Himalayan Anthropology: The Indo-Tibetan Interface

583 Pages·1978·19.595 MB·English

by  James F. Fisher

Himalayan Anthropology
World Anthropology
General Editor
SOL TAX
Patrons
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
MARGARET MEAD
LAILA SHUKRY EL HAMAMSY
Μ. N. SRINIVAS
MOUTON PUBLISHERS · THE HAGUE · PARIS
Himalayan Anthropology
The Indo-Tibetan Interface
Editor
JAMES F. FISHER
MOUTON PUBLISHERS · THE HAGUE · PARIS
Copyright © 1978 by Mouton Publishers. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the
written permission of Mouton Publishers, The Hague
ISBN 90-279-7700-3 (Mouton)
0-202-90067-3 (AVC Inc.)
Indexes by Society of Indexers, Great Britain
Jacket photo by James F. Fisher
Cover and jacket design by Jurriaan Schrofer
Printed in Great Britain
General Editor's Preface
For purposes of teaching and for curating, the peoples and cultures of
the world have traditionally been divided by continents — Europe, Asia,
Africa, Oceania, America — and subcontinents — North, East, West or
Southern Africa, or South or Southeast Asia, or the Middle East, or
Mesoamerica. For purposes of research, however, we usually begin in
much smaller areas — parts of nations, language groups, or even local
communities — and extend our purview in the directions and as far as
needed to provide context for problems in which we are interested. We
may eventually return to a continental perspective, or even one that is
worldwide. With the growth of knowledge, subcontinental areas are
being replaced by others which are smaller or which cut across them or
are interesting in other ways. Thus we now look at areas around a sea, like
the Mediterranean or the Caribbean or the whole Pacific ocean; or
around the North Pole; or along a mountain range like the Andes; or
across vast deserts and/or grasslands; or along natural or political bor-
ders, such as in the present case where colleagues look from all directions
at the Himalayas. Although each scholar develops a particular thesis,
together they provide a general perspective for Himalayan studies. Many
also faced one another for the first time in a Congress designed to bring
new perspectives to Anthropology.
Like most contemporary sciences, anthropology is a product of the
European tradition. Some argue that it is a product of colonialism,
with one small and self-interested part of the species dominating the
study of the whole. If we are to understand the species, our science needs
substantial input from scholars who represent a variety of the world's
cultures. It was a deliberate purpose of the IXth International Congress
of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences to provide impetus in this
direction. The World Anthropology volumes, therefore, offer a first
vi General Editor's Preface
glimpse of a human science in which members from all societies have
played an active role. Each of the books is designed to be self-contained;
each is an attempt to update its particular sector of scientific knowledge
and is written by specialists from all parts of the world. Each volume
should be read and reviewed individually as a separate volume on its own
given subject. The set as a whole will indicate what changes are in store
for anthropology as scholars from the developing countries join in study-
ing the species of which we are all a part.
The IXth Congress was planned from the beginning not only to include
as many of the scholars from every part of the world as possible, but also
with a view toward the eventual publication of the papers in high-quality
volumes. At previous Congresses scholars were invited to bring papers
which were then read out loud. They were necessarily limited in length;
many were only summarized; there was little time for discussion; and the
sparse discussion could only be in one language. The IXth Congress was
an experiment aimed at changing this. Papers were written with the
intention of exchanging them before the Congress, particularly in exten-
sive pre-Congress sessions; they were not intended to be read aloud at the
Congress, that time being devoted to discussions — discussions which
were simultaneously and professionally translated into five languages.
The method for eliciting the papers was structured to make as represen-
tative a sample as was allowable when scholarly creativity — hence
self-selection — was critically important. Scholars were asked both to
propose papers of their own and to suggest topics for sessions of the
Congress which they might edit into volumes. All were then informed of
the suggestions and encouraged to rethink their own papers and the
topics. The process, therefore, was a continuous one of feedback and
exchange and it has continued to be so even after the Congress. The some
two thousand papers comprising World Anthropology certainly then
offer a substantial sample of world anthropology. It has been said that
anthropology is at a turning point; if this is so, these volumes will be the
historical direction-markers.
As might have been foreseen in the first post-colonial generation, the
large majority of the Congress papers (82 percent) are the work of
scholars identified with the industrialized world which fathered our tradi-
tional discipline and the institution of the Congress itself: Eastern Europe
(15 percent); Western Europe (16 percent); North America (47 per-
cent); Japan, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand (4 percent).
Only 18 percent of the papers are from developing areas: Africa (4
percent); Asia-Oceania (9 percent); Latin America (5 percent). Aside
from the substantial representation from the U.S.S.R. and the nations of
Eastern Europe, a significant difference between this corpus of written
material and that of other Congresses is the addition of the large pro-
portion of contributions from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. "Only 18
General Editor's Preface
VII
percent" is two to four times as great a proportion as that of other
Congresses; moreover, 18 percent of 2,000 papers is 360 papers, 10 times
the number of "Third World" papers presented at previous Congresses.
In fact, these 360 papers are more than the total of all papers published
after the last International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnologi-
cal Sciences which was held in the United States (Philadelphia, 1956).
The significance of the increase is not simply quantitative. The input of
scholars from areas which have until recently been no more than subject
matter for anthropology represents both feedback and also long-awaited
theoretical contributions from the perspectives of very different cultural,
social, and historical traditions. Many who attended the IXth Congress
were convinced that anthropology would not be the same in the future.
The fact that the next Congress (India, 1978) will be our first in the
"Third World" may be symbolic of the change. Meanwhile, sober consid-
eration of the present set of books will show how much, and just where
and how, our discipline is being revolutionized.
The reader of the present book will be interested in others in this series
which describe the peoples and cultures of large geographical areas
and/or long ranges of time, as well as those which provide theory to make
understandable both the remarkable variations in human behavior and
their surprising recurrences!
Chicago, Illinois SOL TAX
July 28, 1978

Foreword
The Himalayas are a region traversed by three of the major linguistic,
racial, and cultural dividing lines of Asia. In the valleys of this great
mountain range Indo-Aryan and Tibeto-Burman languages dovetail and
overlap, populations of Caucasian racial features characteristic of North
India met and merged with Mongoloid ethnic groups, and the two great
Asian religions Hinduism and Buddhism coexist there and interact in
various ways, In neither of these spheres are boundaries clear-cut, nor are
the sequences of events which brought about the present kaleidoscopic
pattern easily discernible. While chronological data relating to develop-
ments within the great historic civilizations of the area are fairly well
established, very little is known about the history of the many preliterate
tribal societies which for long filled the interstices between the domains of
more advanced cultures.
The involvement of anthropologists in the study of the cultural dimen-
sion of the Himalayan region is of relatively recent date, and many parts
of that region have been — and indeed still are — virtually inaccessible,
the improvements of communications having been offset by political
restraints. Fortunately there are periodic shifts in the accessibility of the
various areas. While most of the kingdom of Nepal was closed to travel-
ers and scholars at a time when the Indian Himalayas were relatively
open, since the early 1950's the position has been reversed and many
anthropologists are now flocking to Nepal whereas great persistence and
ingenuity are required to gain access to such Indian territories as
Arunachal Pradesh. It is inevitable that the configuration and contents of
the present volume reflect these limitations to the scope for anthropolog-
ical research in the Himalayas.
The question raised by James Fisher as to whether the Himalayas
should be considered a legitimate unit for anthropological study is at least
x Foreword
partly answered by the fact that high mountains impose on the popula-
tions living in their shadow a similar environmental framework of great
rigidity. On the one hand mountain ranges undoubtedly act as barriers
between ethnic groups, but on the other hand movements and trade are
inevitably channeled into a limited number of routes leading through a
tangle of high mountains, and this favors close and repeated contacts
between the various communities compelled to use the same routes. In
lowland country there are no comparable physical features to draw
different ethnic groups together.
The role of trade routes in the spread of civilizations is exemplified by
the channels through which Tibetan Buddhism penetrated into the
Himalayan regions. From Tawang in the eastern Himalayas to places
such as Mustang and Taklakot in the west one can observe the concentra-
tion of Buddhist communities along major trade routes. Where such
routes are lacking — due perhaps to the difficulty of the terrain, such as in
the Subansiri region of Arunachal Pradesh — and trade has never been
more than a trickle of individual barter transactions, there has been no
appreciable infiltration of Tibetan populations and hence no spread of
Buddhist cultural traditions.
After the destruction of the Buddhist civilization inside Tibet by Com-
munist China the Himalayan countries have assumed a new and impor-
tant role as the last refuge of one of the most remarkable creations of the
human spirit. Though originally springing from Indian ideology, Tibetan
Buddhism has developed its own distinctive way of life, and it is fortunate
that though suppressed and partly uprooted in its homeland, this way of
life persists among the Tibetan-speaking communities in the Himalayan
region. The difference between Tibetan and Indian influence in that re-
gion is startling. While the impact of Indian civilization on the indigenous
tribal populations has resulted in the adoption of individual elements
rather than in their wholesale Hinduization, Mahayana Buddhism has
tended to effect in many areas a complete transformation of the local
culture pattern. This process occurred in widely separated regions. Thus
in western Nepal the Thakalis of the Kali Gandaki Valley, undoubtedly
once a preliterate tribal community not very different from Magars and
Gurungs, adopted the whole panoply of Tibetan Buddhist culture com-
plete with monasteries and nunneries, and more than 600 miles to the
east the Sherdukpen of Arunachal Pradesh similarly exchanged an earlier
tribal life-style for a cultural pattern largely modeled on the lines of
Tibetan Buddhist civilization. Though in both cases there have been
casual contacts with Hindu populations of the lowlands, their influence in
cultural and religious matters is not very significant.
Only in the great urban centers of political and economic develop-
ments, such as the triad of towns in the Kathmandu Valley, did a far-
reaching interpenetration of Buddhist and Hindu culture take place, and