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A Nepalese Shamanism and the Classic Inner Asian Tradition

Author(s): John T. Hitchcock


Source: History of Religions, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Nov., 1967), pp. 149-158
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1061768
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John T. Hitchcock A NEPALESE
SHAMANISM AND THE
CLASSIC INNER
ASIAN TRADITION

Although shamanism is a widespread phenomenon, the locus


classicus is Central and North Asia, a result both of its dramatic
nature, reported in detail by Russian ethnographers, and of its
religious centrality in such an immense area.1 For non-Russian
scholars, the opportunity to study the shamanism of Central and
North Asia disappeared, or was severely curtailed, following World
War I and, in subsequent years, the religion has been much affected
by policies of the Soviet state.2 In Tibet, there have been no studies
of shamanism comparable to those made further to the north and,
even if Tibet soon were to be opened to international scholarly re-
search, it is doubtful that shamanism would be found to have
survived there in its earlier form. The result of contemporary
political developments, in sum, has been to remove Inner Asian
shamanism as a subject for field investigation, except for a few
scholars with proper national credentials, and to change it mar-
kedly or in some places perhaps even to eliminate it. If a version of
this religion were viable and socially important today in a region
This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in Nepal in 1960-62 and supported
by the National Science Foundation. I am grateful to the Wenner-Gren Founda-
tion for Anthropological Research, Inc., for providing support during the time
the paper was written.
1 Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York:
Bollingen Foundation, 1963), p. 4.
2
Henry N. Michael (ed.), Studies in Siberian Shamanism (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press).
149
Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Tradition

accessible to international scholarship, it would be a fact of signi-


ficance. With this possibility in mind, it is worth raising the ques-
tion of whether or not a type of shamanism found in Nepal
resembles the type that existed during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries in Central and North Asia.
Inner Asian shamanism is a complex religious phenomenon, and
during the long course of its history it has picked up many ele-
ments and dropped others. In his analysis of the religion, Eliade
describes various patterns he refers to as "classic shamanism,"3
with "great shamans"4 or "masters"5 as its practitioners. The
various local manifestations of Inner Asian shamanism, those that
appear in the ethnographic descriptions, always were to some
degree decadent either in the sense that various elements of the
classic pattern were absent or in the sense that extraneous elements
were present. Classic shamanism thus is a construct, though one
also held by various Inner Asian peoples who believed it existed
in the past and was exemplified by practitioners they sometimes
referred to as "old shamans."6 Whether the religion in this pure
form actually ever was realized is a question that need not concern
us. Its utility as an analytical tool remains unaffected.
The classic practitioner performed within a tradition of belief in
the migratory soul and, having induced a trance by means of
magico-religious music, he released his soul to journey up to the
sky or down to the underworld. While his soul traveled in the
other world, he would enact its adventures, miming dramatically
its encounters with good and evil spirits. Such flights enabled him
to divine the future, either because he traveled in a world where
the future was open to his soul's eye or because the soul could use
clairvoyant spirits as informants. In his trance, he also conducted
souls of the dead to the afterworld or souls of sacrificed animals to
the spirit for whom they were intended. It was his technique of
magic flight, moreover, that enabled the old shaman to perform
one of his primary functions, that of healing. Since some illnesses
were a result of the soul's straying away from the body or being
stolen, it was the shaman who could effect a cure; for once having
ascertained the whereabouts of the lost soul during his seance, he
could brave the perils of the other world to bring it back. Psycho-
pompism of this kind and soul journeys to the heavens and the
underworld are amply documented throughout Inner Asia.7
3 Eliade, op. cit., p. 256. 4 Ibid., p. 227.
5 Ibid., p. 228. 6 Ibid., pp. 219, 237, 257.
7 Ibid., pp. 38, 76, 190-214, 220, 225, 232-33, 237, 247, 254.
150
Most shamans of Inner Asia called helper spirits to aid them in
otherworldly journeys or to give information. But it was charac-
teristic of the classic practitioner that he could "communicate
with the dead, 'demons,' and 'nature spirits' without thereby be-
coming their instrument."8 Though he might actually embody a
spirit so that it could speak through his mouth, he did not lose his
own identity and selfawareness.
Belief in the shaman's otherworldly journey explains many
ritual elements of the Inner Asian tradition. Symbols of magical
flight were common throughout the area. Among the Altaians of
the south as well as among the Samoyed of the north, the shamans'
caps were decorated with feathers, and even among the Manchus,
who had been strongly influenced by Sino-Buddhist culture, the
headgear was made of feathers and imitated a bird. Some peoples,
including the Altaians, tried to make the costume as a whole re-
semble a bird: The costume of the Soyot might even be con-
sidered "a perfect ornithophany."9 Iron disks representing the
sun and moon were sewn to the shamans' caftans, and these ob-
jects were painted on shamans' storage chests and drums.10 Be-
cause of its swiftness, the reindeer provided a characteristic means
of making the shamanic journey, and the hide was used for making
caftans and drumheads. The horse was similarly used and, among
the Buryat, the shaman in his trance mounted a hobby horse
decorated with numerous bells.11 When the Yenisei Ostyak
shaman leapt during his dance, it was taken as a sign of his
special powers: His soul had left the world and was ascending the
heavens or going down into the underworld as seer or psycho-
pomp.12
Some ascensional elements apparently had been borrowed from
other cultures and religions. A model of a ladder appears fre-
quently as a ritual motif, and the suggestion has been made that
it came from the Mithraic mysteries which made use of a ladder
having seven rungs.13 The number "seven" in this context stands
for the seven celestial regions, a conception deriving ultimately
from Mesopotamia.14 Ladders with nine rungs also appear, and in
the ascensional context the number "nine" also refers to the
heavenly spheres, a conception, whatever its ultimate origin, that
8 Ibid., p. 6.
9 Ibid., pp. 155-57.
10 Ibid., pp. 149, 151, 172.
11 Ibid., pp. 147, 149-50, 156, 171.
12 Ibid., p. 223.
13 Ibid., p. 121.
14 Ibid., p. 15.
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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Tradition

is part of classical Indian astronomy.15 In Tibet, both ladders and


ropes are common ascensional elements.16 In shamanic initiations,
the neophyte climbs to the top of a tree under the guidance of an
already initiated and proficient shaman.17 Among the Buryat,
neophyte shamans make clairvoyant pronouncements from the
tops of nine trees, climbing each in turn and making nine notches
at their summits, each symbolizing one of the nine heavens.8l In
the Altaic tradition, the magic flight-indicated ritually by the
shaman's climbing a tree or post notched with seven or nine steps
-is conceived of as a journey during which the shaman over-
comes seven or nine obstacles, encountering one at each threshold
of the seven or nine heavens he must enter.19
With this very condensed conception of classic Inner Asian
shamanism in mind, a conception whose core is the soul's magic
flight, let us turn to a Nepalese shamanism and see that similarities
and differences appear. The Nepalese complex is found in the
Bhuji (birch tree) river valley. Located in west central Nepal
south of the Dhaulagiri massif, the Bhuji river, plus the adjacent
Nishi river, form the major northwestern tributaries of the Bari,
itself a tributary of the Kali Gandaki. The valley is about a week's
trek due west of the bazaar town of Pokhara, which can be
reached from Kathmandu by air. Via the trading center of Butwal,
it is about a week's trek from the Indian border and about the
same distance from Tibet via the Kali Gandaki and Mustang. The
Bhuji valley is settled mostly by members of the Magar and
Metalworker castes, each accounting for about a third of the total
number of households (740). The basis for subsistence is mixed
agriculture, and people living in the upper portion of the valley
migrate some distance during the summer so that they can graze
their livestock and grow potatoes in alpine pastures and fields.
Shamans (jhdkri) are the most important local religious experts;
in the valley as a whole, there are twenty of them, fourteen of
whom are Metalworkers. Four belong to the Magar caste, and the
remaining two belong, respectively, to the castes of Newar and
Matwala Chetri.
I attended seances of both Magar and Metalworker shamans and
recorded portions of a number of the seances on tape as well as on

15 A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India (London: Sidgwick & Jackson,
1954), p. 491.
16 Eliade, op. cit., p. 410.
17 Ibid., pp. 111-15.
18 Ibid.,
pp. 119-20.
19 Ibid., pp. 200, 275.
152
motion-picture film. The recently deceased father of the Magar
family with whom I was living had been a shaman, and a boy from
his lineage who lived nearby had inherited his gift and was learning
the technique. This boy and the members of the deceased shaman's
family gave me much information, and, although shamanism was
not a focus of the research, I was able to interview at some length
two Metalworker shamans who were neighbors. On the basis of
data from these two castes, it is clear that their shamans work
within the same tradition.
Many features of the Bhuji shaman's costume parallel those
found in Inner Asia. Using the costume of a Metalworker shaman
as an example, there was an impressive headdress made of Monal
pheasant tail feathers, and fastened to the back of the jacket were
whole skins of both Monal and Kaleej pheasants-both of which
are birds of the high Himalaya. Another obvious ascensional
symbol on the back of the jacket was two flying squirrels' pelts.
Though not made of reindeer hide, the jacket was fashioned from
the skin of an equally swift animal, the Himalayan mountain goat
(ghoral). Two horns of this animal hung from the back of the
jacket, and the circular drumhead as well as the thongs securing it
also were made of mountain goat hide. These thongs were laced
using a horn of the goat as a punch, and the pattern the lacings
formed was said to represent both the horn itself and the feet of a
bird. Forming a fringe around the bottom of the jacket were
circular and lenticular iron plates, representing the sun and moon.
Although the horse did not figure in this shamanic tradition, the
animal seems to have been suggested, for bells were an important
part of the costume, being interspersed among the iron plates as
well as sewn around the jacket's neck. Riding or pack horses in
the region always wore bells, and the sound was associated with
their movement.
To achieve the trance state during which he acted as diviner and
healer, a Nepalese shaman drummed and sang and frequently, at
the outset, got up and danced. During the all-night course of a
seance, he performed a variety of rituals, depending on the needs
of his clients. Some of them were long and involved the singing of
songs that told of the First Shaman and happenings in the
Golden Age. One such ritual was done for a client who had to be
lifted up into the heavens so that he could remove an obstruction
(gaunda) that was adversely affecting his life. (This is a different
problem than an adverse state [dashd] of one's stars [graha]). While
the shaman drummed and sang a long narrative song about the
153
Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Tradition
First Shaman-a song he interrupted periodically with a shout of
Ho!-the patient's foot at each shout was moved from notch to
notch along a small piece of wood called a "climbing pole" (lisnu).
These poles are used for crossing a wall or for getting from one
level of a house or barn to another. The model used in this ritual
had nine notches cut into one side and seven cut into the opposite
side.20 During the shaman's song, he shouted sixteen times, and
the client's foot was moved up one side of the lisnu and down the
other. When this part of the ritual was complete, the shaman
entered a trance state. The client got onto a winnowing tray and
helpers, who were members of his family, lifted him up while the
shaman danced underneath, tossing the tray up and down on his
back. The ritual took place on the porch of a house, so that a rope
and an image could be suspended from the ceiling. The image was
a carved wooden model representing the sun and the moon. Sus-
pended a little beneath it, there was a lanceolate leaf of the
Sonchampa tree (Michelia champaca). While being bounced up and
down, the patient grasped the rope to steady himself and bit into
the leaf which hung near his head. When he had bitten it in two,
the shaman stepped out from beneath him, and he was lowered to
the ground. The shaman then questioned him:
Did you see the sun and moon?
Yes, I saw.
Did you see the stars in the sky?
I saw.
Did you climb the nine steps?
I climbed.
Did you climb over the obstruction?
I climbed.
As a part of his initiation, the Nepalese shaman climbs a tree
under the guidance of his teacher or guru. I was unable to observe
the ceremony, but obtained a Metalworker's account of his own
initiation. His guru was a Magar from an area two days' walk to
the northwest, an area regarded by the people of the Bhuji valley
as the home of the Original Shaman, and the guru was assisted by
his two sons, both of whom were shamans. The ceremony took
place on the full-moon day.
When the guru had induced a trance by singing and drumming,
he was able to see a particular pine tree growing in the forest, and
20 "The
Mangar, a Nepalese tribe, use a symbolic stairway by making nine
notches or steps in a stick, which they plant in the grave; by it the dead man's
soul goes up to heaven." Ibid., p. 487, noted in H. H. Risley, The Tribes and
Castes of Bengal, II (Calcutta, 1891-92), p. 75.
154
he sent his two sons to go and get it. After they had made ritual
offerings at the foot of the tree and had seen its top shake as they
did so, they chopped it down, stripped it of all branches except for
a tuft at the top, and took it back to the center of the village.
Here, they planted it upright in a hole. The guru blindfolded his
pupil, and his two sons dressed him in his shaman's regalia and
handed him his drum and drumstick. By drumming and singing,
the guru again entered a trance and transmitted his condition to
his pupil. After calling on the Snake of Hell and the Sun and the
Moon to be witnesses of what was about to happen, the guru,
who was shaking as the local shamans always do when they are in
a trance state, got up and leaned against the pine tree. His pupil
followed him, grasped the trunk and shinnied to the top, still
holding his drum and drumstick. The guru next asked him
questions he could answer only by divining the future. Among the
questions was how many years of life remained to the neophyte's
mother. When the pupil had shown that he had acquired powers of
divination, the guru and his sons danced and sang for a time at the
foot of the tree, and then the guru brought the neophyte down
gradually by shouting Ho! nine times. At each shout, the pupil
slid part-way down, until at the last he touched the ground.
During his return to earth, the guru prayed: "Make my pupil as
bright as the sun and as beautiful as the moon. Let this be my
fame." Following the rest of the ceremony, which involved the
sacrifice of a ram and goat, the tree was ceremonially returned to
the forest. A branch was given to the pupil, and he saved it so that
at the time of his burial-on the mountainside rather than by the
river like other people, and sitting up in a tumulus rather than
lying down below ground-it could be set upright between the
stones at the peak of his burial mound.
In classic Inner Asian shamanism, the practitioner controls
spirits and is not controlled by them. On superficial acquaintance,
it might seem that this is not true of the Nepalese shaman, for
during a trance he enacts the characteristics of whatever spirit is
inside his body. If it is an arthritic spirit, for example, his hands
and fingers become stiff and crooked. And sometimes the in-
carnate spirit temporarily overpowers him completely, so that he
falls groaning and twitching to the ground or sits tense and
quivering. But eventually he does regain control, sometimes with
the help of water sprinkled over him by some member of the
audience, and it is then he sings and chants, with drum accom-
paniment, whatever message the spirit has to deliver. We can be
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Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Tradition
sure that his own soul, his own consciousness and personality, have
not been completely obliterated during the trance, no matter how
overpowering the experience may have seemed, because at the
conclusion of it he can answer questions from the audience about
what the spirit has said. He does not have to be told. Further con-
firmation appears in a shaman's description of what happens
during his trance:
The spirits come like birds, wind, an airplane. They enter my heart
and call as from a distance, the way Krishna (a villager) was calling
yesterday: "Have you seen my sickle?" At first, the spirit sits on my
shoulder, and the shoulder hurts for a bit. Then the spirit enters and
the pain leaves. They may also sit on my knees or over my heart. Most
spirits enter through my nose, some through my ears, eyes, knees,
shoulders. I can see them coming. I can tell whether they fell from a
cliff and died, or whether they died from eating inedible food. They
first come to my basket (the one in which shamanizing gear is carried),
then hop over onto me and then go inside. They wear what they were
wearing when they died. They are different sizes ...
When they enter my nose I get a little smell like excrement, or bad
meat, and it feels as if small insects were coming into my nose. When I
call them, they speak into my ear, and I listen. I say what they say.
They sing, and I sing. I repeat exactly.
The spirit gets the attention of the people by saying, "Listen, you
five people sitting there!"
The spirit will say, "You will say I have cheated and deceived you."
He means, you think I'm a liar, but you listen; I'm really telling the
truth. He calls the people donkeys because why should he honor them
if they don't know anything? If they knew anything, why call the
spirit?
The spirits speak by turns. The spirit sometimes says, "I'm such and
such a spirit; tell him (the client) such and such." When I act like the
Simpleton Spirit, it means it's that spirit's turn to talk. The others wait.
I don't decide what spirit will speak. They decide among themselves.
I don't call on any particular spirit to speak. I want different spirits for
different kinds of tasks. (The shaman explained that the spirits decide
among themselves which of their number has the needed knowledge and
power.)
When the spirits leave me, I feel as if I had been beaten by someone
all day long. I feel as if my soul had been lost. When they are inside, I
feel lively.

It is when we consider the journeying of the soul and psycho-


pompism that we discover a crucial difference between the
Nepalese shaman and the classic Inner Asian type. For despite all
the elements of gear and ritual that suggest magic flight, he is
earthbound. When discussing his pole climb, the Bhuji valley
shaman did not claim that his soul had ascended to celestial
156
realms. Even though blindfolded, he could "see" because his guru
helped him call knowledgeable spirits.21 Such "sight," however,
could have been obtained on the ground, and he climbed the pole
only because this is what the First Shaman did.
Of all rituals performed by the Nepalese shaman, the one in
which he lifts the patient up to the moon and stars most strongly
suggests celestial journeying. It looks as if the shaman, at once
psychopomp and steed, were galloping into the empyrean with his
client on his back. When questioned, though, the shaman says it
is the client alone who makes the journey into the sky. Shamanic
power makes it possible for the client to do this, but in space
parlance the shaman is the ground controller and not the astro-
naut. This is the significance of his questions at the conclusion of
the ritual: he is asking in effect, "Was I or was I not able to send
you up into the heavens and to bring you safely back?" Only the
slightest hints of ecstatic ascent and descent appear in my
materials. One such hint was a shaman's saying that when his
helping spirits entered his body, it was "as if a wind had come and
blown him into the air." But this was not classic shamanic flight;
it was a space journey without destination.
The Bhuji valley shaman is a psychopomp, though in a much
narrower sense than the "great shamans" of Inner Asia. In Nepal,
soul-loss is recognized as one of the causes of illness. Sometimes,
in sleep, the soul leaves the body of its own accord and wanders
away, into the forest perhaps; or it may leave the body due to
fright-a common cause of illness among children. More fre-
quently, the soul is enticed or stolen away by the souls of dead
people, or it may fall under the sway of an evil spirit, especially
the Graveyard Spirit (masan dokh). But in order to recover the
lost soul, the shaman does not make a celestial or infernal journey.
After entering a trance to find out whether, in fact, soul-loss is the
cause of his client's illness, there are a number of techniques of
recovery he may follow, including dispatch of a helping spirit to
locate and return the lost soul. But his closest approach to the
classic otherworldly journey is a real terrestrial journey to the
burial ground, where he lies on the stones of the grave and calls to
the soul as if it were a child, luring it from the clutches of its
captor or enticer. It is true that the shaman lying on the grave
encounters the spirit world, but it is an encounter at the threshold;
it is not a journeying into and through it. Even the helper spirits
21 Among the Tadibei Samoyed, the shaman is blindfolded to indicate that he
enters the spirit world by his own inner light. Eliade, op. cit., p. 148.
3-H.O.R. 157
Nepalese Shamanism and Classic Inner Asian Tradition
of the Nepalese shamans are somewhat earthbound. They are con-
ceived of as grazing in various localities. When the shaman calls,
they journey across the local countryside, journeys that sometimes
are specified in elaborate detail. Similar detail regarding the other
world, whether celestial or infernal, is notably lacking.
Returning now to the question raised at the outset: whether
there is a Nepalese shamanism closely resembling the shamanism
of Central and North Asia, one may answer in the affirmative,
subject to two qualifications. The first is that the comparison is
being made using elements of the classic type, a construct not to
be confused with any particular manifestation of Inner Asian
shamanism in all its empirical fullness. The second is that the
Nepalese example has decadent aspects, the most notable being
its loss of belief in magic and dangerous flight, with associated loss
of dramatic enactment.22 On the other hand, this shamanism has
retained many symbols of ascension, even though explaining them
by reference to what the First Shaman wore rather than to his
powers of flight. The Nepalese shaman, moreover, controls spirits
rather than being controlled by them; and he attains trance
through music rather than through mushrooms or tobacco, the
decadent methods used by some of the shamans in Central and
North Asia.23
In conclusion, we may note that the shamanism of the Bhuji
valley probably represents one of the most southerly examples of
a shamanism that embodies so many elements of the classic Inner
Asian tradition. For as one goes south and west toward Pokhara,
shamanism continues to be earthbound, with flights being made
by spirit helpers rather than by shamans themselves, and begins
to lose, in addition, other classic elements. The shamanic drum
gives way to a brass plate and finally, in the region south of
Pokhara, there is no drum, not even a brass plate. Here, the
shamans no longer wear a leather jacket, feathers, or other sym-
bols of flight. Nor do they retain self-awareness and control of the
spirits embodied during a trance. It would seem that the only
element left which strongly suggests the classic ascensional theme
of Inner Asia is the way these shamans use the cut boughs of a
tree. On going into a trance and throughout their seance, they
hold the boughs upright like a bouquet and shake them violently.
Here, possibly, though in a different context, is the Inner Asian
initiating tree.
22 Ibid., pp. 237, 250, 252-54, 256.
23 Ibid., pp. 221, 228, 254.
158

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