
monopolize tremendous resources of barley and butter, which are
the bone and marrow of Zangskari livelihood. In short, these resources
are labor incarnate. Barley is an essential home-grown resource
which provides tsam pa and chang, the dry and wet staples of the
Zangskari diet. Local butter is solid gold. It is far preferred
to the inferior Indian (Amul) butter sold in stores. An elaborate
system of corvee labor ('u lag) enables the monastery to ensure
that sufficient supplies of precious Zangskari butter arrive at
the monastery shortly before the festival. If the butter were
delivered in the summer, it would rot long before the festival.
The porterage system involves ten stages between Abran and Karsha
(some 80 kms) and roughly 15-20 persons depending on how many
loads are to be carried. After each stage, a new set of villagers
from the next hamlet will take up their burdens, which often weigh
no less than seventy pounds.
The sponsors
must also organize personnel for monastic fast: six or seven friends
will serve as cooks, food bearers, water carriers (chu ma), and
chang servers (chang ma) for the month long reciprocal feasting
which preceds and follows the fast. The cooks at the nunnery's
fast often includes the men who will serve as next year's sponsors
who treat this as a kind of trial run. Two kitchens with complete
set of cooks and bearers are required: one at the sponsor's house
where visiting donors are feasted, and one at the temple for the
fasting participants. Pots, cauldrons, utensils, and other furniture
(rugs, low tables, blankets for the monks ) are carried up to
the makeshift kitchen at the temple, while the sponsor's kitchen
in the village borrows from the neighbors.
RECIPROCAL
FEASTING AT THE MONASTERY'S FAST:
Two weeks
before the fast takes place, on the 25th day of the 12th Lunar
month, the sponsors hold a special dinner (gong gzhugs) for the
monks whose assistance they depend upon in the next month. On
the 4th day of the first month, the load bearers ('u lag pa) arrive
at the sponsors house where they are fed with beer and a rich
meal in return for their efforts. The next day, the butter they've
brought is weighed by the monastery's treasurers (de ba) who are
especially skilled at this task since they collect hundreds of
kilos of butter in tithes each year. On the 6th day of the first
month, the sponsors host the monastic officiants and all monks
who attended the opening meal on the 25th to a lavish feast.
During the
three day fast, the upper kitchen at the temple feeds the fasting
participants and the celibates assembled for the concurrent Great
Prayer Festival, while the lower kitchen at the sponsor's house
serves donors around the clock. After the fast is complete, the
festivities are hardly over. Every night for one month beer flows
like water in the sponsor's house. The sponsor must spare nothing
to host the lay donors who have brought offerings to the monastic
fast, prayer festival, and two fire sacrifices (sbyin sreg) all
of which are held in the first Tibetan month. By the middle of
the month, the sponsors invite the same group of monks invited
earlier to a 'cut-off dinner' ( 'or cad). Shortly thereafter,
the sponsors are hosted and thanked by the monastery's treasurers
(de ba). Between the 17th and the 22nd, the sponsors and their
assistants are hosted in most monastic cells, turn by turn. The
monks spoil their guests with the finest foods, richest butter
tea, and liberal portions of Indian Army rum as well as local
distilled spirits ('a rag). Afterwards, the sponsors returns the
favor by calling all of the monks who hosted him to a 'return
feast' (sgron lan) at his house.
During the
'completion tea' or mthon ja, the sponsors offer an entire day
of food (nyin 'khor) to the assembly of monks. They also present
the annual gift ( 'byor phyags or blessed treasure ) which will
be listed amongst the monastery's permanent collection. Gifts
range in cost from from 8-25 thousand rupees and include statues,
texts, thankas, other hangings, and other ritual items. Significantly,
such a gift is not given to nunnery by the sponsor of the nunnery
fast. Between the 25th and the 29th, the sponsors are hosted by
households in Karsha village. This too demands a return feast
at the sponsors house where all these Karsha hosts are invited.
On the last day of the month, the sponsors house finally falls
silent after nearly thirty days of continuous partying and hosting.
CONCLUSION:
"Structure,
or all that which holds people apart, defines their differences
and constrains their actions, is one pole in a charged field,
for which the opposite pole is communitas, or anti-structure
[the egalitarian sentiment for humanity of which David Hume
speaks] representing the desire for a total, unmediated relationship
between person and person..."
Turner posed
a dialectical theory of structure and anti-structure (called liminality
or communitas ). He argued that society necessarily had these
two modalities, one composed of the rules and norms, while the
other was unconstrained, spirited, and radically transcendent.
Turner identified the former realm of structure with the patterned
or regulatory arrangements by which human societies are hierarchically
arranged and by which men are fundamentally divided from each
other. In the latter or liminal realm, status, rank, and other
divisions were temporarily but noticeably absent. In the liminal
moment, the deepest ideals of society can be apprehended because
individuals have stepped outside or risen above the walls and
barriers that usually obstruct against such realizations.
Turner's
theory opposed liminality and structure. While both modalities
were essential to human existence, they would replace one another
or be transformed into one another, turn by turn. Turner later
synthesized these two modalities and refined his theory of liminality
as generative moment which was already evolving into structure
even as it is born and unfolds. He considered that liminality
was evanescent because it was always already returning to structure.
In temporal terms, these two modalities were successive but never
concurrent moments in history or a single ritual process. For
Turner, liminality and structure could not co-exist in the same
time and space.
This central
aspect of Turner's theory requires a slight revision. This essay
modestly tries to show how structure and liminality are not dialectically
or sequentially related, but are mutual and integral components
of the same ritual process like yin and yang. Put another way,
the liminal core and the outer structure of every ritual process
are like two faces of the same coin. The creation of liminality
requires elaborate structural relations. In the end ritual both
destroys and rebuilds the world it seeks to remake. As Geertz
so eloquently noted, ritual fuses the worlds as lived and imagined.
Only through dissolution of the world as lived, can one build
that which was formerly imaginary.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This essay
is dedicated to the nuns and villagers of Karsha. I thank Garkyid
and Skalzang Lhamo for their kind hospitality, as well as the
Lonpo, Sonam Angchug for his guidance and inspiration. Thanks
to Martijn van Beek, Hannah Havnevik, and Mick Khoo for earlier
readings of the manuscript.
*Gutschow,
Kim 1999. The Smyung Gnas Fast in Zangskar, Northwest India:
How Liminality Depends on Structure. In Ladakh: Culture, History,
and Development Between Himalaya and Karakorum. Martijn van
Beek and Kristoffer Bertelsen, eds. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute
of Asian Studies. Pp. 153-173.
Yes! I want to help! Your
donations will go directly to the Tibetans in need. Gaden Relief
has a sterling record of putting over 95% of donations to work
in the Tibetan communities. All of our staff are volunteers and
pay our own expenses. So you can rest assured that your donations
will be put to maximum effect to help Tibetans.
|