Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia: Places and Practices of Power in Changing Environments (Routledge Environmental Humanities) [1 ed.] 036747736X, 9780367477363

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Routledge Environmental Humanities

COSMOPOLITICAL ECOLOGIES ACROSS ASIA PLACES AND PRACTICES OF POWER IN CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS Edited by Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, and David Sneath

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia offers a unique insight into the non-human and spiritual dimensions of environmental management in a changing world. This volume presents a comparative, place-based exploration of landscapes across Asia and the entities, practices and knowledges that inhabit them. Rather than treating sacred mountains, terrains and water sources as self-contained, esoteric religious phenomena, the authors consider them within critical ‘cosmopolitical ecologies’ framings in which nonhuman entities are engaged as actors in the socio-political arena. The chapters include case studies of healing springs recognized by governments, and sacred mountains that are addressed by heads of states and Communist Party cadres, or that speak to the faithful through spirit mediums in a politics of re-enchantment. Contributors explore the diverse ways in which non-human entities such as forest spirits, reindeer, mountains and Buddhist Masters of the Land are engaged by humans to navigate environmental change and address a range of ecological threats from large-scale mining to climate change. Cosmopolitical ecologies approaches encompass the healing power of topography as well as transformative intimacies with other-than-human beings such as sparrows within an Islamic eco-theological poetic setting. In this light, the book observes dynamic and creative processes of cosmological innovation including the repurposing of ritual to address challenges such as the Covid-19 epidemic. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment and society across disciplinary perspectives in general, and to anthropologists, human geographers, political ecologists, indigenous studies, area studies, environmental sciences and environmental humanities scholars in particular. Riamsara Kuyakanon is a Senior Research Associate at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK. Hildegard Diemberger is Research Director at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit & Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK. David Sneath is the Caroline Humphrey Professor of the Anthropology of Inner Asia at the Department of Social Anthropology and Director of the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge, UK.

Routledge Environmental Humanities Series editors: Scott Slovic (University of Idaho, USA), Joni Adamson (Arizona State University, USA) and Yuki Masami (Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan)

International Advisory Board William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA Kirsten Wehner, University of London, UK The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture. The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human-focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences. We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change. For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/RoutledgeEnvironmental-Humanities/book-series/REH

Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia Places and Practices of Power in Changing Environments Edited by Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, and David Sneath

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger and David Sneath; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger and David Sneath to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-47736-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-13776-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-03627-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272 Typeset in Goudy by MPS Limited, Dehradun

This book is dedicated to all the encounters and places that made our work possible

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements List of contributors Introduction: Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia

x xiii xiv 1

RIAM SAR A KU Y AK A NO N , H IL DE G AR D DI EM B ERGE R, AN D DA VID SN EA T H

PART I

Cosmopolitical landscapes and ecologies of practice 1 When lha lu spirits suffer and sometimes fight back: Tibetan cosmopolitics at a time of environmental threats and climate change

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HILDEG AR D DI E MB E R GE R

2 Territorial cults in Sino-Tibetan borderlands: mobilizing spirits for local identity and environmental protection

43

Y UDRU T SOM U

3 Up in smoke: cosmopolitical ecologies and the disappearing spirits of the land in Thailand’s agricultural air pollution JULIA CASSA N IT I

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PART II

Communities and cosmos: place-based knowledges and practices

81

4 Balancing the sacred landscape: environmental management in Limi, North-Western Nepal

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AST RID HOV D E N A ND HA N NA H AV N EV I K

5 ‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics of environment in Buryatia

102

CARO LINE HU M P HRE Y

6 Behind the façade: unseen faces of Japan

124

DAVID C. LE W I S

PART III

Cosmopolitics and the contemporary state 7 Knowing the lords of the land: cosmopolitical dynamics and historical change in Mongolia

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DAVID SNEAT H A ND EL I ZA BET H T U RK

8 Speaking of mountain deities beyond the county border: postsocialist cosmopolitics and state territoriality in Inner Mongolia, China

165

TH OM AS W H IT E

9 Contesting the Chinese Taiga: spirits, reindeer, and environmental conservation in Northeast China

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RICHA RD FR AS E R

PART IV

Cosmopolitical ecologies for the 21st century

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10 Cosmopolitical ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan: repurposing ritual and re-presenting realities

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RIAM SAR A K U YA KAN O N A N D D O R JI GY ELT SH EN

11 Sharing a room with sparrows: Maulana Azad and Muslim ecological thought AN AN D VIV EK TA N EJ A

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Contents

12 Druids and Jhakris: conservation and conversations between spirits of place and spirit-workers from Britain and Nepal

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JON ATHA N W O OL L EY

Afterword

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13 Cosmopolitical ecologies in translation

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HILDEG AR D DI E MB E R GE R, RI A M SA RA KU YA KA NON , AN D DA VID SN EA T H

Figures

1.1

1.2

1.3

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2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2

3.3 3.4 4.1 4.2

Image of the 11th century Tibetan manuscript of the dBa’ bzhed text. Made up of 33 sheets, it is currently preserved in Lhasa (TAR). Photograph: Pasang Wangdu Mt Yarlha Shampo is a peak in southern Tibet. As kulha (sku lha), it used to be the protecting deity of the Tibetan rulers during the imperial period. Photograph: Kurt Diemberger Festival in Dzonkha (Jilong County, TAR), in the land protected by the mountain deity Jobo Kulha (Jo bo sku lha). The portrait of Mao is attached to the pole at the centre of the event (August 1993). Photograph: Carlo Meazza Yarlha Shampo embodied in a white yak is being tamed by Padmasambhava. Mural painting in Samye monastery (southern Tibet). Photograph: Carlo Meazza A woman acting as oracle and healer. When in a trance, she is possessed by Mt Nyanchen Thanglha. Here she is practising mirror divination in a healing session. Photograph: Carlo Meazza Mt Yangzang in Gochang. Photograph: Bao Zhengcai (Nyima) Latse in Kham. Photograph: Bruce Huett 2017 Forests burning in Northern Thailand. Photo: Thongsuk Monkhon One of many ‘Don’t Burn!’ signs along the roads in the hills of Mae Chaem. It reads ‘Burning the forest. … is like burning life’ A Lawa farmer describes rituals of propitiating the spirit to the author. Photo: P’Duang Newly harvested ears of corn gathered for delivery, before the fields of residual corn stalks are burnt White stupa south of Halji village. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2018 Women carrying bundles of straw in Halji. Photo: Hanna Havnevik 2018

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28 45 55 65

67 68 71 84 86

Figures xi 4.3

Ritual at the shrine of one of the territorial deities in Limi. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2012 4.4 Excavator carving the new road to Halji village. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2018 5.1 Balzhan Khatan statue. Photo: Sayana Namsaraeva 5.2 Whispering wishes into the ear of the ‘Mother Stone’, Nozhii. Photo: Sayana Namsaraeva 5.3 Onon Khatan Ezhi. Painter: Larissa Erdineeva 6.1 Praying at the grave of an ancestor 6.2 The rope and the Torii archway on top of the larger rock at Futamigaura beach, in the Ise-Shima National Park in Mie Prefecture, indicate that this is a sacred site 6.3 The Toray company shrine in woodland on a hill behind the factory 6.4 Minelli’s grave after Toray officials have offered incense and flowers 7.1 Aav Khad, Batnorov sum, Khentii province 7.2 An ovoo ceremony presided over by the Panchan Lama (seated in tent); West Sünid Banner, summer 1931. Photo: Owen Lattimore © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2010.5.35905 7.3 Members of the State Honour Guard bring sacred images to the ovoo ceremony at Mount Altan Khökhii, attended by President Elbegdorj, July 2009. The black standard of state (khar süld) and national and provincial flags can be seen alongside the ovoo. 8.1 Festival at the Monastery of the Caves 8.2 Bull Camel Mountain, with the restored temple and oboo in the middle of the picture. The image of the camel is above the temple, three-quarters of the way up the cliff face 8.3 Preparing for the ‘cow camel’s fire veneration' at the 2014 event 9.1 A traditional Evenki tent in late winter 9.2 A fire burns steadily inside the tent 9.3 Surrounded by the herd 10.1 Desuup or ‘guardians of the peace’ lead the Kanjur Chokor procession to protect against COVID-19 as villagers wait alongside the road to receive blessings from the texts. (Bumthang, June 2020, photo: Riamsara Kuyakanon) 10.2 Medicine Buddha as publicly posted by the Zhung Dratshang on 22.12.20 10.3 Photo of novel coronavirus torma offering posted by the Paro Zhung Dratshang

89 96 109 114 116 125

127 131 134 148

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170 179 190 195 199

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10.4 Blessing of the newly arrived vaccines at Paro airport. Photograph posted publicly by the Paro Zhung Dratshang on March 2021 11.1 Amadou Diallo and a Scarlet Tanager seen through the Jules’ grandfather’s binoculars. From, Represent Chapter One: It’s a Bird by Christian Cooper and Alitha Martinez, DC Comics, 2020 12.1 Anti-fracking Shrine 12.2 The White Spring 12.3 Sacred Spring, Nepal 12.4 Bombo Sarki during ritual in Damar. Photograph: Charlie Lumby

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240 246 247 251 252

Acknowledgements

Firstly, we wish to thank all friends, colleagues and communities who have contributed to the research and innumerable conversations in the many Asian locations covered in this volume without whom this project would not have been possible. The research reflected in these chapters is the outcome of numerous collaborative arrangements, including cooperation between the University of Cambridge and the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Sichuan University, the National University of Mongolia, The Royal University of Bhutan, and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. We would like to thank Libby Peachey as editorial coordinator as well as Rebecca Brennan, Rosie Anderson and Grace Harrison of Routledge, the Environmental Humanities Series Editors, anonymous reviewers, colleagues in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge and also the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit Reading Group for their valuable feedback. This volume was made possible by several current and past projects funded by a range of organizations, including the Research Council of Norway (274491/H30), the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (AH/S006869/1; AH/P004768/1; AH/K006282/1; AH/H00159X/1) the Austrian Science Fund, the Newton Trust, the Global Challenges Research Fund, the Cambridge Humanities Research Grant Scheme, the Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit and Pembroke College of the University of Cambridge.

Contributors

Julia Cassaniti is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Washington State University, and a Visiting Professor of Asian Studies at Cornell University. Her research examines the co-construction of mind and culture in South-East Asia, with a theoretical and ethnographic focus on Theravāda Buddhist practice in Thailand. Through projects on Buddhist impermanence, mindfulness, and spiritual phenomenology her work reveals ways that religious ideas and ontological assumptions about the self and other are interwoven into the psychology of everyday life, and the implications that these connections have for global health and well-being. She is the author of Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community (Cornell University Press, 2015) and Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018), and the editor of Universalism Without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Hildegard Diemberger is the Research Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Trained as a social anthropologist and Tibetologist at Vienna University, she has published numerous books and articles on the anthropology and the history of Tibet and the Himalaya as well as on the Tibetan-Mongolian interface, including the monograph When a Woman becomes a Religious Dynasty: the Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (Columbia University Press 2007), the edited volume Tibetan Printing – Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Brill 2016) and the English translation of two important Tibetan historical texts (Austrian Academy of Science 1996, 2000). She has designed and coordinated a number of research projects funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy and the Austrian Science Fund. Dorji Gyeltshen is a Lecturer at the College of Language and Culture Studies, Royal University of Bhutan. He has an MA in Buddhist philosophy from Gangteng Shedra in Bhutan. He teaches Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Classical language and literature at the College. He is also Co-ordinator of the Research Center of Buddhist Studies at the College. In addition to publications

Contributors xv in Dzongkha, he has several in English, including the article 'Propitiating the Tsen, Sealing the Mountain: Community Mountain-closure Ritual and Practice in Eastern Bhutan’, which is co-authored with Dr Riamsara Kuyakanon. Richard Fraser is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at Sichuan University, China. He completed his PhD at the University of Leiden and was recently a postdoctoral researcher at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. Richard has carried out fieldwork with Evenki, Orochen, and Mongol communities in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang province since 2007. His research interests span human-environment relationships; phenomenological-existential anthropology; pastoralism, hunting and land-use; cultural heritage and ethnic tourism; skill and learning; ethnic minorities and the state; displacement and resettlement; renewable and non-renewable energy; climate change; human-animal relations; shamanism and animism; and socialism and postsocialism. Hanna Havnevik is Professor in religious studies at the University of Oslo. One of her main research interests is gender and religion, a field to which she has contributed Tibetan Buddhist Nuns: History, Cultural Norms and Social Reality (1989), the PhD thesis: ‘The Life of Jetsun Lochen Rinpoche (1865–1951) as Told in Her Autobiography’ (1999), and, together with Janet Gyatso, the edited volume Women in Tibet (2005). She is a co-editor of From Bhakti to Bon (2015) and Buddhist Modernities: Re-Inventing Tradition in the Gobalizing Modern World (2017). Havnevik has chaired the Network for University Cooperation TibetNorway for a number of years and has worked closely with young researchers from Tibetan areas in the PRC. She was elected president of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in 2019. Havnevik is currently leading the project “Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a changing climate” funded by the Research Council of Norway. Astrid Hovden is Associate Professor in religious studies at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway. Her main research interests include the social history of Buddhist communities, monastic economy, as well as environmental management in the Himalaya; explored through various published and forthcoming works. Hovden has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork stays on both sides of the Himalayas. Currently, she is part of the research project “Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a changing climate” funded by the Research Council of Norway. Caroline Humphrey is an anthropologist who has worked in Russia, Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang), India, Nepal and Ukraine. She has researched a wide range of themes including Soviet and post-Soviet provincial economy and society; Buryat and Daur shamanism; Jain religion and ritual; trade and barter in Nepal; environment and the pastoral economy in Mongolia; the history and contemporary situation of Buddhism in Inner Mongolia; and urban

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transformations in post-Socialist cities (Buryatia; Uzbekistan, Ukraine). She has written on inequality and exclusion; the politics of memory; naming practices; ethics and conceptions of freedom. Recently she has completed an international research project on socio-economic interactions on the Russia–Mongolia–China border. Recent books: A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian Buddhism, Chicago (2013); Trust and Mistrust in the Economies of the China-Russia Borderlands, Amsterdam University Press (2018). Riamsara Kuyakanon is a Senior Research Associate at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research in Human Geography (2015) examined the relationship between Buddhist beliefs and practices and environmental conservation in Bhutan, addressing theorizations in cultural landscapes, political ecology and Buddhist modernities. Riam conducts fieldwork in Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand and engages in collaborative multi-disciplinary research that employs methods from the humanities, social and environmental sciences. David C. Lewis is a Visiting Professor in the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China, and is also an affiliated researcher of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge, England. Besides his teaching in China, he has taught about Japan at the universities of Cambridge and Leeds. He has conducted research on the anthropology of religion in Japan, England, Russia and elsewhere in the former USSR. His books include Religion in Japanese Daily Life (2018), After Atheism: Religion and Ethnicity in Russia and Central Asia (2000, 2013) and Healing: Fiction, Fantasy or Fact? (1989), besides translating from Russian into English The Kalmyks by Elza-Bair Guchinova (2006) and co-editing with He Ming a book entitled Ethnicity and Religion in Southwest China (2021). David Sneath is the Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at Cambridge University, a Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. In 2021 he was appointed to the Caroline Humphrey Professorship of the Anthropology of Inner Asia. He completed his PhD at Cambridge University in 1991 and carried out postdoctoral research there on environment and society in Inner Asia, winning a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 1994. In 1998 he took up a Lectureship in Anthropology and Development at Oxford University, and in 2000 returned to Cambridge to take up his current appointments. He regularly travels to Mongolia for research and has conducted extended pieces of fieldwork with pastoralists. He is a Co-editor of the journal Inner Asia and has authored more than 50 books and publications on the region. His monographs include Mongolia Remade: Postsocialist National Culture, Political Economy, and Cosmopolitics, 2018, Amsterdam University Press; The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Representations of Nomadic Inner Asia, 2007, Columbia University Press; and

Contributors xvii Changing Inner Mongolia: Pastoral Mongolian Society and the Chinese State, 2000, Oxford University Press. Anand Vivek Taneja is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a book on Indian Muslim ethics in an age of Hindu nationalism. Yudru Tsomu is Professor at the Center for Tibetan Studies of Sichuan University. She received her PhD in 2006 from Harvard University in the field of Tibetan Studies and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in 2007. Her research interest includes Tibetan history, in particular history of Kham, study of Tibetan society in Kham as well as the cultural interaction and blend in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Her present project is entitled “Eastern Tibet in the Eyes of Chinese Intellectuals during the Republican Period,” funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, the American Philosophical Society and the American Council of Learned Societies. Her monograph entitled Blind Warrior of Nyarong: The Rise of Gönpo Namgyel in Kham was published by the Lexington Books in 2015. Elizabeth Turk is a Research Associate in the Mongolia & Inner Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She earned her PhD from the same Department in 2018; her doctoral dissertation explores Soviet legacies of health-related practices and nation building in contemporary Mongolia during a time of increased interest in ‘alternative’ and nature-based therapies. Dr Turk’s current research focuses on the (re-)making of healing arts as cultural heritage during the time of COVID-19 in Mongolia. This research forms part of the larger project ‘Mongolian Cosmopolitical Heritage: tracing divergent healing practices across the Mongolian-Chinese border’ funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Thomas White is a Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD in 2016. Since 2011 he has conducted ethnographic research in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, examining questions of political ecology, human-animal relations, spatial transformations, and infrastructure. He is currently completing a monograph, based on his PhD research, on the role of animals in the politics of the environment, land use and development in Inner Mongolia. Jonathan Woolley is a behavioural scientist specializing in the application of anthropological techniques to the design of environmental policy. He was awarded his PhD in March 2018 from the University of Cambridge, following over a year of ethnographic fieldwork in the Broads National Park. Jonathan’s research at Cambridge was part of an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary research project, Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate, which explored the styles

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of learning about the environment that exist in different cultures around the world. Jonathan’s monograph, Common Sense in Environmental Management, was published by Routledge in 2019. Jonathan has also written widely on East Anglian folklore, nature spirituality, and public engagement with environmental and cultural heritage, and was awarded a Mount Haemus Scholarship by the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids in 2018 in recognition for his work on contemporary Druidry.

Introduction: Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia Riamsara Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger, and David Sneath

Cosmopolitical Ecologies: the multiple possible readings of this newly coined compound term point to this volume’s engagement with cosmology, political ecology and cosmopolitics. As Bruno Latour notes: That politics has always been a cosmopolitics, that it has always been about landscapes, animal husbandry, forest, water, irrigation, about building cities, the circulation of air, the management of disease, in brief about cosmic and material forces, is so obvious in so many traditions that I do not have to belabor the point. This age-old connection does not need to be religious, it is also largely secular … What counts is not if you are religious or secular, but if you manage to protect humans from being defined without the cosmos that provide their life support, and nature from being understood without humans that have collaborated with non-humans for eons. (Latour 2011: 73) The need for this engagement became clear to us as we struggled to convey the importance of the cosmological in environmental politics, and of environmental politics in the cosmological, in understanding our various sites of study, in our various ways. We believe that a ‘cosmopolitical ecologies’ approach conceptually shines a light on a lacuna in addressing relationships between environmental politics and the presence of the cosmological and other-than-human entities in landscapes across Asia, and the contributors of this volume work across disciplines in the environmental humanities and social sciences, united in practice-based engagement that proceeds from long-term commitment in the places where we work. The chapter contributions in this volume are studies of processes of composition that are at once normative and descriptive, entangled with political and ontological claims, and subject to historical change, and encompassing multiple registers, from the textual to the phenomenological. From thinking on cosmopolitics, we take the inspiration that politics extends beyond the human world to include relations with other-than-human beings. A central endeavour of this volume is thus the analysis of processes, past and present, by which the political and the cosmological interact and come into being. As Latour notes, ‘to speak of DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-101

2 Riamsara Kuyakanon et al. cosmopolitics is to say that the world has to be composed' (2011: 73). From political ecology, we take the invitation to question how these relations constitute and are constituted by environmental politics, conceived of in the broadest possible terms. As far as the concept of cosmology is concerned, we take it in the most inclusive way, keeping in mind that it can range from the study of the universe in different epistemological traditions to thought and narratives (logos) about the world (cosmos) akin to the German Weltanschauung. Cosmologies can be religious or non-religious and provide the framework to interpret human societies’ situatedness in the universe over time; they encompass place-based meaning making as explored phenomenologically by anthropologists such as Tim Ingold (2000, 2011) and Julie Cruikshank (2005). While the cosmopolitical attention to the ‘more-than-human’ or ‘other-thanhuman’ has common ground with a range of critical perspectives as found in posthumanism, new materialism, interspecies cosmopolitanism and so on, and brings up some of the same questions, including what constitutes ‘politics’ (e.g. Haraway 2008; Mendieta 2018), in this volume we emphasize the central importance of (usually) non-material, cosmological beings and entities that exist relationally with humans and their environmental politics in different places across Asia. We set out to explore places of power in Asia, taking up Marisol de la Cadena’s invitation to conceive of cosmopolitics as a political practice that includes ‘nonhumans as actors in the political arena’ (2010: 364). Our approach diverges, however, when it comes to what might constitute histories and political philosophies, following the premises arising from our different ethnographic sites. De la Cadena’s observation that ‘a modern state engaging in political conversation with worlds of willful mountains would not be modern nor would the conversation be a political one (2015: 247)’ presupposes an idea of what is modern, and what is political, that is not borne out in many of our study sites, such as in Mongolia, where sacred mountains are enrolled in state legitimization through the reintroduction (and reinvention) of a cosmological ritual (Sneath 2014, see also Sneath and Turk in this volume), or in Bhutan where mountain gods can be key actors in environmental management practices (Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen 2017, see also White, Diemberger and Tsomu in this volume for similar instances). Likewise, many of the contributors of this volume have different points of departure for categories such as ‘indigenous’ or concepts such as ‘indigeneity’ or ‘ethnicity’ arising from their ethnographic sites.

Political ecology With a commitment to understanding that politics has always been a cosmopolitics, to suggest what cosmopolitical ecologies approaches might include, we turn first to political ecology as a means to making sense of how environmental issues are also political issues. Political ecology is ‘a field that seeks to unravel the political forces at work in environmental access, management, and transformation … to demonstrate the way that politics are inevitably ecological and that ecology is

Introduction 3 inherently political’ (Robbins 2004: xvii). Like thinking on cosmopolitics, it is informed by a normative aim for social and environmental justice. Political ecology explores relationships between the economic, political and environmental, and its attention to political economy and power analysis at different scales has contributed to the understanding that those who often bear the brunt of environmental degradation are generally not the cause of it. A political ecology approach is multi-scalar, local and global, place and actant attentive, even among transnational spaces, and draws from geographical thinking on what constitutes ‘place’ (e.g. Massey 1991). It is ‘highly conjunctural’ (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987: 239) as it examines how what occurs in localized sites relates to political economic and ecologic processes at broader scales. This is often done through progressive contextualization (Vayda 1983) following a chain of explanation that employs historical analyses of land access, the wider political economy, socio-natural environment, and so on, as well as discourse analysis1 to understand the different contexts for environmental decision-making.2 While remaining attentive to structural rather than proximate causes, political ecology approaches to power analyses in environmental politics are diverse and no longer solely grounded in Marxist political economy.3 Under the broad umbrella of ‘political ecology’, there is a whole array of approaches to power, from Hobbesian sovereign power to Foucauldian analyses of discursive power, biopower, resistance, to poststructural and posthumanist formulations. The trend has continued in the direction of social constructivism, in which the nature or environment that is knowable is a social construct (e.g. Castree and Braun 2001). In what might be called ‘third generation political ecology’ by some, we can include STS (science and technology studies), postcolonial, urban, feminist and queer analytics. Within these readings, conceptualizations of the environment are produced by what Descola and Pálsson (1996: 15) call ‘ever-changing historical contexts and cultural specificities’, which work in favour of some, and not for others. Despite political ecology’s attention to socio-natures and social constructivist approaches, it has, on the whole, with some notable exceptions, been blind to the non-human in any terms other than materialist. Political ecology has seldom engaged seriously with ontology (see Schulz, 2017) or non-Eurocentric perceptions of what constitutes the world, which is ironic, considering that much political ecology is ‘done’ in non-western places. While the participants or actants in political ecology analyses may not be exclusively human, the field remains largely locked within a dominant worldview in which participation is limited to quantifiable, identifiable organisms. Unsurprisingly, political ecology has been critiqued for pre-supposing ‘the importance … of certain kinds of political factors in the explanation of environmental changes’ (Biersack and Greenberg, 2006: 167), to which we would add the presupposition that only certain kinds of actors or actants can participate, and in which only certain human-nonhuman assemblages are privileged (Yeh 2017: 147, Kuyakanon Knapp, 2016). Borrowing from Ben Campbell

4 Riamsara Kuyakanon et al. (whose work Living Between Juniper and Palm is one of the notable exceptions mentioned above), we suggest ‘taking seriously indigenous concepts of power and local sovereignties, that puts movement, embodiment, and lived encounters between the human and non-human into view’ (2013: 32), as a way to address these shortcomings.

Cosmopolitics The contemporary currency of the term ‘cosmopolitics’ owes much to the work of Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour. In her monumental work Cosmopolitics (2010), more recently followed up with a ‘Manifesto’ (2019), philosopher of science Stengers makes a case for a ‘slow science’ that examines both the historically contingent conditions of modern science’s own emergence and the political consequences of its engagement with other knowledge practices. In Stengers’ work, the ‘cosmopolitical’ points to the engagement required for the reflexive exploration of situated knowledge, the need to slow down to think of what ‘the enigmatic term cosmos’ might be (2005a: 994), and the ‘ecology of practices’ associated with this (2005b). ‘In the term cosmopolitical, cosmos refers to the unknown constituted by these multiple, divergent worlds and to the articulations of which they could eventually be capable’ (ibid.: 995). Philosopher-anthropologist Latour embraced Stengers’ notion of cosmopolitics since, for him, ‘“cosmos” is what ensures that politics will never be just for the benefits of isolated humans, and “politics” is what ensures that the cosmos is not naturalized and kept totally apart from what humans do to it’ (2011: 3). While Stengers specifically disavowed any connection with ‘Kant or with the ancient cosmopolitism’ (2005a: 994), Latour (2004) has pointedly addressed the difference to elaborate how Stengers’ cosmopolitics goes beyond Kantian notions of ‘cosmopolitanism’ which aims to transcend parochial politics to embrace a common world, such as that found in the sociology of Ulrich Beck. In anthropology, there have been a number of engagements with the notion of cosmopolitics, most noticeably by Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser, who, in their words, ‘borrowed the term from Stengers and gave the term an inflection of our own’ (2018: 12). De la Cadena made striking use of cosmopolitics to go beyond the concept of ‘culture’ in addressing the indigenous ‘ethnic’ politics of Latin America (2010, 2015). She does ‘ethnographic colabor’ to show that contemporary indigenous movements involve political practices that cannot be reduced to ‘modern’ (Latour 1993) epistemological claims of ‘multiculturalism’ or the pursuit of cultural rights which are blind to the relational worlds in which these practices are co-produced. These practices, for example, invoking the presence of tirakuna (translated by de la Cadena as ‘earth-beings’, perceived by outsiders as mountains), expand the political beyond the human sphere and challenge the conventional dichotomization of human ‘culture’ and empirical ‘nature’. For Blaser, the cosmopolitical project of Latour, expansive though it be, is nevertheless orientated towards ‘the composition of the common world’ (Blaser

Introduction 5 2016: 548). This approach, he argues, risks obscuring the perspectives of the relatively powerless or differently-orientated.4 As has been pointed out by de la Cadena, Blaser and others, what is at stake in thinking through cosmopolitical ecologies is not a matter of simply expanding the existing notion of politics to include other actors. The issue becomes one of the multidisciplinary debates on representation, epistemology and ontology. Rather than seeking to explore ontologies as such, i.e. schools of thought about what exists, comparable with the Euro-American subfield of metaphysics,5 the studies in this volume are largely concerned with practices, including knowledge practices, and with forms of mediation. There are good reasons for this. The ultimate ontological status of the entities and relationships involved is often indeterminate, disputed or inaccessible, and the identification of separate ontological schemes is all but impossible in the eclectic contexts studied in this volume. The focus here is on the practices and forms of knowledge by which humans gain access to places of power, sacred landscapes and other-than-human entities. As Appadurai (2015: 228) notes, religion can be fruitfully seen as ‘primarily a form of mediation between the visible and the invisible orders’ and ‘as a space of anxiety and indeterminacy about the relationship between [them]’ (ibid.: 224). The focus here is on historical practices and forms of knowledge that not only mediate between the visible and the invisible, the cosmological and the political, but that help constitute a wider field encompassing both. In dealing with the cosmopolitical, many ethnographic engagements in this volume are open to a questioning of standard epistemological categories, as well as highlighting the value of multi-disciplinary work in challenging monolithic disciplinary categories of what might constitute history or politics around environmental issues in a particular context. While some of the findings in this volume point towards encounters and clashes between different cosmological frameworks, we stop short of describing these in terms of multiple ontologies representing radical alterities since many of the contributions in this volume are dealing with the specific engagements of different epistemic practices, many of which have been in long-term direct or indirect contact, and these engagements are navigated by those concerned, through different forms of knowledge according to what is available and appropriate to addressing their specific predicaments. People mix and match ideas, information, strategies and solutions, often with the help of ‘cultural brokers’ who are able to navigate multiple knowledge/religious systems and translate across different epistemologies. These forms of mediation can take place thanks to religious specialists, community elders, state officials, scientists, NGO operatives, as well as mediums possessed by spirits or digital platforms. This is not a new phenomenon. For example, the blending of Buddhist and nonBuddhist perceptions in Himalayan landscapes has a long history to which the engagement with scientific perspectives just adds a new chapter. The same mountains can be invoked as deities through oracles and specific rituals, be surveyed scientifically on the ground and be represented in satellite images posted in a temple.

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Ecologies of practice For Stengers (2005b), the concept of an ecology of practices represents a ‘tool for thinking’ about the various forms of knowledge generated by practices such as those of the physical sciences. In this thinking, various sources and forms of knowledge coexist and interconnect, in a sort of epistemic ecology, without the established hierarchy in which empirical science appears as a superior form of knowledge. Stengers’ ecology of practice is comprehensible within postcolonial and feminist praxes that stress the importance of reflexivity, situated knowledge, and co-production.6 Such an ecology of practice speaks directly to the aspirations of political ecology (the field of research) as praxis: ‘A domain of academic representation, political ecology is implicated in the very processes the analyst seeks to study and must fall subject to reflexive, self-critical commentary’ (Biersack and Greenberg, 2006: 27). These ideas resonate with Deleuze’s notion of ‘thinking par milieu’ – what we take to mean thinking in context, with context and through context, without pre-imposing abstract definitions or ideations that we then conform the context to. This sort of practice co-produces the thinker, as well as the ethos of the practice, and may best be understood relationally, with ‘no identity of a practice independent of its environment’ (Stengers 2005b: 187). ‘Practice’, then, stands for the activities used to give claims to knowledge, which cannot be abstracted from the social and material environments that produce them – their ecologies. Characteristic of the multivalency of the terminology we engage with, Stengers and Latour also speak of ‘political ecology’ in their work, not in reference to the field of political ecology as set out above, but with respect to knowledge production.7 Stenger’s political ecology is rooted in the oikos, in the local and the empirical. Furthermore, this oikos is inseparable from ethos, ‘the way of behaving particular to a being’ (ibid. 997), meaning that there is no ready-made abstract framing or impartial onlooker. In her words, ‘Political ecology affirms that there is no knowledge that is both relevant and detached. It is not an objective definition of a virus or of a flood that we need, a detached definition everybody should accept, but the active participation of all those whose practice is engaged in multiples modes with the virus or with the river’ (Stengers, 2005b: 1002). From this vantage point, it can also be set in a productive conversation with Buddhist literature on ‘interconnectedness’ as a notion often mobilized in Buddhist environmentalism in different guises (see, e.g. Karmapa 2017). Perceiving the cosmological while being ‘present’ to environmental politics, or engaging with environmental politics while being ‘present’ to the cosmological and not ‘without the cosmos that provide their life support’, whilst being aware of the mediated politics of non-human entities and cosmological concepts applied to environmental features, we endeavour to take the experienced moral dimension seriously without reducing it to a reflection of power relations. Are there ways in which a holy mountain can be both a powerful political actor as well as a spiritual resource that transcends it? Is looking at it in terms of

Introduction 7 cosmopolitical ecology reconcilable with a phenomenology of meaning making that creates the very sense of place? We ask what kinds of powers are at play, how are they manifest (or not), and what implications arise from such sites or assemblages.

The importance of historical texts Ontologically complex, this archive included events, the evidence of which could be recorded in writing, along with events that left no evidence and the writing of which would have been insufficient to prove their existence anyway, for they would have been reduced to beliefs. (de la Cadena 2015: 123) These above comments might have been applied to many contexts reflected in this volume, except that across Asia, we also have societies and communities where non-human beings are part of the historical record and were not reduced to beliefs. The relevant textual sources here have an extra layer of richness and complexity in that they reflect voices and debates that developed partly or entirely independently from European cultural history and historiography. From this vantage point, these textual traditions can also reflect distinctive engagements with imperial and colonial powers, offering a multivocality that decentres the binary of the West and the rest and goes far beyond. The chapters included in this volume explore a wide range of settings across Asia, where history matters in multiple ways, and there are multiple meanings to ‘history’. For example, many Inner Asian places such as Qinghai (lit. ‘blue lake’) are recorded in sources in Chinese (Qinghai), Tibetan (Tsongon [blue lake]), Mongolian (Kokonor [blue lake]) within different and sometimes contrasting historical narratives. Place-based meaning making, as reflected in toponyms and landscape mythology, can thus become a site of contestation and negotiation of political relevance – including the potential raising of legal claims associated with juridical personhood of topographical features (see Studley 2019). This applies not only to space but also to time so that historical periodization can be a site of contestation and negotiation, too. For example, in China, the revival of religion and the culture of ethnic minority nationalities in the post-Mao era in Tibetan areas has been hailed as ‘yangdar’, i.e. as the era of the ‘further spread of the [Buddhist] doctrine’ so as to fit into a traditional Tibetan religious historiographical framework. Also, many narratives travel and are re-deployed in very different settings. A famous example is the legendary figure of the Buddhist spiritual master Padmasambhava who appears in several of the chapters in very different guises (see Diemberger, Tsomu, White, Sneath and Turk). Across Asia, rich textual traditions offer unique glimpses into views, debates and even theories in which cosmological politics clearly matter. Some of the sources engaged with here were produced, circulated, commented upon and also hidden to prevent destruction in times of persecution such as during the 9th century Tibetan civil war, 20th century Stalinist repressions in the Soviet Union

8 Riamsara Kuyakanon et al. and Mongolia, and Cultural Revolution in China. Many of these texts were rediscovered at particular junctures to tell their stories (e.g. religious revival in postsocialist countries). Voices from the past re-emerge in multiple ways and for multiple reasons. For example, a text of worship for a sacred mountain may be part of textual collections hidden during the Cultural Revolution or Stalinist religious repression and rediscovered in its aftermath; the same text may include portions thought to have been hidden during earlier religious persecutions and revealed subsequently (see for example Diemberger and Tsomu in this volume). These texts have their own archival histories, which reflect the politics of representation and, at times, engagement with multiple languages and translations. The reemerging cosmopolitical and ecological relevance of texts is also compellingly shown by Taneja’s chapter exploring the writings of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Kuyakanon & Gyeltshen’s on the ritual procession of Buddhist texts redeployed as a COVID-19 safeguard. The past also strikingly re-appears in foundational texts of the present, as Humphrey’s chapter shows in her analysis of the Buryat-Mongol People’s Moral Code that claims to be a modernization of the law code of Chinggis Khan, said to have been handed down through the generations. Against the background of this rich historical texture which interfaces with living contexts of socio-environmental change that are explored ethnographically, the chapters of this volume offer a unique contribution to thinking on cosmopolitics and political ecology.

Volume structure and contents This volume offers a range of different case studies focusing on an engagement with cosmological and political aspects of human relations with the environment and its transformations. Rather than assuming a single framework of analysis, we use ‘cosmopolitical ecologies’ to suggest a mode of investigation that highlights human relationality, including its connections and disconnections with the other-than-human. There is a diversity of engagement with cosmopolitical ecologies approaches in this volume. Thus some chapters engage directly with cosmopolitical ecologies in their analyses, while others speak to it through their subject matter or were written in dialogue with this Introduction. Some chapters are exemplars, and some are proponents of a cosmopolitical ecologies approach. Against the background of Stenger’s ecology of practice, then, the chapters in this collection speak with different voices reflecting a variety of disciplines, positions and collaborations (including authors, such as Tsomu, Gyeltshen and Woolley, who speak about the environment they are most familiar with as they are voices ‘from the place’). Because of this diversity, the editorial team has chosen not to intervene to standardise the rendition of vernacular terms, respecting their context of use (they are normally rendered as they are pronounced with transliteration added when relevant).

Introduction 9 The contributions to this volume are grouped thematically into four sections, each of which has a different focus but speaks to the others. The first three chapters, in the section Cosmopolitical Landscapes and Ecologies of Practice, focus on case studies that immediately reflect an engagement with ecologies of practice in specific sites exploring historical depths and contemporary practices. Anthropologist Hildegard Diemberger sets out from the exploration of a key 11th century Tibetan chronicle of the Buddhification of Tibet, which had seminal influences across all Tibetan Buddhist traditions, to explore connections between cosmology, politics and environment. Looking at a range of historical sources and ethnographic examples from different Tibetan areas in China and Nepal, it focuses on the mobilization of place-based spirits in different settings to shape cosmopolitical ecologies that combine historical depth and constant re-creation and repurposing of rituals and narratives in light of new agendas and constraints. The same theme returns in the following chapter by Tibetan studies scholar Yudru Tsomu, who sets out from observations on the revival of local spirit cults in her homeland in Eastern Tibet/Sichuan Province to examine these types of rituals that are central to Tibetan popular religiosity and were some of the earliest manifestations of spiritual life to be revived in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The focus of intersecting religious traditions, including local autochthonous cults, Bonpo, Buddhism and Taoism, these deities appear as non-human actors engaging in a complex relationship with the modern Chinese secular state and its shifting policies. Often mediated by new digital technologies, they are also the focus of epistemological arrangements in an ecology of practice in which secular environmentalist agendas can dovetail with Buddhist activism despite differing ontological assumptions and ethical priorities. Since the seminal work of Stanley Tambiah (1970) on spirit cults in Thailand, non-human entities inhabiting Thai landscapes have attracted significant anthropological attention, but not necessarily in terms of how they concretely impact human relations with the environment. Based on a case study of farming practices around the District of Mae Chaem in Northern Thailand, the chapter by anthropologist Julia Cassaniti reports on past rituals held to propitiate the spirits before harvesting and attitudes about the use of fires to clear fields before new farming cycles. It examines land management fires from a cosmological, political perspective, moving analysis away from material practices and toward relations with the other-than-human. Such a move draws attention to shifting cosmopolitical attitudes about land and identity that remain hidden when contemporary fires are seen as a continuation of past localized farming practices. In this perspective, they clearly point to the cosmopolitical implications of agroindustry in national politics experienced from the ground up. The following set of three papers, in the section Communities and Cosmos: Place-based Knowledges and Practices, foregrounds the importance of knowledges and practices as multiple, shifting and potentially contested.

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Religious studies scholars Hanna Havnevik and Astrid Hovden explore the relationship between cosmology, environment and politics in Limi, a high mountain community in north-western Nepal particularly vulnerable to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). The local system of environmental management has developed throughout the centuries to accommodate an agro-pastoral lifestyle and is grounded in a cosmology and knowledge system that is very different from that of the Nepali state to which these village communities belong. Noting how the villagers draw upon different knowledge regimes to address natural hazards such as floods and landslides, as well as a changing weather pattern, this chapter explores the complex role of religion in local environmental politics and discusses the strategies people use to manage the sacred landscape in a shifting cosmopolitical context. Anthropologist Caroline Humphrey focuses on the gendered dimension of Buryat landscapes by looking at shifting cosmopolitical ecologies in the postsocialist context. She noticed that amid the general re-sacralization of the landscape in the post-Soviet period, the construction of new shrines and monuments celebrating ‘mothers’ (ezi) emerged as a new phenomenon. Female deities, spirit landmasters, ancestresses, and historical heroines now have prominent roles in local cosmologies alongside the previously hegemonic male equivalents. The placing of these mother-sites brings to attention landscape features such as lakes, rivers, forested groves, caves and clefts that were previously overshadowed by the male imagery focused on sacred mountains. She argues however that the new initiatives are not feminist and indicate how the concept of ‘mother’ indexes changing conceptual configurations of indigenous territories and human groups. Looking at Japan, anthropologist David Lewis explores forms of spirituality expressed in attitudes towards certain natural phenomena, whether it be a reverent attitude towards the Sun or Moon or a practice of visiting places of natural beauty that had been regarded as embodiments of spirits but now might be called ‘power spots’. There is also a fear of potentially vindictive spirits that may need to be pacified through rites of propitiation, not only at a local but also at a national level. This chapter shows that such beliefs and practices remain widespread within a technologically sophisticated, urbanized and well-educated population. The political and environmental implications of the relevant spiritual transformations and adjustments emerge as a fertile ground for exploration. The next set of three papers, in the section Cosmopolitics and the Contemporary State, focuses specifically on how cosmopolitical ecologies relate to the State. In Mongolia, anthropologists David Sneath and Elizabeth Turk focus on the historical circumstances within which humans have been able to represent nonhumans as powerful actors in political realms, including state formations. The authors present two cases where humans recruited non-human entities into political spheres. Close attention to historical ritual texts reveals the cosmological not as an autonomous realm composed of essential and timeless forms but as dynamic and changing. Cosmological forms are as subject to innovation as the historically-produced milieu that frames it. In an effort to move beyond essentialized indigenous ontologies, the authors engage the concept of historical

Introduction 11 mediation to model how humans, through sets of practices and discourses, mediate the real. Anthropologist Thomas White explores Inner Mongolian examples of the revival of religious practices in China’s ethnic minority-inhabited borderlands. These are often rendered acceptable to the secular state by being framed as examples of ‘cultural heritage’, which is increasingly understood in regional rather than merely ethnic terms. This chapter draws on an ethnography of a ritual to venerate a sacred mountain in western Inner Mongolia, at which a Mongol lama criticized state officials in attendance for allowing mining projects near the mountain while also admonishing lay Mongol elites for their errors in conducting the ritual. This chapter uses the lama’s speech to think through what notions of ‘cosmopolitics’ can do for our understanding of post-socialist religious revival in the context of contested ecologies but also uses this Inner Mongolian case to point some lacunae in the broader literature on cosmopolitics. Contestations and multiplicity features in the chapter by social anthropologist Richard Fraser, who explores the conflicts surrounding environmental conservation amongst the Reindeer-Evenki, a community of reindeer herders and hunters in Northeast China. He describes how these conflicts are not just the result of differing attitudes towards the environment but also of different ontological claims in a cosmopolitical framework in which clashes and incommensurability are maintained through a wide range of practices. Drawing upon debates surrounding non-human personhood, the chapter shows that for the Reindeer-Evenki, the environment consists of various kinds of ‘persons’, including the reindeer on whom they depend and the spirits thought to inhabit the taiga environment. The taiga is the domain within which to maintain meaningful relationships with such persons through the quotidian practices of herding, hunting, and dwelling. In recent years, however, the Chinese state has implemented a series of conservation measures that have problematized these practices, including resettlement, the establishment of protected areas, and a much-criticized hunting ban. The chapter shows how these limit Evenki interactions with non-human persons and compromise their ability for meaningmaking. It also describes how some Evenki circumvent these policies through adaptation of herding and hunting practices, as well as employing new discourses of intangible cultural heritage. In the process, this chapter argues for consideration of the role played by non-human persons in understanding people’s experiences of environmental policy and contestations of the environment. The final section, Cosmopolitical Ecologies for the 21st Century, looks at ways in which cosmopolitical ecologies play out and are used to address 21st century challenges cutting across disciplinary and geographical boundaries. Situated in Bhutan, the chapter by human geographer Riamsara Kuyakanon and Buddhist scholar Dorji Gyeltshen is the product of a collaboration that focuses on a territorial rainmaking ritual and its re-purposing. It stems from one author’s chance encounter with the ritual while travelling across the country and the other author’s first-hand experience of conducting the ritual as a young monk. The chapter draws on participant observation, historical sources, as well

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as event and internet ethnography to examine the uses and revival of this ritual during the COVID-19 outbreak. Through this example of cosmopolitical synergy of state and clergy at a time of national crisis, it documents how the cosmological is neither static, unchanging nor ‘out there’. Rather, the authors argue that the cosmopolitical is contingently composed within ecologies of practice that include the government, monk body, civil servants, citizens, researchers, and of course, the virus in its different manifestations – within scientific, political and ritual assemblages. Anthropologist and Islamic Studies specialist Anand Vivek Taneja approaches cosmopolitical ecologies from a very different angle: he looks at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of several major leaders of the Indian independence movement who were confined to Ahmednagar Fort for over three years from 1942 to 1945. He turns to Azad’s prison writings published in 1946 as Ghubar-e Khatir (The Dust of Memories). A major Indian-Muslim political figure, Azad was the President of the Indian National Congress from 1940 to 1946, and the first Education Minister of independent India, and an influential and authoritative religious thinker. Taneja pays particular attention to three letters in Azad’s prison writings that reflect an underexplored tradition of Muslim ecological thought, the ethics of the garden. Through Azad’s depiction of how an altered experience of time can lead to a transformative intimacy with other beings – in his case, the sparrows he shares a room with – Taneja describes a truly democratic encounter across species and reflects on a cosmo-theological ecology of practice resonant with experiences of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the final chapter, anthropologist/civil servant Jonathan Woolley reflects on an unexpected encounter between place-based spirits in the Himalayas and the UK brought about by the invitation of a Nepali Shaman to a British Druid. Noticing that landscape spirits of the Himalayas intervene in environmental management perceptions and decision-making in the region, he finds common ground with similar perceptions in the UK. For example, rockfalls in Nepal are attributed to the banjhakris–forest spirits, who are offended by roadbuilding beside the cliffs they inhabit. Similar place-based spiritual concerns also animate controversy over road building in Europe – with Britain’s druid community regularly mobilizing both politically and ritually to defend their sacred places from road building and oil and gas exploration. Druidic eco-activist rituals and Sherpa critiques of development hinge on similar cosmopolitical logic – namely that the landscape is inhabited by numerous spiritual agencies that can be directly affected by human activity. This chapter pursues a comparative approach, ethnographically exploring both environmental activism and animism in Nepal and Britain. It bridges the ‘here’ and ‘there’ to show how place-based environmental cosmopolitics may at the same time be transnational. Ecology of practice here seems to encounter Kantian and ancient cosmopolitanism in a new light. An afterword reviews how cosmopolitical ecologies lenses have been brought to bear on conceptual areas of interest that are traditionally distinct (politics, ritual, cosmos, environment and ecological management) yet are here re-framed in terms of cosmopolitics and political ecologies in the contributed chapters. It

Introduction 13 sets out important new questions and novel spaces for transformative engagement that arise through cosmopolitical ecologies framings and opens out towards new possibilities within and well beyond Asia.

Map with location of research site across Asia 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Hildegard Diemberger: When lha lu spirits suffer Yudru Tsomu: Territorial cults in Sino-Tibetan borderlands Julia Cassaniti: Disappearing spirits of the land Astrid Hovden & Hanna Havnevik: Balancing the sacred landscape Caroline Humphrey: ‘Mother’ memorials and cosmopolitics of environment David Lewis: Behind the façade, unseen faces of Japan David Sneath & Elizabeth Turk: Knowing the lords of the land Thomas White: Speaking of mountain deities beyond the county border Richard Fraser: Contesting the Chinese Taiga Riam Kuyakanon & Dorji Gyeltshen: Cosmopolitical ecology of COVID Anand Vivek Taneja: Sharing a room with sparrows Jonathan Woolley: Druids and Jhakris

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Notes 1 The deployment of narrative deconstruction, such as debunking the generic ‘tragedy of the commons’ narrative of ecological collapse, which disguises the role of state and non-local elite appropriation of capital, is a classic observation of political ecology (Muldavin 1996, in Robbins, 2004: 45). 2 Two seminal works are often pointed to when tracing political ecology’s emergence in the 1980s. Michael Watts’ Silent Violence demonstrated that what was deemed ‘natural’ phenomena such as famine, was in fact socially produced - an outcome of the “‘rupture of local systems as they become part of coherent and highly integrated global networks’” (Watts 1983b: 14 in Robbins, 2004: 77). Blaikie and Brookfield’s soil and social science work in Nepal, Land Degradation and Society (1987), showed that blaming the proximate poor for land degradation was an inadequate explanation, and what instead needed to be asked was why they were settled on marginal land in the first place, and what factors affect the range of choices that resources users have? 3 Aletta Biersack, in her introduction to Reimagining Political Ecology, characterized political ecology at the beginning of the 21st century as ‘second generation’, not grounded in one totalizing theory (Marxist political economy dominated the first wave of political ecology and remains a strong current in political ecology), but ‘a fluid and ambivalent space that lies among political economy, culture, theory, history and biology’ (2006: 5). 4 Such a cosmopolitics would be limited in its ability to address certain sorts of conflicts where a common world might itself be subject to debate, such as those surrounding the government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s 2013 ban on caribou hunting because population numbers were dropping, which was rejected by the political leadership of the Innu Nation, because population numbers were dropping: for the Innu, in order to restore the health of the population, Innu hunting protocols– and therefore hunting had to be followed. 5 Although there is wide agreement that, as a subfield of metaphysics, ontology is concerned with ‘what there is’ Hofweber (2005: 256), there are differences of philosophical opinion as to what makes up any given ontology. As Fine (1991: 264) notes, “[a]n ontology consists of all those items which are, in an appropriate sense, accepted. There are different views as to what it is for an item to be accepted into an ontology.” 6 In ‘It Matters What Concepts We Use to Translate Other Concepts With…’ de la Cadena is at pains to recognize the necessity of a very attentive and careful writing process (2015: 26), one that recognizes its own ‘partially connected’ conversations (Strathern, 2004), that controls the equivocation by probing the translation process itself (ibid., 116), acknowledges onto-epistemic complexity (ibid., 116), and the limits to understanding, including the author’s own (ibid., 64). 7 In Stengers’ particular case, the philosophy of science, as conceived of by a practivist, it means ‘the politicization of positive knowledge-related issues or practices concerning “things”’ (Stengers, 2005a: 994).

References Appadurai, Arjun. 2015. Mediants, Materiality, Normativity. Public Culture 27(2): 221–37. Biersack, Aletta, and Greenberg, James B. (eds). 2006. Reimagining Political Ecology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Blaikie, Piers, and Brookfield, Harold. 1987. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen. Blaser, Mario. 2016. Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? Cultural Anthropology 31(4): 545–70.

Introduction 15 Campbell, Ben. 2013. Living Between Juniper and Palm: Nature, Culture and Power in the Himalayas. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castree, Noel, and Braun, Bruce. 2001. Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. In: Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics: . Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–21. Cruikshank, Julie. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, & Social Imagination. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. de la Cadena, Marisol. 2010. Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics’. Cultural Anthropology 25(2): 334–70. de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. de la Cadena, Marisol, and Mario Blaser. 2018. A World of Many Worlds. London: Duke University Press. Descola, Philippe, and Gísli Pálsson. 1996. Introduction. In. P. Descola and G. Pálsson (eds.), Nature and Society, Anthropological Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 1–21. Fine, Kit. 1991. The Study of Ontology. Noû s 25(3): 263–94. Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hofweber, Thomas. 2005. A Puzzle about Ontology. Noû s 39(2): 256–83. Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment. Abingdon: Routledge. Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Oxford: Taylor & Francis. Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje. 2017. Interconnected – Embracing Life in our Global Society. Somerville: Wisdom Publications. Kuyakanon Knapp, Riamsara. 2016. Muddying political ecology waters: Serpent spirits and mountain gods as actants in Bhutan and Bangkok, Paper giver at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, 02 April 2016, San Francisco, CA. Kuyakanon, Riamsara, and Gyeltshen, Dorji. 2017. Propitiating the Tsen, Sealing the Mountain: Community Mountain-closure Ritual and Practice in Eastern Bhutan. Himalaya, Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 37(1): 8–25. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2004. Whose Cosmos? Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck. Common Knowledge 10(3): 450–62. Latour, Bruno. 2011. Politics of Nature: East and West Perspectives. Ethics & Global Politics 4(1): 71–80. Massey, Doreen. 1991. A global sense of place. Marxism Today, pp. 24–29. Mendieta, Eduardo. 2018. Interspecies Cosmopolitanism. In Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 292–303. Robbins, Paul. 2004. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Schulz, Karsten A. 2017. Decolonizing Political Ecology: Ontology, Technology and ‘Critical’ Enchantment. Journal of Political Ecology 24, 125–43. DOI: 10.2458/v24i1.20789 Sneath, David. 2014. Nationalising Civilisational Resources: Sacred Mountains and Cosmopolitical Ritual in Mongolia. Asian Ethnicity 0, 1–15. DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2 014.939330 Stengers, Isabelle. 2005a. The Cosmopolitical Proposal. In: Bruno Latour and P. Weibe (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 994–1003.

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Stengers, Isabelle. 2005b. Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices. Cultural Studies Review 11(1): 183–96. Stengers, Isabelle. 2010. Cosmopolitics I (Robert Bononno, trans.). Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press. Stengers, Isabelle. 2010. Cosmopolitics II (Robert Bononno, trans.). Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press. Stengers, Isabelle. 2019. Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science (Stephen Muecke, trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Strathern, Marilyn. 2004. Partial Connections (Updated ed.). Oxford: Alta Mira. Studley, John. 2019. Indigenous Sacred Sites and Spiritual Governance – The Legal Case for Juristic Personhood. Abingdon: Routledge. Tambiah, Stanley. 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-east Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vayda, Andrew P. 1983. Progressive contextualization: Methods for research in human ecology. Human Ecology (11): 265–81. DOI: 10.1007/BF00891376 Yeh, Emily T. 2017. Political Ecology, Critique, and Multiple Ontologies: Musings on the Posthuman and Other Environmental Turns. English Language Notes 55(1–2): 143–52.

Part I

Cosmopolitical landscapes and ecologies of practice

1

When lha lu1 spirits suffer and sometimes fight back: Tibetan cosmopolitics at a time of environmental threats and climate change Hildegard Diemberger

Introduction As we arrived at dusk in the village of Til, perched on the steep rocky slopes of Gurlha Mandata massif in the Limi Valley, we stared at this mighty mountain in awe. Towering at the height of almost 8,000 metres above sea level, it is a Himalayan giant clad in snow and ice. Located to the south of the more famous Mt Kailash, it straddles the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and dominates the landscape of the extreme northwestern corner of Nepal: the Limi Valley in Humla district. The glaciers of this mountain range have been a source of water for agropastoralist communities inhabiting its slopes for centuries and have from time to time caused Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs). In recent years the frequency and intensity of such phenomena seem to have increased significantly, linked to a wide range of local and global factors, including global warming. It is a series of GLOFs experienced by Astrid Hovden (see Hovden and Havnevik, this volume) that inspired the HimalConnect project, which led a team of scholars, including the author of this paper, to explore this landscape and try to understand the predicament of its inhabitants. When discussing receding snow lines and environmental hazards with the local inhabitants, a common response was that many things were not quite right as the lha lu (lha klu) were disturbed and disasters reflected their anger and/or suffering. It wasn’t the only explanation, but it was certainly a common one, alongside others that ranged from an accumulation of bad karma in a Buddhist perspective to observed dynamics of ice and rock movements from a local empirical perspective.2 Referring to the lha lu, the people of Limi were referring to mountains and springs as ‘beings’ that were both the topographical features and the entities inhabiting them that could be translated (somewhat problematically) as ‘gods’, ‘spirits’, or ‘deities’ in English. They were referring to specific ‘beings’ as well as to a common trope rooted in Tibetan cosmology – a concept that I have encountered in many other sites in the Himalaya and on the Tibetan plateau as well as in ancient Tibetan manuscripts (and which in terms of translation challenges reminds us of the Peruvian ‘earth DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-1

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beings’, the tirakunadiscussed by De la Cadena (2015). The term lha lu is intriguing as it reflects an ancient vertical tripartition of the cosmos with the gods (lha) above, the lu spirits (below) and a range of other spirits (tsen, nyen, etc.) in the middle – a cosmological feature that can be found in the earliest Tibetan written records. This concept is particularly meaningful when considered in light of Tibetan linguistic features: Tibetan is a syllabic language and each syllable has an original meaning; for example, the term for ‘size’ che chung is created by combining che (lit. ‘big’) and chung (lit. ‘small’), similarly ring tung (lit. ‘long-short’) means ‘length’ while the category pha khu (lit. ‘fathers and uncles’) indicating generically patrilineally related males in a certain generation. Lha lu is, therefore, a cosmological word that encompasses all the divine beings in the landscape, from the gods (lha) above to the spirits of the underground waters (lu) below. As such, it is also similar to concepts such as sadag zhibdag (sa bdag gzhi bdag, lit. ‘[spirits] owner of the land and [spirits] owner of the earth foundation’) lu sadag (lit. ‘lu [spirits] and [spirits] owners of the land’], which can also be found in the Mongolian context – the ‘spirit masters of earth (gazryn ezed) and related spiritual constituents of landscape (lus, savdag)’ (see Sneath and Turk, this volume). In addition, the term lu has also been used to render the Sanskrit term naga in Buddhist literature, so that translation in itself has been part of a process of the conflation of meanings inscribed in the landscape. Both in Tibetan and Mongolian contexts, natural features of the landscape (see Paldrun 2021:236) may thus be seen as both the homes of deities and the corporeal bodies of the deities themselves (Huber 1994). These spiritual entities control the wellbeing of the land with all its inhabitants, including their health. Setting out from an exploration of the concept of lha lu as can be found both in historical sources and ethnographic contexts, I suggest that it lies at the heart of a ‘cosmopolitical’ rituality as it engages with non-humans as actors in the political arena. Intimately linked to and often identical with environmental features in the landscape, these non-human actors link the religious, the political and the environment in what can be seen as a cosmopolitical ecology. I suggest that rather than representing specific ontological claims, these spiritual entities emphasize the relational dimension of humans with the environment they inhabit and are therefore inherently connected to a morality of care as well as to local power relations. For this reason, it was possible (and compelling) for them to be integrated into different world views over time (pre-Buddhist, Buddhist, other religious traditions according to context, modernist and even Communist); they are not necessarily incompatible with ‘scientific’ knowledge and practices. Even in rural Himalayan contexts that have not been exposed in any significant way to scientific narratives, they co-exist with empirical explanations of environmental phenomena and show that different forms of causality are not mutually exclusive. In other contexts, shaped by modernist science-informed worldviews, these spiritual entities can thus easily resurface and/or be reinvented in processes of re-enchantment that characterize Asia’s varieties of secularism (see Bubandt and van Beek 2011). Associated with illness and healing practices (including ‘spirit possession’), they can even dovetail with

Tibetan cosmopolitics 21 China’s fragmented post-Maoist and ‘post-cultural’ cosmologies of spirits and spectres (Ng 2020). Tibetan environmental cosmopolitics according to the dBa’ bzhed (the testament of Ba): a paradigmatic historical narrative The Tibetan term lha lu (lha klu) appears in innumerable sources in all kinds of genres: ritual texts, biographies, histories, pilgrimage guides and many others. I decided to focus on an 11th century document that can be seen as paradigmatic and particularly important in all Tibetan Buddhist traditions (including the Kagyupa that are dominant in Limi): the dBa’ bzhed, also called ‘the Testament of Ba’. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to work with Pasang Wangdu on the earliest known version of this text (just after its rediscovery in a monastic archive in Lhasa). Also known as ‘the narrative of the bringing of the [Buddhist] doctrine to Tibet’, it gives an account of the events that led to the arrival of key Buddhist masters into Tibet (Santaraksita and Padmasambhava), the construction of the first Buddhist monastery in 775 AD, the declaration of Buddhism as the state religion and the political and religious tensions that followed (see Wangdu and Diemberger 2000; see also Pa tsab Pa sangs dBang ‘dus 2012 and Rme ru Yul lha thar 2012) (Figure 1.1). Since the publication of our preliminary English translation and study of this source in 2000, several

Figure 1.1 Image of the 11th century Tibetan manuscript of the dBa’ bzhed text. Made up of 33 sheets, it is currently preserved in Lhasa (TAR). Photograph: Pasang Wangdu.

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scholars have engaged with this text. This led to the discovery of fragments in the Dunhuang collection at the British Library, which testifies that the core of this narrative came into existence temporally closer to the 8th/9th century events it describes than any other account (see Van Schaik and Iwao 2008: 477–87).3 The theme of local spirits creating havoc for human beings and requiring appropriate engagement appears several times in the narrative. In particular, they play an important part in creating the circumstances that lead to the invitation of the spiritual master Padmasambava to come to Tibet. Famous across Tibet and omnipresent in Himalayan landscapes, this master became the hero in innumerable later accounts of the taming of landscape spirits.4 Although stereotypical narratives of Buddhification of a pre-Buddhist land with its spiritual entities have often been used to construct ideas of tradition, indigeneity, preBuddhist religion, temporality, etc. that need to be interrogated rather than taken at face value (something that both international and Tibetan ‘traditional’ historians have engaged with in different ways), I suggest that early sources such as the dBa’ bzhed can assist in understanding the historical depth of cosmological features that shape what Basso (1996) calls ‘lived topographies’. Their study can also interface with cross-disciplinary textual and ethnographic research into landscape deities involved in human livelihoods, such as the srid pa’i lha on the margins of the Tibetan plateau (Huber 2020). In the dBa’ bzhed, Padmasambhava’s intervention is remarkably limited and more realistic than in any narrative that followed. He is depicted as a sort of skilful ‘engineer’ introducing new forms of water management as well as a powerful ritual specialist. A remarkable passage states that: That day Padmasambhava perfomed mirror-divination…and pronounced the name of all the gods and underground water spirits (lha lu) that had caused the flood of Phangthang, the fire in the Lhasa castle [hit by thunderbolt], the epidemics among people and cattle and the famines. Then calling the names and the clans of all wicked gods and underground water spirits (lha lu), these were summoned to Padmasambhava’s presence. They were made to descend into human beings [i.e. become embodied by mediums] and were severely threatened by him. With the help of a translator, Bodhisattava [Santaraksita] taught them the Buddhist doctrine of cause and effect and made the truth evident. Afterwards Khenpo Padmasambhava told the king: ‘Henceforth, practise the holy doctrine as you like in the country of Tibet! The gods and underground water spirits (lha lu) have been bound by oath but such ritual for giving orders to gods and underground water spirits (lha lu) and binding them by oath must be performed twice more’. (dBa’ bzhed folio 12a–12b) This passage indicates that lha lu spirits had caused environmental disasters and needed to be dealt with. This offered the opportunity for their taming so that they were ‘bound by oath’ of loyalty to Buddhism (using a language common in the

Tibetan cosmopolitics 23 political practices of the time) and were committed to act as Buddhist protectors. Rather than referring to specific landscape gods, as it is done elsewhere in the text, here the narrative refers to lha lu as a generalizing cosmological concept in a way that is not dissimilar from what was done by the Limi farmers I met in 2018. The taming described in this passage implied several steps: first, the spirits’ name was called out, making them present in ways that are still practised in many Himalayan contexts; then, they were compelled to descend (phab) into human beings (mi la), using a vocabulary evoking ‘spirit possession’ through mediums (lhabab, lha ‘bab, lit. ‘god descending’, see also Diemberger 2005); and finally, they were taught the Buddhist ‘doctrine of cause and effect’. The detail of the ‘translator’ (lotsaba) makes this description particularly plausible and compelling. It evokes both the actual process of translation of the Buddhist teachings into Tibetan as well as the role of ‘translators’ assisting mediums during spirit possession (see Diemberger 2005). This realistic description stays in stark contrast with later narratives of Padmasambhava’s miraculous subjugations of deities typically found in the literature based on revealed ‘treasures’, i.e. terma (gter ma). What was represented in the dBa’ bzhed narrative was the enactment of a power relationship that enabled Buddhism to redefine the sacredness of Tibetan landscapes by manipulating existing ritual actions in a recognizable human setting and using an understandable ritual vocabulary. The Buddhification of Tibetan landscapes was not a straightforward operation. According to the dBa’ bzhed, Padmasambhava was able to tame the spirits only partially and was then forced to leave the country because of the anti-Buddhist ministers’ concerns that he may achieve political power by controlling the water and the landscape spirits. The recommended repetition of the ritual taming never occurred and thus, the process of Buddhification was incomplete. It remained an unfinished job. This incomplete Buddhification is a powerful narrative trope as it suggests that later spiritual masters would have to try to complete Padmasambhava’s deeds in specific landscapes. This can be seen in action in 21st century Limi, as in many other Himalayan Valleys and elsewhere on the Tibetan Plateau. In Limi villages, a powerful Buddhist master who was active there in the late 20th century reportedly tamed some local ancestral mountain gods that required periodic animal sacrifice and convinced the local medium to give up on being possessed by local spirits (see Hovden, in press). The issue of animal sacrifice required by local spirits has repeatedly been a source of disputes across the Tibetan Buddhist world and was a point of controversy (and awkward compromises) since Tibet’s Buddhification. For example, in another Himalayan context, the Hidden Valley of Khenpalung, straddling Eastern Nepal and southern Tibet, I encountered another mountain deity, Chokyong Surra Rakye, who has required animal sacrifice up to the present day and whose Buddhist taming has been an ongoing arduous process by local lamas trying to follow in the footsteps of Padmasambhava (see Diemberger and Hazod 1997: 261–82; see also Niangwujia 2021). The way in which Padmasambhava could be re-embodied in the deeds of later masters who tamed landscape spirits in similar ways suggests that Tibetan Buddhist perspectives claiming that Padmasambhava’s persona could transcend conventional space and

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time (see Sanders 2016: 228–39) are not only plausible but also reflected in a sort of ‘distributed personhood’.5 Despite his omnipresence in Tibetan landscapes, Padmasmbhava remains a mysterious figure as historical evidence for his existence and actions is scanty (in contrast to the historical figures he supposedly interacted with). The dBa’ bzhed account of his deeds, less hyperbolic and partly unsuccessful, supports the historicity of his existence (see Kapstein 2000: 155–60; Cantwell and Mayer 2013: 19–50) and may point towards a gradual blend of narratives concerning a real tantric master who went to Tibet in the 8th century, with elements of local landscape mythology and heroic narratives that were travelling along IndoTibetan pathways and the Silk Roads. Padmasambhava’s connection to water and fertility-related deities, his power as a master and omnipresent tales of his heroic deeds of taming hostile forces reverberate with narratives and ritual practices from Buddhist India6 and those of other heroic/saintly figures across Asia. A prominent example is that of Al-Khiḍr/Hizir, the ‘green one’ (see also Navaro 2021, in press), who appears in various guises in Islam, especially Sufism, as well as in Zoroastrianism and even in Christian contexts where he is identified with St George the dragon tamer and, possibly, the European medieval ‘green man’. A political theory of cosmology in a 9th century debate A passage at the end of the main narrative of the dBa’ bzhed is particularly interesting. It is a stand-alone additional chapter, a sort of appendix, that goes under the name ‘Account of the Food Provisioning [for the Dead]’ (Zas gtad kyi lo rgyus), which is the name of the Buddhist funerary ritual involving the dedication and distribution of food (see also Dotson 2013: 51–83). This narrative, which is somewhat later than the main body of the dBa’ bzhed, reports events that took place in the wake of the death of the Tibetan emperor Thrisong Detsen (742–ca800), the Tibetan ruler who had been the patron of Padmasambhava, had built the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet and had declared Buddhism to be the state religion (sse also Kapstein 2006 for an overview). The main focus of the debate was the type of funeral that had to be performed as the country’s leadership, in particular the council of ministers (lonpo, blon po) advising the king, was spilt between Buddhist and anti-Buddhist factions. Debates were a widespread practice and a common literary trope to describe a decision process that led to radical change and/or the solution of a controversy. As a narrative device, they can reflect both actual debates as well as the existence of conflicting views over a particular issue. They are a powerful way of reflecting the discursive character of traditions and the existence of different interpretative communities in relation to controversial themes. There are several debates in the dBa’ bzhed,7 including a remarkable dispute surrounding the cost of Buddhist institutions and the maintenance of monks. In this chapter, I address only the debate reported in the appendix where the anti-

Tibetan cosmopolitics 25 Buddhist minister Chim Tsensher Legsig pleaded for keeping the ancestral, nonBuddhist, mountain cults and their funerary customs for the funeral of Thrisong Detsen. He briefly summarized elements of Tibetan royal mythology and rituality. I present here some salient points (Figures 1.2 and 1.3): … the lord of the people and gods Pugyal Nyathri Tsenpo became the king of the upright Black-Headed ones [i.e. the humans], in our domain, the land of Tibet. He had miraculous properties […] the Mu (rMu) helmet, the Mu (rMu) suit of armour [list of further items follows]. At that time he used to live with his attendants and the Tse and Cog acted as ritual specialists (kushen, sku gshen) […] The god (kulha, sku lha) of the king was [the mountain god] Yarlha Shampo. The tombs of the deceased were erected in Raba Thang. Yarlha Shampo is very mighty and has great magical powers […] [The king] ruled only over a small part of Yoru [in central Tibet]. Then he conquered the lords of the petty kingdoms (gyaltren, rgyal phran) and the kingdom obtained great majesty (ngathang, mnga’ thang) and high political authority (chabsi tobo, chab srid mtho bo), and became endowed with the sacred law (tsuglag, gtsug lag) … (dBa’ bzhed folio 27a, b) According to the well-known myth reported (in a more detailed way) in the Old Tibetan Chronicle from Dunhuang (PT 1287),8 the first king Nyathri Tsenpo,9 who was endowed with extraordinary powers and magic weapons, descended from the

Figure 1.2 Mt Yarlha Shampo is a peak in southern Tibet. As kulha (sku lha), it used to be the protecting deity of the Tibetan rulers during the imperial period. Photograph: Kurt Diemberger.

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Figure 1.3 Festival in Dzonkha (Jilong County, TAR), in the land protected by the mountain deity Jobo Kulha (Jo bo sku lha). The portrait of Mao is attached to the pole at the centre of the event (August 1993). Photograph: Carlo Meazza.

realm of gods (lha) onto a mountain through a rope of light (muthag, rmu/dmu thag). Connecting the levels of the vertical tripartition of the cosmos, he married a goddess of the underground, a female lu spirit, and after the completion of his mission in the human realm, he returned to heaven through the same rope of light. His descendants became mortal because of a conflict that led to the rope of light being cut. According to this mythology, which has some parallels with pre-Islamic Turkic and Persian traditions,10 following the cutting of the rope of light royal funerals with large tombs had become necessary (and can still be seen in Chongye, in southern Tibet). These funerary rituals linked the royal cosmology of descent from heaven to the burial sites in locations associated with the royal lineage and were an expression of royal power.11 The mountain god Yarlha Shampo, a snow-mountain in the Yarlung Valley, was considered to be the key protector of the Tibetan ruler and had the title of kula (sku lha, lit. body-god) – sometimes rendered in archaic sources as sku bla evoking the concept of la (bla) often translated as ‘soul’, ‘vital principle’ (see Karmay 2009 [1988]; Tsomu, this volume) (Figure 1.4).12 According to the anti-Buddhist minister Chim, it was thanks to the worship of the mountain god protecting the royal lineage and the performance of these rituals that the king was able to conquer all the petty kingdoms unifying them under his rule as well as to have majesty, political authority and the respect of the sacred law. He then added: … All this is reversed if Buddhist monks perform the funeral and the religion of India is followed. If misfortunes (tamishipa, bkra mi shis pa) occur

Tibetan cosmopolitics 27

Figure 1.4 Yarlha Shampo embodied in a white yak is being tamed by Padmasambhava. Mural painting in Samye monastery (southern Tibet). Photograph: Carlo Meazza.

there will certainly be a decline in the political authority (chabsi mepa, chab srid smad pa) and the relationship between the lord and his subjects. (dBa’ bzhed 28a) Remarkably, the Chim minister made the case in the name of governance rather than belief and highlighted the political risk in the case of ill events as the process of attribution of responsibility would endanger the relationship between lord and the subjects and hence the stability of the kingdom. Despite the fact

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that it may have been a caricatured narrative from a Buddhist point of view, the speech is remarkably plausible and sophisticated. Vairocana, the Buddhist representative, refuted minister Chim’s argument by contrasting tombs, palaces and the royal territorial cults of Yarlha Shampo with Nālanda Monastery in India, Buddhist ‘pure lands’ and the Protectors of the Three Families (rigsum gonpo, rigs gsum mgon po)13 (see Dotson 2013: 73). He claimed that the petty-kingdoms’14 worship of mountain gods made them weak, whereas the conversion to Buddhism made the Tibetan kings strong and certainly stronger than the petty kingdom rulers (Figure 1.5): the king of Zingpo [petty-kingdom], worshipped the compassionless [mountain] god Thanglha Yarlha, the two ritual specialists (ashen, a gshen) of Phenyul killed many animals … [therefore] ended under the domination of the Tibetan king […] The king of Shang Shung [petty-kingdom] [Nya Shurlag Mig worshipped the compassionless god Gyedo (alias Gekho)…For this reason the Shang Shung kingdom was lost and … passed under the rule of Tibet […] The king of [the petty-kingdom] Chim performed black Bon funerals, and for this reason the kingdom of Chim was defeated and somebody like [you], [Chim] Tsensher, became an orthodox subject [of the Tibetan king]. (dBa’ bzhed 29a–30a)

Figure 1.5 A woman acting as oracle and healer. When in a trance, she is possessed by Mt Nyanchen Thanglha. Here she is practising mirror divination in a healing session. Photograph: Carlo Meazza.

Tibetan cosmopolitics 29 In addition to the well-known mountain gods Nyanchen Thangla and Kailash, alias Gang Tise (associated with Gekho), Vairocana gave a more extensive list of mountain deities linked to petty kingdoms (and their leadership)15 as compassionless deities requiring animal sacrifice.16 In contrast to this, he extolled the virtues of Buddhism as based on logical precepts and scriptural authority, highlighting that by performing virtuous deeds, one achieves higher rebirth and by taking life, one falls to a bad rebirth (dBa’ bzhed 30a, b). Chim Tsensher responded: Monks! Your argument came from the empty sky and is just focused on the next life … If you don’t follow our advice tell us what is better! [Are you suggesting that] the monks hold the assembly of the palace?! That the monks serve the lord?! [And even] that the monks protect the border-lands as border-guards?!!! and he shook himself in passion. Vairocana replied again: “We monks can do it!” (dBa’ bzhed 30b). The exchange between minister Chim and Vairocana in this debate reflects the opposing views that split the Tibetan political leadership at the beginning of the 9th century. It also gives insight into two contrasting theories of power that were underpinned by different cosmologies and different legal frameworks, including oral vs written law (see also dBa’ bzhed, 2a, b). Even if perceived through the lens of a Buddhist framing narrative, the argument presented by minister Chim in defence of territorial cults is remarkably lucid and credible as it reflects in brief Tibet’s constitutional mythology of the imperial period (see Dotson 2013: 71). It is relational rather than ontological – i.e. it argues in terms of relations and mechanisms of attribution rather than belief – and also reminds of Machiavelli’s theory of religion as a tool of governance.17 It is the earliest version of a kind of political critique of Buddhism (and its impact on worldly institutions) that can be encountered in Tibetan and Mongolian societies up to the present day. According to this argument, territorial cults are crucial for the wellbeing of a place and for its governance, whereas the Buddhist focus on detachment, the afterlife and compassion made it unsuitable for dealing with worldly matters, especially defence, whilst monasteries and rituals diverted much-needed resources to other-worldly aims. According to Vairocana’s Buddhist view, on the other hand, it was the Buddhist moral order and a legal system inspired by Buddhist virtues and codified in writing that made the kingdom powerful. History tells us that eventually, Buddhism triumphed. After the death of Thrisong Detsen, Buddhism became dominant under Thride Songtsen and his successor Ralpachen but was persecuted by the following emperor, who destroyed Buddhist institutions. This led to a civil war that saw opposing Buddhist and non-Buddhist factions fighting each other and the eventual collapse of the Tibetan empire. Buddhism returned in a more stable way with the ‘later spread’ of the doctrine (chidar, spyi dar) in the 11th century. The fact that Buddhism triumphed both religiously and politically is encapsulated in the metaphor of ‘golden yoke’ of temporal rule and the ‘silken knot’ of religious rule (serkyi

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nyathrim darkyi dupa, gser byi mnya’ khrims dar gyi ‘dud pa), which is referred to in the dBa’ bzhed as well as many later texts and underpinned the legal system in medieval Tibet (see Pirie 2017: 41–60). This is a theory of governance that highlighted the importance of the combination of the ‘hard’ power of worldly rulers with what can be seen as the ‘soft’ power of religious institutions that provided moral framework and legitimacy that ensured social acceptance. In spite of and also thanks to their Buddhification, sacred mountains and their ritual sites continued to be ‘owners of the land’ (sadag) in Buddhified form. The most important mountain gods had been invited to witness the establishment of Buddhism as the state religion in the 8th century. This is famously reported in an edict and an inscription on a pillar erected in Samye monastery on that occasion.18 In doing so, it referred to the important distinction between ‘deities of this world’ (jigtembe lha, ‘jigs rten pa’i lha) and ‘deities beyond the world’ (jigtenledebe lha, ‘jigs rten las das pa’i lha) that made it possible for these pre-existing spiritual entities to be integrated into the Buddhist framework as lesser deities.19 The ritual reform and cosmological innovation implied by this distinction would subsequently play an important part in the political-religious framework of the Tibetan state and its monastic institutions (see e.g. Mills 2003). Since historical narratives such as the dBa’ bzhed have become widespread across the Tibetan world, it is not surprising to find a wide range of Buddhist/ Buddhified landscape deities closely connected not only to the sacredness of specific places but also to their politics, honour and prosperity. Without using the term cosmopolitics, but reflecting some of the relevant features, this connection was illustrated in Philippe Sagant’s and Samten Karmay’s seminal work as well as that of many scholars who followed in their footsteps.20 Furthermore, landscape deities appear intrinsically connected to the environment – and were even deployed in making a case for juristic personhood of Tibetan Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites (Studley 2018: 354–83, 2019). As hinted at in the dBa’ bzhed narrative concerning their taming by Padmasambhava, they are also closely related to environmental features, including weather and climate (see also Salick et al. 2012: 447–76). Water, in particular, seems to be at the heart of Tibetan political cosmologies and the very Tibetan notion of politics: chabsi (chab srid). Chabsi: a Tibetan concept that links water, politics, and religion The Tibetan word that is commonly used for ‘politics’/‘political’ is chabsi. This was also the term used by minister Chim to indicate the political authority maintained by the appropriate royal rituality and jeopardized by its disregard. The etymology of chabsi is intriguing as it is a compound made up of the term chab (chab), meaning ‘water’ in honorific form, and si (srid) (meaning ‘expanse’, ‘governance’ but also ‘producing the existence of’). This intrinsic connection between water, politics and religion has been noticed and commented upon in a variety of settings, highlighting both the importance of water governance and the cosmological link between water and lu spirits.21 The cosmological dimension of water and politics can be pushed even further as it has a wide range

Tibetan cosmopolitics 31 of implications. It is well known that water management was (and often still is) important in community rules and regulations, legitimized by local cosmologies and enforced by rulers. For example, the Shel dkar chos ‘byung (History of the White Crystal) celebrates the ruler of southern Lato for having built irrigation systems and set up water management registers to regulate access to water when he established his power in south-western Tibet in the 14th century (see Wangdu and Diemberger 1996). This contributed to the prosperity of the country and the ruler’s majesty (ngathang, mnga’ thang), reminiscent in various ways of Wittvogel’s theory of hydraulic despotism (Wittvogel 1957). Things are more complex and nuanced, though, and involve not only temporal rulers and water management but also the spiritual ‘owners of the land’ (sadag, zhibdag, etc.). In that particular case, there was an overlaying of a Buddhist landscape mandala on the local mountain gods to create a compelling cosmology of power that linked the spiritual forces of the place to its politics and environment. The relationality of humans, water, landscape is something that makes Tibet a particularly useful place to talk about cosmopolitical ecology. In earlier works (Diemberger 2012: 100–27; Diemberger et al. 2015: 249–71) building on climatological work by Hans F. Graf, I noticed the importance of mountains in the local moisture circulation system and in the interface between local and regional climate, including the ways in which the monsoon affects the Tibetan plateau. Dew, clouds, rain, snow and ice, as well as springs and lakes, connect the sky and the earth in multiple ways. These provide the basis for innumerable ‘feed-back loops’22: at the local level, vegetation coverage which can be impacted by human activity, affects moisture in the atmosphere and precipitation; at the global and regional levels, snow and ice coverage on mountains, which is adversely impacted by global warming and black carbon deposits from pollution, affect local weather patterns as well as, eventually, water in springs. It is therefore not surprising that snow and ice on mountains as well as water in sacred lakes are often seen as an indicator of the land’s well-being and their disappearance (or excess) is perceived with anxiety (see Diemberger 2012: 100–27; Diemberger et al. 2015: 249–71; Sehnalova 2019: 216–82). The lha of mountain gods are intimately linked to the lu spirits of the underground waters. The Old Tibetan Chronicle mentioned above gives an iconic representation of this connection when it reports that the first king, son of the gods (lha se, lha sras), descended from heaven. He came as Father of the Land, as Lord who ‘descended from heaven like rain’ (chard du phab) to impregnate the earth; he married a female lu spirit and became the ruler of human beings (see Bacot et al. 1940: 81, 85–6; see also Dotson 2011: 83–103 for a contextualization). The Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau offer a kaleidoscope of narratives and ritual practices linking lha lu spirits to landscapes and water – in terms of caring for an essential element for life as well as defence from environmental disasters such as floods and droughts (see Ramble 1996: 141–56). lha lu cosmologies imply a nexus between the immaterial and material qualities of a place, the political leadership and the environment, most prominently everything that revolves around water and its management. Related to this is the idea that ice and snow

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can reflect the ‘honour’ (uphang; dbu 'phang) of a mountain god and of the territory it protects, referring to an important concept in Tibetan society.23 In addition, landscape deities are often conceptualized in terms of kinship relations. They can be married couples (especially mountains and lakes), mothers, fathers, children, brotherhoods and sisterhoods, as well as ancestors and they are profoundly relational among themselves and towards the beings inhabiting their land (humans included). At the same time, some of these deities can be ‘birth gods’ (kyelha, skye lha), defining the identity of (human and other than human) beings born in their domain (see also Tsomu, this volume). The framing of landscape features in terms of kinship underpinned by the use of verbs expressing emotions suggests an affective relationality eliciting care and an awareness of mutual dependency – even when this may be compounded with anxiety, overshadowed by awe or even elicit transgression. In what Basso (1996) would call a ‘lived topography’, landscape deities make people and people make landscapes. These features have remained, whilst being continuously reinvented and re-enacted, after the Buddhification of the Tibetan plateau. Despite narratives setting it in the past, the Buddhification of local deities appears to be a continuous, open-ended process and builds on and reframes their relationship to humans in Buddhist terms. The most common narrative trope is that of taming and conversion of these deities by Buddhist masters, usually assumed to have happened at some point in the past. In addition, these deities are reconsidered in light of the notion of interconnectedness, which renders the Tibetan term tendrel (rten ‘brel) used to translate the Sanskrit Buddhist notion pradityasamutpada (co-dependent origination) and highlights not only the interdependence of all worldly phenomena but also their affective relationship (see Karmapa 2017). The power and relationality of worldly deities can thus be reconciled with Buddhist perspectives against the background of Buddhist theories of truth: Since truth can be perceived at multiple levels depending on the position of the beholder, the distinction between ‘conventional truth’ in which we are all entangled and ‘ultimate truth’ associated with enlightenment, emptiness and nirvana offers a useful framing – worldly deities in interaction with humans can be accommodated within Buddhist soteriological narratives as part of samsara’s contingent existence and cycle of rebirths (this underpins the distinction between worldly and otherworldly deities/aims highlighted in many ethnographic studies, e.g. Sehnalova 2019; Studley 2018: 354–83, 2019). In terms of human relationships to the environment, this framework provides the rationale for blending local spiritual entities with wider Buddhist concepts and aspirations. A further layering of interpretation is often given through the application of tantric ritual concepts such as the mandala to specific landscapes, the association of particular sites with the deeds of Buddhist masters and the discovery of Buddhist sacred treasures (terma, gter ma) as well as the revelation of hidden lands (beyul, sbas yul) (see Garrett et al. 2020). There is wide-ranging literature on these manifestations of sacredness in Tibetan landscapes, which link cosmology, spirituality and politics as well as environmental features in creating what can be seen in Tim Ingold’s words as ‘storied’ world (Ingold 2011: 142).

Tibetan cosmopolitics 33 These landscapes characterized by places of power and spiritual entities that interact with humans within cosmopolitical frameworks do not necessarily manifest as a single and coherent form of meaning making. Often different interpretative communities reflect a variety of narratives that can clash or be reconciled according to different forms of mediation ranging from skilful human operators to digital platforms (see also Tsomu, this volume). Is lha lu cosmology in the Limi context cosmopolitical? In the present day, Limi valley lha lu cosmology is referred to in a variety of contexts. Since the people of Limi are profoundly Buddhist, the local landscape spirits are seen as Buddhist protectors and, in some cases, as mountain gods that were Buddhified either in a distant past or recently thanks to Buddhist masters operating in the area in the 20th and 21st centuries. They are intimately linked to the leadership of the community and to the upkeep of local rules and regulations about access to places and the management of environmental resources. They are the focus of rituals that mark key moments in the agricultural calendar, represent ancestral connections for each household and restore (so, gso) the relationship between people and places (see Hovden and Havnevik, this volume). Their worship coexists with Buddhist moral concepts of karma and interconnectedness as drivers of human behaviour. In Limi, as in many other Himalayan Valleys, older adjustments between local spirits and Buddhist moral frameworks are currently overlaid by new forms of engagement with the landscape. Increasingly exposed to global Buddhist environmentalism, local Buddhist masters are promoting ecological agendas by mobilizing Buddhist concepts. The Yalbang Lama in the new capital of the Namkha administrative unit of which Limi is part and the leader of the Drigung Kagyu sect are remarkable examples. For the Limi community, the voice of environmentalist Buddhism is most prominently embodied by the 37th Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, who lives in India but has close links to the Limi monastic community. Deeply aware of global environmental challenges, he established projects such as ‘The Go Green & Go Organic project’ whose main purpose is ‘to revive the Himalayan and Tibetan Cultures and to protect the nature, animals, birds and environment of the Himalayan Mountains’.24 In addition, a secular engagement with the landscape is promoted by both the state and non-governmental organizations informed by international scientific views and practices. Different approaches can both clash or dovetail according to specific contexts and the ability of a range of people to act as mediators (local leaders, politicians at various levels, administrators, scientists, etc.). Cosmology and rituals of environmental management and activism In the Himalayas and beyond, lha lu spirits can be encountered in the framework of local environmental activism. As illustrated by Tsomu in this volume, the cult of landscape deities has been increasingly revived in many Tibetan areas of China

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after a period of suppression and oblivion associated with the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Across the Tibetan plateau, these kinds of entities have been at the heart of innumerable cases of environmentalist mobilization driven by a wide range of ecological agendas, including waste management, protection of woodland, fight against water pollution, opposition to mining, the promotion of climate change awareness as well as competing forms of development (see e.g. the case of Amnye Machen, Sehnalova 2019: 216–82, Rebkong in Amdo Makley 2014: 229–55; Shangri-La, Coggins and Zeren 2014: 205–28), Nyimatashi/Gongwei Yang 2017: 117–21). Within the border of the People’s Republic of China, these movements have at times been promoted as reflecting governmental ‘green’ concerns, at times have been tolerated as driven by local leaders and communities, often, they have been opposed as politically dangerous. Policy shifts have often entailed dramatic changes in political positioning so that some movements that were initially approved of suddenly became illegal with all the relevant consequences (see Yeh 2014a: 194–219, 2014b: 255–78 and also her film Shielding the mountain, https://www.tibetsacredmountain.org/). Whatever the setting, landscape deities have certainly been important political actors to be reckoned with – sometimes within ritual assemblages that include the use of Buddhist scriptures as powerful ritual objects carried around in procession to bless the land and protect it from adverse weather (see also Kuyakanon and Gyeltsen, this volume). This kind of ritual arrangement has at times gone so far as to include party cadres in the celebration of the relevant rituals, as I witnessed in 1993 in southern Tibet25 and David Sneath in Inner Mongolia.26 Narratives and ritual practices associated with these deities have also provided the framework for the integration of secular figures such as Mao into local cosmologies, where they can be present as images on altars and ritual objects and even as entities involved in spirit possession (see Diemberger 2005). In Bhutan, cosmologies of Buddhified landscape spirits have been fully embraced by the state and interface with environmentalist agendas (see Allison 2014: 197–226; Kuyakanon and Gyeltsen, this volume) – which is reflected not only in publications but also in the production of audio-visual materials such as the short documentary ‘Leveraging Cultural and Scientific Knowledge and Practises for Environmental Conservation in Tali’27 by the Loden Foundation. Often the mobilization of landscape deities in a new environmentalist guise requires a redefinition of their characteristics and mythology. In Sikkim, for example, there has been an interesting adaptation of the famous mountain god Kangchendzonga (alias Kangchenjunga) – historically the protector of that area and its royal lineage. The ‘big snowy mountain of the five treasures’ is named after five treasures that are considered to be kept in it – usually indicated as elements that are indispensable for life, such as grains, cattle, salt, magic weapons, Buddhist scriptures and ritual items. In brochures produced by local grassroots environmentalist organizations, ‘biodiversity’ is now considered to be one of these key treasures protected by the mountain.28 On a much more international scale, the Kangchendzonga mountain with its sacred landscape is the

Tibetan cosmopolitics 35 focus of a national park inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list (see https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1513/). In a similar way, Mt Kailash – a holy site for a wide range of religions including Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as the seat of the Gekho deity mentioned by minister Chim in the debate reported in the dBa’ bzhed – is the focus of a transnational project in the name of its sacredness: the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation and Development Initiative (KSLCDI). This aims at promoting ‘transboundary cooperation and sustainable development to conserve ecosystems, biodiversity, and ways of life across China, India, and Nepal’ (https:// www.icimod.org/initiative/ksl/). Cosmological features are here identified as part of ‘cultural ecosystem services’ within a narrative of conservation and development. The Limi Valley, included in Mt Kailash landscape Mandala, is part of this new ‘ancient’ sacred landscape with many dimensions. Associated with prophetic narratives about the world, Mt Kailash’s Tibetan name, Tise, is at times considered (especially by some Bonpo scholars) to be a loanword from the ancient Shang Shung language and interpreted as ti ‘water’ and ‘se’ god, i.e. the ‘water god’. Whether etymologically accurate or just a plausible interpretation, this creates one of the many powerful cosmopolitical ecological framings. Lha lu cosmologies and their link to water make them relevant to what has come to be called ‘hydropolitical anthropology’, which invites anthropologists to consider ‘the part played by water in the making and unmaking’ of the world (Hastrup and Hastrup 2015). These spiritual entities and their icy and watery connections can be seen as part of ‘storied’ worlds (Ingold 2011: 142) of mutual intertwinement between humans and landscape in ways that do not necessarily imply different ontologies and claims to radical alterity when dealing people and agencies operating from different vantage points. Even when their manifestations in the eyes of scientists or administrators seem predicated on different ontological assumptions, in day-today practices, they shape the ‘partial connections’ (and dis-connections) that link different communities and networks on multiple scales. In highlighting relationality, they are open to a wide range of interpretations that entail affective dimensions. As mentioned by the Limi farmer quoted in the introduction, lha lu spirits can be disturbed; they can get angry, suffer or even abandon a place reducing it to barrenness and misery – an interpretation that appears reconcilable in practice with commentaries that are rooted in empirical observations of ice, rocks, trees, water and weather patterns and even science-driven interventions. In what can be seen as an ecology of practice, humans are very much part of this affective relationship and this is vividly shown by the intense reactions triggered by attempts to climb inaccessible sacred mountains such as Mt. Kailash as well as by the damage or deterioration of certain landscape features.29

Conclusion Despite (but also thanks to) their subordination to Buddhist authority, landscape deities as conceptualized in the Tibetan lha lu notion, reflect the intimate

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relationship between humans and the place they inhabit and are deeply engaged in their worldly concerns; as such, they are often central to the ritual life of many communities across Asia and can be understood in the framework of an environmental cosmopolitics involving non-human actors. These landscape spirits, prosper or suffer, are happy or angered. They stay in an intimate relationship with all animated beings that live in their territory – they are both place-based and potentially translocal as they can connect different networks and even travel through the internet through images and sound. They are part of what Kath Weston describes as the ‘animate’ planet (Weston 2017). The concept of lha lu, as can be found both in historical sources and ethnographic contexts, lies at the heart of a rituality that can be thought of as ‘cosmopolitical’ as it engages with non-humans as actors in the political arena. Intimately connected to and often identical with environmental features in the landscape, these non-human actors link the religious, the political and the environment in what can be seen as a cosmopolitical ecology. Rather than representing ontological claims, these views and ritual practices reflect the relational dimensions linking humans to the environment they live in (or sometimes relate to remotely) and can therefore be connected to a morality of care as well as specific power relations. Against this background, it is possible to understand the actual or potential involvement of beings/spirits/deities of ‘lived topographies’ in the ways in which different forms of knowledge and moral frameworks are navigated and combined in innumerable processes of decision making that shape human existence in the world.

Notes 1 In this paper, I give Tibetan terms as they are pronounced and add the Wylie transliteration when they are first mentioned and when relevant. 2 The pattern of explanations recalls what was found in other contexts, see Salick et al. (2012: 447–76). 3 Van Schaik and Iwao (2008: 477–87) observe that ‘When the Dunhuang fragments is compared with the equivalent passages from all the above versions of the Testament of Ba, there is no doubt that it is closer to the dBa’ bzhed than to any other version…’ and conclude: ‘The correspondence between these two Dunhuang fragments of the Testament of Ba (by which we now mean the dBa’ bzhed is so close that we must consider them variants of the same text’. Since the Dunhuang cave was walled off in 1035 AD, the fragment can be attributed to a date prior to this event and can be tentatively roughly dated on the basis of palaeographical features. 4 There is wide-ranging literature on Padmasambhava see Kapstein (2000: 155–60) for a discussion of the sources. Traditions of revealed text, the ‘treasure’ literature played an important part in this process, for a discussion of the figure of Padmasambhava see Samuel and Oliphant (2020). The ‘taming of the landscape’ has become a common ritual practice and a trope beyond Tibet, for example Buryat Buddhist scholar Dobdon Maskarov told me: ‘There are many stories about taming of different kind of non-human sentient beings by lamas in Mongolian areas. For example, in my homeland there is a popular story related to the great Buryat yogi Namnane-bagsha (b. 1825), who practised tantra and managed to tame sa bdag in Alkhanay area and as a result, this area became an abode of deities. Now this place is one of the sacred places of pilgrimage for Buddhists.

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5

6 7

8

9

10

11

12

13

You can also visit the official website of Alkhanay National Park http://alkhana.ru/ english-version.html.’ Email correspondence 7.2.2021., The concept of ‘distributed personhood’ was developed in a variety of anthropological contexts ranging from humans/things interactions to kinship. It may help as a heuristic device in the understanding of Tibetan theories of existence on multiple planes, which allow for coexisting singularity and plurality of masters. I used this approach in the Tibetan context when studying the Samding Dorje Phagmo (see Diemberger 2007a, 2007b). Water management with the relevant technologies and rituality was a recurring theme in early Buddhism in India, as shown by archaeological evidence corroborating historical research, see Shaw (2018: 223–55). The debate reported in the appendix of the dBa’ bzhed can be seen in a sort of intertextual conversation with other texts such as the Bsgrags pa gling grags, which supported the anti-Buddhist position of the Bonpo and, among other things, denounced Buddhists’ plagiarism of Bonpo texts, see Dotson (2013: 51–83). The dBa’ bzhed text reports three formal debates: (1) Ca. 760 Between Buddhist and Bonpo to discuss the religious orientation of the country. (2) Ca. 790 between representatives of Buddhist traditions from India and from China on the nature and temporality of enlightenment. (3) Ca. 800 between Buddhists and Bonpo on the rituals to be followed for royal funerals (in the appendix). Old Tibetan Chronicle (PT1287), see Bacot et al. (1940) and a wide range of later studies. For a discussion of this vocabulary and, in particular, ‘the black-headed ones’ as humans/humanity, see Hills (2013: 169–80). He shows that in occurrences, this brief term refers synechdocally to the myth of the descent of the Tibetan Emperor from the heavens to take loving charge of the ‘black-headed’ Tibetan peoples. The first mention of Nyathri Tsenpo as Tibetan royal ancestors appears in the Kongpo inscription (800–15) in an entirely non-Buddhist context. Later narratives of the Tibetan royal genealogy try to conflate Nyatri Tsenpo with Buddha’s lineage, reframing his mythology in an Indian Buddhist context (see Van der Kujip 2013: 332). For a discussion of this mythology see Haarh (1969) and Karmay (2009 [1998]). I am grateful to Professor Peter Golden for drawing my attention to parallel features in Tibetan and early Turkic mythology concerning statecraft at a conference in MIASU, University of Cambridge, see also Golden (2006: 23–61). Giuseppe Tucci had already noticed resonances of Tibetan royal mythology with the Turco-Mongolic world (see Tucci 1955: 197–255). Similar tombs can be found in areas associated with ancient Tibetan clans to which the ministers belonged (in many cases, these are also equivalent to the territories of petty kingdoms that were absorbed by the Tibetan empire). Chim (mChims) was one of these: Chim was the clan name of the anti-Buddhist minister in the debate and was also the name of an area in southern Tibet corresponding to one of the pettykingdoms. In this area, there is an immense necropolis with hundreds of tombs. See Wangdu (2009: 73–96); see also Dotson (2012: 159–204) and Hazod (2018: 5–106). The term kulha (sku lha) appears in currently used toponyms, e.g. the mountain god protecting the area of Mangyul Gungthang (Jilong County, TAR). This used to be the protector of the kings of this area between the 13th and the 17th century; they were descendants of the Tibetan emperors and had a government structure reflecting imperial legacies, including the use of political titles such as ‘uncle-ministers’ (zhanglon, zhang blon), see Diemberger (2007a). For a discussion of sku lha and sku bla in the context of imperial cosmology see most recently Dotson, B 2019. Gods and souls in Tibet: The etymologies of sku bla (paper held at the IATS Paris 2019); cf. also Bialek (2018: 233). Rigsum Gonpo refers to the three main Bodhistattva in the Tibetan tradition: Avalokitesvara, Manjusri and Vajrapani.

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14 The Tibetan term gyaltren (rgyal phran) refers to smaller polities that were taken over by the expanding Tibetan Empire around the 6th century AD. Traditional Tibetan historiography refers to a set of twelves petty-kingdoms but different lists show important inconsistencies 15 The name of the mountain deities and the relevant rulers and kingdoms not only evoke earlier catalogues of petty kingdoms taken over by the expanding Tibetan polity (see Dotson 2013: 51–83), they also include some names that are identical with the list of sacred mountains protecting Tibet (see also Tsomo, this volume). 16 See Dotson (2013: 74) ‘Animal sacrifice, or ritual killings, appears to lie at the centre of early Tibetan funeral rites. The horses, sheep, and other animals that guided the deceased to the land of the dead were presumably only constituted as psychopomps when they were sacrificed to join the man or woman in death.’ This is confirmed by archaeological finds. Animal sacrifices were at the heart of negotiation and reform that enabled Buddhists to substitute living animals with effigies and redefine in Buddhist terms the rituals and the sacredness of the relevant sites (see also Niangwujia 2021). 17 See Niccolo Machiavelli’s comment ‘ … the rulers of a republic or of a kingdom should uphold the basic principles of the religion they practise, and, if this be done, it will be easy for them to keep their commonwealth religious, and, in consequence, good and united.’ (Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses [on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius], I.12,2003:143). 18 For a description and a translation of the inscription, see Richardson (1985: 26–31). 19 On this distinction see also de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1993 [1956]). 20 Most relevant in terms of ‘cosmopolitics’ of sacred mountains is Philippe Sagant’s discussion of Walsh’s ethnography describing a mountain god who used to ‘elect’ the leader of the community in the Chumbi Valley. In the same inspiring article on ritual and political centralization he also shows the political relevance of the Gesar epic and the Tibetan royal mythology (see Sagant 1990). For a link of mountain cults and notions such as life (tshe, Tshe), fortune literally ‘wind-horse’ (lungta, rlung rta), power (wangthang, dbang thang) and honour (uphang, dbu 'dpangs) and the relevant rituals see also Samten Karmay (2009 [1998]) as well as Blondeau and Steinkellner (1996). 21 Nymatashi for example refers to the sematic connection between water and politics in his discussion of water governanace in Kangding (Nyimatashi/Gongwei Yang 2017: 119–20). 22 Feed-back loops are an important component in the study of Himalayan microclimates. On the importance of feed-back loops in climate change, referring to a different setting, see also Rush (2018). 23 Uphang, literally meaning ‘position of the head’ and reflects social ranking. This notion was extensively discussed by Philippe Sagant in many of his works, see, for example, Sagant (1990). 24 http://www.fao.org/mountain-partnership/members/members-detail/en/c/98621/; http://www.drikung.org/their-holiness/hh-kyabgoen-chetsang 25 During a fieldtrip in southern Tibet in 1993 I observed several instances of local cadres, including Party secretaries, celebrating local rituals calling for rain and protecting crops from hail. This would have been perfectly consistent with their position as community leaders according to the pre-existing Tibetan political framework. The tension with their position as members of the Communist Party was not an issue at that time. Things changed in later years. 26 David Sneath (2007) witnessed to oboo rituals celebrated with the participation of party cadres in Inner Mongolia. Personal communication. 27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtScMbd0h8 28 I saw a copy of this brochure whilst on the way to Kanchendzonga in Sikkim in 2011. The full title is Kangchendzonga the Sacred Mountain, a Biodiversity Handbook, and was

Tibetan cosmopolitics 39 published by the Kangchendzonga Conservation Committee, Yuksan, Sikkim, with the financial support of the Ministry of Human Resources and Development of the Government of India through the Centre for Environment Education. In the second page under an illustration of the god it reports: ‘The Chief country God of Sikkim …. Kangchendzonga literally means five repositories of God’s treasure, namely that of gold, silver, gems, grains and holy books. This handbook dwells on his most valuable treasure, namely biodiversity’. 29 For example, in the 1990s, intense debates emerged around the concession of permits to climbers for the ascent of Mt Kailash. The late Gompo, a famous Tibetan mountaineer in a leading position in the Tibet Mountaineering Association, was instrumental in ensuring that regulations were passed to prevent such a permit from being given. I had lengthy discussions with him on the subject.

References Allison, E. 2014. Spirits and Nature: The Intertwining of Sacred Cosmologies and Environmental Conservation in Bhutan. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 11(2): 197–226. DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.18805 Bacot, J., Thomas F.W., and Toussaint, C. 1940–1946. Documents de Touen-houang relatifs a l’histoire du Tibet. Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Basso, K. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Bialek, J. 2018. Compounds and Compounding in Old Tibetan. Marburg: Indica et Tibetica Verlag. Blondeau A.M., and Steinkellner, E. (eds.). 1996. Reflections of the Mountain: Essays on the History and Social Meaning of Mountain Cult in Tibet and the Himalaya. Vienna: OeAW. Bubandt, N., and van Beek, M. 2011. Varieties of Secularism in Asia: Anthropological Explorations of Religion, Politics and the Spiritual. London: Routledge. Cantwell, C., and Mayer, R. 2013. Representations of Padmasambhavain Early Postimperial Tibet. In: C. Cüppers, R. Mayer, and M. Walter (eds.), Tibet After Empire: Culture, Society and Religion Between 850-1000. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, pp. 19–50. Coggins, C., and Zeren, G. 2014. Animate Landscapes: Nature Conservation and the Production of Agropastoral Sacred Space in Shangrila. In: E. T. Yeh and C. Coggins (eds.), Mapping Shangrila. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. 2011 dBa’ bzhed [plus “appendix”, Bod kyi lo rgyus rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs, vol. Cha [6] ed. Dpal brtsegs bod yig dpe rnying zhib’jug khang. 2011. Xining: Qinghai minzu chubanshe, pp. 1–62. De la Cadena, M. 2015. Earth Beings. Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Diemberger, H. 2005. Female Oracles in Modern Tibet. In: J. Gyatso and H. Havnevik (eds.), Women of Tibet. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Diemberger, H. 2007a. Leaders, Names and Festivals: The Management of Tradition in the Mongolian-Tibetan Borderlands. In: U. Bulag and H. Diemberger (eds.), The Mongolia-Tibet Interface. Brill: Leiden. Diemberger, H. 2007b. Padmasambhava’s Unfinished Job: The Subjugation of Local Deities as Described in the dBa’ bzhed in Light of Contemporary Practices of Spirit Possession. In: Pramānakīrtih, Papers Dedicated to Ernst Steinkellner on the Occasion of

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His 70thBirthday. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studies, Universität Wien. Diemberger, H. 2012. Deciding the Future in the Land of Snow: Tibet as an Arena for Conflicting Knowledge and Policies. In K. Hastrup (ed.), The Social Life of Climate Models. London: Routledge. Diemberger, H., and Hazod, G. 1997. Animal Sacrifices and Mountain Deities in Southern Tibet–Mythology, Rituals and Politics. In: S. Karmay and P. Sagant (eds.), Les habitants du toit du monde. Volume in Honour of Alexander Macdonald. Paris: Société d’Ethnologie, Nanterre. Diemberger, H., Hovden, A., and Yeh, E. 2015. The Honour of the Snow-Mountains Is the Snow: Tibetan Livelihoods in a Changing Climate. In: C. Hueggel, M. Carey, J. Clague, and A. Kaab (eds.), The High-Mountain Cryosphere – Environmental Changes and Human Risks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dotson, B. 2011. Theorising the King: Implicit and Explicit Sources for the Study of Tibetan Sacred Kingship. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 21: 83–103. Dotson, B. 2012. At the Behest of the Mountain-God, Clans and Topography in PostImperial Tibet. In: Scherrer-Schaub (ed.), Old Tibetan Studies. Leiden: Brill Publishing. Dotson, B. 2013. The Dead and Their Stories: Preliminary Remarks on the Place of Narrative in Tibetan Religion. In: C. Cüppers, R. Mayer, and M. Walter (eds.), Tibet After Empire: Culture, Society and Religion Between 850-1000. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, pp. 51–83. Garrett F., McDougal, E., and Samuel, G. (eds.). 2020. Hidden Lands in Himalayan History and Myth. Leiden: Brill Publishing. Golden, P.B. 2006. The Türk Imperial Tradition in the Pre-Chinggisid Era. In D. Sneath (ed.), Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries. Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University. Haarh, E. 1969. The Yar-luṅ Dynasty. Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad’s Forlag. Hastrup, K., and Hastrup. F. 2015 Waterworlds: Anthropology in Fluid Environments. New York, NY, and Oxford: Berghan Publishing. Hazod, G. 2018. Territory, Kinship and the Grave in Early Tibet: On the Identification of the Elite Tombs in the Burial Mound Landscape of Imperial Central Tibet. In: G. Hazod and Shen Weirong (eds.), Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961–2015). Beijing: China Tibetology Publishing House. Hills, N. 2013. Come as Lord of the Black-Headed. In C. Cüppers, R. Mayer, and M. Walter (eds.), Tibet After Empire: Culture, Society and Religion Between 850-1000. Lumbini: Lumbini International Research Institute, pp. 51–83. Hovden, A. in press. Limi, the Land In-between: the Art of Governing a Buddhist Frontier Community in the Himalaya. Leiden: Brill Publishing. Huber, T. 1994. Putting the gnas Back into gnas-skor: Rethinking Tibetan Buddhist Pilgrimage Practice. The Tibet Journal 19(2): 23–60. Huber, T. 2020. Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and Eastern Himalayas. Vienna: VOAW. Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Oxford: Taylor & Francis. Ives, C. 2016. Buddhism. A Mixed Dharmic B: Debates about Buddhism and Ecology. In: W. J. Jenkins, M. E. Tucker, and J. Grim (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. London: Routledge. Jenkins, W., Berry, E., and Kreider, L.B. 2018. Religion and Climate Change. Annual

Tibetan cosmopolitics 41 Review of Environment and Resources 43(1): 85–108. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-environ-1 02017-025855 Kapstein, M. 2000. The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Kapstein, M. 2006. The Tibetans. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Karmapa, The. 2017. Interconnected: Embracing Life in Our Global Society. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. Karmay, S.G. (2009 [1998]). The Arrow and the Spindle. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point. Makley, C. 2014. The Amoral Other – State-Led Development and Mountain Deity Cults among Tibetans in Amdo Rebgong. In: E. T. Yeh and Coggins (eds.), Mapping Shangrila. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, pp. 229–54. Mills, M. 2003. Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism. London: The Psychology Press. Navaro, Y. 2021. Violence and Spirituality: Khidr Cosmography at the Turkish/Syrian Territorial Interface. In: Y. Navaro, Z. Özlem Biner, A. von Bieberstein, and S. Altuğ (eds.), Reverberations: Violence Across Time and Space. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, R. (1993 [1956]), Oracles and Demons of Tibet. The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities. Kathmandu: Pilgrims Book House. Ng, E. 2020. A Time of Lost Gods – Mediumship, Madness and the Ghost after Mao. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Niangwujia. 2021. “Mountain Deities in Northeast Tibet (A-mdo): Narrative and Ritual in the Cult of A-myes sTag-lung”, PhD Thesis, University of Oslo. Nyimatashi/Gongwei Yang. 2017. Water Politics and Religious Practices in Kangding. HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies 37(1), Article 16. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss1/1 6/117-121 Pa tshab Pa sangs dBang ‘dus. 2012. Bashi [Chinese translation]. Lhasa: Xizang renmin chubanshe. Paldrun. 2021. A Comparative study of the Klu ‘bum: Tibetan Bonpo sources for an understanding of the cult of klu (serpent spirits). PhD Thesis, PSL Paris University. Pirie, F. 2017. Which ‘Two Laws’? The Concept of trimnyi (khrims gnyis) in Medieval Tibet. Cahiers d’Extrême Asie 26: 41–60. Ramble, C. 1996. Pattern of Places. In: A. M. Blondeau and E. Steinkellner (eds.), Reflections of the Mountain:Essays on the History and Social Meaning of Mountain Cult in Tibet and the Himalaya. Vienna: OeAW. Richardson, H. 1985. A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions, Royal Asiatic Society, James G. Forlong Series, No. XXIX. Hertford: Stephen Austin & Sons Ltd, pp. 26–31. Rme ru Yul lha thar. 2012. Sba bzhed kyi dpar gzhi’i skor dang des bod kyi lo rgyus rig gzhung la thebs pa’i shugs rkyen skor las’phros pa’i gtam. Bod ljongs zhib’jug 4: 85–92. Rush, E. 2018. Rising – Dispatches from the New American Shore. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed. Sagant, P. 1990. Les Tambour de Nyi-shang (Népal). Rituel and Centralisation Politique. In: F. Meyer (ed.), Tibet, Civilisation et Societé. Paris: Fondation SingerPolignac.

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Salick, J., Byg, A., and Bauer, K. 2012. Contemporary Tibetan Cosmology of Climate Change. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 6(4): 447–76. Samuel, G., and Oliphant, J. 2020. About Padmasambhava. Historical Narratives and Later Transformations of Guru Rinpoche. Schongau: Garuda Verlag. Sanders, F. 2016. Padmasambhava, Time, and Space. In: D. Rossi and C. Jamyang Oliphant (eds.), Some Remarks. Sharro, Rudolfstetten: Garuda Verlag. Sehnalova, A. 2019. Powerful Deity or National Geopark?: The Pilgrimage to A-myesrma-chen in 2014/2015, Transformations of Modernisation and State Secularism, and Environmental Change. Inner Asia 21: 216–82. Shaw, J. 2018. Early Indian Buddhism, Water and Rice: Collective Responses to Socioecological Stress – Relevance for Global Environmental Discourse and Anthropocene Studies. In: M. Altaweel and Y. Zhuang (eds.), Water Technologies and Societies in the Past and Present. London: UCL Press. Sneath, D. 2007. Ritual Idioms and Spatial Orders: Comparing the Rites for Mongolian and Tibetan ‘Local Deities’. In: U. Bulag and H. Diemberger (eds.), The Mongol-Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia. Brill: Leiden, pp. 135–58. Sneath, D. 2014. Nationalising Civilisational Resources: Sacred Mountains and Cosmopolitical Ritual in Mongolia. Asian Ethnicity 15(4): 458–72. Studley, J. 2018. The Ritual Protection of Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites on the Tibetan Plateau and the Optimisation of Lay Participation. Journal of the Society of Religion, Nature and Culture 12(4): 354–83. Studley, J. 2019. Indigenous Sacred Natural Sites and Spiritual Governance – A Case for Juristic Personhood. London: Routledge. Tucci, G. 1955. The Sacred Characters of the Kings of Ancient Tibet. East and West 6: 197–205. Van der Kujip, L. 2013. Gu ge Paṇ chen Grags pa rgyal mtshan dpal bzang po (1415–86) on the Nyi ma’i rabs (*Sūryavaṃśa) and the Tibetan Royal Families. In F. K. Ehrhard and P. Maurer (eds.), Nepalica Tibetica, Festgabe for Christoph Cüppers. Andiast: IITBS, pp. 325–36. Van Schaik, S., and Iwao, K. 2008. Fragments of the Testament of Ba from Dunhuang. Journal of the American Oriental Society 128(3): 477–87. Wangdu, P., and Diemberger, H. 1996. Shel dkar chos ’byung - The History of the White Crystal. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Wangdu, P. 2009. The sleb ri tombs and the mChims clan. In: H. Diemberger and K. Phuntsho (eds.), Ancient Treasure, New Discoveries. Andiast: IITBS. Wangdu, P., and Diemberger, H. 2000. dBa´ bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of Buddha´s Doctrine to Tibet (BKGA 37). Vienna: VÖAW. Weston, K. 2017. Animate Planet – Making Visceral Sense of Living in a High-Tech Ecologically Damaged World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wittvogel, K.A. 1957. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Yeh, E. 2014a. Reverse Environmentalism – Contemporary Articulations of Tibetan Culture, Buddhism and Environmental Protection. In: J. Miller, D. Smyer-Yu, and P. van Veer (eds.), Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China. London: Routledge, pp. 194–219. Yeh, E. 2014b. The Rise and Fall of the Green Tibetan – Contingent Collaborations and the Vicissitudes of Harmony. In: E. T. Yeh and C. Coggins (eds.), Mapping Shangrila. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, pp. 205–28.

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Territorial cults in Sino-Tibetan borderlands: mobilizing spirits for local identity and environmental protection1 Yudru Tsomu

Introduction Since the 1980s, there has been a strong revival among Tibetans and Tibetrelated ethnic communities of territorial cults – most prominently community celebrations and shrines that go under the name of latse. Since time immemorial, these rituals have been closely connected not only to the local cosmology and sense of place but also to the local religious authority and political leadership. As pointed out by many Tibetan studies specialists, these rituals are central to Tibetan popular religiosity and were some of the earliest manifestations of spiritual life to be revived in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (see Karmay 1998). They have also been the focus of intersecting religious traditions, including local autochthonous cults, Bonpo, Buddhism and Taoism. This chapter explores particular instances of landscape rituals from the Kham region (Sichuan Province, PRC) to shows how the mobilization of ‘beings’ that are both landscape features (such as mountains, cliffs and springs) and entities that can be glossed as ‘spirits’ or ‘deities’ are part of a powerful ‘lived topography’ (Basso 1996). They can be perceived in ways that blend material and immaterial experiences through sensory encounters, the calling of their names or looking at their images depicted on temple walls. They are in an openended relationship with the human (and other than human) sentient beings that inhabit their lands and require regular ritual engagement through practices aiming at purification (sang, bsangs) and restoration/healing (so, gso). I was born in 1969 in an area historically known as Gotang, which has a distinctive local language known as Gochang2 related to Tibetic languages. Setting out from my own experience of both ignorance through cultural ‘forgetting’ and subsequent sanctioned revival, I will describe some ethnographic cases in which spiritual entities associated with landscape features have been mobilized to fulfil a wide range of aims – sometimes with the help of new media and social networks. Reflecting what can be seen as an ecology of practice, these cosmological features emerge as the focus of scholarly interests in ethnic minorities’ culture as well as the aim of community aspirations. As such, they are at the heart of narratives, memory practices and rituality that shape the local sense of place in powerful and sometimes controversial manners. Remembered, DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-2

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forgotten or rediscovered, these spiritual entities are inherently cosmopolitical in that they involve the mobilization of non-human actors within power relations on multiple scales and within multiple narratives. In some instances, their rule over and protection of a certain territory makes them important actors for environmentalist agendas. Tradition and traditionality emerge in these contexts as a claim of continuity that is more fruitfully considered in light of what it does rather than the search for potential corroborating evidence in historical records. Against this background, it is possible to understand the ways in which non-human actors inhabiting these landscapes are experienced, repressed, revived or even transformed to take on board new issues such as environmental threats.

Gotang: remembering a sacred landscape My place of birth was Mepung (Smad spungs) township,3 a cluster of villages that used to belong to the former Gotang4 district in Dartsedo (Kangding) County, Kardzé Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province.5 In Tibetan historiography, this mountainous area inhabited by agro-pastoralists is considered to be one of the Gyarong ‘states’,6 and the local people speak Gochang dialect, which is not intelligible to either Han Chinese living in the neighbouring areas or Tibetans who speak standard Kham dialect. Informed by its distinctive cultural history and language as well its trading networks, this area has a strong sense of place where different definitions intersect. The term Qiang is sometimes used as an indicator of the ethnic origins of the people in this area, but this classification is complicated by the fact that this is a Chinese term and historically, Tibetans in the region were often called Qiang as a label indicating pastoral communities in the ‘west’ [of China].7 The ethnic group currently identified as Qiang, Qiangzu (Qiang nationality) acquired their identity in the last half-century as part of the project of classification of ethnic minority nationalities (Ch. shaoshu minzu) against the background of a complex history of multiple identities and fragmentation at the interface between historic Tibet and imperial China. Most Gotang people currently recognize a possible historical link to people defined as Qiang historically but oppose any identification with the modern Qiang nationality (Figure 2.1). With the dramatic political transformation of this region in the 20th century, a wide range of ethnic issues emerged in these ‘Sino-Tibetan borderlands’ linked to complex and shifting political alignments as well as the development of distinctive religious traditions (see also Gros 2019; Samuel 1993). Against this background, the Gotang people have strongly felt a sense of identity crisis, feeling ‘neither Tibetan nor Han Chinese’.8 In this context, Gotang emerged as a site of competing imperial legacies as well as local and national aspirations, keeping in mind that labels such as ‘Tibetan’, ‘Qiang’ and even ‘Han Chinese’ can be used performatively glossing over historical processes and cultural complexities (see for example Gladney 1997). This sense of crisis is underpinned by the memory of a rich rituality associated with the spiritual entities of the place – generically

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 45

Figure 2.1 Mt Yangzang in Gochang. Photograph: Bao Zhengcai (Nyima).

defined in Tibetan as sadag dudag (sa bdag dud bdag), i.e. ‘owners of the land and owners of the household(s)’9 – set in contrast to the current lack of visible ritual manifestations of this kind of cult. Except for prayer flags on bridges, most ritual expressions of the sacredness of the local landscape are seen as something that belongs to a pre-PRC past and was the casualty of a process of disenchantment and secularization that had already started in the Republican era and was definitely enforced during the Cultural Revolution. Scholarly engagement of various kinds has preserved some of these memories, which are currently being rediscovered in academic and non-academic settings and combined with historical research (see for example Guo Jianxun 2017: 31–6). Elsewhere I documented the production of ethnographic knowledge about Sichuan’s Tibetan areas after 1911 as part of the Republican effort to incorporate the region into the national administration (Roche and Tsomu 2018: 186–210; Tsomu 2012: 319–44). After the establishment of the PRC, a few publications in the 1950s and 1960s followed. During the Cultural Revolution, work on minority languages and culture ceased, but then gradually resumed after 1978 and flourished in the 1980s (see Roche and Tsomu 2018: 190–91). Whilst in some Tibetan areas, the re-establishment of territorial cults was part of the revival of local culture, in my homeland, this was limited to individual practices. As Buddhist monasteries were restored in the 1980s, local territorial cults were not encouraged, for these were linked to worldly deities and recent memory of animal sacrifice (see below). They were thus discouraged both from orthodox Buddhist viewpoints and Communist secularist ones.

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The post-1980s cultural revival was dominated by the restoration of the Sakya monastery and the religious activities associated with monastic Buddhism. In addition, chapels for prayer-wheels were built sponsored by the local population and some lay religious specialists (gomma and amcho)10 have also started to provide religious services for individual households. Furthermore, under the influence of the policy for preserving cultural heritage, the local government has also begun to encourage people to form local performing arts groups called gordro (sgor bro). All these activities were recently promoted in the framework of the national rural revitalization strategy, which has prompted the local government to support ethnic tourism and the restoration of historic sites, including the formal residence of the Gotang ‘king’ and hostels featuring Gotang customs and traditions. This cultural revitalization has been very selective and in this area did not involve the revival of territorial cults so that the relevant sites and rituals such as the latse, for the time being, remain a feature of memories and aspirations. I grew up during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ and its immediate aftermath, in a strong secularist world in which anything that was related to local mythology and rituals was perceived to be part of feudal ‘superstition’ (Ch mixin) – something that had to be abandoned (and at times actively suppressed). As nobody spoke about the local sacred geography and no rituals took place, I had never heard of the sacred mountain in my homeland, Mepung township. My world was shaped by secular education and academic aspirations, which I initially cultivated locally and then, in 1983, through my transfer to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. Since 1980 I have been aware of some cultural revival taking place in my homeland, but I did not take particular notice until recently. In 2016, a group of Gotang elders and middle-aged people, mainly consisting of retired cadres and professionals such as doctors, teachers, etc., expressed a desire to write the history of Gotang. Combining local aspirations with opportunities offered by government policies,11 they requested the Kardzé (Ganzi) Federation of Social Sciences (Ganzi zhou shehui kexue lianhehui) to host the project ‘A Survey of Traditional Cultural Resources of Gotang’ (Yutong chuantong wenhua ziyuan diaoyan), which produced a book entitled ‘Gotang: An Ancient and Mysterious Tribe – A Survey of Traditional Culture of Gotang’ (Yutong: Yige gulao er shenmi de buluo—Yutong chuantong wenhua diaoyan). Against this background, one day, a family friend sent me by WeChat a photo of the sacred mountain known as Palden Yangsang (Dpal ldan g.yang bzang),12literally ‘the glorious [mountain] of good fortune’, located opposite to the village called Oser (’Od zer) where the king of Gotang (Go thang rgyal po) used to live. In his WeChat moments, he included a legend according to which two bodhisattvas went to preach in Kham and unintentionally sat facing Chengdu with their backs to Kham. Thus, Chengdu has become a plain, whereas Kham has become an arduous plateau. On the one hand, this interpretation might be linked to one of the Chinese names of this mountain Busha Shan, i.e. ‘the bodhisattva mountain’, as well as the Chinese perception that the plains are more favourable than mountainous terrain. On the other hand, it contrasts with

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 47 Tibetan and Gochang toponymy as reflected in a wide range of narratives about this mountain, which used to be worshipped by people in Mepung in a grand way – most prominently in the so-called ‘Sheep Year Assembly’. In the Gotang region, the ‘Goli Ngang’ (in Gochang language) or ‘Sheep Year Assembly’ (Ch yangnian hui) used to be held in the 10th month of the sheep year (according to the Tibetan and Chinese calendars) and was strongly focused on heaven and sacred mountains, which are interconnected. During the assembly, such activities as ‘The ceremony of Calling Heaven’, the sacrificial rite and the ceremony known as ‘Carrying Torches around the Villages’ were held. In particular, the Gotang ‘king’ and the major headmen all participated in the sacrificial rite of offering a sheep to heaven. In the sacrificial rite, the Gotang ‘king’ shared the sacrifice with heaven and the sacrificial sheep head was hung in the middle pillar of the kitchen of the royal residence. This was an important ritual for the Gotang society to establish the centre of the world, pray for blessings, avert disasters, and return to order. The prominence of heaven in Gotang is consistent with findings among the Qiang people and other groups at the margins of the Tibetan plateau, where it is often associated with the notion of mu (dmu/rmu) (see Huber 2020; Hazod 2020: 297) – the same term can be found associated to the myth of the rope of light (muthag) linking the ancient Tibetan kings to heaven. According to a local legend, the ‘Sheep Year Assembly’ goes back to a certain sheep year in which a local blacksmith killed a huge snake who demanded a yearly sacrifice of a young boy from the local people. During the sacrificial rite, the local gommas, monks from other areas, the Gotang king and the indigenous leaders under the rule of the king would all participate. The high platform and the sacred tree during the assembly, as well as invocations toward mountains, aimed at ensuring that heaven would bestow blessings and eliminate disaster. As far as the preparation for the grand sacrifice was concerned, each village would select a responsible person to prepare grain, money and goods needed for the festival. Meanwhile, the oldest man in the village would be the kosomo (meaning ‘the person calling heaven’ in Gochang) and he would select from among the village sheep two beautiful animals with spotted patterns on their ears and noses to be sacrificed. Before the festival, the villagers would set up a tent in the place where the villagers held the religious sacrifice. The tent would be equipped with stoves, tables and stools, and be decorated with juniper branches. Some villages would also decorate the tent with birch tree branches hung with khataks (ceremonial scarves). On the 12th day of the 10th month, amidst the drum music and praises of the gomma, the sacrifice aimed at eliminating any defilement for the people of the entire village started and continued the following day. Men would wear a turban with its tip hanging down the waist, women would dress in splendid attire with twelve types of silver ornaments. Meanwhile, dressed in new robes, new shoes and new socks, the kosomo would wear a new turban, with the tip hanging all the way down to his heels. He, together with the gomma, lamas and headmen, would worship the deities by performing the rituals amidst the drum

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music. Then, the male and female teams would take turns to sing songs and perform dances praising heaven, earth and the mountain gods. After the sacrifice, all people would have dinner together, then perform dances (gordro). Just before dusk, the villagers would light torches and carry them around the villages.13 These festivals were considered to be essential to guarantee the wellbeing of the place and its political leadership. The digital age had offered me the opportunity to ‘meet’ (jal) this sacred site, albeit virtually, reminding me of earlier ways in which places have engaged humans through sensorial experiences of landscapes (their vision, the listening to their voices and mantras, the scent of their incense, the taste of their sacred water, etc.) and getting blessings. Following my discovery of the digital ‘lived topography’, I explored the work of local scholars such as Guo Jianxun, who gave a detailed account of the cult of sacred mountains in Gotang as a site at the intersection of different religious traditions: local beliefs possibly linked to a Qiang heritage, Tibetan Buddhist traditions and Taoism. I also asked my uncles and my aunts about sacred mountains and the relevant practices. Some of them witnessed the last celebration of the big sheep year festival in 1943 (involving the sacrifice of a sheep) as well as lesser rituals in the framework of the New Year celebrations up until 1952, shortly after the arrival of the PLA in our areas. One of my uncles, the son of the last Gotang king who was directly involved in the celebrations, confirmed this. My relatives and villagers confirmed what I had read in the literature about the importance of local deities. I was told that the local people believed that illnesses are caused by disturbing the spirits. This may occur, for instance, by polluting water sources, digging or cutting down trees in sacred sites. Whenever the local people feel ill, they go to see the local gomma, who performs divination to find out the causes of the illness. The idea that places can cause illness and heal are closely connected to the concept of la (bla), a spiritual principle described by Samten Karmay (1998) that can be found across the Tibetan plateau. This spiritual principle can be both singular and multiple, individual and collective and is generally associated with well-being. The la of a community may reside in (or be equivalent to) a mountain called lari (bla ri) or a lake known as lamtsho (bla mtsho), this is true also for households or individuals. The la may connect people to places, to non-human animals and to things (typically a turquoise, see Karmay 1998). In many ways, the la can be seen as both an entity and a relationship. My uncles told me that when a person passed away, according to the local funeral practice, the family would erect three poles with canopies called dug (gdugs) for three la: one la stays at home, another la is in the place where the body is cremated and bones are buried, the last la is believed to have taken rebirth.14 My uncle also reported that the la might dwell in different places. If a la was lost, the result was not necessarily immediate death, rather ill health that may lead to death. According to the local customs, if a young boy were frightened, the mother would go to the place where he was frightened to call back his la.15 It was believed that the mother could get the child’s la back even if the la had gone very far away. Another way to get one’s la back was to

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 49 look into the big stone basin in the house, then, when one’s parents or other adults call one’s name, one should answer by saying ‘yes’ so that one’s la would come back. There is also a range of rituals for calling back a lost la called lagug (bla ‘gug) and these are practised if someone has lost his or her la and is therefore unwell in many ways. The local belief that one la stays at home leads to the custom of offering food and incense on the tripod hearthstone. People believe that the la of the spiritual ‘owners’ of the place, sadag and dudag (sa bdag and dud bdag), i.e. the ancestors who built the house and the landscape deities involved in the process, would always stay at home; therefore, food and incense to these ancestral and land spirits are offered during the holidays and auspicious days to ‘restore’ (so, gso) the relationship. This rituality is reflected in architecture: for example, in traditional houses in my uncle’s village, there is a place next to the ladder where the family offers incense to mountain deities and ancestors. It is on the same floor as the shrine room. From the accounts of some of my uncles and villagers, fragments of a fascinating cosmology enshrined in the built environment and lived landscapes emerged – tantalizingly interesting and yet elusive in being reflected in fragmented memories and embodied practices. I gradually discovered that most people were like my mother and had only limited and scattered memories of this past and performed household rituals only to a very limited extent without engaging with the meaning of their actions. However, there is now a growing network that seems actively concerned about the neglect of our sacred landscape and has used social networks to reach out to other people of Gotang like myself. This group of people feels that our sacred mountain is part of our cultural heritage. According to their views, the current worship of sacred mountains originated from the worship of mountain deities during the Tibetan imperial period and before. Since time immemorial, mountain deities have protected villages or ‘tribes’,16 and have been responsible for natural phenomena such as rain, snow, wind and frost as well as natural disasters including floods, landslides and mud avalanches. They also control the life of livestock such as pigs, oxen, sheep, goats, horses, as well as that of wild animals in the mountains and, in some instances, look after hunting activities. They are also in charge of birth, old age, illness and death for all people inhabiting their territories. These kinds of deities operate at multiple scales so that different villages or ‘tribes’ have their own mountain deities, but some deities also have a regional, pan-Tibetan or even global relevance.17 Except for Palden Yangsang (Dpal ldan g.yang bzang), located at the heart of our homeland, sacred mountains within Gotang mostly function as the boundaries for the Gotang district and their site of worship used to be marked by stone cairns called latse. Their names are recited by the gomma, who base themselves on oral traditions and texts belonging mostly to the Nyingmapa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism to carry out their ritual activities aimed at restoring the relationship to the deities, averting disasters, performing sacrifices and making divinations. According to local perceptions, these mountain deities are very ancient and may pre-date the expansion of the Tibetan Empire into this area. The dominant narrative suggests that as the Gotang region became part of the Tibetan imperial

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polity, these deities were gradually Buddhified and included in Nyingmapa texts. This region is considered to have been strategically important since the imperial period and there is historical evidence that during the Yuan dynasty, a Gotang Myriarchy was established here.18 Whilst more research is needed to ascertain evidence of historic data and processes, the perception of continuity in the sacred geography is important for the local ethnic identity and sense of place beyond questions of historical accuracy – especially after a long period of suppression and oblivion. The sacred mountains in Gotang are mountains worshipped by each group in the region in a specific way. Each local sacred mountain has its own territory and its own believers. Thus, people of different villages only believe in the sacred mountain of their own village and won’t revere or worship the sacred mountains of other villages. They may even have competing narratives about the sacredness of their landscape. For instance, Palden Yangsang worshipped by people in Mepung township is respectfully referred to locally as Po Yangsang (Spo g.yang bzang), literally meaning the ‘Grandfather Yangsang’, but people of the neighbouring Chalang (Qianqi township), call it jokingly Bu Yangsang (Bu g.yang bzang), meaning ‘Son Yangsang’. This challenge to seniority, prestige and rank often enrages the people of Mepung. Names and ritual practices, especially large festivals such as that of the sheep year, have historically been directly connected to the local political leadership: in the 19th century, the Gotang headmen had welcomed the Gotang ‘king’, who brought the royal lineage into the local political elite through marriage. He was given title and seal by the Qing administration and became the interface between the local political structure and the Qing empire.19 He was also integrated into the pre-existing rituality and this was adapted to the new ‘royal’ context – the role played by the Gotang ‘king’ in the big sheep year festival reflected this arrangement. When the PLA arrived in 1950, the Gotang king, rather than negotiating his position as suggested by the Kangding Committee, escaped to the mountain wilderness of Palden Yangsang, where he is said to have died of starvation. Some say that his escape was prompted by the anxiety generating rumours spread by the KMT (Kuomintang) spies operating in the area. Since 1951, people’s belief in sacred mountains has gradually faded away. At present, there is no grand sacrificial festival held in Gotang. Except for a few places such as Mepung and Chalang, people in other regions do not know which mountains are sacred and often do not even know the names of these sacred mountains. However, current research into local cultural heritage is producing a real rediscovery of the fragmentary memory of this past and a confrontation with the anxiety about the potential loss that this legacy has left behind.20 A kaleidoscope of mountain cults across Eastern Tibet Travelling across Eastern Tibet, a wide range of revived or reinvented territorial cults that can be seen as ‘cosmopolitical’ fulfil very different agendas, including expressing ethnic identity claims, tourism development and environmental

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 51 issues. In Gotang, the rediscovery of local sacred geography was strongly related to a sense of local identity and the awkwardness that ‘being neither Tibetan nor Chinese’ entailed in that context. The image of Palden Yangsang travelling through the web elicited interest on the part of many people from Gotang, expanding the network. Through the images and the narratives, the ancient spirit of the place seems still to be able to exercise power on its people. Palden Yangsang has particular relevance for the people of Mepung in Gotang, where the Gotang king used to reside. These cosmopolitical framings are interrelated and operate on multiple scales. For example, when they invoke the spirits protecting the land, the people of Gotang also refer to other deities that are more distant and have a regional reach. One of these is Murdo, whose cult was described by Lin Junhua in his work on the ‘Murdo culture’21 Particularly sacred to the Bonpo, this deity can be identified as a male heroic deity as well as being sometimes identified with the Bonpo female goddess Sipe Gyalpo (Srid pa’i rgyal mo). Mt. Murdo (Dmu rdo) is located in Rongdrak (Danba) County, Kardzé Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and is considered to have been the protective deity for all the Gyarong people for many generations. In the eyes of the Gotang people, Murdo is the most important sacred mountain in the Gyarong area and is one of the four most important sacred mountains for the entire Tibetan region. In narratives that are shared across the region, he is renowned as ‘the Lord of sacred mountains’ and ‘the Eastern Lord of Sacred Mountains’. He is considered to be a hero for having led Gyarong troops in the fight against the Gurkha invaders at the end of the 18th century, acting in ways that recall the leader of the Peruvian ‘earth beings’, Ausangate, who bested the Spaniard (De la Cadena 2015: 113). Another important mountain in the area is Lhamotse (Lha mo rtse), ‘the goddess summit’, known as Paoma shan (‘Horse-racing Mountain’ in Chinese). It is located in the southeastern corner of Dartsedo (Kangding) city and is traditionally linked to the Chakla (lCags la) kingdom, historically one of the larger polities in Kham. Recently, some Tibetan scholars maintained that the Tibetan name of this mountain should be Phagmori, instead of Lhamotse, linking it to the female tantric deity Dorje Phagmo (rDo rje phag mo), alias Vajravarahi, which is embodied in many landscape features across the Tibetan plateau (see e.g. Huber 1994). This interpretation would reframe this deity as part of a Buddhist tantric sacred geography. In Dartsedo and other regions within Dartsedo (Kangding) County, there is a traditional festival known as ‘pilgrimage tour around the mountain’ (Ch. zhuanshan hui), which falls on the eighth day of the fourth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, and on the 15th day of the fourth month of Tibetan calendar (Kangding Xianzhi [Gazetteer of Dartsedo], p. 461). Upon passing by the mountain peaks, bends of the river, monasteries, temples, stupas, the big prayer wheels and mani cairns, they hang up prayer flags, place printed scriptures, and burn cypress branches (Kangding Xianzhi [Gazatteer of Dartsedo], p. 462). ‘The Pilgrimage Tour around the Mountain’ in Dartsedo city has always been a grand occasion in Dartsedo. Before the PLA’s arrival at Dartsedo, the central location

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for the pilgrimage tour were Dorjedrak monastery (Nyingma, the family monastery of the local ruler, the Chakla gyelpo) and Lhamotse monastery (belonging to the Geluk tradition). Leaving the city from the Eastern Gate, the local people start their tour by climbing to the northeastern part of Lhamotse, then arrive at the meadow in front of the small monastery on the mountain. After having paid homage to the statue of the Buddhas in the monastery, they pay homage to various monasteries in Dartsedo. Traditionally the cult of Lhamotse was tightly linked to the local ruler, the Chakla Gyalpo, who would be centrally involved in the celebrations. Linked to this sacred mountain, there is a horse racing festival, which makes it similar to other Tibetan and Mongolian territorial cults, where political leadership and environmental prosperity were tightly connected. After 1950 ‘the Pilgrimage Tour around the Mountain’ has become a common festival celebrated by all people in Dartsedo, which usually lasts for three days. It has also been increasingly transformed from a Tibetan religious festival into a commodity fair (Kangding Xianzhi [Gazatteer of Dartsedo], p. 462). The more I delved into the work by local and international scholars, the more I realized that Gotang was just a specific manifestation of a phenomenon that can be encountered across the entire region. There is wide-ranging literature in English and Chinese that offers insight into a variety of ethnographic cases both in terms of recollection of historical instances and description of current practices. Many are associated with Tibetan imperial legacies, as is the case of Yushu Gardo Jobo, whose cult is described by Zhaxi Wende (Bkra shis ban de) in his thesis (2013).22 According to this cosmological framework, deities are organized in a vertical manner: above are the mountain gods and the deities of the sky (lha), these stay in a complementary relationship with the lu spirits below (see also Diemberger, this volume). Nyimatashi (Yang Gongwei), looking at water use and cosmological relevance in the Kangding region, suggests that the recent resurgence of religion could deepen our understandings of local knowledge of the natural environment. In his article ‘Water Politics and Religious Practices in Kangding’, he observes that water is associated with lu (klu) spirits and requires special care in its handling. As Tibetans seek to establish harmonious relationships with the spirits, gods and other beings in the reciprocity of offering and blessing, he concludes: In the past, water was not only a natural and necessary part of daily life for local people of Kangding, but also was worshipped as a sacred substance in religious ceremonies. Today, as a natural resource, water is tamed and commercialized – it is used as industrial water, in tourism, etc. In the process of this transformation, a dramatic increase in water-related problems have occurred, including water waste, water pollution, and floods. One way to reconstruct Kangding’s holistic environment would be to reintegrate religious ethics into the strategies for environmental protection and sustainable development. (Nyimatashi/Yang Gongwei 2017: 121) A cosmology of lha and lu (klu) spirits lends itself to being mobilized in light of environmentalist agendas. The same is true of a range of Buddhist notions such

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 53 as landscape mandalas, landscape features seen as an embodiment of tantric deities, as well as the concept of hidden lands and hidden valleys, the beyul (sbas yul) and belung (sbas lung). These are mostly associated with narratives of Buddhification of Tibet – in particular, the deeds of Padmasambhava, who concealed scriptures, ritual items and even holy sites to protect them from strife and anti-Buddhist persecution so that these could be revealed at the appropriate time (see Garrett et al. 2020 for a wider discussion). Many of these concepts are also relevant in the Bonpo context, with the difference that these were protected from Buddhist persecution.

Mobilizing local spirits for environmental protection: an Eastern Tibetan cosmopolitical ecology Across Eastern Tibet, sacred geography is shaped by the presence of local spirits as well as hidden lands (beyul) to be revealed at the appropriate time. This is not only reflected in religious practices associated with these landscapes but also in community rules and regulations concerning access and management of environmental resources (including grazing times, tree felling, the collection of medicinal herbs, access to springs and streams as well as, in some cases, hunting). Natural disasters, illnesses, crop failures are often linked to infringement of the rules (for similar cases, see Diemberger 2012; Diemberger as well as Hovden and Havnevik, this volume). In the Minyag area, located to the west of Gochang, one of the sacred landscapes considered to have been opened as a ‘hidden land’ (beyul) by a 20th century tantric spiritual master experienced a particular kind of revival of sacredness. This was described to me in July 2017 by one of its protagonists, a young monk in a local monastery. He told me that when it was announced to the community that there was a plan for a small hydro-electric plant in the valley, there was concern amongst the inhabitants that this was actually a first step leading to environmental exploitation in the future, especially mining. The proposed development would have brought a proper road with easier access to the local town for work and trading. There would be employment for the villagers on the construction and the possibility of housing some of the external labourers. It might open up opportunities for tourism. Despite the anticipated advantages, the community was torn and worried about the potential fall-out of the development. The monk was concerned that the development would endanger the rich biodiversity of the valley and would also anger the protector gods and saw in the revival of the sacredness of the landscape a way of mobilizing its spiritual entities to protect it. In a locally published illustrated book that he produced, extolling the beauty of this area, he comments: ‘our ancestors struggled generation after generation to keep this place intact, and because of this we have the responsibility to manage our precious legacy properly and pass it on to future generations’. As the awareness of local sacred geography had declined, he decided

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to map out all the sacred sites where stone cairns marked places of worship to local spirits and, with the help of the community, started to renovate them. This involved the process of construction or restoration of the cairns as well as that of consecration and celebration of latse rituals. In this way, he mobilized local spirits as well as the community and ensured that the relevant authorities became aware of the significance of the local sacred geography. He also extolled the virtues of the development of ecologically sustainable tourism as a more suitable form of economic development in the area compared to mining. Latse appear as stone structures, which can vary in size and shape and are located in high or cosmologically significant places. Built by the community under the guidance of a spiritual master, they have a strong communal element. They are the focus of seasonal rituals during which members of the community make offerings and stick arrows with prayer flags in them. The construction is very cosmological as it involves a large hole underneath the structure, in which the statues of religious figures and local deities are placed. A central pole of wood, the life-pole (sogshing, srog shing lit. ‘life pole’) representing the link between heaven and earth, is installed and supported with stones so as to become the central element with the stone structure built around it. Latse are maintained through the celebration of seasonal rituals but sometimes may go into neglect, which is seen as very inauspicious. Every family has to supply an ‘arrow spear’ (dungda, mdung mda’), which is understood to be a weapon of the deity (Figure 2.2). (For a detailed description of latse rituals and their social significance, see e.g. Tsering 2017: 109–37; Niangwujia 2021.) In this particular case, the process involved five villages of about 300 households and a population of some 1,200 people. The building of the planned 134 latse was a major community activity with a consecration ritual lasting three days and included a feast and horse-riding displays. It was a very effective way to cement community cohesion and engagement with the place, which would be crucial should any attempts to exploit the valley develop (for a detailed discussion of this particular setting, see Huett, forthcoming). In addition to latse cairns and rituals, the monk organized teaching sessions on the environment, exhibitions and distributed CDs and calendars with pictures of the valley. He ensured that they understood the relevant laws related to environmental protection,23 and that local officials were aware of this. Environmental conservation elements and legal aspects are addressed in the preface of a locally produced book about the valley (see Lobsang Gyatso and Thubten Dargye, undated). This was distributed widely to the villagers, local officials and potential supporters, including foreign individuals and organizations. The book contains a beautiful depiction of the rich flora and fauna and descriptions of the many sacred places and ‘self-emanated’ features left by important religious masters, such as hand and footprints. Referring to Tibetan cosmology, Buddhism, local social structures and Chinese law and politics to address environmental issues in a multi-pronged way.

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Figure 2.2 Latse in Kham. Photograph: Bruce Huett 2017.

In a conversation with the monk that had promoted the latse constructions, I asked why he put so much emphasis on practices devoted to worldly deities, normally considered of lesser importance from a Buddhist point of view. He responded that this view was indeed accurate. He then added that he was both a Buddhist and an environmentalist and that the different agendas can dovetail (but are distinct and may imply different prioritizations). An important aspect of his approach was that it combined different epistemological frameworks without reducing one to the other: local spirits, Buddhist tenets and modern ecologist agendas could co-exist in different ways, interfolding rather than collapsing. Trained at Larungar monastery, the Buddhist academy established by Khenpo Jigme Phuntshok (1933–2004)24 in 1988, he had been exposed to a range of modernist and ‘green’ strands of Buddhism. He had therefore learnt how to interface Buddhist spiritual practice with current issues affecting society and the environment.

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Conclusion Looking at particular instances of landscape rituals and mythology from the Kham region, this chapter explored cosmological ideas that have had and still have political relevance on multiple scales. Central to the relationship between human communities and the land they inhabit, they have been the focus of social and cultural engagement both positively and negatively, including sustained re-enactment, repression (especially during the Cultural Revolution), negotiation, reform and revival. On the basis of ethnographic materials and historical records, I have also shown that the mobilization of local spirits may combine ancient cosmological and moral frameworks with current political and ecological issues in highly effective and sometimes controversial ways. Whilst the elements that are mobilized reflect ideas that can be found in ancient historical sources, the definition of this cosmopolitical rituality as ‘tradition’ is complex as it reflects a variety of heterogenous agendas, including current ethnic identity claims and environmentalism. The very notion of tradition and traditionality implies a claim of continuity that is more fruitfully considered in light of what it does rather than the search for potential corroborating evidence in historical records. At the same time, an awareness of historical sources and memory practices allows for a better understanding of the ways in which nonhuman actors inhabiting these landscapes are experienced, repressed, revived or even transformed to take on board new issues such as environmental threats. Looking at the Tibetan examples in light of the unprecedented challenges affecting our world at large, one may wonder if in this global ‘cosmopolitics’ we are all searching for the lost la of Planet Earth, trying to heal and restore its wellbeing in many different ways.

Notes 1 This paper emerged from a reflection on the sacred geography of my homeland. I wish to thank many relatives and friends who assisted me in this. In particular, I would like to thank Yang Zhenghong (Awo Tsewangtar) and Yang Shihua (Trashi Puntsok) for assisting me in finding details about local practices in Gotang and identifying Gochang and Tibetan terms. 2 “Gochang is typically referred to as guiqiong, a pinyin rendering of the local pronunciation of the language’s name. It is spoken primarily in the valley and tributaries of the Dadu River (Rgyal rong rgyal mo rngul chu) in north-eastern Kangding municipality in Kardzé Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The area where the language is spoken was, until 1949, known as Gotang and was ruled over by a local hereditary king. Gochang is an oral language spoken by about 10,000 people and is classified as a Qiangic language, and thus only distantly related to the Tibetic languages. Most Gochang speakers are officially classified as Tibetans (zangzu)” (Roche & Yudru Tsomu 2018: 188; on the history of this region see also Yudru Tsomu 2009: 55–96). 3 Located 47 kilometres to the east of the seat of Kangding (Dartsedo) municipality, Mepung township is located on the eastern banks of the Dadu River, and there are altogether ten villages under its jurisdiction. Ozer (Weise) village used to be the seat of the Gotang “king” and community leading families with which he was linked through marriage alliances.

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 57 4 Gotang can be spelt in a variety of ways Mgo thang, Mgo’thum,’ Gu thom,’ Go thang, Mgu thang,’ Go thom. 5 Chinese sources report that since the Yuan period (1268–369), there have been many administrative units with the place name ‘Yutong’ (Gotang). The first appearance of the place name Gotang in Tibetan sources can be traced to the biography of Khanchen Kazhipa Rikpa’i Sengge (Mkhan chen Bka’ bzhi pa rig pa’i sengge, 1287–1375) (See Sengge Zangpo 1983). For details, see Sichuan Sheng Kangding xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Kangding Xianzhi [The Gazetteer of Kangding (Dartsedo)], Chengdu: Sichuan Cishu chubanshe, 1995, 426–31; Sengge Zangpo 1983, TBRCW2CZ6650, 11–2. 6 Lying in the heart of Sichuan province between Amdo speaking Tibetans and Kham speaking Tibetans, the Gyarong region covers about 26,000 square kilometres. Lower than the Tibetan plateau, Gyarong lies between 1,800 metres and 2,500 metres above sea level and has a much more temperate climate. Rivers cut deep valleys in the region and high, snow-capped peaks surround much of Gyarong. The Gyarong people speak a Qiangic language were subdivided into eighteen Gyarong ‘kingdoms’, – while some include Gotang as one of them, others do not do so since Gotang was considered as a part of the territory under the jurisdiction of Muchil gyelpo (also known as the Mipham Tongde gyelpo). For details, refer to Gyarong Namgyel (2016); Drakbar Palden (2002); Que Dan (1995). 7 Qiang is originally a generic term referring to ‘shepherd in the Western Region (Xirong)’, and it is generally considered to be a big ancient group formed in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and the Loess Plateau. The ancient Qiang group is also often viewed as a common ancestor for both modern Tibetans and Han Chinese. For a discussion of the representation of Qiang in Tibetan sources see Uray (1966: 245–55). For a much more recent discussion of the Qiang in relation to mundane deities and ritual practices on the margins of the Tibetan plateau see Huber (2020) and also Hazod (2020: 293–304). The fluid use of the term Qiang can be seen as parallel to the way in which Tibetans could be called ‘Tangut’ by Mongols and Manchu, collapsing the identity of Tangut/Minyag/Shixia communities with Tibetans more generally. Tangut (Dangxiang), known in Tibetan as Minyag (Mi nyag), are a people historically living in what are now the northwestern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Shaanxi and the southwestern portion of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. They engaged in irrigated agriculture and pastoralism and – taking advantage of their location at the eastern end of the Silk Road – acted as middlemen in trade between Central Asia and China. They adopted Buddhism as their state religion, created their own writing system, and in 1038 proclaimed their kingdom of Xixia, which survived nearly 200 years. See Dunnell (1996); see also https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tangut 8 Other Tibetans typically regard Gochang speakers as Tibetan and consider their language to be an aberrant Tibetan ‘dialect …. Local Tibetans typically consider Gochang speakers to be Sinicized, an attribute with decidedly negative connotations. An equally problematic label is that Gochang speakers are hybrids, neither fully Tibetan nor Chinese’ (Roche and Tsomu 2018: 199–200). 9 In the local context, while sadag (sa bdag) refers to ‘earth-owning spirits’ where one’s house is located, dudag (dud bdag) refers to ancestral spirits of the household. During the Tibetan New Year, the deities worshipped on the tripod hearthstone in the local people’s house include sadag and dudag. Other deities worshipped on the tripod hearthstone also include dagpo (bdag po, another term for ancestor deities) and dronpo (mgron po, the Guest Deity). In addition, there is also ridag (ri bdag) (‘mountain deity’), which is worshipped on the upstairs of the house. For details, refer to Jin Suizi 1998 (3): 82–7.

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10 In Gotang, there are three different kinds of religious specialists: Buddhist monks, gomma (household tantric specialists similar to ngagpa, sngags pa) and amcho (a mchod, monks or lay specialist who does ceremonies/rituals for the dead, etc. in homes). See also Roche and Tsomu (2018: 195); The gomma are the ritual specialists most closely related to local spirits and to the traditions of their taming by Padmasambhava. The etymology of their name probably refers to the traditions of lay meditators (sgom ma, sgom pa) who became household priests in many contexts. 11 Since the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the cultural institutions under the administration of Cultural Departments of provinces or autonomous regions have started the work of rescuing and protecting the national cultural heritage. In particular, the relevant institutions in minority regions, including Tibetan regions, have taken advantage of such policies rescuing and protecting the traditional culture of minorities, i.e. to record folk songs, stories and dances, train young people to learn traditional crafts, and designate some local people as inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, etc. 12 The Tibetan name evokes the important notion of yang (g.yang), which is translated by Samten Karmay as ‘quintessence of fortune’, and is particularly important in Bonpo rituality (but is common in Tibetan popular religiosity more widely). Samten Karmay adds that this concept might be combined with other terms to signify their essence, as in the compound rta g.yang: ‘The “g-yang of horse” is not the horse itself, but the “super horse”’, so to speak’ (Karmay and Nagano 2002: x–xi; see also Karmay 1998 [1975]: 149). See also https://www.univie.ac.at/bon/rituals/gyang-gug/gyang-gug. The rendition of Palden Yangsang as Pusa shan, meaning ‘bodhisattva mountain’ in Chinese, may also be a Chinese rendition of the original Tibetan and a reinterpretation of its etymology. 13 For details, refer to Jin Suizi, 1998 (3): 82–7; Guo Jianxun, Biaoshu de minjian xingyang yu zuqun rentong—yi Sichuan Guiqiong zangzu de yangnianhui weili [Expressed folk beliefs and ethnic identity—Taking the ‘Sheep Year Assembly’ of Gotang Tibetans in Sichuan as an Example], Qinghai minzu yanjiu [Nationalities Research in Qinghai], 2008 (19): 28–34. 14 This may conflate with the Buddhist notion of namshe (rnam shes), the principle of consciousness that keeps being reincarnated in Samsara, as described by Diemberger (1993) in Himalayan contexts. 15 The boy would be asked to put three pebbles in the front pocket of his robe, then he would go, with the mother, to the pace where he was frightened. While walking home, his mother would call his name all the way home, and he would constantly respond by saying ‘yes’. 16 The term rendered as ‘tribe’ in English is usually known as tsoba (tsho ba) or deba (sde ba) in Tibetan, and in Chinese it is written as buluo. In the Tibetan context, these terms can refer to big or small groups. It normally implies kinship connections within the group, but it is not necessarily always the case. 17 Tibetan sacred mountains have different kinds of relevance and can be territorial deities or Buddhist pilgrimage sites or both. The most famous is Mt Kailash, alias Gang Tise (Gangs Ti see), which is considered to have global relevance. 18 According to the records in Yuan shi [History of the Yuan Period], during the Yuan period, the administrative organization set up for Gotang as a separate administrative unit was Yutong lu wanhufu (The Myriarchy of Yutong/Gotang Prefecture). In addition, the military and administrative institutions in charge of larger regions formed jointly by Gotang and other tribes included Diaomen yutong liya changhexi ningyuan junmin xuanfusi (The Mollification Commissioner in Charge of Military and Civilian Affairs of Diaomen, Yutong/Gotang, Lizhou/Hanyuan, Yazhou/Ya’an, the Region to the West of Gyarong Gyelmo Ngulchu, Ningyuan), Diaomen Yutong dengchu guanjun shouzhen wanhufu (The Myriarchy in Charge of Garrison Troops in Diaomen/Tianquan and

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19 20 21

22

23

24

Yutong/Gotang) and Duogansi hada yutong qianliang zongguanfu (Command Office in Charge of Land Tax Revenue in Mgar thar and Gotang in Dokham), etc. During the Ming period, the separate administrative organization of Gotang was abolished, and established Changhexi yutong ningyuan xuanweisi (The Pacification Commissioner of the Region to the West of Gyarong Gyelmo Ngulchu, Gotang and Mgar thar), merging the Region to the West of Gyarong Gyelmo Ngulchu (referring to Se’u rong of the Mi nyag region in present-day Dartsedo/Kangding county where ancestors of the famous Lcags la gyelpo lived), Yutong (Gotang) and Ningyuan (Mgar thar in present-day Tawu County in Kardzé Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture). In the early eighteenth century, Gotang was under the rule of the Muping tusi (Mipham Tongde Gyelpo; Muchi Gyelpo), who was based in present-day Baoxing County in Ya’an prefecture, Sichuan province. Between 1796 and 1820, the senior and junior wives of Tendzin Gyatso (Ch. Bao Fengxiang), Mipham Tongde Gyelpo of the time, fought over the succession to the kingship, eventually, his senior wife Ms. Bao took his son Jia Tian’en moved to Gotang, where they were assisted by the major headman’s family mentioned in footnote 2. In 1833, Jia Tian’en’s grandson Gyeltsen Puntsok was appointed as Yutong zhangguan si (the Gotang Chief’s Office). See also Sichuan Sheng Kangding xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, 1995, 426–31; Lin Junhua et al., forthcoming, 31–7. Guo Jianxun 2017 (6): 31–6; Lin Junhua et al., forthcoming, pp. 59–60. Lin Junhua, “Danba de mo’erduo wenhua” [The Dmu rdo Culture of Danba (Rongdrak)], Xihua daxue xuebao [Journal of Xihua University], 2008 (5): 25–7. For details in Tibetan narratives on dMu rdo see also Sangye Lingpa (1992). On Dmu rdo see also Sichuan Sheng Danba Xianzhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui (2009). This is located in Gato (Sga stod) township of Thrido (Khri mdo) county in Yushul Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and is considered to the protective deity for Yulshul people. The mountain is viewed as the place where their ancestors were born and lived, thus, the local people have merged their worship of mountains with ancestor worship. Locally, Gardo Jobo (Sga mdo jo bo) is personified as a great general who protects the area at the source of the Yangtze River. As one of nine sacred mountains (nine creators of the world, Srid pa chags pa’i lha dgu) in Tibetan regions, Gardo jobo is considered to be the ninth son of Ode Gungyal (’Od lde gung rgyal). In Tibetan imperial mythology, the origin of the Tibetan Empire is attributed to Yabla Daldrug (Yab bla brdal drug) and he is considered to be the maternal uncle of Gardo Jobo. According to this narrative, the Gardo Jobo was incorporated into the scheme of the Nine sacred mountains protecting Tibet (and the world) when the Sumpa area was incorporated into the Tibetan Empire. In sacrificial prayers and praises, Gardo Jobo sometimes is referred to as yullha, or sadag (sa bdag srid sbongs rdo rje.) Whereas local monks called it nedag (gnas bdag), i.e. protector of a Buddhist site, or terdring (gter spring), cloud of Buddhist treasures. As a zhibdag (gzhi bdag), it belongs to ancient deities held to be the spiritual sources for the power and position of local chieftains and big men. In introducing the valley in the preface of the book, the authors outline the relevant points in Chinese environmental law: ‘It is obligatory for every individual ... to protect the environment’; ‘All individuals ... have the right to report on or file charges against anyone who causes… damage to the environment’. The authors also comment on the reference to the rights of ethnic minorities in relation to the environment: ‘China’s laws and regulations protect all ethnic groups in their efforts to preserve their excellent traditions (part of the environmental law)’. In the 4th th Article of the constitution of the People’s Republic of China it stipulates that: ‘the people of all nationalities have the freedom ... to preserve or reform their own ways and customs’. In the introduction he also quotes Xi Jinping who stated that ‘eco-civilisation’ is a developmental goal of China. For a detailed discussion see also Huett. https://treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/Khenpo-Jigme-Puntsok/P7774

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References Basso, K. 1996. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Dan, Q. 1995. Jiarong zangzu shizhi [History of Gyarong Tibetans]. Beijing: Minzu chubanshe. De la Cadena, M. 2015. Earth Beings – Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press. Diemberger, H. 1993. Blood, Sperm, Soul and the Mountain. In: T. Del Valle (ed.), Gendered Anthropology. London: Routledge. Diemberger, H. 2012. Deciding the Future in the Land of Snow: Tibet as an Arena for Conflicting Knowledge and Policies. In: K. Hastrup (ed.), The Social Life of Climate Models. London: Routledge. Drakbar Palden (Brag bar dpal ldan). 2002. Bod rgyal mo rong gi lo rgyus rab gsal me long [History of Rgyal mo rong (Gyarong), Tibet: A Clear Mirror], Vol. 1. ’Bar khams: Krung go mi dmags chab srid gros mol tshogs’du’bar khams rdzong u yon lhan khang. Dunnell, R. 1996. The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. Garrett, F., McDougal, E., and Samuel G. (eds.). 2020. Hidden Lands in Himalayan History and Myth. Leiden: Brill Publishing. Gladney, D. 1997. Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority Nationality. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Gros, S. 2019. Frontier Tibet – ‘Patterns of Change in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gyarong Namgyel (Rgyal rong rnam rgyal). 2016. Rgyal mo rong gi lo rgyus g.yas’khyil dung gi sgra dbyangs [Hisotry of Gyelmorong (Gyarong): Sound of the Conch Shell Coiled to the Right]. Khren tu: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang. Gyatso, L. and Dargye, T. (Sku nub pa Blo bzang rgya mtsho and Thub bstan dar rgyas), Undated local publication. Rmug rong yul sde spyi’i snod bcud kyi bkod pa dang lo rgyus lugs gnyis gsal ba’i me long [A Mirrior Illuminating the Mukrong Region’s Environment and History]. Chinese: Muru ziran mingjing. Hazod, G. 2020. Compte-rendu de Toni Huber, Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Sha-mans in Bhutan and Eastern Himalayas. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 56: 293–304. Huber, T. 1994. Why Can’t Women Climb Pure Crystal Mountain? Remarks on Gender, Ritual and Space at Tsari. In: P. Kvaerne (ed.), Tibetan Studies. Oslo: The Institute for comparative Research in Human Culture. Huber, T. 2020. Source of Life: Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and Eastern Himalayas. Vienna: VOAW. Huett, B. forthcoming. ‘Harnessing the Power of Mountain Gods and environmental Law to Protect a Sacred Landscape’. Jianxun, G. 2008. Biaoshu de minjian xingyang yu zuqun rentong – yi Sichuan Guiqiong zangzu de yangnianhui weili [Expressed Folk Beliefs and Ethnic Identity – Taking the ‘Sheep Year Assembly’ of Gotang Tibetans in Sichuan as an Example]. Qinghai minzu yanjiu [Nationalities Research in Qinghai] 19(1): 28–34. Jianxun, G. 2017. ‘Shanshen, Miaoyu, Tusi yu kangdong shehui zhixu—Jiyu Sichuan Kangding Yutong diqu de tianye diaocha’ [Mountain Deities, Monasteries, the Indigenous Leader and Social Order of Eastern Kham]. Xinnan minzu daxue xuebao [Journal of Southwest University for Nationalities] 6: 31–6.

Sino-Tibetan borderlands 61 Junhua, L. 2008. ‘Danba de mo’erduo wenhua’ [The Dmu rdo Culture of Danba (Rongdrak)]. Xihua daxue xuebao [Journal of Xihua University] 5: 25–7. Junhua, L., Minggang, W., Xiaoyan, Y., and Chunxia, G. forthcoming. ‘Gulao er shenmi shenmi de Yutong ren – Yutong chuantong wenhua diaoyan’ [Ancient and Mysterious Gotang People: A Study of the Traditional Culture of Gotang]. Karmay, S. 1998. The Arrow and the Spindle. Kathmandu: Mandala Bookpoint. Kar may, S. and Nagano, Y. (eds.). 2002. The Call of the Blue Cuckoo: An Anthology of Nine Bonpo Texts of Myths and Rituals. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Kunubpa Lobzang Gyatso (Sku nub pa Blo bzang rgya mtsho alias Longsang Gyatso) and Thub bstan dar rgyas (Thubten Dhargye). 2013. Smug rong yul sde spyi’i snod bcud kyi bkod pa dang lo rgyus lugs gnyis gsal ba’i me long [A Mirror Illuminating the Mukrong Region’s Environment and History] (Trilingual Version, i.e. Tibetan, English and Chinese). Self published. Niangwujia 2021 “Mountain Deities in Northeast Tibet (A-mdo): Narrative and Ritual in the Cult of A-myes sTag-lung”. PhD Thesis University of Oslo. Roche, G., and Tsomu, Y. 2018. ‘Tibet’s Invisible Languages and China’s Language Endangerment Crisis: Lessons from the Gochang Language of Western Sichuan’, March 2018, The China quarterly 233: 186–210. DOI: 10.1017/S0305741018000012 Samuel, G. 1993. Civilized Shamans – Buddhism in Tibetan Societies. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution. Sangyé Lingpa (Sangs rgyas gling pa). 1992. Rgyal rong gi gnas chen Dmu rdo [The Great Sacred Site of Gyarong: Murdo]. Khreng tu’u: Si khron mi rigs dpe skrun khang, TBRCW21638. Sengge, Zangpo. 1983. Bka’ bzhi pa Rig pa’i Seng ge rnam thar [Biography of Kazhip Rikpé Senggé ], Vol. 1. Dehradun, UP: Sakya Center, TBRCW2CZ6650. Sichuan sheng danba xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui. 2009. Danba Xianzhi [Gazetteer of Rongdrak (Danba) County]. Chengdu: Sichuan chuban jituan, Sichuan kexue jishu chubanshe. Sichuan Sheng Kangding xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui. 1995. Kangding Xianzhi [The Gazetteer of Kangding (Dartsedo)]. Chengdu: Sichuan Cishu chubanshe. Suizi, J. 1998. ‘Kangding xian yutong qu Guiqiong ren de zongjiao xisu’ [The Religious Customs of the Guiqiong People in Yutong (Gotang) Township, Kangding (Dartsedo) County]. Zongjiaoxue yanjiu [Religious Studies] 3: 82–7. Tsering, R. 2017. The Warrior in the Mountain and His People – Labtse Mountain Cult and Its Social Significance in an Amdo Village. In: J. Ptackova and A. Zenz (eds.), Mapping Amdo: Dynamics of Change. Prague: Oriental Institute CAS. Tsomu, Y. 2009. Political and Territorial Survival in the Sino-Tibetan Borderland: A Case Study of the lCags-laKingdom During the Qing Dynasty. In: Wim van Spengen and Lama Jabb (eds.), Studies in the History of Eastern Tibet. PIATS 2006. Koningswinter, Halle (Saale): International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Tsomu, Y. 2012. Taming the Khampas: The Republican Construction of Eastern Tibet. Modern China 39(3): 319–44. Uray, Géza. 1966. Greṅ, the Alleged Old Tibetan Equivalent of the Ethnic Name Ch’iang. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 19: 245–56. Yang, N.G. 2017. Water Politics and Religious Practices in Kangding. Water Politics and Religious Practices in Kangding. HIMALAYA 37(1). Available at: https:// digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss1/16 https://digitalcommo Zhaxi Wende (Bkra shis ban de). 2013. Yushu gaduo juewu shenshan yanjiu [A Study of Sga stod jo bo sgyogs chen gdong ra in Yulshul], Zhongyang Minzu daxue [China Minzu University], M.A. Thesis.

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Up in smoke: cosmopolitical ecologies and the disappearing spirits of the land in Thailand’s agricultural air pollution Julia Cassaniti

In the past, we weren’t as sure – the outcome of the farming wasn’t as certain, so we had to ask the spirits for help … Now, when we put the chemicals on, we’re more sure they’ll work. So we don’t have to ask the spirits. –A Hmong villager in Northern Thailand, describing the shift away from spirits of the land and toward the chemicals of contract farming.

Air pollution has become a major hazard across Southeast Asia. People squint to see each other through the haze all around the country during the dry season, and convenience stores had run out of N-95 masks even before the COVID pandemic of 2020. While the haze has been blamed in part on overpopulation, car exhaust, and transborder airflow (Mostafanezhad and Evrard 2018), overwhelmingly it is centrally understood as a result of agricultural burning from farmers in the valleys and the upland communities around the country (Yee 2016; Moran et al. 2019; Mostafanezhad and Evrard 2021). After farmers grow and harvest their crops, they will burn their fields to clear them of the remains of the plants they had harvested, to prepare them for a new round of planting. Significantly, this practice of burning is part of traditional land management techniques common in many communities in the North of the country, as it is in many areas of Southeast Asia, and it is often remarked that it is this tradition of burning that is to blame for the haze crisis. Yet while the traditional nature of the practice may help to explain the situation to some extent, a much more significant explanation is the development of contract farming by large agricultural businesses. These large, multinational corporations have grown exponentially in Thailand over the past 40 years, and they typically expect, if not demand, that farmers burn their fields. Farmers must burn their fields after harvesting in order to increase the number of planting cycles they can have in a year and be able to offer a large enough yield to the companies in order to maintain a sustainable income.1 The increase in burning, as well as the shift in the main crops being grown – from rice eaten by the people that grow it to maize sold to the companies for animal feed, resulting in more plant material to burn – means a greater amount of overall air pollution. Most people in Thailand are aware of the negative environmental impact of the agribusinesses and the large DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-3

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contract farming they administer, but the businesses are rarely publicly called out, and it can be difficult to disentangle the businesses’ culpability from the proximate causes of the burning at the hands of farmers. This is especially so because of the long tradition of burning common to the region and the relative absence of discourse about what is new in the agribusinesses’ practice. It can seem that all that is happening is ‘more of the same’: farmers used to burn their fields, they still do, and that’s a problem for the air. In this chapter, I will suggest a different explanation of the air pollution crisis, one that involves the spirits of the land and their displacement by contract farming, in order to draw attention to the significance of a shifting yet enduring cosmopolitical landscape. In doing so, I will illustrate the importance of a cosmopolitical ecology perspective (Kuyakanon et al. this volume; Latour 2011; Stengers 2010) for understanding ecological crises like Thailand’s haze crisis, and its relevance for making sense of both for older, spirit-laden farming practices and newer, fertilizer-driven ones. Rather than being a continuation of past practices or even a move away from a spiritual landscape to a materialistic one, I will argue that attention to the disappearing spirits of the land represents an important change in the cosmopolitics of the region. Yet the picture of the spirits and haze I offer here does not necessarily suggest that a ‘cosmopolitan’ view, in the sense of people interacting within a single cosmos (Kant 1970), has replaced a ‘cosmopolitical’ one, of the kind suggesting ontological pluralism (Stengers 2005; Blaser 2016; Latour 2002). While the field of cosmopolitics is understood to be attending to multiple, often conflicting other-than-human cosmologies relevant in a particular community, cosmopolitanism suggests a kind of global citizenship led by human actors; Latour sums up this distinction well: ‘Cosmopolitans may dream of the time when citizens of the world come to recognize that they all inhabit the same world, but cosmopolitics are up against a somewhat more daunting task: to see how this “same world” can be slowly composed’ (2004: 457).2 Rather, the presence of the agribusinesses – and the largely absent rhetoric surrounding them – suggests a politics that is itself cosmological in nature. The disappearing spirits of the land are being replaced by an equally cosmologically significant framework based on power, silence, and the potent ‘spirits’ of capitalism. June Nash (1981), Michael Taussig (2010), Anna Tsing (1993) and others have shown that shifting cosmological imagining takes place when capitalism arrives, pointing to capitalism as itself a cosmopolitically-rich culture. In Thailand, the culture of capitalism that underscores current agricultural practices is folded into a salient, ready rhetoric, replete with the silences of expanded lèse majesté laws and of a civilizational power overtaking the wildness of the periphery. The example of the haze crisis in Southeast Asia illustrates the importance of understanding cosmopolitical ecologies in environmental contexts worldwide. I will make this argument in three parts. I will first describe the ethnographic context of land use and some of the practices involving spirits of the land in communities in a notorious ‘hot spot’ for the haze crisis in Northern Thailand. I will then show how contract farming has changed how people in these communities relate to

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their land and its spirits, tracing a decrease in spirit propitiation and an increase in the use of chemical fertilizers. Finally, I will analyze how the farmers themselves understand this shift to be the result of actions by powerful corporations and how the large agricultural companies that have replaced the spirit engagements are themselves connected to a potent and salient cosmopolitical ecology.

The ethnographic site and the (past) involvement of the spirits I have been conducting sociocultural anthropology research in the Northern Thai district of Mae Chaem for the past 18 years (Cassaniti 2015, 2018). Mae Chaem is an ethnically diverse region comprising a large, rural area in Chiang Mai Province, about 30 km east of the Burmese border. It is made up of ‘lowland’ (kon muang) Northern Thai people in the town of the same name and ‘upland’ (Karen, Hmong, Lawa, and other ethnic minorities) in the surrounding hills, all with distinct languages, cultures, and agricultural practices. When I first began my research in Mae Chaem the valleys and hills were covered with fields of rice, but over time I noticed a slow but steady progression of corn farming, along with some other vegetable crops. I was conducting ethnographic research on religion and health in the region, and I didn’t think too much about the shift in cultivation while there, beyond wishing to see the ‘exotic’ rice instead of the corn that was more familiar to my own cultural background in upstate New York. It was only when I started hearing people in Mae Chaem and Chiang Mai talking about the farming practices as a reason for the increasingly bad air pollution that I started to pay attention to the agricultural landscape and to the spiritual implications of the changes that were going on in it. To understand how different economic relationships to the land entailed different orientations to the spirits, even as the practice of burning ostensibly looked the same, during an extended visit in 2019 I spoke with farmers in the valley and hills around Mae Chaem, asking about their past and present burning practices. In conversation with lowland kon muang and in trips up to the hills to speak with people in the Karen, Hmong, and Lawa communities that surround the valley, I learned about some of the subtle and not-so-subtle changes that have occurred over a relatively short amount of time (Figure 3.1). In addition to an increase in population, meaning that more total burning occurs, people in Mae Chaem today are burning their fields at much higher rates than in the past. Farmers explained how they are all but compelled to do so by the agricultural businesses that employ them. They told me about the contracts they would sign, stipulating that a set yield is produced and the pressure they had to produce it to avoid going into debt. ‘Since capitalism (rapop tum niyom) came in, the lives of people changed’, a public health worker in Mae Chaem explained to me: ‘Contract farming is a popular consumer system, and the farmers here have no choice but to follow it’. Contracts are made that stipulate a pre-set amount of crops are sold to the business; the company provides seeds and often fertilizer, and the farmer must then make sure they fulfil the contract. This typically requires more and more cycles of planting and harvesting as the resources in the land are depleted. The fallout of this is that Mae Chaem has

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Figure 3.1 Forests burning in Northern Thailand. Photo: Thongsuk Monkhon.

become notorious as a site of problematic burning and is now a nationally recognized ‘hot spot’ in the region’s haze controversy. At the July 2020 Chulalongkhorn University-sponsored online event ‘Haze and Social (In) Justice in Southeast Asia: Past Experience and What Next?’, Daniel Hayward’s talk included a discussion of the hot spot of Mae Chaem under the title ‘A Cautionary Tale’ (2020). Part of what I learned about changing farming practices in Mae Chaem involves the custom of propitiating spirits of the land to try to secure a successful harvest. There are thought to be many different kinds of spirits residing in the valleys and hills of Mae Chaem, with different ethnic groups attending to (in Thai liang, to take care of, to follow) different spirits in different ways at different points during the farming cycle. These spirits have the power to enable or impede a successful harvest and are thought to reside in the places of farming, with the need to be appeased for positive farming outcomes.

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Across Mae Chaem, there are marked differences between groups in the specifics of these spirits and the rituals made to appeal to them. They range from the lowland Northern Thai to the many upland ethnic minority groups that live in the surrounding hills, though as is often the case with cultural segmentation, this diversity tends to be lumped together by those in the cities and centres of Thailand, as belonging to a general group of upland, rural farmers partaking in the burning of their fields. In general, however, I found a shared sensibility in the different villages I visited, in which people described attending to spirits or ‘lords’ of the land (Jao Din), and of the place (Jao Thi), by making offerings to them before and after planting rice. The specifics of what these offerings look like vary between people, dependent on their neighbourhood and ethnic affiliations and their own financial means, but offering ‘Gai Kuu, Lao Hai’ is most common: ‘A pair of chickens and a glass of whiskey’.3 I was told this phrase by many of the farmers I spoke with in all the ethnic groups I visited. In the Northern Thai villages on the valley floor, a lowland farmer told me about Mae Boh Sok, ‘the spirit mother of the rice’, and another spoke of Mae Kong Kah, ‘the mother of the river’, who it is important to support because of the importance of water for wet rice cultivation. They described how making offerings is like asking for permission to make use of the wild land and to thank the spirits for allowing it, as part of larger patterns found across Southeast Asia of paying homage to the spirits of place (Cassaniti and Luhrmann 2011; Cassaniti 2015b). Others told me about paying attention to the movements of the animals that live on the farms to find the most auspicious time to make offerings and begin planting. While some farmers in the valley continue these traditions, I was told that to learn more about spirit rituals in agriculture, I would need to go up to the hills. My Karen-speaking Northern Thai friend Duang and I drove in his pickup truck up dirt and brick roads to more remote areas close to the border of Burma, which more often than not were now surrounded by maize and other vegetable fields. Along the road were signs saying ‘Don’t Burn!’, exhorting people of the dangers of agricultural fires even though the practice is all but required because of the need for multiple rounds of harvests. Even in the cool season, we passed hillside fields bright with orange flames (Figure 3.2). People in each community we went to described their own past and sometimes current practices of propitiating spirits for success in farming, including common past and present practices of burning fields. The Lawa (sometimes also called Lua) and Karen have been typically referred to as secondary-forest swiddeners, rotating fields and burning new ones rather than moving villages (Kunstadter 1978), while the Hmong, Lahu, Yao, Akha and Lasu have been referred to as primary forest swiddeners, farming an area of land over and over for a series of years, and then when nutrients are depleted moving to a new area and burning that to clear the land (Keen 1983).4 Many of these swidden practices are now outlawed as supposedly leading to unsustainable levels of deforestation, though it has been shown that swidden agriculture is environmentally sound, especially when population pressures are low (Delang 2002: 490; Forsyth and Walker 2008; Geertz 1963).

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Figure 3.2 One of many ‘Don’t Burn!’ signs along the roads in the hills of Mae Chaem. It reads ‘Burning the forest … is like burning life’.

A Lawa man showed us around his small farm and told us how in the past, he and his family would farm a plot of land for seven years, then move to farm a new location and burn a field to clear it. Before burning it, he said, ‘we would first make a spirit house in the area. We would hold a ceremony, kill two chickens, or a pig, or what we could afford, for the spirits of the land. Seven to ten chickens would be good, twelve guarantees success. And one big bottle of whisky. A long time ago, it was customary to kill a dog – not to eat, just to kill it. We would do this to help the spirits, for the spirit(s) of the land, the spirit(s) of the water, because for the rice to grow strong it needs water. We would look for the right land, conduct the ceremony, burn the field, and plant the rice’. Even the spirits of fire were propitiated – asked and thanked for their support – during these extended rituals. ‘We would do the ceremony for the spirit of the fire (phi fai), too’, he explained. ‘Each house would participate, to help the fire to not

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escape the field, to not have the wind come up, and move the fire another place. We would ask the fire spirit to control the fire’ (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3 A Lawa farmer describes rituals of propitiating the spirit to the author. Photo: Duang Lamnamprai.

I asked him where this fire spirit lives, and he laughed, pointing to the jungle around us: ‘in the jungle, of course!’5 People in other upland communities told me similar stories about their past agricultural practices. A Hmong leader in a village across the mountain described how, in the past, people in the community ‘would burn the field, yeah. Just once a year, for 20 or 30 minutes in the middle, to help it grow easier, kind of like a natural fertilizer’. Part of these practices involved Hmong rituals for the jao thii, the lord of the place, in ten hao de ceremonies to protect the water and forests (Hengsuwan 2003, cited in Forsyth and Walker 2008), and suggest an extension of the social beyond only human actors (Hickman 2014). ‘We would use pigs, chickens, whatever we could afford’, he told me. But, he went on, ‘… people don’t do that much anymore. The old people will know better’. An old man who was listening in on the discussion nodded and quietly intoned some chants in Hmong but did not elaborate more. I heard similar stories of spirit propitiation and agricultural fires in Karen villages around Mae Chaem, too. Guardian spirits, especially those of the land

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and water (ther myng khae), are placated before each planting season (Hayami 2011), and while many of the people I spoke with in Karen villages today have long followed Christian traditions that de-emphasize the importance of land spirits, it is not that they are thought to be absent. As one of my Karen friends said, ‘[Now we think that] God assigns the spirits to carry out His orders’. ‘In church we would ask God to watch over the land’, one Karen farmer told me, ‘instead of asking the spirits, but it is a similar kind of thing’. Her perspective points to a continuity in Karen practices from the past even under the new religious order, even as its relevance is fading with new forms of agriculture. ‘But’, added another farmer, when I asked about spirit rituals, ‘This generation doesn’t know those old [kinds of] things’. In each community I visited in the valleys and hills of Mae Chaem, people told me about practices from the past that involved following or propitiating the spirits as part of agricultural techniques that also involved the burning of fields. And in each community, I was told that the rituals involving the land spirits are becoming less and less common, while the practice of burning is increasing. The village leader in the Hmong community explained: ‘Now [still] we burn the fields and ask the spirits for their support so that if we have a successful harvest we’ll thank them. But not as much as in the past’.

From spirits to fertilizers: the increase of contract farming and the decrease of the spirits In the place of past conventions of eating the rice grown in the fields, more and more people are participating in contract farming, selling maize and other crops to agricultural businesses for money. And unlike many people in the urban, nonfarming areas of Thailand, who tend to see the current practices of burning fields as a continuation of past traditions, and who see both older and newer styles of farming as having negative effects on the environment, the farmers in Mae Chaem largely understand that the new practices are not as good for the environment as the older ones. ‘Agricultural products in the past were only used for eating, and there were not many agricultural residues from farming,’ a health care worker in Mae Chaem explained to me, referring in contrast to the current high burnt residues of corn stalks. ‘The management of agricultural waste in the past was part of the traditional way of life’, he went on, suggesting that the practice of burning itself was not ecologically harmful; ‘burning [helped] to increase the amount of potassium, and to create a layer at the surface level … in addition to increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil, it also help[ed] to reduce production costs’. This, he said, has changed with contract farming. Not everyone I spoke with around Mae Chaem, who told me about spirit practices, also told me about contract farming, and not everyone made an explicit connection between them. But a negative correlation emerged that suggests a relationship between an increase in contract farming and a decrease in spirit practices.

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‘We thank the spirits – mae boh sop (the spirit mother of rice), the jao ti du leh na kao (the spirit that watches over rice)’, one farmer in Mae Chaem explained, when I asked about spirit practices in agriculture, ‘sure, with rice… but no, not with the corn’. Corn, it was understood, is almost exclusively a crop grown for contract farming. Others echoed the sentiment: ‘People make offerings for spirits for food they eat’, another farmer told me, speaking in a way that suggested it was obvious, ‘so people do this for rice. They don’t eat the corn. So there’s no reason to make offerings to the spirits’. While the physical activity of burning fields may look similar to the practices of the past, in a cosmopolitically-meaningful sense, the burning is not similar at all. In place of the spirits, in a very practical way, are the yield-improving fertilizers and pesticides that are handed out and encouraged by the agribusinesses that now buy the crops from farmers. As was the case with others, the Hmong village leader explained that in the past villagers would burn the field just once a year ‘for a few minutes’, he said, to help the ground, and in the dry season, they would cut the crops and move to a new field, burning a little ‘like a natural fertilizer’. Now, he and the villagers and others around Mae Chaem would burn their fields between plantings more than once a year, and as the traditional style of swidden agriculture is outlawed, they would plant on the same fields year after year. ‘Now’, he told me, ‘we put in chemicals on the field, whereas in the past, we would pay more attention to the spirits. In the past, we weren’t as sure, the outcome [of farming] wasn’t as certain, so we had to ask the spirits. Now, when we put the chemicals on we’re more sure they’ll work, so we don’t have to ask the spirits as much’. There are a lot of opinions about these fertilizers in and out of Northern Thailand, from the awareness of their harmful effects on the environment (and often on the farmers themselves [Dunn 2012]) to the defence of their use as increasing productivity (as brought up by a retired Monsanto employee neighbour I met in Chiang Mai). Yet, for many people in Mae Chaem, even as they appreciate what the fertilizers can do, they feel the fertilizers make a negative environmental impact. ‘When we grow corn’, one farmer told me, after explaining the region’s past practices of rice farming; ‘it’s easy money, but it’s against nature (pit thammachat). The chemicals go into the water, dry up the land, we have to burn more, there’s more residue to burn [from the corn stalks]… it’s a problem, in the hills, all over!’ Many people feel ambivalent about contract farming, and in particular about the fertilizers’ effects on the environment, but, significantly, they don’t feel there’s much they can do about it. ‘If we don’t make contracts’, I was told, ‘we don’t know if we’ll be able to sell our crops. Maybe no one will buy them. This way we’re sure. The company gives money to the people’, suggesting that while the support of the farmers by the companies might be seen as good, the damage to the land isn’t, ‘ … but there’s not much one can do’ (Figure 3.4).

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Figure 3.4 Newly harvested ears of corn gathered for delivery before the fields of residual corn stalks are burnt.

A cosmopolitical sleight-of-hand The change from sustainable burning to unsustainable burning is sometimes attributed by people within and outside of Thailand to a fairly straightforward issue of population growth, in that there are more fires because there are more people and less land to burn fields sustainably. But as Elinor Ostrom (1990) and many political ecologists have pointed out, looking past proximate causes enables us to debunk narratives around population pressure and environmental degradation. The changes to spirit relations, and the new forms of contract farming, suggest that a different and more complex explanation is needed than the increase in population. Whether on purpose or not (and as Marx pointed out, capitalism sometimes lends a feeling of agency where there is none), the agribusinesses make it so that not only do people feel compelled to participate in their practices but also to not speak of them as the culprits of the effects caused by the practices – notably the haze crisis from the agricultural burning. The businesses connect themselves to systems of power that ensure that the public does not call them out, and they make use of a common, stereotyping logic that suggests that the farmers in the hills are ignorant and to blame instead. It is from these two angles of silence about the businesses and the invoking of popular stereotypes that make it

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difficult for people to publicly recognize the companies as the real culprit of the region’s increasingly dire haze problem. These coalesce not around a transition from spiritual explanations to material ones but around a cosmopolitically salient logic that underpins both the previous practices as well as the more damaging newer ones. People in Mae Chaem and elsewhere know that the businesses are a large part of the problem with the haze, but few bring this up in public. Importantly, the businesses are not regularly called out by people in Thailand as the cause of the fires, and this is because of their alignment with systems of power at the national and international levels. One of the farmers I spoke with told me how he feels almost compelled to take part in the contract farming. When I asked why he had first hesitated when I asked him about his farming, he said, ‘Well… they’re really powerful, with a lot of connections, to the government’. Another farmer put it even more plainly: ‘the people here, they get told by the company what to grow, the company controls this, and the people burn the fields, and the air is bad. And there’s nothing we can do’. A few of the people I spoke with talked about the role of the agribusinesses in the haze crisis, but few did, and no one named the businesses directly. There is an air of silence around the corporations, which in effect creates the opportunity for old stereotypes about ignorant farming practices to fill in the space of blame. CP (Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company, Ltd) is the largest and most active player of the large Thai agribusinesses and one of the most damaging to the environment. The company began as a seed store in China Town in Bangkok in the 1950s, importing seeds from China and exporting pigs and chickens, and eventually turned to maize to serve as animal feed. It is now a large, multinational corporation with business ties around the world, connected in a global network of capital exchange. People in Mae Chaem are familiar with the company, and many have worked with it directly, but no one brought it up to me. When I asked about it, instead of telling me about its practices and the effects it was having on the environment in the area, I was met with silence or quiet, uncomfortable laughter. My friend Sen even told me, ‘You can’t write about that!’ and explained that CP is a big, powerful company with government ties. His explanation helps to explain the reticence people had in telling me about CP and other companies. ‘Maybe CP has left here, I don’t know … but we’re just little people here, Julia’, one farmer told me, and she held up her small, closed hand to illustrate. ‘We’re like this, and they’, meaning the agro-business, ‘are like this’. She used her other hand to cover the first one, enveloping it, and wrapped up her explanation with, ‘ … but we can’t say much about this’. Only three Thai informants, all with social capital and living in Chiang Mai rather than in the more rural area of Mae Chaem, talked to me about the agribusinesses at all. Just one spoke of CP by name and referred to the company as the ‘lords of war’, in a cosmologically-loaded political reference that at least indirectly indexed the kind of ‘lords of the land’ that the company was replacing. Rather than the agribusinesses being cited as the culprit of the haze problem, use in the public imagination is made of a well-known story of rural farmers – especially

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upland, country-side farmers – as wild and uncultivated, and with their old traditions of burning fields, they are often seen as the obvious culprits instead. The practice of blaming farmers in the hills for environmental problems is part of a longstanding, cosmopolitically-loaded trope in Thailand, used to deride upland farmers for everything from their ‘slash and burn’ styles of agriculture (Forsyth and Walker 2008), to housing patterns that are claimed to lead to deforestation (Fahn 2003; Århem 2014), and water misuse and erosion (Dunn 2012), among other ecological problems. It is an archaic and outdated story, but it is still in use today, and it is one that directly benefits the businesses and points to a cosmopolitically loaded narrative in Southeast Asia. In Forest-guardians, Forest Destroyers Forsyth and Walker note that the ‘characterization of the upland population as unruly and problematic easily carries over into discussions of environmental management … the agricultural activities of upland farmers – who are stereotypically associated with “shifting cultivation” or “slash-and-burn” farming – are often targeted as a primary cause of upland degradation’ (2008: 8). In official attitudes that continue today, in 1964 a National Reserve Forest Act noted agricultural practices involving burning as an explanation for deforestation, but neglected to mention the government’s political interest in clearing the forests to seek out communist activists hiding there (Delang 2002). People in Thailand continue to speak negatively about the ‘hill tribe’ farmers of upland communities as ‘poor’ and ‘backward’ and in need of progress and development (McKinnon 2008; Forsyth and Walker 2008). This logic is actively in play when people point to the farmers as the cause of the haze problem. The negative view of hill farmers is changing slowly, but it remains a powerful, ready-at-hand representation in popular rhetoric about the haze. Wittaya Krongsap, Director of Environment of the Chiang Mai Chamber of Commerce, said as much in a 2019 televised conference: ‘Those who are suffering in the city have been outraged as we know the health hazards of the pollution, and we shout at the people in the mountains doing the burning’. Yet, Krongsap went on in his speech, ‘[after] spending the day listening to representatives of mountain communities, we learned that matters were not so cut and dried. Many ethnic communities have spent centuries managing the forests, using slash and burn rotational farming to effectively keep the soil healthy… these are not the people who are the problem, but the front line of people fighting these fires and suffering the most’ (Thai PBS 19 May 2019 cited in City News 2019 [in English]). Not many people in positions of power note this, however, and few go to spend a day or more in the hills. When they do, it is often to lead educational development programs designed to alter current practices or even to teach about (supposedly forgotten) sustainable traditional ones. Scapegoating farmers, and particularly upland peoples, provides a viable and convenient explanation for the haze. If only ‘they’ would know better, such a perspective suggests, they would stop their terrible tradition of burning, and the problem would end.

From one cosmopolitics to another The potent silence surrounding the agricultural businesses and the old, stereotyped explanation for environmental problems as lying at the hands of people

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on the social periphery of Thai society together help to explain the actual human and other-than-human actors at play in the haze crisis. It helps us to better appreciate the spiritual relevance of ecological practices in Southeast Asia and elsewhere and the enduring cosmopolitical significance of what might on the surface seem to be only the erasure of cosmological meaning. In some ways, what I am drawing attention to here is the replacement of spiritually-laden farming practices, in which potent spirits are appealed to, for materialistic ones that are guided by market-driven profit. After all, as the Hmong villager had put it directly, for many, the fertilizers are replacing the need for spirit rituals. The semblance of a cosmopolitan perspective emerges in this shift to the reliance on large agribusiness. Farmers and those around them, in a sense, come to participate in a single, market-driven economy in which all are part of a shared environment. They participate in what Kant referred to in particular as cosmopolitanism: ‘the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop’ (1970: 51). The free market economic practices of contract farming suggest an open economic field of actors negotiating with businesses through the discourse of money, even as Marx pointed out that this cosmopolitan perspective comes with it the problems of marketdriven social inequality (Kleingeld and Brown 2019). In a sense, the Kantian notion of cosmopolitanism may be seen to be overtaking a cosmopolitically meaningful one, and I have drawn attention to the disappearing spirits of the land in part as an illustration of this. It may seem that what I am describing here is a familiar story about materialistic processes of capitalism overtaking cosmologically significant social (and physical) landscapes, and to a large degree, this is certainly the case. Yet, I don’t think that the replacement is only about a materialistic system overtaking a spiritually laden one. Instead, I think that the system overtaking the land in Mae Chaem is in a significant way also a spiritual, cosmologically meaningful one. It is one that is based on the power that comes from a nationally and internationally more distant source, rather than the more local spirits of the past. The presence of the agribusinesses – and with it, the largely absent rhetoric surrounding them and the blame put on the farmers themselves – suggests a politics that is itself cosmological in nature. The picture of the spirits and haze I have painted here does not necessarily suggest that a ‘cosmopolitan’ view, in the sense of people interacting within a single cosmos (Kant 1970), has replaced a ‘cosmopolitical’ one, of the kind suggesting ontological pluralism (Stengers 2005; Blaser 2016; Latour 2002). The agricultural companies that have come to control the land are working to uphold a very common tradition in Thailand of blaming the wild peripheries for political and ecological problems – which in the minds of people in urban centres are grouped together with the lowland kon muang farmers and the Lawa, Hmong, Karen, and others together. The state, which is tied metaphorically and financially to the agribusinesses, is understood to constitute a civilizational power that dominates the wilderness and disenfranchises the people who live there in the process. It is a spirit of capitalism that is bolstered by a rhetoric of the spirit of the state.

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The idea that certain big businesses are beyond reproach is not just due to their financial or political clout; it is also due to locally salient as well as globally circulating ideas – cosmological ideas – about power accrued through affiliations with spiritually potent others, in this case, royalty, religion, money and government. The general silence surrounding the role of agribusinesses in the haze crisis is related to the silence of politics. There is an air of silence around political matters in Thailand, long the case but especially since a military coup that overtook the country in 2014. This air of silence extends past what is strictly political out and into the business sphere, where CP and other large firms have strong ties to the ruling classes in the country. It is for this reason, in part, why so few of the people I spoke with raised the issue of agribusiness in their explanations of the haze problem. The size of the large agribusinesses, and especially their connections to a wide network of industry and financial capital, rather than causing them to loom large in public discourse, counterintuitively instead contribute to their relative invisibility. Because of their financial and political clout, their ability to control media coverage is comprehensive, and the ability to speak against them is almost impossible. It is for this reason that so many people hesitated or laughed nervously when I brought up the role of the businesses. They exert soft power in intimidation practices that are in some ways an extension of the lèse majesté laws that are increasingly extended past the royal family itself and on to the military rulers and other political and economic actors. Farmers in Thailand, especially those in the hills, are in turn aligned in a cosmopolitical vision that ties in to ideas about an untamed wildness, in contrast to a civilizational, cosmologically superior power of those connected to political and economic power. The idea of spiritual power civilizing, or conquering, the wilderness is a rich, historically dense component of the religious political world of Buddhism in Southeast Asia (Tambiah 1970; Davis 2015; Århem 2014). A spectrum thus emerges in the practices of contract farming and the silence around the role of the agribusinesses: from the wild spirits of nature, on the one hand, to what is referred to in Buddhist texts as the spiritual potency (barami) of the dhamma on the other.6 The propagation of Buddhism has been historically tied to that of the ‘righteous king’, and thu dong (wandering forest monks) gain power from the forest by subduing it with the Buddhist teachings (Tiyavanich 1997). Part of this subduing means to control, to refuse to be involved with, or distracted by, the spirits of nature (Cassaniti 2018: 139). As Mostafanezhad and Evrard characterize it, ‘the dichotomy between lowlands and uplands continues to be widely associated with a series of other conceptual oppositions (majority/minority, homogeneity/ fragmentation, rice fields/forests, Buddhism/Animism and so on) that has long framed the relationships between the Thai State and its cultural and ecological margins’ (2021, p. 124). ‘At the boundaries of civilization we find the mountains with their dark forests, wild animals, and strange folk who speak incomprehensible tongues,’ says Michael Rhum (1987: 92); ‘the wild forest (pa thuean) is nature beyond human control, violent and full of threatening forces, but at the same time full of vital energy which can be put to human use if only

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it can be domesticated’. CP and the other large agribusinesses can be thought of as gaining their potency in part through alignments in a cosmological hierarchy that places them in relative proximity to the civilized sacred, while the spirits of the fields and the farmers that interact with them are placed relatively low on this cosmopolitical spectrum, towards the wild and uncivilized. Far from being an issue only in Thailand, there is an aura of, if not silence, then a kind of timidity and respect surrounding business activities at a global level. This makes the corporate agricultural trade similar to business practices found around the world. It extends beyond Southeast Asia, through networks of what Weber called ‘the spirit of capitalism’ (Weber 2002: 1) and Moore critically calls the state of the ‘capitalcene’: ‘a system of power, profit and re/production in the web of life’ (2017, p. 594). In this sense the large agribusinesses’ ties to politicized capital, as part of a powerful entourage of actors, in peoples’ minds, makes them cosmologically potent in their own right. Capitalism may not be ‘spiritual’ in the same way that the spirits of the land are, but as Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen point out (this volume), what counts as cosmological is not static; it shifts with changing social practices and reflects shifts in power relations. Although the burning of the fields may have had the same ‘fiery’ physical qualities in the past as they do today, the change that I have described in this chapter, from paying attention to spirits in agricultural rituals to the contract-farming of large agribusinesses, represents a subtle but significant change to cosmological realities. Such a read of the haze problem, with political and economic power positioned on one end of the spectrum and the old spirits of the wilderness on the other, in effect demonstrates the overtaking of one cosmologically salient power with another within a locally recognizable cultural logic.

Conclusion The rituals involving spirits in agricultural practice suggest a particular expression of agency and an involvement in one’s own livelihood. Although the spirits are not fully controllable, and the crops may still fail, there is an element of engagement with the agency of the spirits, and through that, a personal expression of agency of one’s own. Spiritual power was understood to be mediated through rituals that created at least some degree of control in the vicissitudes of farming. One couldn’t always explain why things happen when interacting with the spirits in the past, nor could one have the same level of power as the spirits, but one could still interact with them and establish a set of meaningful exchanges. This personal relationship to power in agriculture, however, has shifted through a cosmological reconfiguration. With the power of the agricultural businesses, real engagement can not as easily be approached as it had been with the spirits. The logic of power is no longer in a nature that is close to one’s own land but extracted and in large part untouchable. Yet even as this power exists far from the land, within hegemonic notions of King and capitalism, it is not fully alien to those subject to it, in the sense that Marx suggested. Farmers and

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others in Thailand, to a large extent, do understand how the system is oppressing them. While the culture of silencing those it is taking advantage of may continue, by attending to the politics of cosmology, and the picture of cosmopolitical ecology that emerges, as I have done here, scholars and farmers alike are able to access new avenues for disrupting processes that only seem inevitable when they remain unremarked. The shifting of the cosmology in the agricultural practices of Northern Thailand suggests not that capitalism is everywhere the same in a growing global, cosmopolitan order, nor that cosmopolitical relations are everywhere uniquely localized. Instead, it suggests that localized spiritual, other-than-human ontological orientations affect political engagements with the land and that these may be leveraged to serve as justifications for broader, global processes. Attention to cosmopolitical ecologies of the spirits of the land in the haze problems of Southeast Asia helps to suggest the importance of moving our analytic framework away from attention to only human actors and toward the other-than-human ontological aspects of environmental problems. As the introduction to this book so eloquently argues, attention to cosmopolitical ecologies become necessary for understanding the social nature of environmental crisis. The meanings behind the agricultural haze crisis in Thailand I have highlighted in this chapter is particular to Thai politics and Thai social history, but it also informs an orientation to land and power that people may be encountering elsewhere. In suggesting some of the underlying causes of the haze crisis in Southeast Asia as reflecting cosmopolitical shifts in spiritual power, it may point to new theoretical approaches to environmental issues and new methodologies for investigating the social implications of environmental change.

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Riamsara Kuyakanon, Mary Mostafanezhad, Somwang Kaewsufong, Adam Dedman, Emily Zeamer, Clare Wilkinson, Stijn Vanderzande, and friends and informants in Mae Chaem for their contributions to this chapter. The author would also like to thank the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, 2019; Deborah Tooker, Guido Sprenger, the Thai/Laos/Cambodia Studies Group at the Association of Asian Studies 2017 panel ‘Emotional and Intimate Variations: Historicizing and Contextualizing Affect Amid Changing Political Economies in Mainland Southeast Asia’; and Allen Tran and members of the audience at the Society for Psychological Anthropology 2011 panel ‘Neoliberal Subjectivities’.

Notes 1 As Phongpaichit and Baker point out (1996), maize production has been on the rise since the 1950s, when it began to be used for animal feed in Taiwan, Japan, and elsewhere across Asia. Its production has increased forty-fold in its first forty years, with the increase in burning of fields along with it.

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2 Scholars within the field of cosmopolitics itself disagree too about the relative importance of the cosmos: Latour critiques Beck’s version of cosmopolitics as drawing from Kant too much, in not taking different cosmologies seriously enough (2004: 451), while Blaser (2016) feels that Latour doesn’t, either. 3 The names of the spirits are different in each ethnic group’s language, as are the terms for the offerings, but in general, there was a shared sense that spirits reside in the land and that some combination of meat and drink is important to offer to them. All interviews were conducted in Thai or Northern Thai, with some help by research assistants in translating some of the interviews from Karen, Lawa, and Hmong languages. Italicized names of different spirits are in Thai, Karen, Lawa, and Hmong. 4 I focus on Lawa, Hmong, and Karen practices here because they are the main upland communities in Mae Chaem district, but each group has its own set of spirit traditions. For an excellent summary of rituals related to spirits of the land in agricultural rituals among the Lahu see Walker (2015). 5 These particular practices are common, especially in Lawa communities, and there are less and less Lawa-identified people in Thailand, with only 17,000 remaining. In the past, however, it is thought that there were many, many Lawa in Northern Thailand. ‘All this area’, the man told me, gesturing around him, ‘used to be ours’. The spirit practices he described were common across the region; Northern Thai royal family member Kraisri Nimmanahaeminda writes of popular invocations ‘to ask the spirit to partake of and enjoy the offering and to assure health and rainfall for the villagers in return, to let not the rice of the Lawa [Lua hill-tribe] die in their swiddens, let not the rice…wither and die in their fields’. (Lua’nyia’hai b~ hue tai, ka, Tai nyia’na bq hue tai hiao haeng.) (Kraisri 1967: 78, cited in Rhum 1987: 94). 6 I do not at all mean to suggest that Buddhist principles are fundamentally entwined with the kind of destructive agricultural practices supported by agrobusiness, only that the agribusiness, can be seen to be making use of a civilization/wilderness rhetoric that aligns them with a cosmologically powerful perspective of which Buddhism is also a part. Susan Darlington reports on activist monks in Nan Province in Thailand, to cite one example of Buddhist environmentalism, who advocate a move away from maize farming in what they call a shift ‘from capitalist agriculture to dhammic agriculture’ (2019: 2); no doubt there are more perspectives like this throughout the country.

References Århem, N. 2014. Forests, Spirits and High Modernist Development: A Study of Cosmology and Change Among the Katuic Peoples in the Uplands of Laos and Vietnam. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, p. 55. Blaser, M. 2016. Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? Cultural Anthropology 31(4): 545–70. Cassaniti, J. 2015a. Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cassaniti, J. 2015b. Intersubjective Affect and Embodied Emotion: Feeling the Supernatural in Thailand. Anthropology of Consciousness 26(2): 135–46. Cassaniti, J. 2018. Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cassaniti, J., and Luhrmann, T.M. 2011. Encountering the Supernatural: A Phenomenological Account of Mind. Religion and Society 2: 37–53. City News. 2019. Clean Air White Paper, Report 31 May, 2019. Available at: https:// www.chiangmaicitylife.com/citynews/features/clean-air-white-paper/ (accessed 26 January 2021).

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Darlington, S.M. 2019. Buddhist Integration of Forest and Farm in Northern Thailand. Religions 10(9): 521. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10090521b (accessed 15 January 2021). Davis, E.W. 2015. Deathpower: Buddhism’s Ritual imagination in Cambodia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Delang, C.O. 2002. Deforestation in Northern Thailand: The Result of Hmong Farming Practices or Thai Development Strategies?, Society & Natural Resources 15(6): 483–501. Dunn, R. 2012. Perspectives, Problems, and Pesticides: The Discrepancies Between Institutional and Local Environmental Conservation Perspectives in Northern Thailand and the Implications for Natural Resource Management Model Development, PhD thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Fahn, J. 2003. A Land on Fire: The Environmental Consequences of the Southeast Asian Boom. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Forsyth, T., and Walker, A. 2008. Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Geertz, C. 1963. Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Hayami, Y. 2011. Pagodas and Prophets: Contesting Sacred Space and Power Among Buddhist Karen in Karen State. The Journal of Asian Studies 70(4): 1083–105. Hayward, D. 2020. From Maize to Haze. Conference paper presented at ‘Haze and Social (In)Justice in Southeast Asia: Past Experience and What Next?, Chulalongkhorn University, 29 July, Center for Social Development Studies, Bangkok. Hengsuwan, P. 2003. Contradictions on the Struggles Over resources and contesting terrain of ethnic groups on the hill in protected area, Chom Thong, Chiang Mai. Politics of the Commons: Articulating Development and Strengthening Local Practices RCSD Conference, July 11–14, 2003, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Hickman, J.R. 2014. Ancestral Personhood and Moral Justification. Anthropological Theory 14(3): 317–35. Kant, I. 1970. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. In: H. Reis (ed.), H.B. Nisbet (trans.), Kant’s Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 41–53. Keen, F.G.B. 1983. Land Use. In: J. McKinnon and W. Bhruksasri (eds.), Highlanders of Thailand, 1st ed. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, pp. 293–306. Kleingeld, P., and Brown, E. 2019. Cosmopolitanism. In E. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Kraisri, N. 1967. The Lawa Guardian Spirits of Chiangmai. The Journal of the Siam Society 55(2): 185–225. Kunstadter, P. 1978. Subsistence Agricultural Economies of Lua’ and Karen Hill Farmers, Mae Sariang District, Northwestern Thailand. In: P. Kunstadter, E.C. Chapman, and S. Sabhsri (eds.), Farmers in the Forest: Economic Development and Marginal Agriculture in Northern Thailand, 74± 133. Honolulu, HI: East West Center. Kuyakanon, R., Diemberger, H., and Sneath, D. (eds.). 2021. In: Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia. London: Routledge. Latour, B. 2002. War of the Worlds: What About Peace? (Charlotte Bigg, trans.). Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press.

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Latour, B. 2004. Whose Cosmos? Which Cosmopolitics? Comments on the Peace Terms of Ulrich Beck. Common Knowledge 10(3): 450–62. Latour, B. 2011. Politics of Nature: East and West Perspectives. Ethics & Global Politics 4(1): 71–80. McKinnon, K. 2008. Taking Post‐Development Theory to the Field: Issues in Development Research, Northern Thailand. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 49(3): 281–293. Moore, J. 2017. The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis. The Journal of Peasant Studies 44(3): 594–630. Moran, J., NaSuwan, C., and Poocharoen, O. 2019. The Haze Problem in Northern Thailand and Policies to Combat It: A Review. Environmental Science & Policy 97: 1–15. Mostafanezhad, M., and Evrard, O. 2018. Geopolitical Ecologies of Tourism and the Transboundary Haze Disaster in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. In: A. Neef and J.H. Grayman (eds.), The Tourism–Disaster–Conflict Nexus (Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management, vol. 19. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited. Mostafanezhad, M., and Evrard, O. 2021. Uncertainty, Rumor and the Sociality of Crisis: The Environmental Geopolitics of Seasonal Air Pollution in Northern Thailand. In: S. O’Lear (ed.), A Research Agenda for Environmental Geopolitics. Northampton (MA): Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 121–35. Nash, J. 1981. Ethnographic Aspects of the World Capitalist System. Annual Review of Anthropology 10(1): 393–423. Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press. Phongpaichit, P., and Baker, C. 1996. Thailand: Economy & Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rhum, M. 1987. The Cosmology of Power in Lanna. Journal of the Siam Society 5: 91–107. Stengers, I. 2005. The Cosmopolitical Proposal. In: B. Latour and P. Weibel (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 994–1003. Stengers, I. 2010. Cosmopolitics (I.R. Bononno, trans.). Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press. Tambiah, S.J. 1970. Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taussig, M.T. 2010. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Tiyavanich, K. 1997. Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Tsing, A.L. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Walker, A.R. 2015. From Spirits of the Wilderness to Lords of the Place and Guardians of the Village and Farmlands: Mountains and Their Spirits in Traditional Lahu Cosmography, Belief, and Ritual Practice. Anthropos 110(1): 27–42. Weber, M. 2002. The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism and Other Writings. London: Penguin. Yee, H.T. 2016. Chiang Mai’s Headache: Corn-Fed Smoke Haze. Straits Times, May 21. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/chiang-mais-headache-cornfed-smoke-haze (accessed 15 January 2021).

Part II

Communities and cosmos: place-based knowledges and practices

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Balancing the sacred landscape: environmental management in Limi, North-Western Nepal Astrid Hovden and Hanna Havnevik

Introduction On top of the hill immediately south of Halji village towers a white stupa. It was built on the advice of a Buddhist lama in order to protect the village from floods. There are numerous stupas in the village and surroundings, constructed to deal with various threats and as sources for blessing. The stupas are multivalent symbols, but each tells a story about keeping the landscape in balance; a balance that is increasingly challenged by a host of socio-political changes and an unpredictable climate.1 Halji is one of three villages in Limi, a Tibetan-speaking border community in Nepal’s Humla district. The villagers have managed their local environment since the first settlements were established in the valley at least 1,000 years ago. Agro-pastoralism has constituted the basis of their livelihoods, variously supplemented with trade, crafts and manual labour. Their indigenous system of environmental management that has developed throughout the centuries to accommodate shifting socio-political circumstances is recorded in customary law and is grounded in a cosmology and knowledge system that is quite different from that of the Nepali state. With the recent administrative reforms in Nepal, however, the community has to adopt the national system for environmental management. This is an ongoing process and the degree to which the villagers will retain and integrate their indigenous system with new policies is, therefore, an open question. Yet, the current situation provides an opportunity to explore how the relationship between cosmology, environment and politics plays out in a Himalayan mountain community (Figure 4.1). We start by presenting the main characteristics and challenges of the local environment, followed by an outline of the cosmology.2 Then, we detail the mechanisms for environmental management in Limi. Noting how the villagers in Limi draw upon different knowledge regimes, we discuss the complex role of religion, not only in shaping the perception of the environment but also the manner and degree to which religion has an impact on environmental politics. While the spiritual aspect tends to be neglected in national and international political discourse, development projects, as well as academic publications about environmental management, we argue that this is key to understanding the local DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-4

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Figure 4.1 White stupa south of Halji village. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2018.

perspectives and strategies. Spiritual entities appear as non-human agents engaging in power relations on different scales and in different religious and secular frameworks. They can be seen as cosmopolitical as they play an important and yet often neglected role in the complex relationship between humans and the landscape they inhabit as well as between communities and state structures. The material on which this chapter is based has been collected through five periods of long-term ethnographic fieldwork between 2010–12 and 2018–19.3 Information has been elicited through conversations with villagers either formally through interviews or in everyday conversations and observations provide additional insight into daily practices and taken for granted understandings that villagers seldom express in words. When we discuss ‘environmental management’ in this chapter, we use the category in the widest possible sense in order to capture both formal decision-making and informal ways people relate to the environment, acknowledging the significance of environmental knowledge as embodied and lived. The local languageterm’khor yug gi’dzin skyob embodies much the same as the English concept but carries a number of localized connotations that we unpack throughout the chapter. A Tibetan equivalent to the English ‘sacred landscape’ is more difficult to find, but we use the term to signify religious or spiritual ways of perceiving and interacting with the environment, highlighting how these perspectives differ depending on

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cosmologies and knowledge regimes. Speaking of different types of knowledge and compartmentalizing them as secular and religious, Buddhist and autochthonous, local and global, theoretical and embodied is a heuristic construct useful for analysis, but the reality is much more fluid.4

Local environment and livelihoods The three villages in Limi are located at an altitude of between 3,700 and 4,000 metres, in a river valley surrounded by peaks reaching up to 6,000 metres. The slopes around Halji village, the main locus of this research, are covered by scree and boulders, testifying to significant debris flow and rockfall activity throughout history (Kropáček et al. 2015). The north-facing shadow-side of the valley is covered by pine forest, whereas scattered juniper and shrubs predominate the vegetation on the sunny slopes. A variety of herbs grow in the area, and while some are used for incense, food supplements and medicine, much of the local knowledge of medicinal plants has reportedly been lost. The surrounding high valleys serve as pastureland for animals and as habitats for various species of wildlife, such as blue sheep, wolves and snow leopards. Precipitation mainly falls as rain during the summer monsoon and in the form of snow in the late winter and early spring. The climate is cold, allowing only one harvest per year. Manure mixed with pine needles is spread on the fields as fertilizer, but with the reduction of livestock, the use of natural fertilizer has increasingly been supplemented by chemicals bought in Purang on the Chinese side of the border. The moraine soil is meagre and the area of arable land is too limited for the villagers to be able to live on agriculture alone. As pointed out by Melvyn Goldstein (1974), villagers, therefore, depend on triangulation between different livelihoods. The customary solution has been to complement farming of barley and turnips with animal husbandry, trade, crafts and low-income manual labour in villages at lower altitudes. The household is the main economic unit, but options and income opportunities vary between different social levels and between the genders, with women doing the main bulk of the agricultural work (Figure 4.2).5 While a general strategy of triangulation of livelihoods continues today, the balance has in recent years shifted towards the increasingly profitable manual labour opportunities in Purang to the neglect of agriculture and animal husbandry. This has become an important option for the villagers that has led to a considerable increase in living standards, especially for women and those at the bottom of society. Pastoral nomadism, which used to constitute a significant part of the local economy in the past, has become largely abandoned after the arrival of the road enabling easy transport of goods from the Chinese side of the border (Hovden 2016; Saxer 2016). Yet, agriculture still constitutes an important part of the local livelihoods – practically and ideologically, if not in terms of income – and as farmers, the villagers are sensitive to changes in the environment.

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Figure 4.2 Women carrying bundles of straw in Halji. Photo: Hanna Havnevik 2018.

Weather and climate change6 Since the 1970s, the world has experienced a significant increase in temperature, particularly marked at higher elevations. Glaciers in the Himalayas have been retreating at an average rate of 0.5 metres per year since 2000 and the melting is projected to continue or accelerate.7 Scientists have documented seasonal changes in precipitation which has resulted in unpredictable availability of water, the risks of landslides and flash floods affecting not only communities in the Himalayas but also the downstream basins where more than 1.3 billion people find their livelihoods. The villagers also share similar observations in Limi. When asked about environmental changes, they reported that the glacier above the village is receding. A majority also noted temperature increase, and many had observed new species of animals like long-tailed monkeys as well as mosquitoes and other insects previously found only at lower altitudes. Local farmers lament the unpredictable precipitation pattern with a later onset of the monsoon and dryer winters, interspersed with years of extreme snow levels and avalanches. An exceptionally hard winter in 2014–15, for instance, caused great loss of livestock and destruction of infrastructure. Flocks of wild animals were forced to migrate

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from the Tibetan plateau to Limi and many perished as they were not able to find sufficient food in the deep snow. Damage caused by the frequent landslides and rockfalls causes great concern; instances of both being witnessed during fieldwork. The main challenge for the villagers is, however, the recurring floods. After a first flood in 1993, Halji has been struck by six Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) from 2004–11, and smaller floods from the same melting glacier have destroyed footpaths and fields in neighbouring Til as late as 2018 (Hovden 2011; Kropáček et al. 2015; Diemberger et al. 2015). The community also struggle to maintain unstable irrigation channels, control user rights to natural resources and deal with the customary local government’s alignment with the new administrative structure of Nepal (ICIMOD and HimalConnect 2020). Limi people are particularly concerned about outsiders from villages further south, grazing their animals and harvesting herbs and other non-timber forest products in Limi territory – a challenge that has increased after the merger of local communities into larger administrative units. The environment can be described in various ways according to the perspective of the observer. The account above conforms largely to a natural scientific perspective, observing the physical features of the environment from a distance. A closer look at the landscape, however, reveals a number of other features, such as the many stupas and shrines. Some of these sacred structures have been built to demarcate the inner space of the inhabited and cultivated territory and to keep threatening non-human forces in the landscape at bay (Gutschow and Ramble 2003). Since ancient times, Tibetans have conceived of the world as three-tiered: the sky is inhabited by deities, while serpent spirits live in the subterranean level, and the middle zone is shared between humans and a host of spirits and demons. This division frequently referred to as the lha, klu, btsan tripartition discussed in the chapter by Diemberger in this volume, is, however, a simplified categorization as the levels are interrelated. Throughout the centuries, Tibetan Buddhism has incorporated a host of local deities and spirits converted to protect the new religion as it spread and developed.8 This led to complex and overlapping conceptions and terminology relating to supernatural beings, which Buddhist elites have systematized into otherworldly (’jig rten las’ das pa’i srung ma) and this-worldly gods (’jig rten pa’i srung ma),9 with Buddhist deities ranked above local ones. In many high Himalayan communities, as well as on the Tibetan plateau, both historically and today, buddhicized and local religious expressions co-exist. The boundaries between them are often fluid and, as argued by Diemberger in this volume, there is a sense that the buddhicization process is always incomplete.10 Central to these overlapping conceptions are the territorial deities connected with the person, dwelling, lineage, community, and environment (such as pho lha, mo lha, yul lha, gzhi bdag, sa bdag).11 The classificatory schemes vary with complex linkages between Buddhist deities, the protector gods of the person, the lineage, and the territory.12

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Deities and spirits in the local landscape Villagers see the Limi valley as controlled by deities and spirits residing in territorial features such as mountains, water, trees and rocks. They believe that if these territorial deities are angered due to moral transgressions or ‘sin’ (sdig), ritual pollution or defilement (sgrib) or other types of harm (gnod pa), they may cause environmental disasters and disturbances, material and social misadventures as well as salvational obstacles. At the top of the hierarchy of territorial deities are the yul lha (‘deities of the land’). Each of the three villages in Limi has its own yul lha, who are also regarded as ‘owners of the land’ (sa bdag). In Til, this is the couple Mi chen dbang po and A phyi sba klu ma, respectively classified as btsan and klu sprits, whereas in Halji, it is a female deity who seems to have been partly merged with the Drikung Kagyu protectress A phyi chos kyi sgrol ma. All are referred to as either grandmothers or grandfathers, suggesting that they may have been ancestral deities in the past. Their shrines are located near the entrance to the inner, more sacred part of the valleys above the villages. In addition, people in Limi worship three ancestral deities (pho lha), who, to complicate matters further, seem to have been partly merged with standard Buddhist deities. Such ongoing buddhicization processes (Buffetrille 1998: 18–35) show how territorial deities are contested and evolving. The yul lha and the pho lha – deities of the village and ancestors – are also part of a set of five deities of the individual (’go ba’i lha lnga). Thus they are simultaneously part of the body as well as residing in the surrounding territory. The deities are propitiated in a multitude of ways, from the daily fumigation ritual (bsang) to the annual rituals (lha gsol) at their shrines (pho brang or yul sa). Furthermore, villagers believe that there are numerous other deities and spirits of the lha, klu and btsan class residing in the physical features of the landscape. Only people with extraordinary powers ‘see’ these territorial deities; for everyone else, their presence is sensed only in subtle ways. There is, therefore, a constant risk of unintentionally harming these spirits, and before carrying out any potentially disturbing activity, the villagers perform purification and offering rituals (Figure 4.3). The forest and wilderness surrounding the village are referred to as the ‘forest of gods’ (lha shing), where villagers explain numerous territorial gods and spirits live. Since the health, wealth and wellbeing of the community are not only dependent on the availability of natural resources but also on the benevolence of territorial deities, all extractive activities in this area, such as digging the earth, cutting wood or picking herbs, are regulated to avoid harming them. These non-human beings are also believed to be disturbed by fighting or conflict in households as well as in the community. Villagers explain that deities angered by community conflicts are among the many causes of natural disasters in Limi. Another way of harming the spirits is through dirt, pollution and defilement (mi gtsang ba, sbags / btsog pa, grib). While there is some overlap, these terms carry meanings that are quite different from western conceptions of pollution. Deities and spirits are, for instance, regarded as sensitive to pollution by smell (Karmay 1998). However, menstruation blood and birth blood are perceived as particularly polluting, and the villagers report that some decades ago, the highest

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Figure 4.3 Ritual at the shrine of one of the territorial deities in Limi. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2012.

religious authority advised them to fence off the shrine of the water spirits behind the main spring in Halji in order to bar women from entering. If women pollute the spirit with their grib, the water source may dry up and they will not be able to irrigate their fields.13 Similarly, other types of pollution can also have serious consequences for the environment. Halji villagers recall that in 1993, there was a large flash flood sweeping down from the mountains towards the village. People explain that Gangs ri lha btsan,14 one of the ancestral deities, became angry because of the presence of a polluting substance and sent the flood. In order to appease the furious deity, his followers built a shrine for him at the ‘Hill of the gods’ (Lha’i sgang ga) above the village. As a testimony to the ritual efficacy our interlocutors point out that the village was subsequently protected from floods for more than ten years.

The local environmental management system In order to understand how cosmology translates into environmental politics, we take a closer look at environmental management in the valley. The system is based on a particular type of social organization, with most rights and obligations distributed according to household category as well as the individual’s gender and position. The society is divided into three social strata: large households (grong chen), small households (grong chung) and unmarried women’s households (mo rang) and there are significant differences in the rights and responsibilities between them.

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If the large households have a full quota, the small households’ portion is 50%, while the single woman households are assigned a share of roughly 25% of the obligations and benefits accrued to each household. This applies to the payment of taxes, access to natural resources and other assets. As with many other Himalayan border communities, Limi has historically been semi-autonomous from the state and has had its own system for governing the village according to a detailed set of customary laws. These laws are modelled partly on the old Tibetan legal tradition, with historical roots also in the Nepali governance system. At least since the introduction of the Panchayat system in 1960, the community has seen a gradual but initially largely nominal approach to the Nepali state requirements – a process that has intensified during the last decade. Currently, the villagers follow a double administrative arrangement, managing the environment according to both local, customary as well as Nepali laws, each with its own set of leaders and officials. The traditional leaders have taken care of internal village matters according to local customary law, whereas the Nepali leaders have dealt with comparatively fewer issues relating to the state (Hovden 2016, forthcoming). This division of labour used to function reasonably well but is currently challenged as the Nepali government requires a stronger implementation of the national laws. Formally, the traditional management consists of close cooperation between the village assembly and the monastery, taking care of the community’s needs in complementary ways.

The responsibilities of the village assembly The village assembly consists of one male representative from each household, excluding unmarried women’s households, which have normally not been represented in the village assembly. Due to a Nepali directive issued at least a generation back, four women from this category are elected as female representatives (N: mailah). They have to attend some of the assembly meetings and in two of the villages have the responsibility of managing irrigation. The assembly administers much of the communal village land and collects local taxes based on the size of fields and the number of animals (Hovden 2013, 2016, forthcoming). The village assembly collectively makes most of the environmental management decisions in the community. A set of customary laws regulate communal and individual use of natural resources. These detailed rules determine the taxation on farming, timing and methods of agro-pastoral activities, access to common resources, wildlife, forest, pasture and rangeland management, which are enforced by fines. There is a strong textual tradition in Limi and many of these laws and regulations are recorded in local administrative documents; mainly tax documents and agreement contracts. But except for the former, it is seldom necessary to consult the documents as all villagers are familiar with the rules. A set of officers and ‘watchmen’ are elected during the annual village assembly meetings to ensure that they are followed. The duties of the ‘forest watchmen’ (lta rtog pa) include checking that the villagers obey the prohibition against cutting wet wood, while the ‘animal watchmen’ (lo rags pa)

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are responsible for controlling that animals are kept out of the fields. The many duties of the ‘officials’ (las ’dzin)15 include supervising the villagers’ contribution of the required labour and payment of their dues, but also ensuring that they have access to their share of natural resources. In addition to the enforcement of these regulations, it is the responsibility of the village assembly to ask monks to perform rituals for protection against disease, capricious weather and natural hazards. A significant portion of the village taxes are earmarked to sponsor these elaborate rituals, and it is the task of the abovementioned officials to provide the monks with the necessary equipment, serve them meals and offer other support.

The monastery’s multiple roles in the protection of the environment Each of the three Limi villages has its own monastery staffed by local monks, contributing to environmental management in a number of different ways. A main role is to provide ritual services, many of which are directed at appeasing and controlling the territorial deities and spirits. The monks thus play a crucial role in mediating the relationship between humans and non-humans in the landscape. Elsewhere in the Himalayas, this function is frequently performed by other types of religious specialists as well.16 Most of the general ritual activity takes place in the winter, but rituals aimed specifically at increasing fertility and yield from fields and animals and the manipulation of weather are performed in the summer season. Three times between planting the fields and just before harvest, monks perform fire offerings (sbyin sreg) to protect the fields and ensure a good yield, followed by fumigation rituals (bsang), purification of mountains and the valley (ri khrus klung khrus) and libation offerings (gser skyems) to the protector deities. Parallel to the monks’ rituals, groups of villagers led by the caretaker monk carry sacred scriptures around the fields (chos skor) in order to protect the agricultural yield. First, the women carry the 12 volumes of the Prajñāpāramitā, and the second time all villagers carry the 108 volumes of the Kangyur. At the request of the village assembly, the monks also perform annual rainmaking rituals (char ’bebs) at the main subterranean spirits’ (klu) shrine to the west of the village, which lasts at least three days.17 If the rain still does not come, the women will decide to intensify the irrigation and the rituals will be prolonged. After careful analysis of meteorological conditions, signs in nature and scriptural advice, the monks may conclude that the drought is caused by other spirits and will adapt their ritual strategy accordingly. Rain-making rituals are often followed by wind-stopping rituals (rlung gnon)18 as the wind can be treacherous in this valley. These rituals variously employ peaceful and wrathful means in order to maintain the precarious balance and reciprocity between humans and spirits. In addition to its role as ritual provider, the monastery is involved in environmental management in many other ways. Firstly, as one of the main landowners in the village and collector of local taxes paid largely in kind (barley, butter and dried cheese). The income from the taxes is used to cover the basic needs of the monastery, and the surplus is reinvested as loans to the villagers against interest. In difficult times, the monastery has largely given loans

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for seed grain or food, whereas nowadays, the taxes are usually converted into money for business capital. Furthermore, the monastery provides services to individual villagers and the community for different types of divination and prediction (mo, rtags pa) in front of the statue of their protector deity. In cases of floods, landslides or other large-scale unfortunate events, locals approach high lamas for divination in order to reveal the cause and prescribe the proper action, whether secular or ritual. For instance, before building the stupa for flood protection, described in the introduction of the chapter, a local lama performed divination and told the villagers that disturbance of the territorial deities caused the flood. As discussed in Diemberger et al. (2015), divination is only one of several strategies in risk-evaluation and decision-making, and villagers draw on experience and consult a variety of sources of information in these processes. After the subsequent more serious floods, the villagers chose to consult a number of external high lamas for prediction and advice. While the floods were variously explained in terms of retribution from angry spirits or due to moral transgressions, actual measures taken consisted of a combination of practical engineering work, religious rituals and political lobbying with Nepali government officials. Moreover, monks also participate in decision-making and conflict resolution bodies. One such recently formed institution, commonly referred to as ‘The [Group of] Fifteen’ (bCo lnga), consists of five monks and ten members of the laity. In 2001, this group suggested new regulations, including a revision of the regulation for the protection of the forested area surrounding the village. The rules, together with the fines for breaking them, are listed in an agreement contract (gan rgya). The document says that while villagers may cut wood for use in the monastery, the cutting of wet wood in the restricted area is forbidden, both for private use and for sale (Halji village regulations 2001). This is only the most recent of many such prohibitions. The main forested area to the south of the village has been protected since early times. In order to avoid harming the deities, spirits and protectors, all villagers swore an oath (mna’ bskyal) in the monastery that they would not cut the wood. Similarly, rules for the protection of wildlife, which high religious authorities have recently emphasized, are reportedly recorded in old documents. The ban on logging and hunting, occasionally disregarded when predators have preyed too hard on the livestock, has historical roots in the old Tibetan administrative system, and some of Limi’s regulations to protect their environment may be related to territorial sealing (rgya sdom pa). Since at least the 12th century historical decrees (rtsa tshig) ordering the sealing off of roads (lam rgya), rivers (chu rgya), mountains (ri rgya) and valleys (klung rgya) have been issued by religious masters, monasteries and the Tibetan government as measures of environmental protection, but also for political control.19 While our discussion of the role of religion focuses largely on the local level, we will briefly look at the extent to which religious institutions, networks and worldviews play a role at national and international levels. Monasteries have no formal role in the Nepali national regulation of natural resources but may be given a special status as cultural heritage. After the flood in 2011, the monastery in Halji’s

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importance as cultural heritage was effectively used as an argument in fundraising campaigns for flood relief both in Nepal and internationally, as the community itself was otherwise regarded as too small and too remote for intervention. Finally, the local village monasteries are connected with a wider community through global networks of lamas and sponsors, some of whom are actively campaigning for environmental protection. Since 2013, the head lama of the Drikung has led the campaign ‘Go green go organic’, through which he has promoted the building of ice stupas for water storage in his two monasteries in Ladakh, tree planting and organic farming. The last few years, there has been a growing interest in organic products in Nepal and some of the villagers in Limi have recently started to adopt the English term organic when describing their own agricultural produce.

Environmental management in the new government structure The above description of the environmental management system in Limi shows close cooperation between secular and religious institutions at the local level. Currently, the community faces the challenge of reconciling its customary system with the Nepali state’s environmental policy. After the new Constitution of Nepal was endorsed in 2015, the municipality government level was allocated more resources and power. In the local election of 2017, the former Village Development Committees (VDCs) merged to form new, larger rural municipalities. Limi VDC thus became part of Namkha Rural Municipality, counting with its 2,429 km2, as the largest rural municipality in Nepal, requiring new ways to share responsibilities, administration and resources. With this new structure comes an additional set of leaders and functionaries, Nepali as the administrative language, and cooperation between units that were previously self-governed (Hovden forthcoming). As part of the government reform, all the laws in Nepal need to be re-written. This is a complicated process, as the broad field of environmental management spans the jurisdiction of several ministries. The new regulations will have important consequences for environmental management in remote rural municipalities. However, to what extent will local communities be able to retain some of their old management systems and what role will religious institutions be able to play? The new Environment Protection Act 2076 endorsed in October 2019 may give some indication. Chapter 7 makes provision for integrating traditional practices for conservation and protection in Environmental Protection Plans at the provincial and local levels (Government of Nepal 2019). To what degree this will be translated into practice remains, however, to be seen.

Different epistemological understandings of the climate and environment One of the challenges in the local adaptation of the new Nepali government system is that the legal documents and policies take for granted a particular, largely technical, understanding of the environment. Ten years ago, hardly anyone in the village had heard about climate change and global warming. During

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fieldwork in 2018 and 2019, this situation was gradually changing. Some of the village leaders explained that they first heard about climate change through dialogue with Nepali government officials when applying for funding for flood mitigation after a series of GLOFs, and monks told us that they first heard about global warming from a high religious leader. NGO workers, researchers, and educated youth have contributed to the spread of information about climate change, but except for the ones sent to schools in urban centres, this framework for understanding environmental change has not taken hold widely in the villages. The climate change narrative has its roots in a knowledge regime characterized by technocratic and scientific viewpoints and language, variously interpreted at administrative and local levels. In these constructions, the natural world is devoid of non-human agency and is detached from the local worldview in Limi. Yet as different versions of the narrative and the accompanying language have spread among villagers, it has been interpreted and adapted to the local context (see also Campbell 2017). The environmental understanding of national and regional agencies and a number of NGOs results in epistemological differences or mismatches between local and global environmental imaginaries.20 While scientists relate floods and landslides to climate change, villagers, only superficially familiar with scientific, environmental research and terminology, observe variability in weather and environment influencing the safety of humans, animals, and fields and attribute many of these changes to what Huber and Pedersen (1997) refers to as a ‘moral climate’. But as Diemberger (2013) and Diemberger et al. (2015) have pointed out, locals are not bound by one knowledge regime but combine and shift between them. Religious masters, with their international networks among disciples, institutions and politicians, have access to scientific explanations of climate change but deliver a variety of messages depending on their audience. In the villages, they often emphasize Buddhist interpretations, such as when the head of the Drikung Kagyu tradition told the Limi villagers to recite sacred scriptures (the Kangyur) as flood prevention measures. Butcher (2013) writes that the 14th Dalai Lama and the head of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, Gyalwang Drukpa, informed villagers in Ladakh that the devastating 2010 flood was due to karmic retribution.21 In Solukhumbu, monks saw the deadly avalanche on Mount Everest in April 2014 as retribution from the goddess of the mountain angered by tourism, vibrations from helicopters and climate change.22 Increasingly, the head of the Drikung order and other high lamas with global networks try to reconcile natural scientific and Buddhist explanations. Some lamas, such as the modernist reformer Pema Rigsal Rinpoche, the head of the Namkha Khyung Dzong monastery in nearby Yalbang,23 told villagers in Limi consulting him for divination that the floods were not caused by lha and klu, but by global warming. Local access to and ways of navigating these different knowledge regimes vary. When discussing the way the local community draws on different types of knowledge, we have to specify who constitute the local community (Aase et al. 2018). This is not as easy as it may sound, as villagers are highly mobile, with outmigration to Kathmandu, New York or other cities abroad.24 A significant

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number of those remaining in the villages are frequently moving between Limi and Purang or between the villages and urban centres in Nepal or India.25 At the same time, as they are increasingly settling outside the valley, they are connected through phone and social media. The villages received the first phone connection through a Nepali Telecom satellite phone set in 2010 and got the first weak internet signals in 2019. Through Facebook and other social media, young villagers, whether in the valley or in Kathmandu, share feelings, thoughts and knowledge about the local environment through photos, texts and videos. The topics range from the beauty of the landscape, concern about animals, promotion as a tourism destination, teaching out-migrated villagers about local customs, a celebration of territorial deities, or participation in environmental awareness campaigns, to name but a few. There are significant differences between the out-migrated urban and rural population, between generations and genders depending on education, language skills, mobility, relations with Nepali authorities and/or NGOs. But all villagers have been exposed to new agricultural practices, new technology and new ways of seeing and managing the landscape. Limi people continuously evaluate these innovations. While some have been discarded, others, such as greenhouses providing vegetables also in the winter months and threshing machines, electric mills and other laboursaving technology, have been welcomed. As Limi and other Tibetan speaking communities engage with modern technology and alternative worldviews, the effects do not necessarily lead to a loss of tradition and secularism as villagers continue to mix Buddhist, folk religious, scientific and materialistic explanatory models and practices, as also observed by Salick, Byg and Bauer (2012). In the past, women would largely be bound to the villages, but now this holds true only for the elderly. Young women frequently travel to Purang for manual labour and send their children to far away urban centres for schooling. Many of the children spend years away from home in the sponsored programmes at the schools of the Central Tibetan Administration in India. The elderly desire education and more opportunity for their children and grandchildren but lament that the understanding of local cosmology, knowledge of the local language and the agro-pastoral lifestyle is being lost among the young villagers migrating to the urban centres.26 Those who remain in the villages are caught in-between, navigating between local and global, secular and religious, developmental, political and environmental concerns.

Conclusion The landscape in Limi is seen as inhabited by spiritual entities with which humans interact on different terms according to a variety of framing narratives and ritual practices. In our presentation of the environmental management system in Limi, we showed the close cooperation between the local village administration and monastery and highlighted the multiple roles played by the latter. These include not only ritual manipulation of weather and environment but also the way the monastery engages in the politics of the environment as

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landowner, creditor and participant in various decision-making bodies. The system is grounded in a cosmology connecting human and non-human agents in the environment in complex ways. Yet, as omnipresent as the local deities may appear, we have to be careful not to overemphasize their importance. The villagers in Limi are highly mobile, navigating between geographical locations, social contexts, media and knowledge regimes. In daily management, the villagers have to weigh multiple concerns. Every so often, when religious considerations clash with other pressing matters, the villagers prioritize the latter. In the autumn of 2018, for instance, the old stupa near the water spring was sacrificed to the new road as the excavator carved its way towards the village. In an attempt to make up for the offence, the monks conducted rituals to reduce the negative karma caused by the killing of insects when transforming the mountain path into a motorable road and in order to placate the territorial deities. If the balance between humans and non-humans is restored and maintained, the road may bring prosperity to the village. While the villagers are acutely aware of the challenges that may come in its wake, the road is held as indispensable to the community’s development, as it connects the village with markets in neighbouring China as well as the Humla district headquarters and shortens the distance to Nepali state authorities (Figure 4.4). Although the importance of local ecological knowledge related to environmental management is increasingly recognized, there is still neglect of the role

Figure 4.4 Excavator carving the new road to Halji village. Photo: Astrid Hovden 2018.

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played by indigenous cosmologies and religion in national and international policies, development projects, as well as academic publications.27 This chapter has shown, however, that it is key to understanding the local perspectives and strategies. Perceived as profoundly powerful, the non-human agents are central to Limi’s cosmopolitics, shaping negotiations, tensions as well as relations between the village communities and the state.28

Notes 1 A number of articles discuss the role of stupas and other ritual markers in the landscape protecting habitations. See e.g. chapters in the edited volumes of Blondeau and Steinkellner (1996), Blondeau (1998) and Gutschow et al. (2003). 2 While acknowledging the importance of sin, karma, and Buddhist moral precepts in Tibetan and Himalayan people’s relation to the environment, we have chosen to focus mainly on cosmology and territorial deities in this chapter. See for instance Woodhouse et al. (2015) and Gagné (2018) for a discussion of some of the other aspects. 3 Most of the ethnography discussed in this chapter is built on data collected by Hovden for her PhD thesis (Hovden 2016) from 2010 to 2012 and subsequent fieldwork in Limi in 2018 and 2019, as well as Havnevik’s field trip to the valley in 2018. We want to thank all the villagers for generously welcoming us and for sharing their knowledge. We thank Rinchen Loden Lama, Dawa Tsering Tamang, Tenzin Lama, and all others who have helped us, for their skillful research assistance. The fieldwork in 2018 was conducted as part of the RCN funded research project HimalConnect and the fieldwork in 2019 was funded by the Williamson Fund. When not referenced in the chapter, the data builds on this ethnography. An updated version of Hovden’s PhD thesis is due to be published as a monograph by Brill. 4 Tibetanised people’s notions of self and non-self, as well as of their surroundings, attest to their shifting between understandings of human, animal and non-human domains that are embedded in their mind-bodies. This fluidity between the categories is very different from westerners’ binary understanding of nature versus culture and secular versus sacred. For a discussion of problems with modernist conceptions of e.g. secular versus religious as separate domains, see Rubow (2016). 5 More ethnographic data on gender relations and women’s lives in different parts of the Tibetan plateau and in the Himalaya were called for by Gyatso and Havnevik (2006: 1–25) in order to avoid essentializing Tibetan women and to enable us to write comparatively across the plateau and the Himalaya based on thorough empirical and historical knowledge. When it comes to works dealing with gender and women in the high Himalaya, we find scattered information in a number of anthropological monographs, too many to mention here. 6 Climate change is defined as the average of all weather and temperatures in the last thirty years (Sippel et al. 2020). 7 Maurer et al. (2019). See also satellite photos, https://www.bbc.com/news/scienceenvironment-48696023 (accessed 19 June 2019). 8 See e.g. Gyatso (1987: 38–54). 9 In his encyclopedic work Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1975) describes and classifies thousands of different spirits seen to inhabit the Tibetan cosmos. 10 The relation between local and Tibetan Buddhist religious forms in high Himalayan communities and on the Tibetan plateau has been researched by a number of scholars, too many to refer to here, but substantial contributions have been published in collected volumes: Blondeau and Steinkellner (1996), Blondeau (1998), Macdonald (1997). See also Karmay (1998), Ramble (1990, 2008), Diemberger and Hazod (1997). 11 Ramble (1996) and Stein (1972: 200–12).

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12 Blondeau and Steinkellner (1996). 13 Pan-Indian and Tibetan deep-seated conceptions connecting female bodies with impurity are still maintained in Himalayan villages. For spirits’ agency in the Mongolian landscape, see Davaa-Ochir (2008). For water spirits causing natural catastrophes and harm in Tibet, see Dorje (2013). 14 Gangs ri lha btsan belongs to the btsan class of deities. He is regarded as the guardian deity (gnas bdag) of Mt. Kailash, but in Limi, he is also regarded as the ancestral deity (pho lha) of a number of households. 15 Hovden describes this at length in her PhD thesis (2016) and in her forthcoming book. 16 See for instance Blondeau (1998), Diemberger and Hazod (1997), Karmay (1998) and Ramble (1996, 1990). 17 See also Dorje (2013) on klu. 18 In Tibet, three weather-makers served the Tibetan government, see NebeskyWojkowitz ([1956] 1975, pp. 467–80). For a detailed description of hail-stopping rituals, see Klein and Sangpo (1997) and Niangwujia (2021). 19 See decrees (rtsa tshig) for the protection of animals and environment issued by Regent Reting (LTWA document 151), sTag brag ngag dbang gsung rab mthu stobs (1874–952) in 1944 (LTWA document 161) and the 13th Dalai Lama in 1901 (LTWA document 170). We thank Lobsang Shastri (BDRC) for making these documents available to us. For a detailed discussion of territorial sealing, see Huber (2004) and Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen (2017). 20 See Allison (2014) in her analysis of garbage and pollution challenges in Bhutan and Butcher’s discussion of flood prevention in modern Buddhist Ladakh. 21 Butcher (2013: 106). For statements on climate change by the Dalai Lama, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/20/dalai-lama-says-strong-actionon-climate-change-is-a-human-responsibility (accessed 6 March 2020). See Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche statements on climate change. https://www.lionsroar.com/howbuddhist-monks-in-ladakh-are-fighting-climate-change (accessed 06 March 2020). 22 Spoon (2014, p. 449). 23 For a discussion of modernist Buddhist reformers and Buddhist modernities, see Havnevik et al. (2017) and McMahan (2008). 24 Villagers estimate that more than fifty Limi people, mainly from Dzang and Til, live in New York, corresponding to ca. 5% of the population. 25 A similar migration pattern among high Himalayan communities is discussed by Childs and Choedup (2019), Gagné (2018) and Craig (2020). See also Havnevik (2020). 26 In a study of change in the Khumbu valley in Nepal, Spoon (2014) found a generational gap in worldviews as many young people are involved in tourist management. Only rituals close to the main mountaineering trails have been maintained, while knowledge of outlying areas has dwindled. 27 See Salick, Byg and Bauer (2012) and Rubow (2009: 95). 28 See also Diemberger, this volume.

References Aase, T.H., Chapagain, P., and Dangal, H. 2018. Multi-Sited Himalayan Households and the Misleading Rural-Urban Dichotomy. Area [online] 51(1): 174–81. DOI: 10.111/area.12450 (accessed 01 September 2020). Allison, E. 2014. Waste and Worldviews. Garbage and Pollution Challenges in Bhutan. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture [online] 8(4): 405–28. DOI: 10.155 8/jsrnc.v8i4.25050 [accessed 05 September 2020].

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Blondeau, A.-M. 1998. Foreword. In: A.M. Blondeau (ed.), Tibetan Mountain Deities. Their Cults and Representations. 1st ed. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Blondeau, A.-M., and Steinkellner E. (eds.). 1996. Reflections of the Mountain. Essays on the History and Social Meaning of the Mountain Cult in Tibet and the Himalaya. 1st ed. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Buffetrille, K. 1998. Reflections on Pilgrimages to Sacred Mountains, Lakes and Caves. In: A. McKay (ed.), Pilgrimage in Tibet. 1st ed. Curzon: Richmond Surrey, pp. 18–35. Butcher, A. 2013. Keeping the Faith: Divine Protection and Flood Prevention in Modern Buddhist Ladakh. Worldviews [online] 17L: 103–14. DOI: 10.1163/15685357-017002 002 (accessed 01 August 2020). Campbell, B. 2017. Encountering Climate Change. Dialogues of Human and Nonhuman Relationships Within Tamang Moral Ecology and Climate Policy Discourses. European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 49: 59–87. Childs, G., and Choedup, N. 2019. From a Trickle to a Torrent. Education, Migration, and Social Change in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal. 1st ed. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Craig, S. 2020. The Ends of Kinship. Connecting Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York. 1st ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Davaa-Ochir, G. 2008. Oboo Worship. The Worship of Earth and Water Divinities in Mongolia. M.Phil thesis, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. Diemberger, H. 2013. Anticipating the Future in the Land of the Snows. In: K. Hastrup and M. Skydstrup (eds.), The Social Life of Climate Change Models: Anticipating Nature. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. Diemberger, H., and Hazod, G. 1997. Animal Sacrifices and Mountain Deities in Southern Tibet. In: S. Karmay and P. Sagant (eds.), Les habitants du Toit du monde. 1st ed. Nanterre: Société d’ethnologie, pp. 261–83. Diemberger, H., Hovden A., and Yeh, E.T. 2015. The Honour of the Snow-mountains is the Snow. Tibetan Livelihoods in a Changing Climate. In: C. Huggel, M. Carey, J.J. Clague, and A. Kääb (eds.), The High-Mountain Cryosphere. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 249–60. Dorje, L. 2013. Klu in Tibet. Beliefs and Practices. M.Phil thesis, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. Gagné, K. 2018. Caring for Glaciers. Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas. 1st ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Goldstein, M. 1974. Tibetan Speaking Agro-Patoralists of Limi. Objets et Mondes 14(4): 259–67. Government of Nepal. 2019. The Environment Protection Act 9/2019 (2076). Gutschow, N., Michaels, A., Ramble, C., and Steinkellner, E. (eds.). 2003. Sacred Landscape of the Himalaya. 1st ed. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Gutschow, N., and Ramble, C. 2003. Up and Down, Inside and Outside: Notions of Space and Territory in Tibetan Villages of Mustang. In: N. Gutschow, A. Michaels, C. Ramble, and E. Steinkellner (eds.), Sacred Landscape of the Himalaya. 1st ed. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenshaften, pp. 137–94. Gyatso, J. 1987. Down with the Demoness: Reflections on a Feminine Ground in Tibet. Tibet Journal 12(4): 38–54.

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Gyatso, J., and Havnevik, H. (eds.). 2005. Women in Tibet. 1st ed. London: Hurst & Co. Publishers and New York: Columbia University Press. Havnevik, H. 2020. Book Review of Geoff Childs and Namgyal Choedup’s ‘From a Trickle to a Torrent: Education, Migration, and Social Change in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal’. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 54, 267–70. Available at: http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/ collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_54_11.pdf (accessed 20 October 2020). Havnevik, H., Hüsken, U., Teeuwen, M.J., Tikhonov, V., and Wellens, K. (eds.). 2017. Buddhist Modernities. Re-Inventing Tradition in the Gobalizing Modern World. 1st ed. London: Routledge. Hovden, A. 2011. If This Is What a Small Glacial Lake Flood Can Do, Imagine a Big One. Nepali Times 564. Available at: http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=1 8418 (accessed 03 November 2020). Hovden, A. 2013. Who Were the Sponsors? Reflections on Recruitment and Ritual Economy in Three Himalayan Village Monasteries. In: C. Ramble, P. Schwieger, and A. Travers (eds.), Tibetans Who Escaped the Historian’s Net: Studies in the Social History of Tibetan Societies. 1st ed. Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, pp. 209–30. Hovden, A. 2016. Between Village and Monastery. A Historical Ethnography of a Tibetan Buddhist Community in North-Western Nepal. PhD. thesis, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo. Hovden, A. (forthcoming). Limi, the Land In-between: the Art of Governing a Buddhist Frontier Community in the Himalaya. Leiden: Brill. Huber, T. 2004. Territorial Control by “Sealing” (rgya sdom-pa). A Religio-Political Practice in Tibet. ZAS 33: 127–52. Huber, T. and Pedersen, P. 1997. Meteorological Knowledge and Environmental Ideas in Traditional and Modern Societies: The Case of Tibet. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3(3): 577–597. ICIMOD and HimalConnect. 2020. Proceedings of the Workshop on Environmental Management in a Changing Climate. Communicating Local Perspectives from the Kailash Sacred Landscape. 30.09–01.10.2019. [online] (accessed 30 October 2020). Karmay, S.G. 1998. The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet. 1st ed. Kathmandu: Mandala Book Point. Klein, A., and Sangpo, S. 1997. Hail Protection. In: D.S. Lopez (ed.), Religions of Tibet in Practice. 1st ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 538–47. Kropáček, J., et al. 2015. Repeated Glacial Lake Outburst Floods Threatening the Oldest Buddhist Monastery in North-Western Nepal. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences [online]. DOI: 10.5194/nhess-15-2425-2015 (accessed 01 September 2020). Kuyakanon, R., and Gyeltshen, D. 2017. Propitiating the Tsen, Sealing the Mountain: Community Mountain-Closure Ritual and Practice in Eastern Bhutan. Himalaya [online] 37(1), 8–25. Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/ vol37/iss1/7 (accessed 15 Ocober 2020). Maurer, J.M., Schaefer, J.M., Rupper, S., and Corley, A. 2019. Acceleration of Ice Loss Across the Himalayas Over the Past 40 Years. Science Advances [online] 5(6). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav7266 (accessed 15 October 2020). Macdonald, A.W. (ed.). 1997. Maṇdala and Landscape. 1st ed. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd. McMahan, D.L. 2008. The Making of Buddhist Modernism. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Nebesky-Wojkowitz, R. 1975. Oracles and Demons of Tibet. 2nd ed. With a foreword by Per Kvaerne. Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlaganstalt. Niangwujia 2021. Mountain Deities in Northeast Tibet (Amdo): Narrative and Ritual in the Cult of A‐myes sTag‐lung. PhD. thesis, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo. Ramble, C. 1990. How Buddhist are Buddhist Communities? The Construction of Tradition in Two Lamaist Villages. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 21(2): 185–97. Ramble, C. 1996. Patterns of Places. In: A.-M. Blondeau and E. Steinkellner (eds.), Reflections of the Mountain: Essays on the History and Social Meaning of the Mountain Cult in Tibet and the Himalaya. 1st ed. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 141–57. Ramble, C. 2008. The Navel of the Demoness. Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in Highland Nepal. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Rubow, C. 2009. Metaphysical Aspects of Resilience. South Pacific Responses to Climate Change. In: K. Hastrup (ed.), The Question of Resilience: Social Responses to Climate Change. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, pp. 88–113. Rubow, C. 2016. Respect and Passion in a Lagoon in the South Pacific. In: K. Hastrup and F. Hastrup (eds.), Waterworlds: Anthropology in Fluid Environments. 1st ed. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 93–110. Salick J., Byg, A., and Bauer K. 2012. Tibetan Cosmology of Climate Change. Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture [online] 6(4): 447–576. DOI: 10.1558/ jsrnc.v6i4.447 (accessed 30 June 2020). Saxer, M. 2016. New Roads, Old Trades. Neighbouring China in North-Western Nepal. In: M. Saxer and J. Zhang (eds.), The Art of Neighbouring: Mediating Borders Along China’s Frontiers. 1st ed. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Fischer, E.M., Székely, E., and Reto, K. 2020. Climate Change Now Detectable from Any Single Day of Weather at Global Scale. Nature Climate Change [online] 10(1): 35–41. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0666-7 (accessed 07 January 2020). Spoon, J. 2014. Everyday Buddhism and Environmental Decisions in the World’s Highest Ecosystem. Journal for the Study of Religion Nature and Culture [online] 8(4): 429–59. DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.v8i4.19062 (accessed 06 June 2020). Stein, R.A. ([1962] 1972). Tibetan Civilization. 2nd ed. Stanford CA.: Stanford University Press. Woodhouse, E., Mills, M.A., McGowan, P.J.K., and Milner-Gulland, E.J. 2015. Religious Relationships with the Environment in a Tibetan Rural Community. Interactions and Contrasts with Popular Notions of Indigenous Environmentalism. Human Ecology [online] 43(2): 295–307. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-015-9742-4 (accessed 15 September 2020).

Tibetan language documents Decrees (rtsa tshig) for the Protection of Animals and Environment issued by Regent Reting (LTWA document 151), sTag brag ngag dbang gsung rab mthu stobs (1874–1952) in 1944 (LTWA document 161), and the 13th Dalai Lama in 1901 (LTWA document 170). Halji village regulations (2001). Unnamed agreement contract (gan rgya) made by ‘The [Group of] Fifteen’ (bCo lnga).

5

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics of environment in Buryatia Caroline Humphrey

In 1996 I found the great Karl Marx Collective in Selenga District a skeleton of its earlier flourishing self. After several years of economic ‘shock therapy’, the farmland people were used to seeing around them had become a wilderness. The herds had been decimated, so many pastoral camps, byres, milking parlours, etc., had become ruins and the roads to them were overgrown. Three-quarters of the vast acreage of agricultural fields was now a wilderness. One hamlet had been abandoned and another was cut off because the bridge leading to it had been swept away. Weeds and self-sown trees sprouted in former fields. Wolves and bears were roaming closer, and Tashir, the central village, seemed to cower in darkness when the electricity supply failed. In other words, not only was the farmers’ ‘surrounding milieu’ (Rus. okruzhayushchaya sreda), as people called it, visibly transformed, it now loomed as a disturbingly active presence. The socialist era conviction that ‘nature’ (Rus. priroda) could be controlled, kept in its place, and harvested by technical means had become a mere memory. A great turnaround had taken place, with a new humility before non-human powers and awareness of the fragility of life. Amid a general contraction of common efforts and grim withdrawal into personal household survival, the community had nevertheless done its best: it built a dignified memorial to the terrible losses from World War II and a small Buddhist prayer-house. But what the farm leadership brought to my attention most eagerly was their construction of a new sacred place in the hills, a worshipping site for Emege Ezhi (literally ‘Granny Mother’1). I was joyfully taken to this spot (described further below) and it was immediately clear that, with its accommodation for 200–300 people, this was an ambitious project in local terms. Only much later did I realize that the Emege Ezhi shrine is part of a far wider pattern. It is just one of many new worshipping places (Bur. mörgöliin gazar), monuments, sacred megaliths, statues and small temples established across Buryatia honouring spiritual powers that are held to be feminine – or at least non-masculine – many of which are conceptualized as ‘mothers’ (ezhi). In bringing these contemporary phenomena into focus, this chapter addresses the historical character of Buryat cosmologies. Despite the timeless or eternal character attributed to them by many scholars as well as residents, they are mutable and seem these days to be undergoing a particular process of alteration. DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-5

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 103 This chapter will argue that the recent elevation of mother figures and their new prominence in the public sphere is not the result of post-socialist socio-political changes concerning women, such as their greater economic clout or political emancipation, neither of which has seen marked improvements in Buryatia since Soviet times. Rather the persona of ‘the mother’, the in some ways ambiguous symbolic image of motherhood, is being proclaimed as the icon for certain vernacular forms of ethnic renewal and environmental attention that focus attention on the notional-cosmological as well as the physical ‘earth’ (Bur. gazar, explained further below). Since my visit in 1996, the prominence of non-masculine monuments and images has only increased. Meanwhile, a change of emphasis is on the way concerning the apprehension of human – non-human relations. The trepidation at the encroachment by wild forces as a result of economic collapse and human neglect of the 1990s is being supplemented by a different sharp anxiety about human wrongdoing in nature, by growing alarm about anthropogenic climate change and heedless pollution of the land and waters. The results are evident in unprecedented temperatures, drought, forest fires, floods and dangers to wildlife. In both contexts, the feminine images are indexed to occult forces that are threatening but also potentially protective of human communities. These powers need to be appeased, it is held, by paying respect and above all by morally regulated behaviour towards ‘nature’ (Bur. baigal, Rus. priroda). In many cases, the reasons given for erecting a statue of an ancestress or initiating worship at a ‘female’ rock are social ones, such as memorializing an admired relative’s miraculous healing powers, beseeching fertility, or marking out the motherly origin of a kinship grouping. But invariably, a necessary aspect of paying respect to this figure is strict observance of the correct behaviour with regard to natural processes in the environment, as the ethnographic examples to follow will show. A particular puzzle addressed in this chapter – why mothers? – may be related in some degree to disappointment in the deeds of fathers (leaders, politicians, husbands), but the particular notion of motherhood invoked is more directly associated with a culturally specific biopolitical and moral rethinking of Buryatness as a way of life. The chapter thus addresses two linked processes: the enterprises of societal renewal that accord the ‘mother’ a specific bio-ethnic role and the imaginative work that has produced a ‘re-balancing’ in the topology of cosmological imagination. Both of these constitute responses aimed at collective self-strengthening in the face of the uncertain political and natural forces that surround the Buryats at this time. In this chapter, I also hope to accomplish an anthropological re-balancing that reflects the one undertaken in Buryatia. The existing literature on Buryat and Mongolian landscapes and the politics thereof has focused extensively on cults of sacred mountains and on rituals at oboos (elevated cairn shrines believed to be the ‘seats’ of spirit land masters) (Lindskog 2016; Sneath 2014; Dumont 2017; Evans and Humphrey 2003; White, this volume). A central and recurrent tenet of Mongolian and Buryat-Mongolian cosmologies, attested at least from the 17th century onwards, is the idea that the Sky and mountain peaks are typologically ‘male’ while the Earth and rivers are ‘female’. This is not just an ideational distinction seen in the naming and mythology of geographical objects; it is also

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widely followed in practices such as the prohibition on women climbing sacred peaks or participating in most oboo rites, the grounds usually cited being that female biological processes such as menstruation are polluting and would offend the master spirit (Zhukovskaya 1997). In contrast to the plentiful anthropological writing on the political and social significance of oboos, the study of ritual observances in the lowly streams, groves, lakes, hollows, crevices and caves of a putatively symbolically female character is much rarer. The relatively few studies of such ritual activity examine particular cases, mostly relate to Mongolian not Buryat ethnography, and do not take as their central theme the politics of the wider gendered landscape within which these rites have their place.2 There are good reasons for the weighting of anthropological attention. The ‘male’ oboo ceremonies are far more popular, expensive, and widely publicized and often involve political leaders and state interests (Sneath 2014). By contrast, until recently, the overshadowed rites indexed as ‘female’ had a more personal, varied, and sporadic character with fewer participants, and often they seem to have been intentionally set up as sequestered and confidential, and in some cases even entirely withheld from outside view (Humphrey 2017). In the last 20 years, many of these formerly modest observances have been opened up to public visibility, with official approval, advertisements in the media, Buddhist lamas invited to preside, structures built, and state funding sought. Anthropologists have long been accustomed to the idea of the ‘cultural landscape’, the way people of a certain culture visualize and act upon the spaces of their lived world. And there is nothing new about the thought that the inhabitants of a certain territory might keep alternative such landscapes in mind or that one such vision can be actively contested by another (Humphrey 1995), or that they may reappear as facets of personhood (Pedersen 2012). However, perhaps less common is attention to the question of how such landscapes are made newly perceptible to people or to the diversity of attitudes to visibility, which, following the idea of ‘language ideology’, one might call a question of visibility ideology. Rane Willerslev (2016) has rightly argued that the nomadic/ transhumant/migratory peoples of Inner Asia, whose livelihoods depend on the accurate sighting of wild animals and herds over great distances, greatly prioritize the ocular. Yet religious ideas, phrased differently among various groups, have also insisted on the existence of the non-visible, of realms that co-exist in a universe where ‘the world that can be seen’ is just one among non-visible others. The conviction that the spirits of dead relatives, deities, great shamans, animals, birds, or demons dwell temporarily in these realms, circulate between them, and may on occasion return to (or at least insert a felt presence in) this world is evident in a host of everyday practices; people exercise caution in the care and ‘containment’ (Empson 2010) of the unseen energies/spirits that people know might affect them for good or ill. Objects held to represent symbolically, contain or host such powers have normally been enclosed, framed, boxed in, wrapped in layers, buried or secreted away. This practice was especially carefully observed in everything to do with death and the representation of ancestors (Delaplace 2009; Empson 2010). Only in the case of the most revered deceased lamas were

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 105 memorial stupas (suburgan) placed openly in the landscape. These monuments were constructed according to modular formats; conceptually, they were more like reliquaries, shining white vessels containing precious sacra secreted within. This all too brief summary indicates why statues and paintings depicting human likenesses of ‘mothers’ and displayed in public, indeed sometimes visually towering over the surroundings, are such a remarkable innovation and cultural break with the past.3 Having said this, it is necessary to note that the ‘mothers’ are physically represented in a number of different ways and that some of these are objects of worship, prayers and offerings, while others are simply respected in a secular kind of way. Yet, the range is not infinite. Certain ‘types’ of image occur again and again, while other possibilities offered by global trends in art are altogether absent. For example, nothing like the self-searching feminist gaze of Mongolia’s leading contemporary female artist, J. Munkhtsetseg (‘Mugi’), is to be found in the Buryat provinces. Mugi’s series Silence depicts the maternal body, beginning with the image of a woman ready to conceive, looking downwards as her inner organs, ovaries and genitalia are shockingly exposed, a taut, angular image which, although it suggests sexuality pays no attention to the breasts, inviting lips, and soft outlines typical of male artists’ depictions of the female body. As Uranchimeg Tsultemin observes (2018: 3), ‘Mugi’s work subverts the norms of the visualization and objectification of female nude figures in patriarchal Mongolia’. In this light, I wish to make clear that the Buryat female images may be a new departure, but they are not a critical self-examination of motherhood from a mother’s point of view. Rather, they are ‘social’, in the sense of images made by, and for the benefit of, whole groups of people, communities for whom their typological image of ‘mother’ is what counts. It would be unwise to characterize the types of images/artefacts created as a spectrum, for they are so heterogeneous they seem as though coming from completely different thought-worlds. There are ‘mother’ statues depicted according to classic Soviet sculptural prototypes; quasi-Buddhist art gallery type paintings; sculpted ‘totemic’ images of clan progenitors; mothers ‘visualized’ in natural phenomena such as rocks and caves; as well as the more traditional sacred box shrine (bumhan) that encloses a tiny painted image that is barely visible in its shadowy recess. A non-Buryat (Russian, European) visual repertoire is used for some of the most prominent of the images, and the paradox is that this is the case even if the intention is to represent a Buryat identity, a representational situation that in some ways parallels the linguistic, in which the majority of urban and younger Buryats use Russian and do not know their native tongue. This is the conundrum (‘I have only one language, yet it is not mine’) discussed by Jacques Derrida (1998) as himself a Maghrebian whose sole language was French. Yet, unlike in Derrida’s language case, in the matter of ritual and ceremonial images, Buryats are not confined to a single visual register and they are untroubled by multiplicity. The diverse kinds of representation are held to complement one another, are not felt to be jarring or puzzling, and can be found side by side at ritual sites. The same features – a shift in the visible/

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invisible register and representational borrowing – are apparent in the revival of interest in a class of female/hermaphrodite water spirits (lusad), not ‘mothers’ in this case, brought about by fears of pollution in Lake Baikal. The lusad were known previously from Buddhist prayers and rites but never till recently set up as material objects of public worship. Indeed, people had no idea what lusad looked like, until in 2016, environmentalists and lamas relying on ancient Sanskritic prototypes of the nāgas (serpent demi-god, known in Tibetan as kLu), had granite sculptures of them erected on the shores of Lake Baikal (see in this volume: Diemberger; Hovden and Havnevik; Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen; Sneath and Turk; Tsomu). I will return to questions of representation when discussing some sites in more detail but now turn to the social movements that have been actively promoting these changes.

Social movements and a new moral code The Republic of Buryatia is home to the full panoply of governmental institutions, as well as an internationally respected institute for scientific, environmental research, so it has to be understood that the social movements I shall describe are far less firmly based entities, composed of enthusiasts, officially registered but not usually funded by the state. The broad reason for their existence is the felt need to recover and encourage a Buryat ethnic culture. Along with the mass expansion of both Buddhism and shamanism, there have been attempts at reviving traditional pastoralism, collection of local histories, the revival of Buryat language media, records made of repression and trauma, and the organization of popular nation-wide ceremonial festivals and competitions at which Buryat songs, clothing, dances, and sports can be shown at their best. Along with all this, there has been a remarkable enthusiasm and felt a need for genealogy (Quijada et al. 2015; Zhanaev 2019). The main form this takes is locating oneself in a notional patrilineal kin group and tracing its migration history, which brings with it a focus on ever earlier historically personages and events. The importance accorded to ‘origin’ is probably founded not only on Buryat and Mongol historical thinking but also on the Russo-Soviet notions of istok (source) and proiskhozhdenie (provenance, origin, extraction); but whatever the influences, the result is an enthusiastic extrapolation of wisps of historical information. It is in this context that a women’s group calling itself ‘Heritage of Hoelun’ (Nasledie Oelun) – Hoelun being the mother of Chinggis Khaan – first nominated (‘rediscovered’) a place of worship for Hoelun4 and then brought out a new moral code for the Buryats. This document is significant for this chapter because although it is known more to religious-minded people than the broad mass, it indicates how ‘motherhood’ is to be understood and also dictates that interactions with nature should be seen as moral injunctions. The Buryat-Mongol People’s New Moral Code (Buryaad Mongol Aradai Shene Bileg) claims to be a modernization of the sacred Great Yassa (Great Law Code) of Chinggis Khaan, this being a collection of the emperor’s aphorisms (bileg) said to have been handed down through the generations.5 Many months of

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 107 discussions with people of all ages went into the preparation of the 25-page document, which in 2014 was the winner of a nationwide competition for projects to ‘revive the people’s spirit’. Published first in Russian, as befits the contemporary dominance of Russian in public life, it was initially authored jointly by ‘Heritage of Oelun’ and a men’s group named ‘Sain Er’, which took its name from the legendary raiders and horse thieves, (in Mongol sain er, literally ‘good men’) said to have led a Robin Hood-like existence stealing from the rich and handing the booty to the poor in the borderlands of Buryatia, Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. If ‘Sain Er’ is a somewhat fringe group, ‘Heritage of Oelun’ has become a more substantial organization, in 2016 adding the title ‘Women of Buryatiya’ to its name. Both are examples of the social innovation that has been springing up everywhere, and their efforts are part of a wide outflow of books, articles, blogs, videos, films and even other moral codes that draw on ‘tradition’ as guidance for the right way to behave now.6 Whatever this ‘codex’ is, it is not the law of the land, nor does it represent actual behaviours and habits. It is not even clear that it depicts relations that people truly desire to be actualized in real life. Rather, the ‘New Moral Code’ holds up to view a moral order imagined as if necessitated by a cosmology. ‘The Buryat-Mongols live and act according to the will of the Eternal Blue Sky’, the Codex declares. ‘According to the laws of Tengri [Heaven], the Sky is father, the Earth (Bur. Gazar) is mother’. The Yassa decreed the territory around Lake Baikal to be the Great Sanctuary (Ikh Khorig), to be preserved intact by proscriptions such as forbidding hunting, the cutting of trees, and fishing. Now, people must observe ‘eco-custom’ (a new expression, Bur. eho-zanshil). A paragraph of the Codex explains the gist of this: Our ancestors worshipped Sky and Earth and took from nature only that which was necessary for survival. Nothing extra! They did not think only of themselves. They always thought about us – their descendants. […] Do not pollute the earth, waters, or fire! In anything you do, think about what will remain after you for your descendants.7 The next section of the Codex concerns social relations and declares that the essence of the relations between Sky and Earth is the harmony between man and woman. This harmony is to be achieved by a series of measures that are practically definitional of patriarchy: obligation to respect parents; authority of the husband over the wife; wife to be taken from a noble clan (rod); no divorce, though the husband may take a junior wife and the first wife should acquiesce; illegitimate children of the husband must be acknowledged and brought into the family; descent to be reckoned in the male line only; a true man should beget at least three sons and is responsible for the honour of his clan; a woman should have a shining spirit and pure thoughts. She should be hospitable and keep good order in the household when her husband is away. She should not be a burden on her husband, for she has come into the family to uphold his clan. She is responsible for educating children in good behaviour. And then we come to a

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crucial sentence: ‘A good woman is the pledge for the successful continuation of the clan of her husband’. This is a key bio-social attribute of ‘mother’: she is a progenitor. The Codex underlines this concept by defining what we might call the ‘anti-mother’, the social outcast who has not given birth or adopted a child. About her, we read, ‘Giving help to the childless is not acceptable – it is forbidden (Bur. seer). Such people are not invited to betrothals and are not respected guests at weddings’.8 The Codex thus clarifies a concept of ‘mother’ in which she is the progenitor, not so much of her own babies as of her husband’s clan descendants. Her progeny, more broadly, is a kin group, a clan or even a nation. This is why I have been using the word ‘mother’ in inverted commas: in order for readers to see that mother is not a single universal understandable category, and also to mark the fact that the ritual celebration of ‘mothers’ discussed here is not the only way that mothers are appreciated in Buryatia. The visual representations of ‘mother’ also make this evident. These ideal ‘mothers’ are never represented as realistic images of present-day Buryat mothers, nor in the modes common to European and Christian art, cradling or breast-feeding a baby, caring for gambolling children, and so forth. Indeed, in virtually all images, children as such are altogether absent since the progeny is an imagined future of the group. In the next section, I outline the scope and diversity of this concept of ‘mother’ by contrasting three ethnographic examples, ranging from the public/political to the locally embedded.

From ‘mother’ of the nation to ‘grandmother’ of the locality The statue ‘Mother of Buryatia’ stands on a hill at the entrance to the capital city, Ulan-Ude, where the main road from the airport crosses the bridge over the Selenga River. The bronze figure in traditional clothing stands on a tall granite pediment and, at 16 metres, is the tallest statue in the Republic. Looking unsmilingly forwards, she holds out a bowl and a ritual scarf (hadak) in a gesture that symbolizes hospitality. Some controversy is connected with the idea that the statue symbolizes the Republic with its multinational population rather than the Buryat people. The statute was made by a Russian sculptor and first set up in 2002 in the centre of town overlooking Lenin Street, but in 2008 it was removed to the site at the bridge. Here the statue could be spatially better understood as a hostess welcoming visitors, standing at the entrance as it were of a ‘dwelling’ (the city, the Republic).9 The setting aligns as a structure with the idea also expressed in the Codex: the wife/progenitor should present a hospitable yet restrained and dignified face on behalf of an implicitly male-defined and male-dominated group. The controversy concerns the authorship of the statue, which was first made in the 1970s by a Buryat sculptor, Erdeni Tsydenov, and named by him ‘Freedom’ as well as ‘Mother of Buryatia’. Tsydenov’s original remained as a plaster cast stored in a museum basement. When his idea was retrieved, cast in bronze, and in the process given a more imposing appearance, the authorship of the original Buryat sculptor was ignored. What is significant in any case is the mediated character of this ‘mother’

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 109 as a work of art. Tsydenov said he was inspired by the statue of Christ in Rio-deJaneiro, by its grandeur and height, and he wanted his ‘mother’ to appear as a stately protector.10 The bronze cast inspired an alternative view: it was said that the welcoming position of the statue ‘made it the Buryat equivalent of the American Statue of Liberty’. This idea was scorned on the Internet by Russian citizens of the Republic: ‘Don’t compare our monument with any old rubbish’; ‘Why do we need a statue of liberty?’; ‘Better compare it with the statue at Volgograd’ (the 1960s monument of a titanic warrior woman brandishing a sword that commemorates victory at Stalingrad, CH); ‘Remember, guys, that our monument is not for the indigenous people of Buryatia, the Buryats, or we never would have thought of comparing it with some American Statue of Liberty – though that notorious liberty vanished there ages ago’.11 These comments show how the most political of all ‘mothers’ is thoroughly mediated by global cultural imagery and recent patriotism. The paradox is that the statue does nevertheless stand for ‘us’ and ‘our’ environmental situation. This can be seen from the fact that in 2019, during raging forest fires and smoke-filled air, a respirator was put over the statue’s mouth, a Buryat flag attached to her right hand, and a placard reading ‘Help’ (In English) pinned to her left.12 The ‘Mother of Buryatia’ has much in common with other recent proud public monuments, notably with the bronze statue of Balzhan Khatan, depicted as a warrior woman with bow and arrows, which greets incomers to Aginsk, the capital of the former Aga Buryat Autonomous Okrug (Figure 5.1), and with the

Figure 5.1 Balzhan Khatan statue. Photo: Sayana Namsaraeva.

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statue of the Khori Mother, created in 2013 to stand at the entrance to Khorinsk, a regional centre in the Buryat Republic. Both are situated next to rivers. The Khori Mother is a tall, slim unsmiling Buryat woman, arms outstretched, making a libation. It forms a sculptural complex with a large bronze swan flying above, together depicting the ‘swan mother’ primogenitor of the Khori Buryats, who according to legend alighted on a lake, turned into a woman, gave birth to many sons with the ancestor Khoredoi, and then, her task done, re-assumed swan form and flew away back to the Sky.13 There are several statues and depictions of Balzhan Khatan and Khori Mother in Buryatia, along with books, articles on the web, etc., and these invariably associate the ancestresses with lakes, rivers, and springs (see further on Khori Mother below). This link with water brings me to the cosmo-ecological agency of these creations. Bruce Grant, in his article (2001: 332) on the bronze sculptures by Zurab Tsereteli that proliferated across Moscow in the 1990s, mentions a certain continuity with Stalinist art and cites Boris Groys: Like the avant-garde, Stalinist art continues to be oriented to the future; it is projective rather than mimetic, a visualization of the collective dream of the new world and a new humanity… It does not retire to the museum but aspires to exert an active influence on life. (Groys 1992: 113) Grant’s argument is that Tsereteli’s works, drawing on Russian history, fairy tales and the fantastic, attempted to create an aura of innocence and tranquilly for a fragmented country. This was a return to an age of simpler pasts and new beginnings, a classic resource of nationalist narratives (2001: 335). The Mother of Buryatia statue has a similar ‘nationalizing’ flavour, but I would argue that rather than shifting gears by performing the ‘innocence’ of a new age as in Moscow (in which Tsereteli was not altogether successful, as it turned out), in this case, the statue projects an active influence by directing attention to what had been ignored in Soviet public-political life, the foundational importance of Buryat women both as biological and mythical progenitors and as the guarantors on behalf of a social group of a sacral relation with the surrounding environment. However, complexities arise when the commemoration is of real women and their transformation into ‘mothers’, as my next two examples show. Emege Ezhi (to return to the figure with whom this chapter began) is a case of the indigenous invention and contrasts in many respects with the Soviet-mediated Mother of Buryatia. Unlike the latter’s open and overlooking site, Emege Ezhi’s shrine is in an obscure woodland glade and, in multiple ways, is closed off. Invisible until one actually enters it, the site is enclosed as a sacred land by a thread looped between the surrounding trees. The shrine itself consists of a deep, cupboard-like, hooded box standing on four poles in front of rows of offering tables14 and benches for worshippers. Inside this shrine, there must be sacred items, but these are impossible to see. But why is this ‘grandmother’ shut off? The problem with real mothers is that in a patriarchal virilocal society, they come by definition from somewhere else and bring with them the threat of the

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 111 alien. A married-in woman arrives as a daughter-in-law, a subordinate stranger, and she earns full motherly status only gradually by having children above all and by taking over effective management of her own household. Emege Ezhi was a shaman who arrived in Tashir from the distant Western Buryat taiga, in her case already with a husband, Malkhar, of the Alagui clan. The story goes that she decided to pit her occult strength (shidi) against the benign and learned local Guulin Lama and attacked him. Taking up the challenge and deceiving her, he turned himself into a small boy and pretended to be asleep, having hidden a matchbox under his pillow. She arrived, her soul having taken the form of a bee, intending to poison him with her sting. But he managed to trap the bee in the matchbox. So her soul became a prisoner, and day by day, she herself grew weaker. Seeing this, her husband’s kin sent envoys to Guulin Lama, begging him to free her. He agreed on the provision that she convert to Buddhism. She gave her word and also promised to protect not only her husband’s clan but all the people living on the left bank of the Selenga River.15 However, many generations later,16 the descendants of Malkhar and Emege Ezhi began to experience misfortunes – sons died, livestock perished. Lamas told the family that the only solution was to create a shrine for appeasement of the capricious Emege Ezhi at a site to the northeast of her burial place. The collective farmers told me that at first, only the direct descendants worshipped there, but soon people started coming from far and wide. This story, which owes nothing to Russian influence, recalls the conceptual antimonies (see note 1) described by Morten Pedersen (2012) for the Darhads of NW Mongolia not so far away: the wild taiga versus the benign steppe, shaman versus lama, female versus male, outsider versus familiar, and free versus trapped. At the time of my visit, Emege Ezhi, the exemplar of the semi-tamed intruder turned progenitor and ‘mother’, acted as protective gatekeeper to further incursions: I was told that all parents of a bride intending to marry into the village were required to visit the shrine to request permission for their daughter to settle on her territory. This is a set of classic mythological counters, but one I would suggest that was apt for retooling in the plight of the rural Buryats in the 1990s when the unpredictability of the ‘outside’ was something they really did have to deal with. With locally gathered memories of another grandmother, Ochirhai Emege, we learn more about the process of deciding how to represent a relative being transformed into an object of worship (Sandzhe-Surun 2015: 127–84). Ochirhai was a herdswoman who worked in a remote sheep station of the Karl Marx Collective in the 1930s–50s. She was also a healer and a mystic who used to retreat for meditation at the foot of Burin Uula. This was a special spot, for, in the imagined kinship relations that link mountains (Empson 2011: 31–2), the smaller Burin Uula is held to be the wife of Burin Khaan, the massive baretopped mountain that is forbidden to women and worshipped by the men of all the surrounding villages, including Tashir, the central settlement of the farm. During her life, Ochirhai was greatly loved and respected. Her shaman-like abilities (although she was a devout Buddhist) enabled to her act in ‘beyond human’ ways, with, or as part of, baigal (nature). In these drought-prone parts, she

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could bring rain; she could get rid of livestock epidemics; she could quell a fierce storm and turn it into a bird. All this was because she somehow crossed the human–non-human boundary and interacted with the land spirits (sabdag) as if she was one of them. For example, she was said to be visited by Burin Khaan at night, and when Burin Khaan’s wife gave birth, she was the one who cut the umbilical cord (ibid. 2015: 128). Ochirhai must have died in the 1960s, but it was not until 2008 that her grandchildren decided that her powers must be concentrated into a material form for the purpose of worship. They engaged a local painter, who produced a portrait in oils in which she sat surrounded by the five types of livestock. However, the idea was developing that she was ‘the first khandama17 (female Buddhist vowtaking devotee) in Buryatia’, and when they showed the portrait to an expert in Buddhist iconography, he said that it was incorrect: she should be depicted like a deity in a thangka, dressed in Buryat clothing and jewellery. This was done. Soon, however, it was decided to make a whole ritual complex in her honour at her favourite spot at the foot of Burin Uula. For this, a suburgan was erected, beneath which was buried a sacred vessel dedicated to the Lusad (underground-dwelling water deities), with a small house for meditation alongside, in which Ochirhai’s relics (her material belongings) were reverently gathered, for they were held to retain some essence of her powers. In this example, the import of the ‘mother’ figure is very unlike that of Emege Ezhi, even though the two shrines are geographically in the same district. Instead of the mother as an incoming wild spirit with a bee soul to be trapped and placated with mounds of meat, Ochirhai’s memorial invites people to take part along with her, to replicate through meditating in the same holy spot, her participation in natural events. If Emege Ezhi’s shrine seems to follow a logic of enclosure for self-protection, Ochirhai’s does something different: the containment of relics in order to make their anima accessible by later generations and thus to propagate widely the buyan (merit, fortune) she embodied (see Empson 2010 for a study of these logics in Mongolia).

Nozhii Nuur – a sacred lake In the previous section, I described some dissimilar forms of ‘mother’, each of them having a different orientation in human–non-human relations. They are not seen as incompatible but as alternative facets, each of which should be venerated if possible. At least three major sites18 in Buryatia are set up in such a way that several different materializations of ‘mother’ are located side by side. The most recently established of these is at Nozhii Lake in the Aga District. A shallow salt lake set in a vast treeless and unpopulated steppe, Nozhii has long been sacred to the Khori people because every year, great flocks of white swans, the group’s mythical progenitor birds, would alight here on their migration from the south. One of my respondents told me that her grandmother would make a milk libation in the direction of this lake each morning, long before it became a popular ceremonial site. With this lake, we begin to see the current concern with ecological fluctuations and climate change. At dry periods, the lake reduces

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 113 in size and occasionally, it dries out completely, as happened in the droughts of 1885, 1908, 1943 and again in 1976 (Zatirko 2019). Nozhii Lake is on the flight path of birds coming from Southeast Asia and Australia. When the swans cease to come, this is a serious cosmological event, for, among both Mongols and Buryats, the arrival of migrating birds marks the coming of spring. In synchronistic thinking, the same rite that calls in and welcomes the birds is also agentive: holding the rite brings on the sprouting of grass, the strengthening of the herds and the appearance of their life-saving milk. When the swans arrive, a lama told me, the spirit of Buryats surges up. It seems that in late Soviet times, the migration of the swans became uncertain and the rite to welcome them was abandoned, but in 2009 it was decided to take action and build a ritual site on a raised bank of the lake. First built was a suburgan stupa named Lhabab Shodon19 in honour of the longed-for return back to earth of the Shakyamuni Buddha after he had disappeared to give teachings to the beings in heaven, including to his own deceased mother. In this way, a religious motif was paralleled analogically to the long-awaited return of the swans. Next put in place was a 1.5 m. high megalith called ‘Mother Stone’ (Ezhi Shuluun) held to have the shape of a woman. It seems that lamas from Aga Monastery had first raised the question of finding a ‘Mother Stone’ since two such stones had been revealed in Mongolia and one in Tuva, so they reckoned the fourth surely must be in Buryat lands. Despite many searches, no stone was found, until in 2010, members of Altan Zhasa, a local culture studies society, discovered a ‘female shaped’ megalith lying in the earth on its side. They had it set upright on a plinth and fenced off appropriately for a sacred object. Not long afterwards, they also discovered a white stone with ancient writing. A member of the society said that it read. ‘This land is the centre of the four elements: Water, Fire, Wind and Earth’.20 Soon, the official district website was declaring that this second miraculously discovered stone symbolized the centre of the earth.21 With such evidence of the cosmic significance of the site mounting, further objects were added: a 5 m high column on top of which is perched a sculpted swan representing Khoboshi Khatan, the progenitor of the Khori people; a ritual wooden tethering-post (serge); a fence and pavilion to cover the ‘Mother Stone’; a small glass-fronted box shrine; and a sculpted ensemble of a mother with two children seated nearby. Meanwhile, it was declared that the ‘Mother Stone’ was a materialization of the Goddess Tara. Finally, another megalith stone was discovered. This one was confirmed by the Aga monastery lamas to be the goddess Norzhima, bringer of wealth, prosperity and plentiful children.22 By 2017 the swans had returned in great numbers. In the words of a local enthusiast, they ‘covered the entire lake like a white feathery blanket, slowly swimming, dividing off into pairs, kissing, and accepting refreshments from the visitors – a magical sight’.23 The annual ceremonies to welcome the birds are now attended by many people and followed by songs, girls’ swan dances, and other performances organized by the Khori people. Throughout the year, hundreds of childless couples travel to this ‘place of power’ to beg for progeny.

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Figure 5.2 Whispering wishes into the ear of the ‘Mother Stone’, Nozhii. Photo: Sayana Namsaraeva.

Others come to have their secret wishes fulfilled. These are whispered into the ear of the ‘Mother Stone’, men to the right ear and women to the left. The same practice is followed at the ‘Eezh Khad’ (Mother Rock) near Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, and similarly, the Stone is dressed in women’s clothing, jewellery, hat, etc. (Figure 5.2). This brief outline shows that the Nozhii Lake complex is a site where several different manifestations of ‘mother’ are present, or perhaps it would be more correct to say they are added to one another, as the cult is a constantly evolving process.24 Here is the ‘mother’ as patriclan progenitor (seen in both symbolic swan and ‘mother’ statue modes); here, we also find the poetic Buddhist religious analogy to the return of the swans commemorated by the stupa. The widest mytho-cosmological reference (Mother = Earth) is materialized in the form of the ‘Mother Stone’, which is earthy in physical nature, just as the megalith was discovered half-buried in the soil. This most non-human power-object, albeit humanized by the addition of clothing, is the one to respond to human wishes (see Empson 2011 for a vivid description of ‘dressing’ and repair of the fortunegiving White Rock in north-east Mongolia).

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The ‘mother’ of the River Onon The Altan Zhasa society was active in other places inhabited by Aga Khori Buryats. In 2014–15 its activists resolved to build and consecrate a palace (Bur. ordon) for the cultivation of the spirit-master of the Onon River, Onon Khatan Ezhi (Onon Queen Mother). The long, fast-flowing and dangerous Onon rises in Mongolia. Its valley of steppes and cedar forests are home to countless wild animals (including it is rumoured even tigers migrating from the east); a nature reserve and many archaeological sites are here, and its history is rich with battles from the Chinggisid era to the 20th century. Riverside dwellers, Buryats, Russians and Khamnigans, held the river to be sacred in particular ways. It seems that in the past, shamanists had made fish sacrifices (Bur. zagasan töölei) to the spirit-master and that she accepted only burbot (Bur. gutar), no other kind of fish. A local historian suggested that this rite went back to the protoMongolic Kidans of the Liao Dynasty when it marked the end of the hunting season and the start of the fishing season.25 Even in officially atheist Soviet times, a herder remembered the river’s magical properties. Each year during a warm period in autumn, which he called ‘Rekhe’, the Onon would subside and its waters acquired healing properties, so at this time, he made sure to bathe his entire herd of horses in the river. ‘Rekhe’ is the time, his daughter explained, when the Lusad deities give people and animals everything they need when rivers and healing springs have accumulated energy and useful elements from the medicinal herbs and grasses.26 However, despite the evident respect in which the river was held, to my knowledge, no image of its spirit master existed until 2015, when a Buryat woman artist was engaged to ‘materialize’ the ‘Mother’ as a painting to be installed in the newly built palace. The neighbouring villages contributed funding. High guests and Buddhist dignitaries were invited, and in 2015 the palace and painting were consecrated by lamas, followed by a general celebration with archery, horse races, wrestling and other games (Figure 5.3). A local lama explained the painting as follows: Onon Khatan Ezhi is painted as an ‘eternally young beauty’, seated on the bank with one foot in the water. She presides over a valley in a landscape in which the worshipped mountains Alkhanai, Khaan Uula and Khökhe Uula are visible in the background. In her right hand, she holds the fish offering and in her left a bumba (symbol of wealth). Coiled in her lap is a Lus (sing. master-spirit of water) in the form of a snake. Plunging through the river is the king of fish, the beluga sturgeon, while numerous aquatic-earthly creatures (snails, frogs, water-voles, etc.) occupy the foreground as her subject beings. And in the river is the Chintamani stone, which according to Buddhist lore, fulfils the desires of the believers and is an attribute of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. Thus, in broad terms, the new cult of the queen-spirit of the Onon brings to the fore something that had been overlooked, at least as a public concern: the notion of the river as a sanctified bounteous provider, for which respect, honour and offerings are due. This conceptualization of baigal (‘nature’) as a provider, of course, is not new, as is

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Figure 5.3 Onon Khatan Ezhi. Painter: Larissa Erdineeva.

amply shown by the cult of great mountains. The innovation is the highlighting of the spatially low, watery, ‘feminine’ and interstitial (for the Onon was historically a boundary between Russian and Qing China-Mongolia) river in this munificent role.

Changing relations with baigal from ‘mothers’ to Lusad water-deities Although Onon Khatan Ezhi is a ‘mother’, she is not imagined as a biological progenitor. It is significant, though, that, as the celebrations revealed, she was ‘mother’ in the sense of provider-protector for a body of people who organized themselves as if inspired by the Moral Codex mentioned earlier. The officiating local leaders and lamas brought with them an aura of virility and the patriclan. Flags were waved, a blue one for the Sky and a green for the Earth. Twenty-three young men arrived dressed as the warriors of Babzha Baatar, a 17th century hero who had made the Onon his defiant boundary against a Manchu army that was pursuing him. It was drawn to everyone’s attention that he was a member of the Khuatsai clan of the Khori people. The boys urged to ‘compete and show their strength in this sacred place’ were listed with their clans carefully recorded and it is possible they competed as clan members rather than as residents of a village, which would have been more usual.27 But what was going on here? Buryatia is a complex modern region and clans are almost entirely irrelevant to the life of its factories, schools and universities, farms and trading networks. The widespread

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 117 movements to resurrect clan associations in conjunction with assertions of attachment to a particular territory (in this case, that of the villages along the Onon River) are fundamentally conservative, backwards-looking and somehow ‘unreal’. Yet an idea expressed by that wily statesman Henry Kissinger is food for thought. He wrote, ‘Conservatism is the fruit of instability, because in a society that is still cohesive it would occur to no one to be a conservative’.28 Now, socio-political instability is a constant in Buryatia. I would suggest that in finding ways to address it, Buryats are, in fact, turning a seeming anachronism into innovation. The Buryat clan groups excavated from ancient ties, which are reassuring in their ostensible bio-social ancientness, are actually new social associations and they are bringing a contemporary sensibility to their re-working of an earlier cosmology. This they have been doing by re-conceptualizing the immediate surroundings as sacred, bringing a new attentiveness to the low-lying and ‘female’ places close to where people live and with which they interact. Here changes in forest cover, water levels, the movements of animals and birds, and signs of damage and pollution are far more evident than is the case with the distant peaks of the mountain cults. The ‘mothers’ can be seen as a conceptual ‘hinge’ that articulates the relation between the new social associations and territories now re-thought as environments of human – non-human interdependence. Meanwhile, it is important to place the idiom of the ‘mother’ in a wider context. The archaic patriarchal kinship forms just mentioned are by definition Buryat and provide an ethnic self-strengthening sense of purpose, notably the motivation for procreation and group survival into the future. But Buryats have other identities besides the ethnic: there are territorial, religious, civic, and political identities, as well as the broadest of all, members of humanity. It is in this regard that the emergence of the Lusad water-deities to public prominence is significant. The overall religious situation in Buryatia forms a turbulent arena, in which diverse mutually hostile strands of Buddhism and similarly at-odds filaments of shamanism jostle with Orthodox Christianity and neo-religions (Bernstein 2013), while the mountain cults continue apace. The initiation of a new cycle of Buddhist rituals to propitiate the Lusad took place in 2015 in the Kabansk District on the south-eastern shore of Baikal. This is an industrialized area with a cellulose-paper plant and a cement factory, both of which have been accused of polluting the lake. Kabansk District is a sandy, swampy strip, divided by the delta of the Selenga River and rimmed by mountains; it sees its economic future to lie in tourism to Baikal, both local and international. The great majority of the population is Russian and from the early 19th century, a handsome Orthodox monastery has existed here. Meanwhile, the Buryats were (and still mostly are) shamanists or converts to Christianity. So, from a Buddhist point of view, the area was benighted and ripe for the Khambo Lama, an outspoken opponent of shamans, to rectify the situation by building a new Baikal monastery (as he had done earlier in shamanic Barguzin, where he initiated the cult of the goddess Yanzhima, see note 14 and Bernstein 2013: 114). It is not clear who among the lamas in the new Baikal Datsan, which is very small, initiated the cult of the Lusad. But the operation had the effect of opening a new page.

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First, from the social point of view, the appeal was to all of the people inhabiting, working in, or visiting the shores, not just to Buryats. The lamas were to provide a wake-up call, to point to the relation between the environmental disasters affecting the Republic (notably drought, wildfires and pollution of the lake) and everyone’s ecological responsibilities, including the temporary workers, the holidaymakers and the foreign tourists. If the social entity evoked was comprehensive in an idiom very different from the more limited groups evoked by the ‘mothers’, the Lusad in their new visibility were also universalized. No longer seen as local water spirits (such as the very small Lus-snake attached to Onon Queen Mother), the lamas now identified them with Sanskritic prototypes, the nāga deities. Here we see again how ancient ideas are being resurrected to express a most contemporary sensibility. People should be aware, the lamas teach, that we are part of an interconnected world and that water is the essential medium of connectivity. Everything in existence needs moisture to survive, all animals, plants, and even geological objects, and this includes us human beings, made up as we are of tissues, organs and liquids. Unlike the ‘mothers’, the Lusad are a plural entity, the anima of all this wateriness, consisting of an immense hierarchy of various types. They exist unseen underground or underwater, and while often conceptualized as serpents, can take many forms: male, female, hermaphrodite, or half-human half-snake (though in legends and stories of encounters with them, they seem mostly female).29 The Lusad are ultra-sensitive to damage and pollution of waters and easily become vengeful. In this case, they bring about epidemics, misfortunes, floods, droughts, and wildfires. Significantly, they are also said to cause depression, anxiety, dread, and other human psychological disturbances. In other words, the Lusad are held not only to react to the overt, easily visible interactions between humans and the cosmic element Water in all its forms but also to be agentive in the interpenetration of non-human and human invisible psychic states. A sense of caution and dread must have been both a cause and a consequence of the lamas’ teachings on the Lusad, for now, karmic retribution is said to await for infringement of an even more exacting list of prohibitions regarding the lake: washing oneself or one’s clothes, spitting, urinating, throwing rubbish, pouring out used liquids, putting a sharp implement into the water, using any chemical substance, cutting trees on the banks, being drunk in the vicinity, and worst of all, allowing even the tiniest spot of blood to enter the water. But the influence of Lusad extends much further. Thus, for example, farmers’ burning of fields post-harvest is also a sin because microorganisms and seeds containing moisture will be destroyed, and ‘seeds are the fundament, the very basis, of the food chain of all living beings’.30 This is only a brief introduction to the Lusad, which deserve much further research, but it serves to point up by means of contrast the key feature of the ‘mothers’ who have been the main theme of this chapter. Unlike the unbounded universalizing narrative of the lusad, each version of the ‘mother’ links a defined procreative human entity with a given environment and the processes ongoing in it.

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Conclusion In the last 30 years, the Buryats have experienced two major shocks to their accustomed relations with ‘nature’ (i.e. the Soviet concept of priroda, which was seen as separate from and subject to human activity). With the collapse of the communist order, there came a sharp realization of the limits of the human capacity to create, master and transform priroda. Later, with the ravages of unregulated bandit-capitalism came the realization that the surrounding milieu (Rus. okruzhayushaya sreda) had been severely damaged by mining, illegal logging, over-fishing, careless disposal of industrial wastes, etc. I have suggested that rural Buryats responded by reframing the Soviet Russian concepts in terms of Buryat ideas and also by creating new social associations from hitherto untapped social resources. ‘Surrounding milieu’, usually translated as ‘environment’, was reimagined in light of a Buryat cosmological concept of nature, baigal, which includes human beings as temporary denizens in a vast whole. With this shift came a surge of interpretations of unusual events and misfortune by means of mytho-praxis, which was only encouraged by the disintegration of Soviet institutions, identities and socialist values. Space was opened for attempts to formulate new moral codes. These were framed in quasi-historical, quasicosmological terms and promoted by some self-strengthening groups, especially women’s groups, local antiquities clubs, and Buryat culture associations. Buddhist lamas and shamans were also important agents in this overall shift, particularly the former whose main organization, the Traditional Sangha, was eager to advance its influence and whose lamas could lend formality and sanctity to any occasion. The overall effect of this cosmological re-framing and social innovation has been to promote the visibility of rituals aimed to protect and benefit human groups in their intersection with environmental processes. With regard to anxiety about ecological disasters, even though a substantial proportion of the urbanized and highly educated population is well aware of the need for legislative, economic, and legal measures, they also know these would have to be enacted on a Federal or Republic level, i.e. ‘out of range’, since Buryats are a minority even in their own Republic. In any case, the rites I have described here are not seen as antithetical to scientific and practical action but rather as their essential accompaniments, since such ritual actions are held to have effects in ‘nature’ (baigal) and to inculcate the right attitudes among the participants. The chapter has suggested that ‘mothers’ have appeared as a point of articulation, serving, on the one hand, to define a given human group as it reproduces itself in ‘nature’ (baigal) and on the other to link that group in a caring way with the energies of the environment on which it depends. The idea of such a ‘mother’ operates on different scales, demarcating both metaphorical progenies as well as socially or biologically defined descendants. It is perhaps because of the qualities associated with ‘mothers’ (these notional figures are fertile, educators in good behaviour, granters of wishes, nurturing, hospitable) that their monuments are now in many ways more popular and provide more ready access to the life-giving energies of baigal, than the proud, competitive and dominating

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‘fathers’ of the high mountains. Another answer to the question ‘why mothers?’ suggested by the rural ethnography is that ‘mothers’ while nurturing a descent group, originate notionally from outside it; they come from an ‘elsewhere’, an idea that can be associated with realms of baigal, out of which they may appear mythologically as potentially more capricious beings such as a swan or a bee. However, this particular concatenation is specific to the framing provided by patriarchal versions of Buryat kinship encouraged by initiatives like the recent moral codes. It does not work well in the urban multinational atmosphere of the capital, where, whatever the original Buryat sculptor of the ‘Mother of Buryatia’ may have intended, the statue has been overtaken by national/patriotic assertions and mediated visual references, and the link between ‘mother’ and ‘nature’ (Russ. priroda) almost, but not quite, lost. Finally, as the recent cult of the lusad shows, the ‘mother’ idiom is not called upon when Buryat people see themselves simply as residents of an area alongside Russians and others, and when the relations with baigal are taken as a matter of human harming and wrongdoing rather than mutuality. All of these cases, however, are evidence that there has been an upheaval in the ways that Buryats in Russia are conceptualizing their relations with the environment. New statues and shrines make these changes visible and offer foci for people to express the deep concerns that have been fermenting.

Notes 1 The father’s mother is informally called ‘emege’, a word derived from ‘em’ (female). ‘Ezhi’ means mother. Thus, the name of this worshipped ancestress expresses the idea of the generic mother, qualified as the granny or grandmother kind of mother. 2 An exception is the study of an analogous problem by Morten Pedersen (2012). Discussing how personhood is expressed by ‘thinking through landscape’ in the specific topography of the Shishged Depression in N W Mongolia, he observes that the contrast made in Darhad Mongol cosmological imaginaries between the central, Buddhist, uniform and unitary steppe and the surrounding marginal, shamanist and all too varied and multiple taiga forest is not a straightforward ‘binary opposition’ of the Lévi-Straussian structuralist kind, for the two are asymmetrical in power relations. Yet, as he argues, ‘for the weighty concept of a centred steppe to work in the Shishged context, it requires the weightless counter-image of a marginal taiga’ (2012: 255). Analogously, it can be argued that for the concept of the dominant, high, rockhard and ‘male’ mountain to work requires the image of what it is not: lowly, flowing, riverine and ‘feminine’. 3 There are also new statues of male deities, heroes and ancestors, but they seem to be fewer and less popular. To my knowledge, statues recently erected of the mountain master-spirit Burin Khaan and the ancestral warrior Babzha Baatar are regarded with respect but not in themselves subjects of religious rituals or personal devotion. 4 This is the so-called oboo of Hoelun, said to have been erected by Chinggis khaan in honour of his mother. The oboo is in fact a natural rock formation. It is located in a distant place, almost inaccessible, and furthermore, locals contest the new identification of the rocks. Perhaps for these reasons, worship at the site seems to be very sporadic, although Hoelun herself continues to be extolled as a paradigm of ‘female origin’ and as an exemplar of motherly virtues. https://newbur.ru/n/42325/ (accessed November 2020).

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 121 5 http://asiarussia.ru/news/1395/ (accessed November 2020). 6 At least one other new moral code, the ‘Honour Code of the Buryat’, has been popularized by posters in cafes in Irkutsk and widely discussed on the Internet, while a document of the same kind has also been produced in Tuva (Abaev, 2014). See Quijada, Graber and Stephen (2015) for discussion of understandings of ‘tradition’ in the Buryat context. 7 Буряад монгол арадай Шэнэ бэлиг, available at: http://asiarussia.ru/news/3648/ (accessed November 2020). 8 All quotations from the Codex from summary at: http://asiarussia.ru/news/3798/ (accessed November 2020). 9 https://www.bankgorodov.ru/sight/pamyatnik-mat-byryatiya (accessed November 2020). 10 https://arigus.tv/news/item/116106/ (accessed November 2020). 11 https://vk.com/wall-61009220_80915 (accessed November 2020). 12 https://www.infpol.ru/203178-foto-dnya-na-mat-buryatiyu-nadeli-respirator/ (accessed November 2020). 13 https://www.100sel.ru/pamyatnik-hori-hatan-knyaginya-hori (accessed November 2020). 14 These were six large tables with rims constructed for the offering of meat (two tables), one table each for milk, vodka, sweets, and cakes, as well as a further long meat table to the side. I was told that the meat of some 30–40 sheep, supplied on a rota by the worshippers, was offered at the twice-yearly rites. 15 https://selengatour.ru/obo1.php (accessed November 2020). 16 I discovered from the fieldnotes of my first visit to the Karl Marx Collective in 1967 that Malkhar and Emege Ezhi arrived seven generations back. My respondent, a middle-aged woman, married into the Malkhar descent group, knew not only the c. 40 people going back 4 generations of her own family, which was local, but also a much more extended network of several branches of her husband’s relatives. Large families of 7–10 children were common in the Malkhar lineage. No mention was made of Emege Ezhi in that Soviet era, and of course, not knowing of the existence of the ancestress, I did not inquire about her. 17 This term is derived from the Tibetan Khandroma (‘sky-goer’), used for female tantric partners of spiritual masters, female deities and occasionally for mediums. 18 Along with Nozhei Nuur, the others are the worshipping places of the female deity Yanzhima in Barguzin and Alhanai Mountain in Zabaikal Krai. The deity Yanzhima (Skt. Saraswati) was revealed to the Khambo Lama, the head of the Traditional Buddhist Sangha in 1996 when he was meditating deeply in the forest on the destruction of Buddhism and the rise of shamanism in the region. As he opened his eyes, he saw before him the image of a deity in a great stone slab right in front of him. The ‘self-arisen’ image is a common theme in Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and the Khambo Lama lost no time in consecrating the manifestation of Yanzhima, which was soon recognized as a major fertility and childbearing site in the Republic. For details, see Bernstein (2013: 114–22). 19 Lhabab Duisen (Tib. ལྷ་བབས་དུས་ཆེན) is a festival devoted to the return of Shakyamuni Buddha to earth from the heavens after he had gone there to give teachings. According to the Buryats, the Lhabab Shodon stupa is dedicated to mothers. 20 https://www.infpol.ru/123504-v-age-nashli-ezhy-shuluun/ (accessed November 2020). 21 http://www.aginskiiao.ru/news/news219108.php (accessed November 2020). 22 Norzhima is said to be the younger sister of the goddess Yanzhima, who appears in the form of a large slab rock in the forest north of the Barguzin valley. These deities are local forms of the Tibetan deities Norshima and Yangchenma. The extraordinarily popular Yanzhima attracts hundreds of pilgrims and worshippers, especially childless couples desiring children. 23 https://gazeta-n1.ru/news/50499/ (accessed November 2020).

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24 Each local homeland is also a complex of diverse ritual sites. For example, the nearest village to Nozhii Lake, Tsogto-Khangil, has 8 such sites within a radius of 15–20 kilometres. As well as the sacred lake, there is a mountain-top oboo; two subugans for famous lamas; a shrine for Buural Khügshen Ezhi (‘Grey-haired Grandmother’) a shaman ancestress from Mongolia, similar to Emege Ezhi; two sites associated with the ancestress Balzhan Khatan; and one spring with healing properties. https://docplayer.ru/32426786Selo-cokto-hangil-vid-s-zapadnoy-storony.html (accessed November 2020). 25 https://vk.com/wall284072995_3691 (consulted November 2020). 26 https://albert-motsar.livejournal.com/215557.html (consulted November 2020). 27 https://vk.com/wall-62338706_39155 (accessed November 2020). 28 Quoted in Christopher Clark ‘A Rock of Order’, London Review of Books, 8 October 2020, p. 7. 29 Local Buryats sometimes referred to the Lusad as dakini, female embodiments of enlightenment. For an ethnographic account of a lus transforming between woman and snake in an Inner Mongolian landscape, see Humphrey and Ujeed (2013: 130–52). 30 https://baikal-tourist.ru/news-ibur/lusad-takhilgan-obryad-pochitaniya-khozyainaozera-bajkal (accessed November 2020).

References Abaev, N. V. 2014. The Civilisational Codes of the Ethnocultural Matrices of the Buryat and Tuvan ‘Codes of Honour’: A Contrastive and Comparative Analysis’. Available at: http:// tengrifund.ru/civilizacionnyj-kod-etnokulturnoj-matricy.html (accessed October 2020). Bernstein, A. 2013. Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Delaplace, G. 2009. L’invention des morts: sépultures, fantômes et photographie en Mongolie contemporaine. Paris: Centre d’Études Mongoles et Sibériennes; École Pratique des Hautes Études. Dumont, A. 2017. Oboo Sacred Monuments in Hulun Buir: Their Narratives and Contemporary Worship. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 24:200–14. Available at: https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-24/dumont (accessed 6 January 2021). Empson, R. 2010. ‘Enclosing’ for Growth: Including or Excluding People from Land in North-East Mongolia. In: Isabelle Charleux, Grégory Delaplace, Roberte Hamayon, and Scott Pearce (eds.), Representing Power in Modern Inner Asia. Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, pp. 123–148. Empson, R. 2011. Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, C., and Humphrey, C. 2003. History, Timelessness and the Monumental: The Oboos of the Mergen Environs, Inner Mongolia. Cambridge Anthropological Journal 13(2): 195–211. Grant, B. 2001. New Moscow Monuments or, State of Innocence. American Ethnologist 28(2): 332–62. Groys, B. 1992. The Total Art of Stalinism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Humphrey, C. 1995. Chiefly and Shamanist Landscapes in Mongolia. In: E. Hirsch and M. O’Hanlon (eds.), The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–62. Humphrey, C. 2017. A Women’s Landscape in Buryatia. Unpublished seminar given at European University, St Petersburg, Russia.

‘Mother’ memorials and the cosmopolitics 123 Humphrey, C., and Ujeed, H. 2013. A Monastery in Time. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lindskog, B. 2016. Ritual Offerings to Ovoos Among Nomadic Halh Herders of West Central Mongolia. Études Mongoles et Sibériennes, Centralisiatiques et Tibétaines 47. Available at: http://journals.openedition.org/emscat/2740 (accessed 6 January 2021). Pedersen, M.A. 2012. The Taiga Within: Topography and Personhood in Northern Mongolia. In: Laura Feldt (ed.), Wilderness in Mythology and Religion: Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies and Idea of Wild Nature. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 241–64. Quijada, J., Graber, K., and Stephen, E. 2015 Finding ‘Their Own’: Re-vitalizing Buryat Culture Through Shamanic Practices in Ulan-Ude. Problems of Post-Communism 62: 258–72. Sandzhe‐Surun (Radnaeva, Galina Zhigmitovna). 2015. Pamyat’ ushedshikh vremen [Memory of Vanished Times]. Ulan‐Ude: NovaPrint. Sneath, D. 2014. Nationalising Civilisational Resources: Sacred Mountains and Cosmopolitical Ritual in Mongolia. Asian Ethnicity 15(4): 1–15. Available at: 10.1 080/14631369.2014.939330 (accessed 6 January 2021). Tsultemin, U. 2018. Mugi’s Self-Portrait and Maternal Bodies in Post-Socialist Mongolia. Third Text 33(1): 79–104. Available at: 10.1080/09528822.2018.1546458 (accessed October 2020). Willerslev, R. 2016. Seeing with Others’ Eyes: Hunting, Reincarnation and Idle Talk in the Landscape of the Siberian Yukaghir. In: Peter Jordan (ed.), Landscape and Culture in the Siberian North. London: University College London Press, pp. 49–70. Zatirko, A. 2019. ‘Ozero Nozhii’. Available at: https://www.chita.ru/articles/137097/ (accessed November 2020). Zhukovskaya, N.L. 1997. The Shaman in the Context of Rural History and Mythology (Tory Village, Tunka District, Buriat Republic). Inner Asia 2(1): 90–107.

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Behind the façade: unseen faces of Japan David C. Lewis

Shintō and Buddhism Are Japanese people ‘religious’ – or not? This can be answered either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ according to apparently contradictory data. One stereotype of the Japanese as ‘very religious’ comes from adding up the reported numbers of Shintoists, Buddhists, Christians and others – making a total of at least one and a half times the national population (Nelson 2012: 48; Lewis 2015: 45–6).1 On the other hand, sociological surveys show that about three-quarters of the population describe themselves as ‘without a religion’ (Lewis 2018: 63–4). Part of the problem with these statistics is the use of the word conventionally translated as ‘religion’ (shūkyō 宗教) – a previously obscure Buddhist term which in the 19th century was imparted a new meaning as a translation of the English word ‘religion’ (Isomae 2012: 228, 231–32).2 Nowadays, for many Japanese, it tends to connote groups with a definite membership (LeFebvre 2015: 199), such as Christian churches or some of the Japanese ‘new religions’. Several of these new religious movements emerged at times of political or social upheaval, especially with the Meiji Restoration and the opening up of Japan in the middle of the 19th century and also a century later in the aftermath of defeat in World War II and the Emperor’s renunciation of claims to divinity. At such times of transition, people tend to be asking questions about spiritual issues and may be open to exploring new ideas. Likewise, possible external influences could have contributed to the greater emphasis on spiritual experiences and personal inner fulfilment that characterized some of the so-called ‘new-new’ religions that have arisen since about 1970 (Shimazono 1993: 225). The post-war movements have developed in the context of an officially secular political framework, as stipulated by the postwar Constitution. In so far as the official separation of religion from the state was imposed on Japan during the American Occupation, this has some similarities to the secularities which emerged in a post-colonial or post-imperial context in some other Asian countries (Bubandt and Van Beek 2012: 10–3). In practice, most of these ostensibly ‘non-religious’ Japanese people do attend Shintō or Buddhist ceremonies at various times in their lives or observe other practices having a spiritual dimension, although the participants may prefer to refer to these as ‘customs’ (Lewis 2018: 62–6).3 Usually, rites to do with birth DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-6

Unseen faces of Japan 125 and childhood tend to be Shintō while funerals and memorial rites are Buddhist – such as paying a Buddhist priest to recite sutras for a departed soul on certain anniversaries of death. Likewise, the year may begin with a visit to a Shintō shrine, but at the bon 盆 festival in the summer and/or at the equinoxes people may visit the graves of their ancestors (Figure 6.1). Returning to their native place (furusato 故郷) may conjure up sentiments of the type described by Spae (1971: 76), who states: Through a projection of one’s affections, nature seems to return one’s love. A profound and beneficial empathy sets in between man and his surroundings …. These surroundings take on the shape of the numinous; they are worshipped and … by a mysterious osmosis they put him in touch with the divine. Spae is here referring to an attachment to the places where people ‘were born and have lived, to the countryside, and their native soil’ – that is, the furusato. Whereas the worship of spirits in nature is normally regarded as part of Shintō, visits to the ancestral graves at the furusato are more associated with Buddhism. The two religions actually complement each other in practice. Shintō has an emphasis on ritual purity, whereas Buddhism deals with the pollution entailed by death. On the surface, they appear to be two different religions but behind the façade is a symbiosis between them.

Figure 6.1 Praying at the grave of an ancestor.

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Nature worship in Japan Likewise, behind the façade of secularity, there also remains a strong undercurrent of spirituality. At times this is expressed in a reverence for nature, or for the spirits, called kami 神 in Shintō terminology, believed to reside in natural phenomena. The Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Ōmikami, was regarded as the ancestress of the imperial house and during the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries State Shintō had promoted the practice of bowing to portraits of the Emperor (Shimazono 2009: 102–3).4 A survey conducted by the Gallup Organization in 2001 showed that 48.2% of the sampled Japanese adults, 29.4% of the teenagers and 35.3% of the pre-teens had prayed to entities in nature such as the Sun or Moon (McKay 2001: 90–2). A 30-year-old woman whom I interviewed described how she sometimes prays to the Moon, especially when she sees the full moon or crescent moon. Sometimes she makes requests, but at other times she merely puts her hands together and stands in adoration or admiration ‘because the moon is beautiful’ (Lewis 2018: 320). Another woman said that she feels inwardly moved by seeing a beautiful moon or other features of nature, which inspire in her a feeling that there is ‘something more’ or some kind of a ‘greater power’ (Lewis 2018: 292). Others mentioned how they ‘greet’ the moon. My informants were urban, middle-class residents of the city of Ōtsu (current population about 340,000) in Shiga Prefecture, where my fieldwork was conducted in two urban neighbourhoods and in a large synthetic fibres factory. In Japan there are also sacred mountains, including not only Mount Fuji (富士山) but also Mounts Tate (立山) and Haku (白山), which collectively are known as the sanreizan (三霊山) – a term often translated into English as the three ‘holy’ mountains but in fact the term rei (霊) means ‘spirit’, ‘soul’ or ‘ghost’. Mountains may also evoke a worshipful response: for instance, one of my informants said that if she is touched by the sight of a majestic mountain, a beautiful sunset or the shining full moon, she may put her hands together and bow to the mountains, Sun or Moon, without words. The object of her worship is not important, she says, but what is expressed by it is a recognition of a ‘power in nature and above men or nature which might be God, but I don’t distinguish what it is’ (Lewis 2018: 327). Other mountains famed for their spiritual characteristics include Mount Osore (恐山) – ‘fear mountain’ – in Aomori prefecture, where there are blind mediums who consult spirits of the dead (Blacker 1975; Reader 1991: 130–2), and Mount Kōya (高野山) in Wakayama prefecture, where Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, chose to establish his base in 819 AD.5 In Shikoku, where Kūkai was born, he is remembered particularly because of the longest and most famous pilgrimage route in Japan, starting at Mount Kōya and then crossing to Shikoku to visit 88 temples there (Reader 2004: 10–2; Kitagawa 1987: 133–4). A third-generation Japanese American who described herself as a ‘non-Buddhist’ felt that she ‘had to’ embark on this pilgrimage, in the course of

Unseen faces of Japan 127 which she discovered that ‘the journey was as much an inner one as an outer one’ because she ‘travelled through three realms (mind, body, heart; present, past, and future)’, and sometimes entered ‘a fourth realm of freedom’ (Noda 1983: 174–5, 183). In the past, many did it on foot, but nowadays many pilgrims travel by car or air-conditioned coach, making the whole experience closer to a form of tourism (Hendry 1999: 33). In the past, ascetics called yamabushi used to live in the mountains, practising austerities as a way of entering into closer communion with the spiritual realm. It was probably easier to do this when the locations were relatively remote, but nowadays, with modern transport and communications, it is more difficult for the spiritually-minded to escape from tourists, hikers and others. Spirituality has also become more commodified – although there were aspects of this in the past, too, through the sale of safety charms or amulets at the pilgrimage destinations, whether these were Buddhist or Shintō.6 The vocabulary is also shifting: for example, some of the older generations might say they went to a shrine or temple to ask for the deity’s blessing and help, whereas younger people might go to receive the spiritual benefits of a ‘power spot’ (pawa-supottoパワースポット) – that is, locations believed to be sites of spiritual energy where one can be ‘revitalized’ in spirit, mind or body (Figure 6.2).7 An inclination to believe to at least some extent in ‘power spots’ was expressed in 2015 by 45.9% of the male and 60.3% of the female students sampled by Inoue (2015: 8).

Figure 6.2 The rope and the Torii archway on top of the larger rock at Futamigaura beach, in the Ise-Shima National Park in Mie Prefecture, indicate that this is a sacred site.

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Very often, the ‘power spots’ are located at places of spiritual significance, such as Mount Fuji, various shrines or temples, or places such as waterfalls which in the past were often where yamabushi practised their austerities. Some ‘power spots’ are also places of ecological importance in maintaining biodiversity or healthy ecosystems. For instance, one ‘power spot’ is Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan, where the many species of wildlife include about sixty that are endemic to the area. However, any attempt to disentangle the significance of the lake as an ecological zone from its identity as a place of spiritual significance is complicated by the fact that many shrines and temples are around the perimeter of the lake and the Shirahige shrine even has its entrance portal (torii 鳥居) standing in the lake itself. Around many Shintō shrines are groves known as ‘chinju no mori’ (鎮守の森), which often have environmental significance. Shintō contains beliefs about spirits (kami 神) which can reside in many types of phenomena, including mountains, rivers, trees and other natural features. Sometimes a special tree may be demarcated as the residence of a kami by the use of shimenawa (標縄) – a kind of Shintō sacred rope, usually with zigzag paper streamers attached, comparable to the use of strips of cloths in some other cultures to demarcate sacred trees.8 An ideology of Shintō as an environmentally-friendly religion that protects the environment by means of its sacred groves has been promoted more actively since the 1970s (Rots 2015: 209, 214), in an attempt to preserve what has been left after the destruction of many chinju no mori through the eradication of smaller shrines or their amalgamation with larger ones at times during the preceding century (Toya 2017). Sometimes the preservation of some ancient forest may have been an unintended by-product of the presence of chinju no mori around Shintō shrines, but there were also cases of deforestation and of the intentional management of timber resources (Rots 2015: 208; Omura 2004). Even if certain trees were protected, this did not necessarily apply to the birds, insects or reptiles that passed in and out of the chinju no mori. A greater degree of biodiversity might be expected in remote mountain areas, but even these might be subjected to logging, while the valleys and plains tended to be used for rice and other crops. Towns and cities are mainly concentrated in the alluvial plains and relatively narrow coastal areas, where nature has become even more domesticated – primarily consisting of garden plants, domestic pets and some bird or insect species.9

Spiritual sensitivity Even though the precincts of officially designated Shintō shrines or Buddhist temples occupy only about 0.55% of the territory of Japan (Omura 2004), in urban areas the precincts of such sites may nevertheless provide oases of relatively greater biodiversity in the ecological ‘semi-desert’. These ‘oases’ of gardens or woodland often attract tourists, some of whom claim to come primarily to

Unseen faces of Japan 129 enjoy the relatively peaceful surroundings and scenery, without mentioning a hope for spiritual benefits. Not uncommonly, motivations are mixed because even those who say they go primarily for ‘sightseeing’ nevertheless still tend to put their hands together and bow in an apparent attitude of prayer, besides putting something into the box for monetary offerings. Many people do not distinguish between Buddhist and Shintō places of worship and tend to lump them together when asked how often they visit such places (Lewis 2018: 201–2). When asked about their feelings at shrines or temples, people gave a broad spectrum of answers ranging from those who spoke of a ‘serious’ (majime まじめ / 真面目) or ‘sacred’ (shinsei 神聖) mood to those who said they felt ‘nothing particularly’ except the feeling of being a tourist. It was noticeable, however, that two men who did sense a difference in atmospheres between Buddhist and Shintō establishments were both professional musicians (Lewis 2019: 202). In many cultures, music helps to stimulate a receptivity to spiritual communications, whether this is the shaman’s drum in Siberia or the biblical references to prophecy being received in an atmosphere of music or singing (2 Kings 3: 14–20; 1 Chronicles 25: 1). In a study which I conducted about Christian healing in Britain, I discovered a statistically highly significant correlation whereby people with active musical or artistic involvements tended to be more likely to receive revelations believed to be from God (Lewis 1989: 142–6).10 I suggest that perhaps some explanation for this correlation may lie in the structure of our brains, whereby the right half is associated more with spatial awareness and musical attributes, whereas the left hemisphere tends to be associated more with logical reasoning. Might those with a more developed right hemisphere become more receptive to certain types of insights which in at least certain contexts can be interpreted as being from a spiritual realm?

Paranormal experiences Spiritual experiences of various kinds are not often described in conventional ethnographic literature because it is easier to focus on rituals that can be seen with one’s eyes or heard with one’s ears. Beliefs can, to some extent, be researched through talking with people – but it tends to require a greater degree of trust and rapport with the researcher before people are willing to recount certain types of spiritual experiences, especially those involving personal crises such as the death of a family member. Sometimes informants are unwilling to talk about such experiences for fear of being laughed at, or considered to be crazy or imagining things (Lewis 2013: 13–4). Even if people might be willing to tick the box in an online survey to say that at some time in their lives they had experienced, for instance, a premonitory dream, they are less likely to describe it in detail unless they feel that they can trust the researcher with the information. That is one reason why this ‘unseen face of Japan’ is relatively under-explored. Perhaps it is actually a capacity that could be innate within human beings – but

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the local cultural context may influence the degree to which people are willing to talk about it. In urban Japan, at least some people are open to the possibility that dreams may be communications from a spiritual realm. An example is a man who said: Ten days ago I had a dream about my mother’s brother. He wanted me to pray more fervently and to perform the ancestral rites for him… I can’t now remember his words to me in the dream, or even if there were any words at all, but my strong feeling when I awoke was that this was what my uncle wanted me to do. (Lewis 2018: 253) Another man told me of a dream in which he had seen a friend of his who had died. Without words, and by a kind of transference of his thoughts, his friend seemed to be communicating the message ‘Don’t come here’. A Japanese lady who dreamed about the death of her mother regarded it as a warning of the future when, about a week later, her mother died of an unexpected heart attack (Lewis 2018: 35).11 According to a nationwide poll conducted in 2001, 46% of Japanese adults and 51.4% of teenagers reported that something they had dreamed about actually did happen afterwards in real life (McKay 2001: 107–10). Another type of spiritual experience is seeing what in Japan are called ‘fireballs’ (hi no tama 火の玉 or hidama 火玉). Seven out of a hundred Japanese people whom I interviewed told me that they had personally seen a ‘fireball’ and they described it as a red, orange, purple or ‘blue-green’ glow or ‘star’ which was seen for a short while and then disappeared. In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001, 13.9% of adults and 3.9% of teenagers reported that at some time in their lives they had seen one (McKay 2001: 108–10). A detailed account of a fireball was given by a woman who had been with others when they saw it. She said: It was just after 7.00 pm at night and I was standing by the shop in the factory with a couple of friends when we saw over the personnel office something red, glowing like a firefly, jumping about very slowly, which then drifted off towards the south and disappeared. It was about a metre or so in diameter. (Lewis 2018: 33) In Japan, hi no tama had traditionally been regarded as spirits of dead people, whereas in other cultures different explanations have been given for similar kinds of phenomena.12 A ‘pseudo-scientific’ theory that purports to explain this phenomenon in Japan claims that the light comes from the phosphorus emitted by the bones of dead people. However, only two of my informants had seen the fireball in a graveyard, the place where one would expect to see them if the phosphorus theory had any validity: others saw the fireballs on the roof of a house, in the sky above Kyōto, out at sea and in other places. One person

Unseen faces of Japan 131 mentioned that the phosphorus explanation for fireballs is unlikely to hold nowadays because cremation rather than burial is the legally prescribed norm. Therefore it seems that exposure to scientific thinking has simply widened the repertoire of proposed explanations but has not actually provided a theory that covers the whole range of accounts. One after-effect of the sudden and devastating loss of life in northeast Japan caused by the tsunami in March 2011 was a spate of reported spiritual experiences, most of which were to do with encountering ghosts of the dead. Horie (2016: 210) reports that 64 out of 100 people interviewed said that they had conversations with someone who had died.13Parry (2014) describes in detail the experiences of some of those whose bodies were taken over (or ‘possessed’) by spirits of the dead, including animal spirits. A supernatural rescue was related by a man who was engulfed by the tsunami but suddenly found himself being pulled out of the deluge by someone who appeared to be walking on water; the drowning man linked this experience with the fact that he was wearing a cross around his neck.14

Territorial spirits Another form of spiritual revelation was described by a man who calls himself an ‘amateur medium’ and who claims to receive communications from the spirit world in the form of ‘mental flashes’. He is often consulted by others seeking

Figure 6.3 The Toray company shrine in woodland on a hill behind the factory.

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guidance about spiritual matters. For example, on the day I interviewed him, he had been asked about a tree that had blown over in the precincts of a shrine belonging to Toray Industries, a producer of synthetic fibres and other goods (Figure 6.3): the Toray employee wanted to find out if the spirits would prefer the tree straightened up or cut down (Lewis 2018: 190). Each year a Buddhist ritual called segaki (施餓鬼) – ‘being charitable to hungry ghosts’ – is performed in the area around the Toray company shrine. A small altar is set up, on which flowers, candles and incense are put alongside various food offerings, including apples, grapes, peaches, rice cakes and rice wine. After the Buddhist priest has chanted sutras for about half an hour, the offerings are scattered over the nearby ground as food for the wild animals. Although the animals are said to be the present-day guardians of the graves of ancient warriors, it almost seems as if they are considered to be, in some sense, embodiments of the dead spirits. In some other contexts, the spirits of animals or of dead human beings are believed to affect people adversely, causing symptoms of demonization, and might need to be exorcised through certain rituals (Smyers 1999: 90; Kisala 2001: 125; Shimazono 2004: 168–72; De Antoni 2016; Takahashi 2016: 188–9). For instance, a member of a new religion called Kōfuku no Kagaku claims that the behaviour of a person who slithers like a snake or darts about like a fox may be symptomatic of demonization by an animal spirit (Takizawa Yoshiyuki, quoted by Kisala 2001: 125). If a new building is erected on the Toray factory precincts, the local territorial spirit needs to be placated before the workers first break into the ground. Therefore the company invites in a Shintō priest to perform a jichinsai (地鎮祭) ceremony for appeasing the god of the locality.15 Such ceremonies are commonly performed by other companies too (Lewis 2018: 191). In residential areas, a jichinsai ceremony is often regarded as an essential part of constructing a new house. Homeowners whom I interviewed about this tended to have relatively pragmatic views on it, many of them saying that the ritual was included in the cost of the building rather than being an optional extra: therefore, they had the rite performed so as to have the full value for their money. Some said that the builders ‘preferred’ to have a jichinsai, so they complied in order not to offend the workmen. Cases in which no jichinsai had been performed are rare but seem to involve a substitute of one type or another. One man decided to hold a Shintō ‘roof-raising ceremony’ in place of the jichinsai while another saved the jichinsai fee but instead threw a Shintō safety charm into the sand which would be mixed with the cement (Lewis 2018: 142).16 The practice of conducting jichinsai rites is so widespread, including not only private but also public buildings, that in 1971 the mayor of Tsu city in Mie prefecture was sued on the grounds that conducting a jichinsai for a municipal building violated the constitutional separation of religion and politics established by the occupation forces after World War II. In response, decisions by the Nagoya High Court in 1972, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1977, asserted that the jichinsai was a

Unseen faces of Japan 133 traditional folk practice, not explicitly promoting Shintō as such (Takenaka 2015: 143; Nelson 2012: 45–6). In 2010, however, the Supreme Court did rule that the local government in the town of Sunagawa in Hokkaidō had violated the constitutional separation of religion from the state in allowing one shrine – but not another one – to have been built on public land (Rots 2017: 196).

Dangerous human spirits Although spirits connected with places are respected, some of the most dangerous spirits are the ones who in this world are at the top of the food chain – that is, human ghosts. For instance, after a fire broke out in the Toray factory in 1973, it was discerned that the company needed to appease the spirits of warriors who had fallen in battle in that area in 672 AD but had not received a proper burial. Now a Buddhist priest visits the factory each month to recite sutras on behalf of those who had died in that battle (Lewis 2018: 167–8). One of several different motivations for ancestral rites in Japan is a deeply rooted feeling that there ought to be some kind of appropriate memorial for those who have died. A fear of dead spirits is even more pronounced if the deceased had no descendants to perform the ancestral rites, in which case the soul may become a potentially vindictive ‘unattached’ spirit (muenbotoke 無縁 仏). Fear of a muenbotoke is to some extent compounded by the widespread concerns with purity and pollution in Japanese culture, expressed in both religious and non-religious aspects of the culture (as described, for example, by Ohnuki-Tierney 1984: 28–30): an ‘unattached’ spirit is feared because it would be ‘out of place’ – i.e. ‘dirty’ as defined by Douglas (1966: 35) – and potentially dangerous. Such ideas help explain the continuing rites conducted by the Toray factory for a nominally Roman Catholic engineer named Antonio Minelli, who committed suicide in the factory in February 1927. His death by suicide was one reason to fear lest his spirit might be bearing a grudge, but the fact that he had no children meant that nobody would perform ancestral rites for him; hence he might become a potentially malevolent muenbotoke. Now twice a year, on the anniversary of his death and during the summer bon festival, when the ancestors are said to return to this world, officials from the Toray factory visit Minelli’s grave, light incense and bow before it in a manner which outwardly is indistinguishable from ancestral rites (Figure 6.4) (Lewis 2018: 159–64). More than a thousand years previously, a desire to appease a spirit thought to have been offended led to the construction of the Kitano Tenmangū (北野天満 宮) shrine in Kyōto, built in honour of a scholar named Sugawara no Michizane (845–903 AD). Towards the end of his life, he had lost the favour of the court and was exiled to Kyūshū, but after his death a series of disasters were attributed to his angry spirit. Later on, he was deified as the god of learning, to whom many shrines in Japan are now dedicated. Now in the 21st century, a similar concern about potentially angry or vindictive spirits is an undercurrent in a recurring political debate about the Yasukuni shrine (靖国神社) in Tōkyō.

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Figure 6.4 Minelli's grave after Toray officials have offered incense and flowers.

Spirits of the Yasukuni shrine The Yasukuni shrine commemorates the war dead, who died for their country between 1867 and 1951. Among the 2,466,532 spirits enshrined, there are those of 1,068 people convicted as war criminals, 14 of whom were Class A war criminals, whose presence has been the subject of heated controversy. Further controversy has arisen from visits by Japanese politicians, such as Prime Ministers Nakasone, Koizumi and Abe, whether in a private or official capacity (Tanaka 2008: 119–37; Breen and Teeuwen 2010: 214–8; O’Brien 1996: 167–70). By contrast, less attention was paid to Prime Minister Abe’s participation in a ceremony at the Ise shrine in 2013 and the Japanese government’s

Unseen faces of Japan 135 attempts to reframe certain religious practices as ‘customs’ and not as ‘religious’ (Rots 2017: 180). Although the Yasukuni shrine is usually depicted as a place to remember the war dead, a less well-known aspect is the conducting of rituals that, to at least some extent, are supposed to pacify the spirits of the dead. Although terms such as ‘mourning’ (tsuitō 追悼) or ‘consoling the dead spirits’ (irei 慰霊) are commonly used to describe the rites, one of the other terms is chinkon (鎮魂), meaning ‘placating of the spirit’ (Takenaka 2015: 135). The name ‘Yasukuni’ means ‘Peaceful Land’, with an implication that the deified soldiers protect the country, but there is an awareness that some of the soldiers might have died with a sense of anger or frustration at an apparently meaningless death: they could therefore become resentful spirits (onryō 怨霊) which need to be pacified or appeased (Antoni 1988: 127). One of the buildings in the Yasukuni complex is the chinreisha (鎮霊社) or ‘spirit pacifying shrine’, where a variety of spirits are enshrined, including those who had been former enemies of the Emperor or of imperial Japan.17 Those who died on both sides in the civil wars of 1868–9 – including some who fought against the imperial army – are enshrined there, as are also foreign war dead from China, Korea, Britain, the USA and elsewhere. Each morning and evening, offerings are presented to the spirits enshrined in the chinreisha, irrespective of which side they had fought on during the wars (Breen 2007: 150–1). At least some of these spirits are ones that potentially could become vindictive or malevolent. To keep them from doing so is one motivation why they are propitiated: it is the same motivation as the Toray rituals for Minelli or for those who had perished in the swamps without a proper burial some 1,300 years earlier. This aspect of the Yasukuni shrine is not one that is generally promoted in public, with its stress on honouring those who had given their lives for the country. Perhaps this might be one reason why for a long time the chinreisha was hidden from sight by a steel fence and visitors were not admitted to it, despite the continuing daily rites for the spirits commemorated there (Breen 2007: 151; Takenaka 2015: 193–4). Whereas territorial spirits can be relatively easily ‘domesticated’ or ‘tamed’ if one embarks on a building project, there is apparently a greater fear lest ‘wild’ animal or human spirits might adversely affect not only individuals but even a whole community. It is this fear which expresses itself at many different levels – not only locally in a factory but also nationally in at least some aspects of the controversial Yasukuni shrine. The present government of Japan faces a similar dilemma to that faced over a thousand years ago when disasters were attributed to the angry spirit of Sugawara no Michizane. In that case, his spirit was placated by making him into the god of learning. Unfortunately, it is probably too optimistic – and unrealistic – to imagine that some of the war dead at the Yasukuni shrine could potentially be transmuted into gods of peace or forgiveness.

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Shifting worldviews Japan has been used in this article as a case study of a highly urbanized and industrialized population, many of them with high education in technical and scientific subjects. My own informants included people who had been educated in technical or scientific subjects such as medicine, engineering or chemistry and several of them held managerial positions in the Toray company. Many of those who participated in religious rituals as part of their work duties did have private doubts about the efficacy of the rites in protecting from disasters at work but they did not express their scepticism publicly (Lewis 2018: 187–9). Nevertheless, in a society where robots are becoming more common in everyday life, some people have begun to wonder where human intelligence originates and whether it is likely to have happened merely by chance. Among the 667 people who filled in a questionnaire for me, 63.3% expressed a belief in a ‘Being above man and nature’.18 Among the 100 people subsequently interviewed, those who were asked why they had such a belief usually referred to the limitations of human knowledge or power, saying there are ‘many things science cannot explain’. One person commented, ‘nature is so great there must be a God’. Some gave more explicit examples such as the constant revolution of the planets or the annual cycle of flowers and plant life, with each blossoming in its own turn, as natural processes which indicated the existence of an intelligence behind scientific laws and the cycle of nature. A few also mentioned experiences of miracles (Lewis 2018: 294–5). Whether starting from the vastness of space or the intricacy of the genetic code, a scientifically minded generation of Japanese are asking meaningful questions about life, intelligence and purpose. At least some of them are beginning to look beyond the mountains or the Moon to think about a greater power. A survey conducted by the Gallup Organization in 2001 (McKay 2001: 83, 86) showed that 24.3% of the adults, 19.8% of the teenagers and 57% of the pre-teens expressed a belief in a being who ‘created Heaven and Earth’ (tenchi-o tsukutta天地を作った).19 Perhaps the greater percentage among pre-teens might indicate that such a belief is on the rise, or else it might show that it is a very common belief in childhood but people become more sceptical as they get older. When asked whether or not at some time in their lives people had ever prayed to such a Being, those admitting to having done so accounted for 38.7% of the adults, 51.0% of teenagers and 41.3% of the pre-teens (McKay 2001: 90–2). When these percentages are compared with the figures for those who, at some time in their lives, prayed to ‘Nature (The Sun, Moon etc.)’, an interesting pattern emerges. Among adults, 48.2% had prayed to entities in nature, a greater percentage than those who had prayed to a Creator, but the reverse was the case for teenagers and pre-teens. Whereas 29.4% of the teenagers had at some time prayed to entities in nature, over half had prayed to a Creator; among the pre-teens, 35.3% had prayed to something in nature, but 41.3% had addressed prayers to a Creator God. Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, more recent surveys on religiosity in Japan have not asked the same questions to follow through whether or not this generational difference has been sustained as people grow older.

Unseen faces of Japan 137 Nevertheless, it is suggestive of a possible shift in worldviews, whereby the younger generations might be beginning to think more about whether or not there is an intelligence behind the universe. In an increasingly globalized world, the sources of such a worldview shift are hard to disentangle, but they probably include, to some extent, the widespread exposure to scientific theories. Perhaps even the widespread use of robots in Japan can not only lead to an interest in artificial intelligence but also make people aware of the limits to such intelligence and the boundaries of human knowledge about the universe. Japan has often been called the land of a myriad of gods (yaoyorozu no kami 八 百万の神 – literally ‘eight million kami’), but now it appears as this perspective is gradually changing. Some of the ‘new religions’, including some founded in the 19th century, have such a focus on one supreme deity that it is tantamount to a kind of monotheism. For example, Tenrikyō (天理教) believes in a single deity called Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto (天理王命), regarded as the creator of all things, with attributes that include omniscience, omnipotence, personhood and the power to heal. Konkyōkyō has also been described as ‘a modern Japanese monotheism’ (Kamstra 1994: 103–17; Holtom 1933: 279–80).20 If a tendency to think in such terms is now becoming more widespread also among those who do not ostensibly subscribe to any particular defined ‘religion’ but nevertheless have a spiritual worldview, it might mean that, in the future, more Japanese will have a perspective which looks beyond visible entities in nature as objects of worship and instead directs their reverence towards an invisible Intelligence that created that beauty.

Notes 1 There is considerable double-counting, partly because most Japanese people at various times in their lives observe both Shintō and Buddhist rituals and partly because the statistics are gathered from the self-reporting by different organizations, some of which lack a formal ‘membership’ list. 2 Apparently the Chinese, when faced with the same translation problem, borrowed the Japanese word, pronouncing the same characters in Chinese as zōngjiào. 3 To some extent, words such as ‘spiritual’ are more acceptable as labels for what they actually do or think, although the Engish loan word supirichuaru, スピリチュアル may be preferred to words such as seishinteki 精神的 (referring to the soul or mind) or reiteki 霊的 (referring to ghosts or similar spirits). 4 This also occurred in Korea, which was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. I suggest that State Shintō was one of the influences in the development of the ‘Kim cult’ in North Korea, where residents are expected to bow down before huge statues of Kim Il-Sung, whose birth name of Kim Song Ju was changed to Il Sung, meaning ‘become the sun’ (Fifield 2019: 16). His birthday, a national holiday in North Korea, is called the ‘Day of the Sun’ (Lim 2015: 88) and epithets to describe all three leaders of the Kim clan often employ solar imagery – e.g. ‘Sun of Socialism’, ‘Sun of the Nation’, Sun of the 21st Century’ or ‘Guiding Ray of Sun’ (Lankov 2013: 4, 50; Fifield 2019: 12, 88). Ten of the 56 titles for Kim Jong-Il listed at https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kim_Jong-il’s_titles (accessed 15 October 2019) contain the word ‘Sun’. Other titles implying a kind of quasi-divinity include ‘Great Man, Who Descended From Heaven’ and ‘Glorious General, Who Descended From

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Heaven’. Similarly, North Korean political mythology claimed that Kim Jong-Il was born on Mount Paektu, which traditionally had been the most sacred mountain in Korea – although Russian sources state that he was born in the Khabarovsk region (Demick 2010: 123; Fifield 2019: 25). These divine-like features of the Kim cult indicate that it is a transmuted form of Japanese state Shintō rather than simply being a version of the cults of personality of the kind that existed in China or the USSR (Lewis 2018: 56). Kūkai had studied in Tang dynasty China, where he might have had contact with other non-Buddhist religions too. At his tomb on Mount Kōya there is a replica of a stele, carved in 781 AD, that is currently on display in the ‘Forest of Steles’ Museum in Xi’an (西安碑林博物館 – Xī’ān bēilín bówùguǎn) and which gives details of the spread of Christianity in Tang dynasty China, when there were Christians in every province of China and churches in many different cities. The creation of the syllabic ‘kana’ orthographies is also attributed to Kūkai and there are claims that some of the symbols, especially those used in katakana, might have been based on Hebrew letters (Lee 2010: 31). Shintō institutions are conventionally referred to in English as ‘shrines’ and Buddhist ones as ‘temples’. Although this term and an alternative term ‘energy spot’ エネルギースポットwere coined in Japan, their pronunciation and the use of the katakana syllabic script in writing these expressions give the impression that they were borrowed from English. See Lewis (2013: 161, 165) for examples from the Mari and Udmurt peoples of European Russia. Limitations of space in Japanese homes may influence the use of miniature bonsai plants instead of full-sized ones, and a similar process of ‘shaping’ or domesticating nature might be perceived in the depictions of animals among younger generations: a few decades ago, Snoopy and ‘Hello Kitty’ cartoons were widespread, then there was the tamagotchi artificial ‘pet’ craze. Over the same period, and continuing now, both real and fantasized animals have been depicted in manga cartoons and anime films, where even the monsters can become an ‘endangered species’ by the emasculation of being rendered as ‘cute’! Nevertheless, alongside animal monsters are also human equivalents such as witches or vampires that may be fantasized counterparts to the frightening aspects of nature in real life, such as earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes and typhoons. A recent collection of papers which also focusses on the experiences of charismatic Christians mentions spiritual experiences being received by musicians of one kind or another (Ng 2020: 102; Smith 2020:121–2; Brahinsky 2020: 55–6), and refers to people being ‘overcome by a song’ (Dzokoto 2020: 86), so to me it seems surprising that their analyses of ‘strategies for crossing the line’ (Brahinsky 2020: 49–55) or ‘spiritual kindling’ (Luhrmann 2020: 153–8), besides factors stimulating mental ‘porosity’ vis-à-vis entities believed to lie outside the mind (Smith 2020: 121–6), seem to overlook potential links between these types of spiritual experiences and musical or artistic creativity. In the past, I sometimes asked informants about their own interpretations of experiences such as precognitive dreams, though often the response was ‘I don’t know’. More recently, I have tried to bring out some of the implications of the experience in the mind of the interlocutor by means of a series of prompt questions, such as: ‘Do you think this experience means that information about the future is coming just from your own mind or from some other source?’ ‘If an external source of intelligence is communicating with you about your future, does that mean that this intelligence is interested in, or concerned about, you?’ ‘If some intelligent Being is interested in your life, do you think that Being likes you – or hates you?’

Unseen faces of Japan 139 12 In the course of some fieldwork I conducted in northwest Siberia, a man from the Mansi people recounted how he was on a reindeer sledge when he saw a ball of fire with ‘sparks flying off both sides’, which he interpreted as a god. Another example was related to me by a Kazakh woman who was in her living room when she saw what she described as a ‘circle of light’ about the size of a bracelet that went up her arm, around the back of her head and disappeared. She regarded it as a sign from the other world, perhaps from her deceased mother (Lewis 2013: 70). Elsewhere in the world, such lights might be regarded as angelic or demonic, or as something else, with some people unsure what it might be. For example, in one part of Africa, a fireball-like phenomenon was regarded as evidence of witchcraft (Bowen 1954: 44), whereas in northern Nigeria a pastor was led through the forest at night by a globe of light, about waist-high (Gardner 1986: 72). 13 There was also a rapid rise in the proportion of people claiming to have a religious belief, rising from about a quarter to approximately half of the population, while over three-quarters asserted a belief in an afterlife (Horie 2016: 210). 14 Roman Dombrauskas, personal communication, reporting on his visit to the disaster area. 15 Although a jichinsai is sometimes referred to as a ‘ground breaking ceremony’, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters used for the word conveys the idea of a ‘ground pacifying ceremony’. 16 I have heard of a similar approach in a Christian context (Hong Ru, personal communication, 30 August 2018) concerning a pastor who performed an alternative ceremony to reassure the workmen that a spiritual rite to assure their safety had been conducted: this involved burying a Bible in the foundations of the building and anointing the four corners of the site with red wine – presumably symbolic of the sacrificial blood of Christ. 17 The character for ‘pacify’ (鎮) in chinreisha is the same ‘chin’ as in jichinsai 地鎮祭 and chinkon 鎮魂. It is also used in the names of various religious institutions that are concerned with the ‘pacification’ of malevolent powers and protection against their influences (Antoni 1988: 126). 18 Although this phrase (人間や自然を超えた何か大きなものの存在 ningen ya shizen-o koeta nanika ōkina mono no sonzai) did not differentiate easily from more specific Shintō or Buddhist concepts, I nevertheless tried to capture Shintō ‘animistic’-type beliefs in a separate question on ‘a spirit within man and nature’. Other questions asking about belief in a personal spirit or soul, especially one that survives death, aimed to ascertain beliefs that are often connected with Buddhism (Lewis 2018: 294). 19 This terminology was more ‘neutral’ by avoiding vocabulary such as kami 神 (associated with Shintō) or hotoke 仏 (a term that may refer to ancestors or to the Buddha). Although the ancient Kojiki 古事記 chronicle begins with a mention of Ame- no- minaka nushi’ (天御中主 or 天之御中主神) – ‘The Lord in the Sky’ or ‘Heavenly Lord’ – this is not a term used in everyday parlance. 20 Although Ōmoto-kyō acknowledges the existence of many kami it also asserts that these ultimately derive from the same Supreme God of the Universe. Moreover, when Ōmoto-kyō adherents pray to a particular named kami ‘they understand this is just one manifestation of the single God’. Available at: http://www.oomoto.or.jp/ English/enFaq/indexfaq.html (accessed 15 January 2019).

References Antoni, K. 1988. Yasukuni-Jinja and Folk Religion: The Problem of Vengeful Spirits. Asian Folklore Studies 47: 123–36. Blacker, C. 1975. The Catalpa Bow. London: Allen and Unwin.

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Bowen, E.S. 1954. Return to Laughter. London: Gollancz. Brahinsky, J. 2020. Crossing the Buffer: Ontological Anxiety Among US Evangelicals and an Anthropological Theory of Mind. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1): 45–60. Breen, J. 2007. Yasukuni and the Loss of Historical Memory. In: John Breen (ed.), Yasukuni, the War Dead and the Struggle for Japan’s Past. London: Hurst and Company, pp. 143–62. Breen, J., and Teeuwen, M. 2010. A New History of Shinto. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Bubandt, N., and Van Beek, M. 2012. Varieties of Secularism – In Asia and in Theory. In: N. Bubandt and M. Van Beek (eds.), Varieties of Secularism in Asia. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–28. De Antoni, A. 2016. Call Me a Dog: Ritualized Affective Correspondences, Inugami Possession and Exorcism in Contemporary Tokushima Prefecture. Paper presented at the Japan Anthropology Workshop section of the European Association for Japanese Studies conference in Kobe, September 2016. Demick, B. 2010. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea. London: Granta. Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Dzokoto, V.A. 2020. Adwenhoasem: An Akan Theory of Mind. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1): 77–94. Fifield, A. 2019. The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un. London: John Murray. Gardner, R. 1986. Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. Hendry, J. 1999. An Anthropologist in Japan: Glimpses of Life in the Field. London and New York: Routledge. Holtom, D.C. 1933. Konkokyo: A Modern Japanese Monotheism. The Journal of Religion 13: 279–80. Horie, N. 2016. Continuing Bonds in the Tōhoku Disaster Area: Locating the Destinations of Spirits. Journal of Religion in Japan 5(2–3): 199–226. Inoue, N. [井上順孝]. 2015. 第12学生宗教意識調査報告 [Dai 12 gakusei shūkyō ikishi chōsa hōkoku/Report on the 12th Survey of Students’ Religious Consciousness]. Tokyo: Kokugakuin University. Isomae, J. 2012. The Conceptual Formation of the Category ‘Religion’ in Modern Japan: Religion, State, Shintō. Journal of Religion in Japan 1: 226–45. Kamstra, J.H. 1994. Japanese Monotheism and New Religions. In Peter B. Clarke and Jeffrey Somers (eds.), Japanese New Religions in the West. Folkestone: Japan Library, pp. 103–17. Kisala, R.J. 2001. Religious Responses to the ‘Aum Affair’. In R.J. Kisala and M.R. Mullins (eds.), Religion and Social Crisis in Japan: Understanding Japanese Society Through the Aum Affair. London and New York: Palgrave. Kitagawa, J.M. 1987. On Understanding Japanese Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lankov, A. 2013. The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, S. 2010. Rediscovering Japan, Reintroducing Christendom: Two Thousand Years of Christian History in Japan. Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO, New York, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, Hamilton Books.

Unseen faces of Japan 141 LeFebvre, J.R. 2015. Christian Wedding Ceremonies: ‘Nonreligiousness’ in Contemporary Japan. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 42(2): 185–203. Lewis, D.C. 1989. Healing: Fiction, Fantasy or Fact? London: Hodder and Stoughton. Lewis, D.C. 2013. After Atheism: Religion and Ethnicity in Russia and Central Asia. London and New York: Routledge. Lewis, D.C. 2015. Directions of Change in Japanese Religiosity. Journal of Religion in Japan 4(1): 32–63. Lewis, D.C. 2018. Religion in Japanese Daily Life. London and New York: Routledge. Lim, J.-C. 2015. Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea: The Leader State. London and New York: Routledge. Luhrmann, T.M. 2020. Thinking About Thinking: The Mind’s Porosity and the Presence of the Gods. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1): pp. 148–62. McKay, W. 2001. Japan: Changes in a Changing World. Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Organization. Nelson, J.K. 2012. Japanese Secularities and the Decline of Temple Buddhism. Journal of Religion in Japan 1(1): 37–60. Ng, E. 2020. The Mind and the Devil: Porosity and Discernment in Two Chinese Charismatic-Style Churches. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1): 95–113. Noda, K. 1983. A Pilgrimage in Shikoku. In: Essays on Japanology 1978–1982/ Watashitachi no Nihongaku. Kyoto: International Cultural Association of Kyoto. O’Brien, D.M. 1996. To Dream of Dreams: Religious Freedom and Constitutional Politics in Postwar Japan. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Ohnuki-Tierney, E. 1984. Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Omura, H. 2004. Trees, Forests and Religion in Japan. Mountain Research and Development 24(2): 79–182. Available at: https://bioone.org/journals/Mountain-Research-andDevelopment/volume-24/issue-2/0276-4741(2004)024[0179:TFARIJ]2.0.CO;2/TreesForests-and-Religion-in-Japan/10.1659/0276-4741(2004)024[0179:TFARIJ]2.0.CO;2 .full (accessed 11 January 2021). Parry, R.L. 2014. Ghosts of the Tsunami. London Review of Books 36(03). Available at: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n03/richard-lloyd-parry/ghosts-of-the-tsunami (accessed 10 January 2021). Reader, I. 1991. Religion in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu/London: University of Hawaii Press/Macmillan. Reader, I. 2004. Making Pilgrimages: Meaning and Practice in Shikoku. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rots, A.P. 2015. Sacred Forests, Sacred Nation: The Shinto Environmentalist Paradigm and the Rediscovery of ‘Chinju no Mori’. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 42(2): 205–33. Rots, A.P. 2017. Public Shrine Forests? Shinto, Immanence, and Discursive Secularization. Japan Review 30: 179–205. Shimazono, S. 1993. Introduction to Part 4: New Religious Movements. In: M.R. Mullins, S. Shimazono, and P.L. Swanson (eds.), Religion and Society in Modern Japan. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, pp. 221–30. Shimazono, S. 2004. From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Smith, E. 2020. Empowered Imagination and Mental Vulnerability: Local Theory of Mind and Spiritual Experience in Vanuatu. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 26(S1): 114–30.

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Smyers, K.A. 1999. The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Spae, J.J. 1971. Japanese Religiosity. Tokyo: Oriens Institute for Religious Research. Takahashi, H. 2016. The Ghosts of Tsunami Dead and Kokoro no kea in Japan’s Religious Landscape. Journal of Religion in Japan 5(2–3): 176–98. Takenaka, A. 2015. Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory and Japan’s Unending Postwar. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press. Tanaka, A. 2008. The Yasukuni Issue and Japan’s International Relations. In: Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi and Togo, Kazuhiko (eds.), East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical Memories and the Resurgence of Nationalism. Westport, CT, and London: Praeger Security International, pp. 119–141. Toya, M. 2017. Shintō’s Sacred Forests and Japanese Environmentalism. Available at: https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b05214/shinto%E2%80%99s-sacred-forests-and-japanese-environmentalism.html (accessed 16 October 2019).

Part III

Cosmopolitics and the contemporary state

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Knowing the lords of the land: cosmopolitical dynamics and historical change in Mongolia David Sneath and Elizabeth Turk

Rather than exploring the power of agentive landscapes per se, this chapter focuses on the historical circumstances within which humans have been able to represent non-humans as powerful actors in political realms. Today, such moves often occur within ‘global’ discourses concerning indigeneity and politics surrounding claims to ancestral land (e.g. Li 2000, 2010), sacred landscapes as worlds ontologically distinct from conventional ‘modernist’ ones (de la Cadena 2015), and the importance of preserving such sacred natural sites, resulting in UNESCO’s coining of the term ‘sacred value’ in an effort to preserve associated cultural heritage and biodiversity (Niglio 2018). Frequently such discourses detail distinct ways of inhabiting the earth (Ingold 2011) reflected in the concept of ‘traditional ecological knowledge’, based on continuous, close, practical engagement with the environment (Ingold and Kurttila 2000) and argued to be important in maintaining ecological well-being (Ford and Martinez 2000; Gadgil et al. 1993). In Mongolia, the popularity of shamanism aligns with environmental protection discourse to open new spaces for shamans to engage with forms of activism, founding NGOs to protect their homelands, for example, and joining national protest movements such as the 2016 Noyon Uul protests, in which a shamanic collective likened their struggle to the Standing Rock Sioux’s Dakota Access Pipeline protests in the USA. This chapter will focus on two cases where humans recruit non-human entities into political spheres, exploring the historical circumstances that contributed to the possibility and expediency of such mobilization. The first is Mergen Diyanchi’s (1717–66) reinterpretation of the relationship between the Buddhist church and local deities, manifest in the rituals he devised for local master spirits of the mountains and rivers, consecrating them to the service of the Darma and modelled on the Tibetan legend of Padmasambhava (Atwood 1996: 137–9). The second case study explores Father Stone (Aav Khad) in Khentii province, an example of very recent cosmological production. Amidst the re-vitalization of culture in post-Stalinist era Mongolia, a successful school teacher and herder asked his children just before he died in the mid-80s to worship him through a large stone nearby, claiming he would enter into the spiritual landscape as a local ‘master’ (ezen). This has become a popular pilgrimage site attracting distant visitors to pray and beg for economic prosperity. DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-7

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Rather than an autonomous realm composed of essential and timeless forms, such cases reveal the cosmological as a dynamic and changing field, as subject to innovation as the historically produced milieu that frames it.

Aav Khad and the making of a local cosmology During doctoral fieldwork from 2014–2016 exploring ‘alternative’ medicine and nature-based remedies, one of the authors (Elizabeth) became increasingly interested in the role that local deities, spirit masters of earth (gazryn ezed) and related spiritual constituents of landscape (lus, savdag) play, in some instances facilitating healing, and in others causing harm and wreaking havoc in people’s lives and bodies. I (Elizabeth) first heard about Aav Khad (Father Rock) – and that worshipping there was financially auspicious – around the same time I was told about the day in the springtime every year when nature-based entities emerge from their winter slumbers, as recorded in a 31 March 2015 fieldnote entitled ‘Khansh neekh ödör (everything wakes up); Lake that consumes people’. There I recorded that a friend I call Ganaa had told me that, as the ground and water thaw in springtime, creatures living underground and in lakes, rivers, etc., ‘wake up’, as do spirit masters of land, related spirits, and the souls (süns) of deceased family members. This day takes place according to the Buddhist astrological calendar, and in 2015 fell on April 5. It is important to contextualize this fieldnote by adding that landscape-based spiritual entities are not entirely inactive in the winter and definitely not absent. The earth is alive (gazar amitai), people told me, as are related spiritual constituents, but with differing degrees of liveliness or activity depending on the season. The second half of that fieldnote pertains to the direction the conversation went following: Avrga toson arshaan [Avrga toson mineral spring]. The second thing we [Ganaa and I] talked about is this lake in Khentii [province] that consumes people. A person that goes into the water just sinks and never comes out. People say that it is lus pulling them down. It is an incredibly dangerous situation. When you are next to the lake you should not speak too loudly, otherwise the ezen [spirit master] will hear you and come after you. Actually the lake is a complex, two connected underwater with a small mountain separating them. The lake to the other side of the mountain has been used for many, many years … [especially] for healing dermatological problems. People go into the water, come back out and use the mud to spread on their skin…People say these lakes are connected underground (dooguuraa) because one heals and the other kills people. People speculate that the dangerous one is jealous of all the attention the healing one gets, and so punishes people for forgetting [about] it. I hadn’t realized it then, but this conversation was among the first of several in planning a trip over the Naadam holiday a few months later to visit Ganaa’s

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 147 family in a rural part of Dornod province. We decided to visit both Avrga Toson arshaan and Father Rock on the way to Dornod in a part research, part worship, part convenience-based endeavour. This last point is particularly well illustrated by the fact that Ganaa had a friend from University named Khaliunaa who lived adjacent to Avrga Toson, with whom we stayed overnight. After our arrival late afternoon, Khaliunaa showed us around the arshaan, a natural healing complex comprised of two mineral spring-fed lakes, two mineral springs and three different types of medicinal mud, as well as medical facilities and patient accommodations. While driving from the therapeutic, saline lake to the adjacent one, Khaliunaa mentioned that this lake is considered particularly dangerous and that approximately one person drowns there per year. This is because it is very deep, the waters choppy, especially on windy days, and that most Mongolians do not know how to swim, she told me. A few years ago, a white metal fence was erected around the lake so as to deter amateur water enthusiasts from assuming that it shares the same relatively shallow quality as the neighbouring lake. The next day we reached Aav Khad just outside of Batnorov district (sum) centre, pulling off the main road to the south and travelling 10 or 15 minutes along dirt roads, many of which were our own forgings. As we approached a small mountain range, a prominent column-like rock formation became increasingly visible. The white stupa nearby, as well as blue and other coloured khadags (scarves) tied around the rock formation, confirmed our suspicion that we had found Father Rock. Ganaa relayed to me that because the spirit owner (ezen) is male, only men are allowed to climb to the top to circumambulate. Ganaa rested near the car while her two children and I ascended the stairs formed from long slabs of stone. The three of us waited near the base of Aav Khad while Ganaa’s husband circumambulated Father Rock and left offerings of small monetary bills, loose tea and biscuits in front of the sacred natural monument (Figure 7.1).

Banzarov and the genre of shamanic primitivism In the standard reading, Aav Khad is a particular example of a general type of ritual site that is very common in Mongolia; shrines to local deities commonly known as gazaryn ezed, ‘land-masters’ or ‘spirits of the land’. These spiritual masters are ancient features of a distinctive Mongolian cosmology, originally ‘shamanic’ spirits that were accommodated by Buddhism, introduced from Tibet in the 16th and 17th centuries. So Endicott (2012: 104) writes: Buddhism in Mongolia had gradually over the centuries accommodated the preexisting beliefs of the pastoral nomadic population – beliefs in a plethora of gods associated with nature. Absorbing elements of shamanist rituals, Buddhism also incorporated a spiritual reverence for the land that supported the herders’ way of life. This narrative reflects the dominant western scholarship on Mongolian religious practice, which, as Atwood (1995: 113; 2004: 414) points out, has continued to

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Figure 7.1 Aav Khad, Batnorov sum, Khentii province.

reproduce the 19th century paradigm established by the Buryat scholar Dorji Banzarov (1822–55). In this view, Atwood (1995: 113) notes, ‘shamanism could be explained as an independent growth formed out of the contact of a childlike people, the Mongols, with natural forces they could not fully understand… a universal stage of religion that any nomadic people must adopt naturally.’ This perspective reflected the evolutionism of 19th century social science, with its fascination with the primitive and notional stages of human progress. Banzarov’s ‘privileging of the past over the present, of genesis over development, is so pervasive and unconscious that “the Mongols” seem to refer far more to the denizens of the 13th century empire than to any of his contemporaries’ (Atwood 1996: 114). This concern with a sort of ‘cultural archaeology’ was a central feature of anthropology as it emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. In his work Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its objectFabian (2014 [1983]) charts the pervasiveness of what he terms ‘allochronic discourse’, which, by denying the

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 149 coevalness of the object of study, constructs the ‘other’ in particular ways. So, for example, even in some recent scholarship, the ‘folklore’ and contemporary ‘worldviews of the local nomadic population’ are represented as resources for the interpretation of sacred ancestral landscape, specifically Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds and other stone monuments in the Eastern Altai mountains (Dal Zovo 2015). Such treatments imply a relatively static cosmology in which ‘landscape is conceived as an animated whole’ from the Late Prehistoric age until today (Dal Zovo 2018). Much of the 20th century scholarship on Mongolia, both within Mongolia and internationally, followed in Banzarov’s footsteps;1 implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, the primary object of inquiry was taken to be a distinctive ‘Mongolian culture’ that was most fully expressed in the past, before such extraneous influences as Tibetan Buddhism, ‘Chinese’ Qing administration, and, more recently, the Soviet-style state (see, e.g. Jagchid and Hyer 1979).2 This narrative reflected the projects of modernist nation-building that the new elites were engaged with. As Atwood (1996: 116) puts it, ‘the secular and anticlerical communities in… native Mongol areas developed a body of scholarship that deliberately minimized the role of Buddhism and sought in the unsullied spirit of the folk a tradition antipathetic to the feudal Buddhist church’. Following Banzarov, Mongolian ‘folk religion’ was taken to be a composite form in which Buddhist elements, introduced from Tibet, formed a sort of veneer over the older and more authentically Mongolian beliefs of ‘shamanism’, a subject that has attracted an enormous amount of anthropological attention. Unless they had unmistakably Tibetan Buddhist origins, ritual practices were taken to be remnants of a presumed shamanic folk religion of the past. So, for example, Endicott (2012: 104) follows the standard reading when she writes: ‘Perhaps the most obvious example of the adoption of a preexisting ritual by Mongolian Buddhism was the spirit-worship at ovoo shrines’.3

Ovoo ceremonial and the lords of the land In most parts of Mongolia, the ovoo4 (the word literally means a ‘pile’ or ‘heap’) takes the form of a stone cairn topped with branches and poles, festooned with fluttering khii mor’ (‘wind horse’) prayer flags and khadag scarves.5 The most elaborate, often located on prominent hills and mountains, have constructed stone bases several meters across, with rows of smaller ‘supporting’ cairns around them. The humblest are simple piles of rocks, often found at the sides of tracks. In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, the seasonal ceremonies carried out at ovoos were important public events, conducted on auspicious days by religious and secular authorities and sometimes by commoner households. These rites were directed towards the savdag,6 the spiritual lords or ‘owners’ of the local territory, and the luus,7 the dragon spirits or naga of Buddhist cosmology. These are often collectively referred to as the gazaryn ezed the lords or masters of the land who govern conditions in each locality, particularly rain.8 The ritual engagement of these local deities was an important function of political administration in the

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Figure 7.2 An ovoo ceremony presided over by the Panchan Lama (seated in tent); West Sünid Banner, summer 1931. Photo: Owen Lattimore © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2010.5.35905.

pre-revolutionary period. The Qing emperor had been, after all, considered a bodhisattva, and in the Bogd Khaan period (1911–24), the head of state was the Jebsundamba Khutugtu the ‘living Buddha’ of Urga. In addition to the ceremonies carried out by temples and monasteries, rites were also conducted by the administrative units of the state, particularly the most fundamental division of government, the khoshuu (‘banner’) principality (Figure 7.2). The grandest of these ceremonies were the rites carried out for the most important sacred mountains, and the Qing and Bogd Khaan regimes went to great lengths to engage these local deities in the projects of imperial and aristocratic Buddhist rulership. The highest-ranking mountains deities held official aristocratic ranks and had the corresponding salary paid to them from the Imperial treasury.9 They were honoured with ovoo ceremonies in spring and autumn, attended by officials of the highest rank. They also owned large numbers of livestock, herded by commoner families allocated to them for the upkeep of their ceremonies, which were immensely costly events.10 The political and the spiritual were entirely commensurate categories that could interact directly. Officials could, and sometimes did, hold local deities responsible for their behaviour. The senior Qing resident official in Urga (present-day Ulaanbaatar) was apparently furious to be caught in a heavy storm when conducting rites at the nearby Bogd Uul sacred mountain. He responded by whipping and depositing fetters on its ovoo by way of punishment and later fined the deity by confiscating its horse herd (Zhambal 1997: 16). Ovoo ceremonial,

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 151 and the wider sacred landscape it referenced, was cosmopolitical, then, in the sense that de la Cadena used the term in her 2010 work, since local deities were included in the pre-revolutionary political arena, and indeed in the structures and processes of the state. Relations with the ‘lords of the land’ were simultaneously cosmological and political, and the rites concerned reflected both these wider orders. In the 20th century, however, the Soviet-backed Mongolian People’s Republic targeted and destroyed the pre-revolutionary Buddhist religious establishment in the 1930s. Ovoo ceremonial all but vanished – the grand public rituals of the past were forbidden, and rites, if they were performed at all, had to be done in private. As a physical structure, however, the ovoo survived the Stalinist anti-religious campaigns somewhat better than the temples and monastic buildings that were largely destroyed at that time. The humbler ovoo either endured or quietly returned to the landscape in the state socialist period, along with the habit of travellers circling wayside ovoos and adding a stone to it as they passed.11 In the late 1980s, the era of Soviet glasnost and perestroika, the state began to sponsor campaigns of national ‘cultural revival’ which accelerated after the ‘Democratic Revolution’ of 1990, including a relaunched monastic Buddhist establishment and a revival of ovoo ceremonial. Offerings were left at ovoos once more, including sweets, money, tea and the heads of livestock, particularly valued horses to help gain them a good reincarnation. In the pre-revolutionary period, major public events, including ovoo ceremonies, were often accompanied by sporting contests (naadam) of horse racing, wrestling and (less commonly) archery. The socialist state had retained these sporting events as celebrations of national culture, held (literally) under the red flag in the sum districts and aimag provinces in the summer, with central national games in July. These sporting events had become a well-established part of public culture and in the 1990s, ovoo ceremonies began to be re-attached to them. In addition, groups of neighbours and relatives began to sponsor their own ovoo ceremonies with attendant games.12 Regular ovoo ceremonies have also been instituted as national rituals at a number of mountains recognized as sacred in the pre-revolutionary era.13 These have become rites of national exaltation attended by Mongolian President as Head of State and the abbot of Gandan Monastery in Ulaanbaatar, flown in by helicopter, if need be, to take part. Symbols of state are as prominent as the Buddhist imagery at these events, including national and provincial flags and new regalia inspired by the Chinggisid empire. This forms part of a genre of state ceremony devised in the 1990s to promote a distinctive national brand of public culture, including costumes and props such as presidential regalia, ceremonial honour guard uniforms and the white and black standards of the state (the tsagaan and khar süld), one or both of which may be brought from Ulaanbaatar for the sacred mountain ceremonies. The events as a whole are not seen as exclusively Buddhist. Following the Banzarovian script of nationalist history, reference is made to early Mongol worship of Tenger (‘heaven’), and additional rituals have been devised for these events, such as the shooting of the ‘great bow of state’ (the töriin ikh num), another recently devised national symbol, which hark back to the pre-Buddhist, imperial past (Sneath 2014).

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In the contemporary era, then, ovoo ceremonial is again cosmopolitical, just as it was in the pre-revolutionary one. But the political and cosmological orders that are referenced in the rites have been radically transformed. Today the ovoo finds its place within a category of ‘national tradition’ in an overwhelmingly modernist and nationalist public culture. Contemporary cosmopolitics is thoroughly entangled with notions of indigeneity and national heritage. Furthermore, contemporary Mongolian cosmopolitical is not a single shared register. Attitudes towards spiritual entities vary between non-religious, Buddhist, ‘shamanist’, and various eclectic personal perspectives. Different constituencies may regard the political sphere as including or excluding spiritual entities. So contemporary cosmopolitics includes a range of disputed understandings of external reality, from those that accept the agency and efficacy of spiritual beings to those that deny their existence (Figure 7.3). The dominant understanding of the ovoo, however, views it in terms of Banzarovian continuity and antiquity. Its rituals are as a means of honouring shamanistic spirits, the gazaryn ezed ‘lords of the land’, that have inhabited the Mongolian landscape from ancient times to the present day, worshipped as part of a cultural engagement with the landscape based upon an equally ancient nomadic life-world. Despite Buddhist appropriation and Communist interruption, this

Figure 7.3 Members of the State Honour Guard bring sacred images to the ovoo ceremony at Mount Altan Khökhii, attended by President Elbegdorj, July 2009. The black standard of state (khar süld) and national and provincial flags can be seen alongside the ovoo.

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 153 cosmological engagement has survived in the folk practices of rural Mongolia, to be revived in an era of newly-found cultural self-confidence. The more closely one examines this account, however, the more problematic it becomes. Firstly, its allochronic reasoning has become suspect in the face of critiques of evolutionism (Fabian 2004 [1983]; Kuper 2017) and anthropological disquiet with continuity thinking (Robbins 2007; Holbraad et al. 2019). Secondly, as we shall see, the evidence suggests that the ovoo spread with Buddhism, rather than pre-dating it as a ‘shamanistic’ practice. Thirdly, understandings of, and relations with, the gazaryn ezed ‘land master’ spirits appear to have been purposefully transformed in ways that reflect particular historical moments and processes.

Nativizing Mongolian Buddhism: the Third Mergen Diyanchi Gegeen’s rites for local deities One of the most influential figures in the popularization of Buddhism in Mongolia was the Third Mergen Gegeen. Born in 1717, Luvsandambijaltsan, the third incarnation of the Mergen Diyanchi lineage of ‘Living Buddha’ incarnate lamas of the Urad region of Inner Mongolia, was one of the most prolific writers of 18th century Mongolia. His written works were block-printed and widely circulated in the 18th century and range from liturgical texts for monastic and lay ceremonies to popular songs, didactic poetry and historical chronicle. The most remarkable feature of the Third Mergen Gegeen’s work, however, was that it was written in Mongolian rather than Tibetan, the dominant liturgical language of the period. This work was part of a project to institutionalize a comprehensive set of Mongolian-language Buddhist rites (Ujeed 2015: 102–3), and the texts he authored have long been a key source for scholars studying the history of religion in Mongolia (Banzarov 1981 [1846]; Heissig 1980; Bawden 1958; Humphrey and Ujeed 2013). His writings include numerous ritual texts devoted to local deities, the spiritual masters of the land and water, including the sacred mountain Muna Khan and the Yellow River. In these liturgies, the ovoo functions as a dwelling-place for the local deities where they could be worshipped, and there are specific texts describing how to properly construct ovoos and conduct rituals at them (Ujeed 2020: 227). The Third Mergen Gegeen’s work has been largely read in Banzarovian terms as an attempt to assimilate existing ‘shamanistic’ content into Buddhist form. Since many of the rituals concern the local deities of features of the Mongolian landscape, the argument goes, these must have been ancient, animist and shamanic spirits that local people were accustomed to worshipping at ovoos. To help win over their new converts, lamas like the Mergen Gegeen reluctantly dressed the old deities and their ceremonies in new Buddhist clothing, creating a class of lay religious practice or ‘folk religion’ that, although ostensibly Buddhist, retained much of the ancient shamanistic content intact (Banzarov 1981 [1846]: 54; Rintchen 1955: 8–14; Bawden 1968b: 104; Heissig 1980: 105; Jagchid and Hyer 1979: 174; Pürev 1998: 80).

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But this interpretation has become increasingly problematic. Bawden, for example, although reluctant to break entirely with this orthodoxy, noted that Banzarov misinterpreted the Third Mergen Gegeen’s text to suggest he considered ovoo rituals to be shameful and so, by implication, non-Buddhist. In fact, the text indicates nothing of the sort (in the mistranslated passage, the author was merely excusing himself for being unable to cite older scriptures on the subject), and the evidence suggests that the ovoo was considered to be perfectly Buddhist by the monastic clergy (Bawden 1958: 27–8; Banzarov 1981 [1846]: 68). In his careful, historically situated analysis, Atwood (1996) debunks the Banzarovian orthodoxy that presents ovoo ceremonies and other popular rites such as the Fire Ritual (galyn tahkliga), as prime examples of shamanistic practices taken over by a Buddhist establishment. As Atwood (1996: 130) points out, although the historical sources describe the suppression of shamans and destruction of their ritual objects, there is no record of ovoo sacrifices or fire rituals or anything to associate them with shamanism.14 In fact, the evidence suggests that the ovoo appeared after the 16th century popularization of Buddhism.15 The earliest known Mongolian text detailing the construction of an ovoo dates from the 17th century and describes the practice in entirely Buddhist terms (Erdenetuya 2002; Sneath 2007). It makes no mention of preexisting ‘shamanic’ sites or rites. The same can be said for the Third Mergen Gegeen’s 18th century text on the establishment of ovoos, which appeared entirely Buddhist and was explicitly written in response to requests from the devout. Indeed, the construction of new ovoos was considered a meritorious Buddhist act and continued throughout the Qing era, often sponsored by noble donors keen to demonstrate their devotion.16 Furthermore, the ovoo is almost identical to the la btsas ritual cairn of Tibet, also associated with sacred mountains, where lamas perform similar ceremonies for the same classes of local deities.17 The ovoo, then, almost certainly spread throughout Mongolia as part of a set of Buddhist practices. Far from representing continuity, Atwood shows that the work of the Third Mergen Gegeen reveals cosmological innovation and reformation. The 16th century spread of Buddhism in Mongolia had been marked by an intense intolerance of the pre-existing ritual specialists and their practices (Elverskog 2003: 158–9; Kollmar-Paulenz 2012: 93). As Atwood (1996: 136) notes, without the speculative continuities imagined by Banzarov, all the evidence points to a comprehensive replacement of earlier ‘shamanistic’ specialists and practices by Buddhism in the 16th and early 17th centuries. There is no evidence that the old deities were sworn to the service of the Buddha; indeed, they appear to have been treated as entirely false, their images were burned and their worship forbidden. But by the time the Third Mergen Gegen was compiling his Mongolian-language liturgies, over a century later, there was growing concern in sections of the Buddhist elite at the ongoing Tibetanization of Mongolian Buddhism (Humphrey and Ujeed 2013: 77). Despite the efforts of some leading figures such as Zaya Bandida (1599–62) and the Second Neichi Toin (1671–703), the enormous Buddhist establishment in Mongolia had become increasingly oriented towards Tibet.

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 155 Mongolian translators could not keep up with the flow of new tantric rituals from Tibet and many texts were available only in Tibetan. Mongolian monks commonly went to study in the monasteries of Lhasa, and increasingly they tended to stay there. The writings of lama scholars such as the Third Mergen Gegeen reflects a nativizing movement at the highest levels of the monastic establishment and the religious politics of the Qing era. This work reconstructed Buddhism’s relation to Mongolia, not only by providing a native-language liturgy but through a retelling of the narrative of sacred landscape (Atwood 1996: 137). Rather than denied as false, deities conceived of as local to the landscape of Mongolia were named and venerated, but they were recast in a particular mould – as fierce land-masters (Tibetan sa bdag, Mongolian savdag), recruited to the service of Buddhism. This account followed the narrative of sacred landscape in Tibet, where the 8th century Buddhist master Padmasambhava had travelled from India to subdue the native deities and demons, forcing them to take oaths to defend Buddhism.18 So although the script was Tibetan, the characters were decidedly Mongolian; the imperial conqueror Chinggis Khan was identified as an incarnation of the chief of the dragon-spirits (luu), for example, and the sacred mountain and river deities named in the texts were those of the Mergen Gegeen’s homeland. The Third Mergen Gegeen’s rites for local deities reveal the second phase of a double transformation in the mediation between the spirituality of the Mongolian landscape and its human inhabitants; firstly, an expurgation of native spirits followed, eventually, by a Tibetan-style population of the landscape with oath-bound protectors of the faith, propitiated by new rituals and objects such as the ovoo and its ceremonies. Rather than the innate conservatism of Banzarov’s archaic folk religion, we see historical processes of active and agentive cosmo-political innovation. The Third Mergen Gegeen can be seen, as Humphrey (2019: 396) describes him, as a ‘theoretical agent rather than a passive subject of culture’. Here our point of analytical intervention is not an exploration of the powers of the landscape themselves but in contextualizing the Third Mergen Gegen’s position as he wrote and widely circulated rituals that reconceptualized the role of local deities in Buddhist Mongolia. It provides a historical example of the politics of humans mediating the recruitment of the natural environment into public discourse, in this case via ritual texts. But, as we shall see, cosmological innovation is not confined to the written past or the work of ecclesiastical authorities; it is also apparent in personal practices of sacred landscape in contemporary Mongolia.

Contemporary cosmological construction at Aav Khad After worship at Aav Khad, Ganaa, her husband, two children and I (Elizabeth) stopped in Batnorov district (sum) to ask more about the sacred rock. Traversing one of the few main dirt roads in town, Ganaa called out to an elderly man adjacent to his wooden home. He approached the tired wooden fence separating his homestead from the dusty road. I asked where we might be able to find out more about Aav Khad. Resting his forearms on the wooden rail, he succinctly

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responded: ‘Probably his children know’. Confused as to the children of whom, I paused. Ganaa jumped in: ‘Which person is there?’ Galt. Since the 80s it has been called Father Rock. It is newly established. Who built it? A person named Sharavsambüü worshipped this rock, and was living there and then died. So his monument was raised. I heard that he was living here around 1970, then it [the stupa adjacent to Father Rock] was raised after the market economy began.19 For what purpose do people worship there? I asked. Sharavsambüü asked his children to ‘please go and worship’ (shütej yavaarai) the stone after he died. [His children said] ‘Our father fed us here and died here. Since that time we were living here and we became rich. Our father was living in this homeland’, and they worshipped this rock and put some khadags there and were going on like this. Only then did it become a shrine (shüteen).20 Sharavsambüü worked in Norovlin district for twenty years as a teacher and, upon retirement, moved to Batnorov district and began the rock worship, the man explained. After stating that he himself was local – born and raised in Batnorov – the man assured us that, ‘a long time ago, there was nothing inherited there. People in this homeland do not worship it [this rock], just this one family. There is no history from long ago’.21 It is written that ‘if we worship our father’s rock, then we will become rich quickly’. [But] I haven’t seen it. There are some sutras and so on there. One ovoo is erected there. Drivers and so on, when they go here and there, they worship that rock, people say. […] The rock doesn’t influence anything, it doesn’t heal or anything. When a person worships this rock, I haven’t heard of any important or useful things [happening].22 This example illustrates not only how reverence for a rock-shrine of family importance can take on legendary status during a time marked by mass deification of natural landmarks but how certain individuals have been responsible for the making of cosmologies there. It also demonstrates another crucial point, that in Mongolia, as elsewhere, the estimation of efficacy, or even existence, of local deities varies from person to person and from one social circle to the next. Many Mongolians are, to some degree, sceptical of accounts of spiritual powers, and as this case illustrates, the claims of some are not necessarily recognized by others.23

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 157 Sharavsambüü’s founding of a nature-based shrine occurred in Perestroika-era Mongolia when the revitalization of national ‘traditions’ that had been banned and its practitioners persecuted a few decades earlier began to be reclaimed and circulated as culturally- and nationally-defining features. At a time of reawakening of Mongolian ‘culture’, Sharavsambüü installed himself as master of this rock formation, regardless of whether or not there was a spirit master there before him, and regardless of the presence of other landscape-based spirits (e.g. lus, savdag) that in the standard Buddhist establishment discourse would likely have been present too. In the view of the local man with whom we spoke, Sharavsambüü’s positioning of himself as spirit owner of Aav Khad represented an expedient way for his children to remember him after he was gone and for them to financially benefit from his location within the narrative of a sacred landscape.

Conclusion: from Indigenous ontology to historical mediation In these accounts, we see cosmology as creation; that is, the cosmological as capable of being authored in historical time. Both the Third Mergen Gegeen and Sharavsambüü revealed novel narratives of sacred landscapes that came to frame the understandings of others within the milieu of their times. Rather than a stable and distinctive interpretive grid, the cosmological appears as a field of activity; wherever we might seek to locate agency for its production, it frequently, perhaps necessarily, has political implications. If one recognizes the cosmological to be the product of historical process, it makes little sense to think of a single Mongolian cosmology. Notwithstanding certain common elements, the cosmology of the Third Mergeen Gegeen was not the same as that of schoolteacher Sharavsambüü, who, however much he may have doubted or rejected it, was undoubtedly familiar with the cosmology of Soviet-style modernism. Rather than integrated cultural systems, we see cosmological elements understood contextually, within broader public cultures; that is, representations that emerged as part of historical processes within varied and multiple publics. Similarly, since many elements of sacred landscape were introduced from Tibet in a pre-nationalist era, the notion of an indigenous and essentially Mongolian cosmology seems unsustainable. Rather we find historically changing cosmological schemes amongst people in Mongolia, a series of open fields within and between which elements may circulate. Textual sources provide a crucial perspective in understanding cosmologies as dynamic. By drawing from historical sources, we can understand how dramatically ovoo ceremonies and lords of the land have changed from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries to the present. In comparing historical texts on ovoo ceremonies with contemporary examples, we find important and sometimes drastic differences. Drawing from textual sources also reveals how a historical figure – in our example Mergen Diyanchi – can re-write different kinds of relations between Buddhist establishment and local deities to suit their political and religious interests.

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Recognizing cosmologies as, in effect, open and dynamic systems forces us to look again at notions such as ‘indigenous cosmology’ or ‘shamanic ontology’. Indeed, the claims for the existence of integrated ‘animist’ or ‘shamanic’ ontologies can hardly be accepted without reflection. Self-conscious animists may be hard to find in Mongolia, but there are many who might describe themselves as shamanists. However, their cosmological accounts vary from schemes resembling the Third Mergen Gegeen’s, to those of Banzarov, to those of new-age spiritualists.24 Furthermore, studies of the history of ‘shamanism’ in Mongolia has shown how little evidence there is for received understandings of the term. Kollmar-Paulenz (2012), for example, has convincingly critiqued the orthodoxy that Buddhism replaced ‘shamanism’ as a pre-existing Mongolian religion, arguing that while contemporary texts frequently include terms for male and female ritual specialists that can be translated as ‘shamans’ (böö and udgan), the phrases that indicate ‘shaman-ism’ as religious faith or distinctive cosmology (e.g. khar shashin ‘black teachings’ and böö mörgöl ‘shaman-veneration’) appear much later, as a retrospective reification of imagined doctrinal rivals by the monastic establishment (see also Bumochir 2014). Within what has been called the anthropology of ontology, notions of animism and shamanism are routinely presented as radical ontological alternatives to Western ‘Cartesian dualism’ (e.g. Ingold 2011; da Col and Graeber 2011). In this view, as Scott (2013: 860–4) notes, ‘Western’ scientific and modernist thought has eliminated wonder and insists upon regarding things and concepts as discrete entities. In contrast, the alternative ‘indigenous ontologies’ understand things as relations and conceive of being not as static but in the continuous flux of transformational becoming.25 The essence of shamanism is presented as the lack of stable form, an ‘ontology of transition’, in constant flux and, in the case of Mongolia, homologous to the chaotic political economy that emerged post-1990 (Pedersen 2011). Others have claimed that the shamanistic ability to shift between perspectives of humans, animals and things (e.g. Viveiros de Castro 2009) constitutes a technique that, when adopted, allows one to grasp different ways of dwelling; to see ‘our otherness [that] is always dwelling within us’ (Hage 2012: 289). This reification of worldview allows for grand conceptual schemes and striking dichotomies, but it relies upon a certain essentialism and is decidedly ahistorical. Recruiting animism, shamanism, and other supposed relationalisms to help keep wonder open for the anthropology of ontology can lead to scholarship that casts contemporary Mongolians as living in a cosmological realm typically associated with a timeless, ancient past. For example, Fijn (2018: 73) argues that although distinct in some ways, human-dog relations among Mongolians and the Yolngu of Australia share certain similarities based on the fact that in both contexts, ‘humans and nonhumans roam freely, rarely bounded by fences’ and that ‘neither group imagines categorical boundaries between the domestic and the wild, or culture and nature’. In this account, the ‘indigenous cosmology’ of Mongolian herders is a form of animism, just as that of the Yolngu is a form of totemism (Fijn 2018: 91).

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 159 Banzarov sifted through the Buddhist texts for ‘shamanic’ elements lurking beneath the Lamaist formulas, but in retrospect, these seem to be largely his own constructions. The allochronic legacy of evolutionist anthropology appears in hunting through contemporary acts and utterances for survivals of archaic worldviews. The quest for cosmological alterity and the denial of coevalness also has methodological implications. As Fabian (1983) notes, such temporal distancing between anthropologist and interlocutor can take place at each instance of inscription during fieldwork. Clifford (1990: 56) notes that anthropologists’ interests and assumptions influence what they choose to record in the field: ‘If one perceives an event – a performance or ritual – as a traditional survival, one may “naturally” exclude from one’s data the modern, commercial, or evangelical forces that are everywhere in the culture but “peripheral” to the event’. In the case of Mongolia, the Banzarovian legacy of regional scholarship has promoted an essentialized, exoticist notion of Mongolian culture that is hard to shake off, even during fieldwork. For example, during Elizabeth’s visit to Avrga Toson arshaan mentioned above, Khaliunaa’s explication for drowning – that most Mongolians do not know how to swim – was not a detail that particularly stood out when taking field notes, or indeed upon reflection. Much more memorable and exciting to record were rumours circulating in Ulaanbaatar of angered and deadly spirit-masters. Whilst Khaliunaa may not have mentioned the masters of the dangerous lake for fear of inciting them, she may just as well not have done so because they did not feature in why she finds the lake dangerous. But, wonder-inducing or not, such prosaic explanations must be taken into account, for without them, anthropologists risk editing our data into a particular shape – even at the point of inscription. In place of the primitivist picture of timeless Mongolian cosmology, this historicist perspective reveals cosmopolitics as a dynamic field, historically contingent and malleable in ways that can be meaningfully related to the political milieu and the interests of those involved. This permits us to examine how sacred landscape might come to be authoured as elements of a wider cosmology. But in light of new materialist scholarship that has convincingly disrupted the convention of attributing agency only to human beings, we leave open the question of how we might ultimately ascribe cosmological agency and authorship; be that to human individuals, spiritual powers, reincarnated enlightened beings or some Latourian assemblage. The study of cosmological as historical process points towards other analytical avenues. Following Appadurai (2015), we consider the processes and sites of mediation as central and constitutive in themselves.26 For Appadurai (2015: 224), ‘religion is always a tricky effort to read the invisible out of the visible, the tangible, or the sensible’. Taking place, as it does, within fields of power relations, this mediation is a normative, ideological and therefore a political process; ‘the way signs are seen as mediators between the visible and invisible orders is itself a product of different semiotic ideologies’ (Ibid.). Appadurai is at pains to point out that his conception of mediation is not a second-order interpretation of a pre-existing external material reality; rather, mediation and materiality constitute each other. ‘Mediation, as an operation or embodied practice, produces materiality as the effect

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of its operations […] But this materiality does not preexist mediation, any more than speech preexists language’ (Appadurai 2015: 224–5). The mediation productive of sacred landscapes in Mongolia can be seen as a historical cosmopolitical process depending on diverse parties, but also upon interests, ideology and power relations. ‘Whatever the ideology of matter and mediation that defines a particular cosmology, it is in and through some such ideology that matter comes to matter’ (Appadurai 2015: 233–4). As anthropologists, we may not be in a position to describe the powers and consciousnesses of sacred landscapes as they might do themselves. Rather, we examine processes of mediation and the space in contemporary discourse that allows for humans to bring non-humans into political realms. The empowering move – for humans – is to engage with those discourses to achieve given aims with respect to the emplaced entities they are representing, relating to, or speaking for. Our position does not imply any privileged knowledge of the entities themselves and certainly does not deny their existence. But it seems to us that, as researchers in the social sciences, we are not methodologically well-equipped to acquire and present the experience of a cosmopolitical ‘pluriverse’ directly. What is left for us to explore, as honestly as we can, are the sets of practices and discourses by which humans attempt to mediate the real.

Notes 1 Banzarov’s view of ovoo ritual as a remnant of shamanism became the standard interpretation. Prejevalsky (1876: 283), for example, describes the ‘sacred cairn of the lamas, probably a relic of their primeval superstitions…’ 2 In their account of Mongolia’s society and culture, Jagchid and Hyer continually reference historical periods from the Xiongnu empire of the third century BCE to the 1940s, with a particular emphasis on the 13th century Chinggisid period. For their discussion of religion in these terms see Jagchid and Hyer (1979: 168–77). 3 This reflects the dominant reading. Jagchid and Hyer (1979: 168) go so far as to describe the ovoo as a ‘shamanistic shrine’. 4 Ovoo is the standard transcription of the Cyrillic spelling of the word used in contemporary Mongolia; other spellings include oboo, obo and obuγ-a, reflecting other pronunciations and transcription from classical Mongolian script. 5 In some places, typically wooded regions, ovoos are made of wood or have a rough cone of poles and branches around a stone core, with an opening to the south. 6 The Mongolian form of the Tibetan term sa bdag, meaning ‘land lord/master’. 7 The term is sometimes used inclusively to refer to local deities and spirits (Mönkhsaikhan 2004: 52). 8 In pre-revolutionary texts describing ovoo ceremonies, these were also commonly collectively referred to as gajar usun-u ejed (lords of the earth and water) or qan gajar usun (earth and water kings) (Tatar 1976: 14). 9 Bawden (1968a: 102); Tatar (1976: 11). 10 See Wallace (2015: 225–6). 11 The Mongolian scholar Tsendiin Damdinsüren noted that in the late 1950s, most people tolerated the ovoo and it was not generally considered an obstacle to socialism (Bawden 1968a: 179). 12 See, for example, Lindskog (2016: 2–6). 13 At the time of writing, rites have been instituted at ten ‘state ceremony mountains’ töriin takhilgatai uul across the country, each one carried out every four years or so.

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 161 14 Notions of sacred mountains certainly pre-date the 16th century, indeed they predate the Mongolian Empire. The Kitans of the Liao state, which occupied much of what is now Mongolia from the 10th to the 12th centuries, had a number of holy mountains (Franke 1990: 406); but the Liao also sponsored Buddhism, so it is misleading, perhaps, to label this ‘pre-Buddhist’. The 13th century text Secret History of the Mongols suggests that at least one mountain (Burkhan Khaldun) was an object of worship in 12th century Mongolia, although the only ceremony described appears to be an entirely personal one and does not resemble later rituals (see Cleaves 1982: 37; de Rachewiltz 2004: 33). This early source also includes mention of spiritual ‘lords of the earth and water’ (Pelliot 1949: 112). However, those mentioned were located outside Mongolia and there is no indication as to what they were like except that they could cause severe illness and death. Buddhism had a presence in the Mongol court at that time, so, again, it is not clear if this reference can be considered definitively ‘pre-Buddhist’. 15 Bawden (1958: 23) notes, for example, that the word itself does not appear in Mongolian texts with any religious connotations until after the Yuan period. See also Bawden 1968b: 104, where he points out that materials described as ‘shamanist’ by Rintchen (1975) appear to be Buddhist. 16 See Bawden (1968a: 84). The lama Boryn Zhambal who was born in 1882, for example, recalled that when he was in his twenties, all of the thirty aimags (divisions) of lamas in the capital Khüree constructed oboos and instituted rites for them. This was clearly a new development and one that many older lamas disapproved of (Zhambal 1997: 22). And in the pre-revolutionary period, the Daurs of the Nonni River region apparently selected sites and ‘made new oboos every year’ (Humphrey 1996: 148). See also Pozdneyev (1971 [1892]: 101). 17 Karmay (2000: 388); Berounsky (2009: 33–8). 18 This narrative was not unique to the Third Mergen Gegeen; similar representations appear in other monastic accounts (see, for example, accounts of the Jebsundamba Khutugtu receiving the fealty of masters of the land in Bawden [1961: 17, 59–60]). 19 Khüükhed ni medekh bailgui. 80aad onoos aav had gej nerledeg bolson. Saykhan baiguulsan yum daa. Sharavsambüü gedeg khün ter khadiig shüteed tend baij baigaad nas barsan yum. Tegeed khöshöög ni bosgoson yum gene lee. 70 kheden ond manai end amidarch baigaad zakh zeel ongorsnii daraagaar bosgoson gedeg. 20 Manai etseg maani end bidniig ösgöj baigaad end nas barsan tegeed ternees khoish bidnüüd end baij baigaad bayjsan yum. Ene manai aaviin nutaglaj baisan nutag yum geed, tegeed eniig shüteed khadag yavdag bolgood tegeed l baisan yum gene lee. […] Teged l shüteen bolson doo. 21 Deer üyes udam ugsaatai yum gej baikhgüi. Yagaad gekhed ene nutgiin ülsüüd shütdeggüi, zügeer l neg ail baidag baisan. Deer üyiin tüükh baikhgüi. 22 Aaviin mini khadand mörgöj baival bid doroo l byajij baikh bolno gej bichsen baina gene lee. Bi kharaa ch ügüi. Nom mom enter baina lee. Bas tendee neg ovoo bosgoson baidag. Jolooch nar enter naashaa tsaashaa yavakhdaa ter khadand mörgölöö gej baidag.[…] Khadand nölöölööd baikh yum baikhgüi. Emchilgee enter baikhgüi. Ter khadiig shütej baikhad tiim gavyatai, tiim yumand tustai gej bi duulaagüi ee. 23 Many of those who took part in the wave of illegal (‘ninja’) gold mining that mushroomed in the late 1990s, for example, were privately agnostic as to the existence of local deities who were said by others to be angered by tunnelling into the ground, see Munkherdene and Sneath (2018: 822). 24 In many ways, the current popularity of occultist thought and practice is informed by the occultism that circulated across the Soviet cultural region throughout the 20th century (Rosenthal 1997; Stephens 1997; Terbish 2017). Shamans and related spiritual practitioners commonly mobilize concepts such as bio energy (bio energi), telepathy, hypnosis (khovsdolt, gipnoz) and the ‘sixth sense’ (zurgaa dakhi medrekhüi). During a 2015 interview, one shaman interlocutor mentioned that he had recently won a national sixth sense

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competition that was aired on television. A different shaman interlocutor treats the heartmind (setgel) by hypnosis or ‘mind treatments’ (setgel zasal) in which he exchanges the patient’s bad thoughts for his good ones. 25 Scott (2013) notes that a common theme in the anthropology of ontology has been the idea that Western dualist thinkers need to learn how to discover wonderment and astonishment and that shamanism, animism and other ‘non-dualist modes of being’ offer intellectual resources to do so. According to Scott, the anthropology of ontology resembles a new kind of ‘religious study' since it critiques ‘Western’ scientific and modernist thought for shutting down wonder. Its advocates have recast the former wonder-based opposition between religion and science in terms of two distinct ontologies: one based on Cartesian dualism that stands for ‘Western’ modernity and the second as ‘non-dualists’. While the former considers things and concepts as discrete entities, the latter is said to understand things as relations and conceives of being not as static but in the continuous flux of transformational becoming (Scott 2013: 860–4). 26 In his critique of ANT, Appadurai (2015: 233) makes the point that Latour’s style of analysis ignores language as a social fact; it ‘reduces sociality to plumbing and thus replaces processes such as mediation, interpretation, and voicing with terms such as association, network, collection, and linkage’.

References Appadurai, A. 2015. Mediants, Materiality, Normativity. Public Culture 27(2), 221–37. Atwood, C. 1996. Buddhism and Popular Ritual in Mongolian Religion: A Reexamination of the Fire Cult. History of Religions 36(2), 112–39. Atwood, C. 2004. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. New York: Facts on File. Banzarov, D. 1981 [1846]. The Black Faith, or Shamanism among the Mongols. Mongolian Studies 7(1981–2), 53–91. Bawden, C.R. 1958. Two Mongol Texts Concerning Obo-Worship. Oriens Extremus 5(1), 3–41. Bawden, C.R. 1961. The Jebtsundamba Khutukhtus of Urga/text, translation and notes by C.R. Bawden. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Bawden, C.R. 1961. The Jebtsundamba Khutukhtus of Urga/text, translation and notes by C.R. Bawden. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Bawden, C.R. 1968a. The Modern History of Mongolia. London: Weidenfield and Nicolson. Bawden, C.R. 1968b. Mongol Notes: II. Some “Shamanist” Hunting Rituals from Mongolia. Central Asiatic Journal 12(2), 101–43. Berounsky, D. 2009. The Mountain Cult in North-Eastern Tibet and Its Relation to the Buddhist Reincarnated Masters. In: Tomasz Gacek and Jadwiga Pstrusinska (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth Conference of the European Society for Central Asian Studies. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bumochir, D. 2014. Institutionalization of Mongolian Shamanism: From Primitivism to Civilization. Asian Ethnicity 15(4), 473–91. Cleaves, F.W. (trans. and ed.). 1982. The Secret History of the Mongols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, J. 1990. Notes on (Field)notes. In: R. Sanjek (ed.), Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 46–70. Dal Zovo, C. 2015. Archaeology of a Sacred Mountain: Mounds, Water, Mobility and Cosmologies of Ikh Bogd Uul, Eastern Altai Mountains, Mongolia. Doctoral dissertation, Department of History, University of Santiago de Compostela. Dal Zovo, C. 2018. Ancient Funerary Mounds and Traditional Master Spirits of the

Knowing the lords of the land in Mongolia 163 Place: Animated Landscapes in the Mongolian Altai [Abstract]. European Association of Archaeologists Conference, 7 September 2019, Barcelona. de la Cadena, M. 2010. Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond Politics. Cultural Anthropology 25(2), 334–70. de la Cadena, M. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Elverskog, J. 2003. The Jewel Translucent Sū tra. Altan Khan and the Mongols in the Sixteenth Century. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Pub. Endicott, E. 2012. A History of Land Use in Mongolia: Thirteenth Century to the Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Erdenetuya, U. 2002. Ovoo üüdekhiin zan üil selt orshiv sudryn tukhai [Regarding a Sutra for the Establishment of a New Obo]. Ugsaatny Sudlal [Ethnology] 14(2), 1–5. Fabian, J. 2014 [1983]. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fijn, N. 2018. Dog Ears and Tails: Different Relational Ways of Being in Aboriginal Australia and Mongolia. In: H. Swanson, G. Ween, and M. Lien (eds.), Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations. Durham and London: Duke University Press, pp. 72–93. Ford, J., and D. Martinez. 2000. Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Ecosystem Science and Environmental Management. Ecological Applications 10(5), 1249–50. Gadgil, M., Berkes F., and Folke, C. 1993. Indigenous Knowledge for Biodiversity Conservation. Ambio 22, 151–6. Heissig, W. 1980. The Religions of Mongolia (G. Samuel, trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Holbraad, M., Kapferer B., and Sauma J.F.. 2019. Introduction: Critical Ruptures. In M. Holbraad, B. Kapferer, and J.F. Sauma (eds.), Ruptures: Anthropologies of Discontinuity in Times of Turmoil. London: UCL Press, pp. 1–26. Humphrey, C. (with U. Onon). 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power Among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Humphrey, C. 2019. Placing Self Amid Others: A Mongolian Technique of Comparison. In R. Gagné, S. Goldhill, and G. Lloyd (eds.), Regimes of Comparatism. Leiden/Boston: Brill, pp. 372–401. Humphrey, C., and Ujeed H. 2013. A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian Buddhism. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ingold, T. 2011. Against Space: Place, Movement, Knowledge. In: Being Alive: Essays on Movement, knowledge and Description. London: Routledge, pp. 145–55. Ingold, T., and Kurttila, T. 2000. Perceiving the Environment in Finnish Lapland. Body & Society 6(3-4), 183–96. Jagchid, S., and Hyer, P. 1979. Mongolia’s Culture and Society. Boulder: Westview Press. Karmay, S. 2000. A Comparative Study of the Yul lha Cult in Two Areas and Its Cosmological Aspects. In: S. Karmay and Y. Nagano (eds.), New Horizons in Bon Studies. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, pp. 383–94. Kollmar-Paulenz, K. 2012. The Invention of “Shamanism” in 18th Century Mongolian Elite Discourse. Rocznik Orientalistyczny, T. LXV, Z. 1, 90–106. Li, T.M. 2000. Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1), 149–79. Li, T.M. 2010. Indigeneity, Capitalism and the Management of Dispossession. Current Anthropology 51(3), 385–413.

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Lindskog, B.V. 2016. Ritual Offerings to Ovoos Among Nomadic Halh Herders of WestCentral Mongolia. Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 47, 1–20. Mönkhsaikhan, D. (ed.). 2004. Uul Ovoony San Takhilgyn Sudruud [Sutras for Mountain Oboo Ceremonies] Ulaanbaatar: ARC, World Bank, WWF Publication. Munkherdene, G., and Sneath, D. 2018. Enclosing the Gold Mining Commons of Mongolia: The Vanishing Ninja and the Development Project as Resource. Current Anthropology 59(6), 814–38. Niglio, O. 2018. Sacred Landscape for a Global Approach. Almatourism: Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development 9(8), 1–16. Pelliot, P. 1949. Histoire Secrète des Mongols: Restitution du texte Mongol et traduction française des chapitres I à VI. Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve. Pozdneyev, A.M. 1971 [1892]. Mongolia and the Mongols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pürev, O. 1998. Mongol Böögiin Shashin. Ulaanbaatar: Admon Press. de Rachewiltz, I. (trans. and ed.). 2004. The Secret History of the Mongols. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill. Rintchen, B. 1955. A propos du chamanisme mongol. Le culte de l’ongon Dayan degereki chez les Mogols. Khotougaites du Kossogol (About Mongolian Shamanism. The Worship of the Ongon Dayan Degereki Among the Mongol Khotgoits of Khövsgöl). Helsinki. Studia Orientalia XVIII 4: 8–16. Rintchen, B., 1975. Les materiuax pour l’etude chamanisme Mongol. 2-Textes Chamanistes Mongols. (Materials for the Study of Mongolian Shamanism: 2 Mongolian Shamanic Texts). Otto: Harrosswits-Wiesbaden. Robbins, J. 2007. Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity. Current Anthropology 48(1), 5–38. Rosenthal, B. 1997. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. New York: Cornell University Press. Sneath, D. 2007. Ritual Idioms and Spatial Orders: Comparing the Rites for Mongolian and Tibetan ‘Local Deities’. In U. Bulag and H. Diemberger (eds.), The Mongol-Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia. Leiden: Brill, pp. 135–58. Sneath, D. 2014. Nationalising Civilisational Resources: Sacred Mountains and Cosmopolitical Ritual in Mongolia. Asian Ethnicity 15(4), 458–72. Stephens, H. 1997. The Occult in Russia Today. In B.G. Rosenthal (ed.), The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, pp. 357–78. Tatar, M. 1976. Two Mongol Texts Concerning the Cult of the Mountains. Acta Orientalia 30(1), 1–58. Terbish, B. 2017. I Have My Own Spaceship: Folk Healers in Kalmykia, Russia. Inner Asia 20(1), 132–58. Ujeed, U. 2015. Establishment of the Mergen Tradition of Mongolian Buddhism. In: Vesna Wallace (ed.), Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 95–115. Ujeed, U. 2020. Ritual Texts by Mergen Gegeen. In: Vesna Wallace (ed.), Sources of Mongolian Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 226–51. Wallace, V. 2015. Buddhist Sacred Mountains, Auspicious Landscapes and Their Agency. In: Wallace (ed.), Buddhism in Mongolian History, Culture, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 221–42. Zhambal, B. 1997. Tales of an Old Lama (Tsendiin Damdinsüren, ed., Charles Bawden, trans.). Tring, UK: Institute of Buddhist Studies.

8

Speaking of mountain deities beyond the county border: postsocialist cosmopolitics and state territoriality in Inner Mongolia, China Thomas White University of Cambridge

Introduction ‘Have you noticed the bullet holes?’ Batbagan asked me. We were discussing the image of a camel that sits high on a cliff face in western Inner Mongolia, China. ‘It was shot at during the Cultural Revolution’. Once graced with a Buddhist monastery which coordinated its veneration, the camel was attacked, and the monastery destroyed, by zealous Red Guards during this period of upheaval (1966–76), as manifestations of the ‘Four Olds’, which Mao sought to expunge from Chinese society. Batbagan leaned in and whispered, with a wry smile, ‘those who shot at it died soon afterwards’. Today rituals once again take place at Bull Camel Mountain, and you need good binoculars to see the bullet holes from the foot of a cliff. Following Mao’s death, shifts in political winds meant that space opened up for the revival of certain cultural practices of minority nationalities, such as the Mongols (Sneath 2000). Positively valued conceptions of culture came to subsume practices that had been categorized negatively as ‘religion’ or ‘superstition’ (C. mixin) during the Cultural Revolution. Among the Naxi of Yunnan in southwestern, for example, the dongba ‘religion’ became ‘dongba culture’, which the anthropologist Emily Chao (1996: 210–1) describes as an ‘invention of tradition… aimed at bolstering Naxi ethnic identity and prestige’ in a way that was acceptable to the state. This chapter discusses a brief moment at Bull Camel Mountain in 2013 when the frictions involved in the subsumption of Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist practices of mountain veneration into local cultural heritage were made apparent. This happened when a Buddhist lama, in the course of a ritual he was conducting, criticized the attendant local officials for allowing mining in the mountains behind Bull Camel Mountain, in a speech that also admonished lay actors for their conduct of the ritual. I want to think of this as a fleeting instance of cosmopolitics, in which a particular sacred landscape and the other-than-humans that constitute it, which straddled the border between two administrative units of contemporary Inner Mongolia, became, tentatively, political. I choose to engage with the burgeoning DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-8

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literature on cosmopolitics (e.g. de la Cadena 2010; Sneath 2014; Blaser 2016) because thinking cosmopolitically draws our attention to the particular frictions encountered by projects of minority cultural revival in China, and by what I call the ‘regionalization’ of culture in contemporary Inner Mongolia, thereby demonstrating that contemporary state territoriality in China co-exists, sometimes awkwardly, with other ‘socionatural formations’ (de la Cadena 2010: 361). At the same time, a perspective from Inner Mongolia helps to highlight some of the lacunae of the existing literature on cosmopolitics, particularly the question of how other-thanhumans become political through the authoritative voices of human subjects. This requires us to attend to competing sources of authority within a community, and their complex relationship to the state. I thus argue for the need to avoid homogenizing a minority or indigenous community in opposition to the modern state. Blaser and de la Cadena acknowledge that ‘making public these kinds of other-than-humans is difficult for those who live with them’ (2018: 2). In the Chinese context, however, this is especially the case: the political forms of the (comparatively) liberal Americas, such as public demonstrations (de la Cadena 2010) and consultation meetings (Blaser 2016), are rarely available, and denunciation of ‘superstition’ (C. mixin), and suppression of ‘evil cults’ (C. xie jiao) (Makley 2018: 100), run parallel to the official celebration of certain circumscribed forms of cultural heritage. Inner Mongolia is a region that has witnessed intense ethnic violence and religious persecution within living memory; a region where one avoids speaking about ‘sensitive’ (C. mingan) topics in public; a region, like the nearby Qinghai described by Charlene Makley (2018: 14), where ‘[d]eferral and avoidance, not public avowal’ characterize daily life. How might a mountain deity be ‘made public’ in such a context?

Padmasambhava and the Haruuna Mountains The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in northern China is transected from east to west by a range of mountains that crosses many of its political subdivisions. These mountains are given various names in different parts of the region, including the Da Qing, Muna and Haruuna. As is the case with mountains across Inner Asia, they are host to a variety of sites of ritual significance, including numerous sacred cairns (M. oboo) and several significant Buddhist monasteries (Humphrey and Hürelbaatar 2013). Rich in mineral resources, these mountains have also been sites of intense mining activity, perhaps most notably at the Bayan Oboo mine north of Baotou, where the world’s largest rare earth deposits are found (Bulag 2010). In 2013 I conducted fieldwork at the western end of this mountain range, known locally as the Haruuna Mountains. These mountains straddle the border between two administrative subdivisions of Inner Mongolia: Alasha League and Bayannuur Municipality. The Alasha side of the border is especially rich in mineral resources, particularly iron, and in 2013 numerous small-scale privately-run mines were in operation. These mines,

Speaking of mountain deities 167 and the roads leading to them, had caused significant damage to local pastureland.1 Among Mongols in Alasha, as in other parts of the Mongolian world (High 2013), there is a strong taboo against digging up the earth. Those who do so risk angering local spirits (M. nebdag sabdag) and bringing upon themselves misfortunes such as illness. Mining in the Haruuna Mountains is particularly problematic since these mountains contain several sites of great significance within Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhist cosmology, particularly those situated in close proximity to the famous Monastery of the Caves (M. Aguin Süm). Once upon a time, the legend goes, the great Indian Buddhist saint Padmasambhava pursued an evil spirit (M. shulmus) into a cave in these mountains, where he finally managed to crush it under a huge stone, still visible inside the cave today. Other caves nearby are said to be the dwelling places of five female deities (dakini). In the late 18th century, the Monastery of the Caves was founded at the site. This institution is unusual in its associations with the Nyingma (or ‘Red Hat’) branch of Tibetan Buddhism (Charleux 2002). The Monastery of the Caves contains a prominent example of the womb caves found in other parts of the Tibetan cultural area (Charleux 2002; see also Humphrey this volume). On passing through a narrow cleft in the rock, pilgrims are said to be purified of their sins.2 The site itself is known as a particularly ‘fierce’ (M. dogshin) place. Locals tell of the grisly end of a bandit in the early 20th century who set out to plunder the monastery: on approaching it, blood started pouring out of his nose and mouth and he collapsed, dead. It is also said that those who took part in the ransacking of the monasteries during the Cultural Revolution died not long afterwards. The Monastery of the Cave’s subsidiary institutions, also in the Haruuna Mountains, just over 10 km to the south, included a monastery located next to a phallic rock formation known as the ‘Red Pagoda’ (M. Ulaan Subraga). In 2007 a temple at the foot of the Red Pagoda was rebuilt, thanks, it was said, to a large donation from a Han Chinese businessman with mining concerns nearby who felt obliged to make recompense for contravening the Mongolian taboo on digging up the earth. Locals said that he had become concerned after several others involved in mining in the mountains were afflicted with serious disease. The monastery at Bull Camel Mountain was another of the Monastery of the Cave’s subsidiaries. This mountain is also connected to the legend of Padmasambhava, who is said to have ridden a bull camel (M. buur) on his way to destroy the demon in the cave. The footprints of the bull camel are said to be still visible outside Padmasambhava’s Cave at the Monastery of the Caves, etched into a large rock by the mouth of the cave. After Padmasambhava had destroyed the demon, the bull camel was transmogrified into a dark imprint on the sheer cliff face of a nearby mountain. This image of a camel is said to change according to the season: in the winter, for example, a covering of rime makes it appear as if the camel is frothing at the mouth, as bull camels do in their winter

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rut. The image is even said to be able to indicate future weather events: if it takes on a particularly dark hue and its humps look flatter, locals fear a drought. Like the Monastery of the Caves, Bull Camel Mountain is also said to be particularly 'fierce'. There is a strong taboo against bringing bull camels in front of the mountain; doing so risks them becoming impotent or even wasting away.3 This is because the power of the mountain will ‘crush’ (M. darah) their ‘vitality’ (M. hii-mori).4 Many also hold the mountain responsible for the flourishing of camels in Alasha and for the speed of this region’s camels in particular, which are said to resemble the image of the camel on the cliff face, being dark and small in stature. It is also said that if a cow camel that has repeatedly miscarried is brought in front of the mountain when the camel on the cliff is rutting, it will be able to conceive successfully. As with the great Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Labrang in Gansu, described by Emily Yeh, the Monastery of the Caves and its branch monasteries ‘formed a patchwork of territories across the landscape whose allegiances and social identities were primarily centred around [the main temple]’ (2003: 510; see also Humphrey and Hürelbaatar 2013: 76). It was one of the eight main monasteries of Alasha (Charleux 2002). However, after the creation of Dengkou County in 1927 (Nasan Bayar 2000: 248), the Monastery of the Caves was no longer situated within the territory of Alasha, while the Red Pagoda and Bull Camel monasteries remained in the banner. This was part of a broader process of administrative reform, involving the replacement of Mongolian banners with Chinese counties, which was bound up with the arrival of waves of Han Chinese settlers in Inner Mongolia (Bulag 2002a). Today the monastery still lies in Dengkou County (now part of Bayannuur Municipality), an overwhelming Han Chinese agricultural administrative unit. As a county, Dengkou is marked within Inner Mongolia as a particularly Han Chinese space. It even includes a museum celebrating the ‘opening up’ of ‘wasteland’ (in other words, Mongolian pastureland) through land reclamation projects by the Production and Construction Corps (C. bingtuan) during the Cultural Revolution (see White 2016). One Mongol amateur historian from Dengkou, who had self-published a book on the Monastery of the Caves, told me that it was a great pity that it was no longer located in Alasha; had it been so, he said, it would long ago have been declared a world heritage site. As a county dominated by Han Chinese settlers, Dengkou does not afford the same avenues for projects of cultural revival as those enjoyed by Mongols in Alasha. Today Mongols in the region of Ulaan Els5, just across the border in Alasha, still attend the large annual ceremony at the Monastery of the Caves in Dengkou County (see Figure 8.1). This includes many of the Muslim Mongols who live in this region and who have their own mosques, but of whom some also attend Buddhist monasteries as well as oboo. They have also been actively involved in the revival of occasional rituals at Bull Camel Mountain (White 2021).6 However, some people in Ulaan Els admitted that their engagement with Bull Camel Mountain was more substantial than with the Monastery of the Caves; they did not donate livestock to the latter, for example, because, they

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Figure 8.1 Festival at the Monastery of the Caves.

said, ‘it’s not our place (M. manai gajar bish), it’s in Bayannuur’. So while locals do recognize a border-spanning sacred landscape, the official county (and now municipality) border also shapes how they engage with it.

Alasha camel culture In 2008, Mongol officials in Alasha succeeded in having ‘The Camel Husbandry Customs of the Alasha Mongols’ listed as part of China’s national intangible cultural heritage. Camels had once been a hallmark of Alasha’s remoteness and backwardness; their valorization in the form of camel culture must be understood as an attempt to defend the value of Mongol traditions of animal husbandry using concepts that were acceptable to the state, in the context of the ‘cultural heritage preservation fever’ (Harrell 2013) that gripped China in the reform era. Extensive animal husbandry, a key marker of Mongol identity in Inner Mongolia (Khan 1996), was under threat at the turn of the millennium, as the state began to implement strict environmental policies to tackle a perceived crisis of desertification. These included grazing bans, stocking limits, and the relocation of herders away from the grasslands. The official intangible cultural heritage listing contains three elements: camel races, camel tack, and ‘camel veneration customs’ (C. ji tuo xisu). The latter term is used to refer to the rituals at Bull Camel Mountain, as well as smaller-scale domestic rituals. In 2004 a small group of Mongol elites living in the capital of

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Figure 8.2 Bull Camel Mountain, with the restored temple and oboo in the middle of the picture. The image of the camel is above the temple, three-quarters of the way up the cliff face.

Alasha, Bayanhot, had coordinated the reconstruction of a small temple at the foot of Bull Camel Mountain and arranged for a new oboo to be built next to it (see Figure 8.2). The new temple lay slightly to the east of the ruins of the much larger monastery, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. In Mongolia, the post-Soviet period ushered in what David Sneath (2014) describes as the ‘nationalizing of civilizational resources’. Rites to mountain deities, once part of the ‘Buddhist ecumene of high Asia’ (2014: 464), were territorialized as part of a national cultural heritage which politicians are keen to support. In the case I am describing here, we see rather the ‘regionalizing’ of a Buddhist ritual at a sacred mountain associated with Padmasambhava and his demon-pacifying journeys across Inner Asia. As I will show, however, unlike the nationalizing described by Sneath in the case of Mongolia, which involves the incorporation of mountain deities into the national culture, regionalizing here involves the occlusion of such deities in favour of a local culture centred on the camel. This regionalization has occurred in a context in which established nationality policies have come under increasing criticism from some Chinese intellectuals and policymakers, who have proposed instead a ‘melting pot’ model of assimilation (Elliot 2015). In recent years in Inner Mongolia, official discourse has increasingly framed culture in terms of particular regions, at various

Speaking of mountain deities 171 scales, rather than distinct nationalities. Thus the notion of a ‘grassland culture’ (C. caoyuan wenhua), for example, formed by multiple nationalities, has been promoted as an integral part of Chinese civilization (Nasan Bayar 2014), and all across Inner Mongolia, local regions have been encouraged to develop their own distinctive ‘cultural brands’ (C. wenhua pinpai) (Hürelbaatar n.d.). Neighbouring Bayannuur Municipality, for example, now celebrates its ‘Culture of the Great Bend of the Yellow River’ (C. Hetao wenhua). Regionalization has also been influenced by the emphasis on development through tourism (Oakes 1993; Makley 2018), a strategy which is increasingly evident at Bull Camel Mountain, as I show below. But it has also been adopted by local Mongol officials and intellectuals in their attempts to counter longstanding stigmatization of pastoralist practices in certain dominant discourses, in a way that is acceptable to the state and does not involve open criticism of other modes of land use that threaten pastoralist livelihoods, such as mining. The regionalization of culture which frames rituals at Bull Camel Mountain as part of Alasha camel culture does not merely involve the rescaling of ritual practices to fit within the bounds of contemporary political geography. It also manifests itself as a kind of ontological gerrymandering. Articles produced by intellectuals in Alasha since the turn of the millennium work to obscure the Buddhist associations of the Bull Camel Mountain veneration and instead emphasize its ‘concrete’ or ‘pragmatic’ (C. wushi) nature. This is exemplified in a sympathetic article published in the authoritative History of Alasha by a Han Chinese member of the Alasha League Propaganda Department (C. Xuanchuan Bu), on the ‘camel veneration customs’ of the Mongols of Alasha (Li 2007), including the rituals conducted at Bull Camel Mountain. This article begins by contrasting these customs favourably to the worship of the stove god and the dragon king among the Han (see Chau 2006). Unlike those forms of ritual, the article claims, camel veneration is not directed at a deity (C. shenling) but at one’s own camels, such that the very ‘substance’ (C. shiti) of the camel is regarded as ‘sacred’ (C. shen). Whereas most of my informants in Ulaan Els reserved the equivalent Mongolian term (M. onggon) for Bull Camel Mountain, in this article, it is applied to herders’ own livestock. The article distinguishes camel veneration from other ‘religious veneration activities’ (C. zongjiao jisi huodong) and writes that it is not a ‘purely superstitious (C. mixin) activity but a mixture of faith (C. xinyang) and pragmatism (C. wushi)’ (2007: 370). Such arguments must, of course, be seen in the context of the repeated attempts by 20th century Chinese governments to categorize and then expunge ‘superstition’ in their quest for modernization (Goossaert and Palmer 2011). A similar preemptive defence against the charge of ‘superstition’ is mounted in a recent publication by a group of Alasha Mongol intellectuals (Huqun 2010) describing Alasha’s cultural heritage, which distinguishes these rituals from ‘purely religious activities’ (C. chun zongjiao huodong), in that they do not involve praying to a ‘higher power’ (C. shangcang shenling), but are directed at the substance of the camel itself (Huqun 2010: 21).

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Both publications thus downplay the role of lamas, particularly when they discuss the rituals at the Bull Camel Mountain. Occluded too are the connections between the Bull Camel Mountain and the Monastery of the Caves, both in terms of the legend of Padmasambhava, and the historic institutional subordination of the monastery at Bull Camel Mountain to the larger monastery, now situated outside the borders of Alasha. Instead, these articles stress that these rituals exemplify the ability of local ‘ordinary people’ (C. minzhong i.e. non-state actors) to organize themselves and demonstrate a kind of ‘spontaneous and sincere social order’ (C. zifa er youzhong de minjian shehui chengxu) (Li 2007: 378). This discourse thus works to transform the rituals at Bull Camel Mountain into officially approved regionally distinctive ‘folk culture’ (C. minjian wenhua) rather than religion (cf. Makley 2018).

The 2013 veneration ritual One of the local Mongol officials and intellectuals who played an important role in the regionalization of culture was Altanuul. Born to a herding family just to the west of Bull Camel Mountain his family were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, but in 1974 he was sent to work in the Alasha Left Banner7 branch of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) (C. zhengxie), where he worked as a secretary and an accountant. After retiring from this job in 1999, he authored several books and lived in a modern apartment building in Bayanhot, only occasionally travelling to the countryside to preside over cultural events. In March 2013, Altanuul invited me to attend an annual event at Bull Camel Mountain, which he had organized. Having arrived at the nearest small town the previous night, I was given a lift to the mountain early in the morning by two amiable police officers. On the flat ground in front of the cliff face was a Mongolian tent (M. ger), inside of which I found Altanuul’s relative Batbagan, a local herder who was once party secretary of a nearby village (M. gachaa), preparing a sheep’s breastbone, with an elderly lama advising. This was Sechen, one of the most important monks at the Monastery of the Caves. As they discussed the ritual, Batbagan did not refer to Bull Camel Mountain but instead to hairhan, the respectful Mongolian term used when speaking of sacred mountains. An hour later, the breastbone was placed in a large bonfire outside as part of the ‘fire veneration’ ritual (M. galiin tahilga) that marked the start of proceedings. Batbagan, together with several other local herders, circumambulated the fire and threw yoghurt and alcohol into the flames. They were dressed in traditional Mongol robes but were joined in their circumambulation by several soberly dressed Han and Mongol officials from Ulaan Els, including the local (Mongol) party secretary, as well as the two policemen, one of whom took photos. We then returned to the ger. Flanked by two other lamas from the Monastery of the Caves, Sechen sat in the seat of honour in the middle of a large table, with Altanuul and the officials at either end. Altanuul began to make a speech in halting Chinese, explaining the history of the revival of the veneration ritual,

Speaking of mountain deities 173 which he claimed was ‘spontaneously organized by local farmers and herders (C. nongmumin)’. He boasted that the revived ceremonies, which involved ‘cultural activities’ (C. wenhua huodong), like camel racing and wrestling, had been covered by media outlets from across Inner Mongolia. The metal door of the ger then creaked open and an official in an elegant trenchcoat entered, carrying the traditional Mongolian gifts of brick tea and bottles of alcohol with a blue silk scarf (M. hadag) draped over them. A thick wad of red Y100 notes was placed on top of the hadag. The excitement was evident in Altanuul’s voice as he stood up to greet the new guest and receive his gifts. The head of the Alasha Left Banner government, a Han, had arrived and was signifying his status as a guest and honouring Altanuul as host by presenting him with these gifts. Ignoring the lamas and speaking instead to Altanuul, the head of the banner used the plural ‘we’ (C. women) to express the government’s hope that the ‘local people’ (C. dangdi renmin) would ‘live and work in peace and happiness’ (C. anju leye), a common idiom. Altanuul called Batbagan over to take away the gifts, laughing that they were ‘too heavy’ for him. Altanuul then announced, ‘I will be sure to pass this on to the ordinary people’ (C. laobaixing). Using standard Communist Party phraseology, he said, ‘on behalf of the popular masses (C. renmin qunzhong) of Ulaan Els, I thank you’. As Altanuul sat down, the elderly lama Sechen got up, announcing in Mongolian that he wanted to say something about ‘the destruction of our homeland’ (M. gazar nutagiin ebdrel). An awkward silence fell among the assembled Mongols. Clearly, this was not part of the script of today’s ‘cultural activities’; the lamas were merely supposed to chant in the background. Referring to the numerous mines in the Haruuna Mountains behind us, he complained in Chinese that the mountains had been continuously exploited (C. kaifa). Switching back to Mongolian, he told the assembled company that ‘digging up the mountains is wrong’. ‘You can’t just dig anywhere’ he added, now in Chinese. Altanuul tried to interject to restore the genial atmosphere of hospitality, but Sechen continued with his speech. He told them it was important to ‘venerate the mountain properly’ (M. sain tahih). He then criticized the breastbone offering which had just been used in the fire veneration ritual, saying that the lay organizers should have ensured that it was of adequate size in order to bring about the ‘flourishing’ of the five kinds of domestic animal (M. taban hoshuu mal). Seated close by, I overheard Altanuul whisper to the Chinese official sitting next to him that Sechen was ‘criticizing (C. piping) our mistakes’. Batbagan chimed in, explaining that Sechen was the ‘number one’ lama at the Monastery of the Caves. Overhearing this, Sechen then announced, in Chinese, ‘I’m from Bayannuur (C. Bamengren), but I’m also a local (C. dangdiren)’. At this point, Altanuul got to his feet and instructed Batbagan to hurry up and start toasting. Batbagan obeyed and began, as is customary, with the most honoured guest, who in this case was deemed to be Sechen. By treating him this way as a guest rather than someone in charge of proceedings, Batbagan sought to close down the possibility of further authoritative, critical speech from Sechen. The awkward

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moment seemed to have passed, and the toasting continued as the assembled guests began to tuck into the steaming mutton before them.

Cosmopolitics from South America to Inner Asia The ethnographic case presented here has some obvious similarities with the emergent anthropological literature on cosmopolitics: a sacred mountain, regarded by locals as capable of wreaking vengeance on those who profane it, now threatened by mining. Marisol de la Cadena (2010), for example, describes opposition to mining close to a mountain named Ausangate in Peru. Rather than merely opposing the mine project because it would damage their pastures, she argues that local people were concerned that mining would anger Ausangate, conceived of as a ‘sentient entity’ and a ‘political actor’. De la Cadena asks us to think of the conflicts over mining in this case not as ‘politicsas-usual’ but as ‘cosmopolitics’; that is, a disagreement characterized not by ‘power disputes within a singular world’ but instead ‘adversarial relations among worlds’ (2010: 360). So rather than understanding the conflict over mining near the sacred mountain of Ausangate as characterised by divergent perspectives on a single nature, de la Cadena argues that we need to recognize the fact that different ‘socionatural formations’ were involved (2010: 361). Ideas of cosmopolitics have also been employed recently by anthropologists of Mongolia in order to describe a context in which ‘state prophecies, shamanic advisers, and astrological divination’ are part of the political scene (High 2013: 754). Politicians at all levels of government, up to the President himself, attend rituals for sacred mountains, which are usually conducted by Buddhist lamas. However, David Sneath (2014) shows how other ritual practitioners such as shamans can represent themselves as the legitimate spokespersons of particular mountains. There is thus a politics of ritual authority and other-than-human mediation that is relevant to consideration of cosmopolitics in Mongolia. Drawing on these approaches to cosmopolitics, in what follows, I analyze the way in which Sechen embodied and made public an alternative socionatural formation in opposition to state-sanctioned extractivism but also to the regionalization of culture promoted by lay elites in Alasha. I then argue that his ability to speak publicly in this way hinged on his deployment of official territorial identities and Maoist modes of grassroots criticism, thereby complicating the notion of a singular community conceived of in opposition to the state.

The official version of the event What did the state officials who attended the 2013 veneration think that they were doing? Unfortunately, I was unable to interview them, but we are entitled to make some suppositions based on their words and actions at the event, as well as those of their ‘host’, Altanuul. In referencing the ‘local people’ (C. dangdi renmin), as he handed the gifts to Altanuul, the head of the banner confirmed him as the

Speaking of mountain deities 175 legitimate representative of the local community; this was recognized by Altanuul, who thanked him formally on behalf of ‘the popular masses of Ulaan Els’. The ability of Altanuul to play the role of representative was, I suggest, influenced by his former employment in the Alasha Left Banner CPPCC. This branch of government, part of the United Front (C. tongzhan bu), plays an important role for the party-state in ‘co-opting potentially threatening social forces’, as well as in monitoring public sentiment (Yan 2011: 54). In ethnic minority regions such as Alasha, the CPPCC works with minority elites in order to ensure social stability. It is also responsible for publishing works on local culture and history. Because of his association with the CPPCC, Altanuul was an appropriate mediator, in the eyes of the officials, between the state and local people. Through their gifts, the officials sought to indicate their support for approved forms of ethnic culture (cf. Makley 2018: 102), thereby contributing to social stability. Altanuul, in turn, sought to frame the event within the discourse of the minjian (non-state) sphere. Using language reminiscent of the article on camel veneration in History of Alasha, he said that the events had been ‘spontaneously’ organized by local people. Adam Chau notes that since the mid-1990s, the idea of minjian as an ‘expanding public sphere where citizens act upon their own initiatives’ has ‘gained salience in the public discourses in the PRC’ (2006: 1). This is related to the retrenchment of the post-Mao state from the provision of many public services. In his speech, Altanuul described the revived events at Bull Camel Mountain as ‘cultural activities’, thereby seeking to downplay their religious nature. It is not necessarily the case that Altanuul did not recognize the mountain deity; for other members of the laity, it was certainly present (witness Batbagan’s use of the term hairhan). However, his official role as representative of the local community required him to emphasize culture over religion. Not mentioning the lamas or the Monastery of the Caves, Altanuul claimed that the events were organized by local farmers and herders. Here he used an official phrase referring to multiethnic rural inhabitants (since farmers tend to be Han while herders are normally Mongol). In fact, there did not appear to be any Han farmers present, but by speaking in these terms, Altanuul hinted that the event might be an example of the ‘unity of nationalities’ (C. minzu tuanjie) that is so prized by the state (Bulag 2002b). In proudly announcing that the events had from news media across Inner Mongolia, Altanuul was also playing to the desire of officials to promote the region as a tourist destination.

Sechen’s cosmopolitical speech How are we to understand Sechen’s speech? Again, Altanuul’s words provide us with a clue. He explained to the official next to him that Sechen was ‘criticizing our mistakes’. Sechen’s speech had yoked criticism of improper ritual conduct to criticism of mining; what connected these two practices was their offence against the sacred landscape. To the laity, Sechen stressed the importance of ‘properly venerating Bull Camel Mountain’ by ensuring that the offering of the breastbone to the fire was of the right proportions. Only through correct

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conduct of the ritual would it be possible to ensure that the mountain exercised its benign influence over the fertility of livestock in the region. Elided with this, and directed at the officials, was the necessity of observing the Buddhist injunctions against mining, especially in the Haruuna mountains with their numerous sacred sites. I think we can regard Sechen’s speech as ‘cosmopolitical’ in the sense proposed by de la Cadena since it ‘makes public’ an other-than-human actor, Bull Camel Mountain, which was omitted from Altanuul’s speech. But even beyond the content of the speech, its very form – the fact that it was spoken from a position of ritual authority by a lama from the Monastery of the Caves – enacted an alternative socionatural formation at odds with the official version of the event. In this alternative, Bull Camel Mountain is part of a sacred landscape centred on the Monastery of the Caves, once visited by Padmasambhava, and must be placated through proper ritual conduct, directed by lamas, and not offended by the digging of the earth. This contrasted with the socionatural formation which undergirded the official event, according to which these mountains are resources to be ‘exploited’, while revived rituals are regionally distinctive ‘cultural activities’, which demonstrate the initiative of ordinary local people rather than the authority of lamas, and constitute a potential economic resource as a tourist attraction. Sechen’s speech was also cosmopolitical in the sense that it asserted the primacy of the Bull Camel Mountain as the object of veneration. This contrasts with the interpretations of this ritual produced by Alasha intellectuals, who argue that it is one of the ‘camel veneration customs’ which are part of Alasha’s intangible cultural heritage. The article in History of Alasha classifies the ritual at the Bull Camel Mountain under the category of ‘bull camel veneration’ (C. ji er tuo), which can also take place in a domestic setting, involving the household’s bull camel. Nowhere is it mentioned in the article that it is a mountain deity that is being venerated. Even after briefly mentioning the legend of Padmasambhava and the history of Bull Camel Monastery (without once mentioning the Monastery of the Caves), the author is keen to stress that ‘camel veneration is, on the whole, not a religious activity directed at a higher power; instead it is directed at the domesticated camel itself.’ Sechen’s speech, however, with its correction of the laity, can be read as an assertion of religious authority which also made public the mountain deity which has been expunged from official versions of ‘Alasha camel culture’. In the next section, I suggest that Sechen’s public criticism was made possible by his adoption of certain spatial identities legible to the state, which at once placed him outside the jurisdiction of the Alasha officials, but also gave his criticism the moral authority of a grassroots subject.

Disjunctive territories At one point during his speech, Sechen had switched from Mongolian to Chinese and declared himself to be ‘someone from Bayannuur’ employing a non-

Speaking of mountain deities 177 ethnic category of spatial identity that is the recent product of administrative reforms of the modern state, unlike more historically durable identities, such as that of the Urad Mongols, whose three banners are today also part of Bayannuur municipality (Humphrey and Hürelbaatar 2013). At the same time, Sechen also described himself as ‘local’ thus appropriating the language that Altanuul had employed when he cast himself as the representative of the local community. Why did Sechen choose to make himself legible to the state in these ways, speaking Chinese and identifying himself with one of the administrative units of the contemporary state? One answer, I suggest, is that this placed him outside the jurisdiction of the officials he was criticizing. In Inner Mongolia, the salaries of lamas are paid by the state, and monasteries often find themselves ‘supplicants’ for state funds (Humphrey and Hürelbaatar 2013: 320). The local government generally controls such funds at the county/banner or league/ municipality level. The Monastery of the Caves, now in Dengkou County, Bayannuur Municipality, was thus not under the jurisdiction of Alasha Left Banner, and Sechen, as a lama from Bayannuur, did not have to worry excessively about the consequences of publicly admonishing Alasha officials. His critical speech, whose form and content disrupted the regionalization of culture and its attendant ontological gerrymandering, was thus in part made possible by the way in which the management of religion in China is itself regionalized: structured according to the territorial-administrative contours of the state. Sechen’s self-identification as simultaneously from Bayannuur and local is itself significant. In official terms, this was an inherently contradictory statement since it was spoken (just) within the borders of Alasha, not in Bayannuur. In speaking as both a local and someone from Bayannuur, Sechen disrupted the regionalization of culture represented by the official event while also undermining the official understanding of state-society relations contained within it. According to this understanding, the state, represented by the head of the banner, was interacting with ‘local people’, represented by Altanuul and spatialized within the administrative unit of Ulaan Els. By positioning himself as a local who was critical of the officials for their improper conduct, rather than grateful to them for their gifts, Sechen disassembled the community which had been bundled together in the person of Altanuul and implicitly refuted his claims to act as its representative. Having established his religious authority over the laity he had adroitly switched to the voice of the grassroots subject, one of the silent masses who were supposed to be ventriloquized by Altanuul. Of relevance here is Charlene Makley’s observation, in relation to her work on Tibetan mountain deity mediums, that ‘the speaking subject in practice is never unitary but emerges as a variety of voices’ (2018: 74). Sechen’s speech was described by Altanuul as ‘criticism’ and could thus be understood not only as an assertion of religious authority over the laity but as a kind of political speech that harked back to the Maoist era. Several scholars have shown how publicly enunciated criticism, both of the self and of others, was central to the political subjectivity which Maoism interpellated (Makley 2005; Bulag 2010).

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‘They have their own politics’. Thus did Sherry Ortner (1995: 177) caution us against the ‘sanitizing’ of subaltern resistance. Such caution is salutary in the case of cosmopolitics. Literature on this theme that has emerged from the Americas works with a very clear notion of the subaltern subject: a member of an indigenous ‘community’, conceived of in opposition to the modern state (Blaser 2009, 2016; de la Cadena 2010). The case from Inner Mongolia which I have analyzed cannot be neatly described in such terms. The official version of the event did indeed imagine a territorially bounded grassroots community interacting with the state; however, the uncertainty over the nature of this community, was indicated by the multiplicity of terms used for it: ‘local people’, ‘herders and farmers’, ‘popular masses’, ‘ordinary people’. This ambiguity was also suggested by the subject positions of those involved in the event. The ‘representative’ of the community, Altanuul, was himself a former state official who had not lived locally for many decades. Sechen’s speech, in turn, conjured up an alternative social imaginary along with the mountain deity, one in which this ‘community’ was itself divided into monastics and laity; then, in figuring himself as both from Bayannuur and ‘local’, he positioned himself outside the jurisdiction of Alasha officials, and highlighted the way in which contemporary state administrative units had failed to erase older socio-territorial identities; and finally, he undermined Altanuul’s claim to represent this community by inhabiting the role of the critical grassroots subject, a subject position that historically had a central place in the political techniques of the Chinese Communist Party.

The following year In 2014 another event was held at Bull Camel Mountain (see Figure 8.3). This time the organization was the responsibility of officials from Ulaan Els, who combined it with a conference on ‘Camel Culture and Tourism’. It emerged that one of the sponsors of the event was a Han Chinese businessman who owned mines in the Haruuna Mountains but was seeking to diversify into tourism. Adverts for his hotel occupied a prominent position next to the stage. Local herders were this time instructed to bring cow camels and their recently-born offspring, as another ritual was incorporated into the event. This was the ‘cow camel’s fire veneration’ (M. ingen galiin tahilga), at which the fire is worshipped to ensure the flourishing of the camel herd (Chabros 1992). This domestic ritual was traditionally conducted by individual households, separately from the event at Bull Camel Mountain. The 2014 event was billed in Chinese as the ‘Alasha Inner Mongolia Sacred Camel Veneration Folk Culture Festival.’ A large stage was set up on the plain, on which was displayed an exhibition of ‘Alasha camel culture’, involving various items of camel tack. Monks from the Monastery of the Caves were present, chanting inside the small temple, but their role was far less prominent than the year before. Instead, the main ritual was conducted by two lamas from the monastery of Baruun Hiid, one of the two largest Buddhist institutions in Alasha.

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Figure 8.3 Preparing for the ‘cow camel’s fire veneration’ at the 2014 event.

One of these lamas was also a prominent member of the Alasha Left Banner Buddhist Association (C. fojiao xiehui), the official organization which represents worshippers to the state. Seated on an armchair in one of the Mongol ger by the side of the stage, however, was an even more eminent religious figure: the Züün Gegeen, from the other main monastery in Alasha, Züün Hiid. He sat silently as local herders prostrated themselves in front of him. Outside the ger, the two other lamas continued with their ritual. Soon the loudspeakers were switched on and the formulaic speeches of various officials drowned out the Tibetan chanting. By combining these two rituals and employing lamas from Alasha, I suggest, local officials sought to emphasize the regionalization of culture. This ritual innovation involved in this event literally relegated the veneration of the mountain to the background, with the ‘cow camel’s fire veneration’ taking pride of place on the plain in front of the cliff. The event thus involved the regionalization of the sacred landscape and foregrounding of local ‘folk culture’. The lamas were not afforded an opportunity to speak in front of the officials or to ‘make public’ Bull Camel Mountain and its associations with the Monastery of the Caves.

Conclusion In Mongolia, the nationalizing of civilizational resources in Mongolia, nourished by ideas of the nation promoted in the Soviet era, appears to be a fait accompli

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(Sneath 2014). In this chapter, however, I have suggested that the incipient regionalization of Buddhist rituals to mountain deities in Inner Mongolia, does not proceed without challenge. Such challenges can be conceived of not merely as cultural politics but also as cosmopolitical in de la Cadena’s sense. In both form and content, Sechen’s speech ‘made public’ a particular socio-natural formation (a Buddhicized landscape inhabited by other-than-humans, mediated by lamas) that was threatened by the mining permitted by local officials in Alasha, but also by the official version of ‘Alasha camel culture’ promoted by officials and intellectuals in Alasha in response to perceived threats to rural ways of life. According to this official version, the ritual exemplified not the TibetoMongolian Buddhist veneration of ‘spiritual beings’ but instead a distinctive local folk culture that involved the veneration of camels themselves. But how was cosmopolitical speech made possible here? This, I argue, is a crucial question that is largely absent from the emerging literature on cosmopolitics, focusing as it does on indigenous peoples in the Americas. This literature takes for granted a political context that appears to permit speaking of ‘other-than-humans’, even if such speech is ultimately relegated to the category of ‘belief’. By contrast, the Chinese context is one in which such ‘other-thanhumans’ have been treated as dangerous ‘superstition’ and which have invited state violence within living memory. In the case I have discussed here, this ‘making public’ of a sacred landscape was afforded by the very administrative divisions which are integral to state territoriality. Sechen was a lama from a monastery with cosmological ties to Bull Camel Mountain, whose authority was recognized by the laity; at the same time, he hailed not from contemporary Alasha, but from a neighbouring administrative region, and thus did not depend on the assembled officials for support and patronage. He could also, however, present himself as a humble ‘local’, whose public criticism conjured up the grassroots subjectivities and political forms of the Maoist period. Sechen thus appears as a thoroughly multiple subject; indeed, it was this very multiplicity that enabled his critical speech. If ‘indigenous cosmopolitics’ requires us to ‘slow down reasoning’ (de la Cadena 2010; Stengers 2005) in order to reveal assumptions inherent in our alltoo-human conception of politics, I suggest that an anthropology of ‘postsocialist cosmopolitics’ in China might require us to slow down further still, in order to avoid figuring cosmopolitics in stark dichotomous terms as indigenous worlds against the modern state. Instead, we must trace ethnographically the various ways in which sacred landscapes are brought into relation with state territoflying horse. Mongolians attempt to ‘raiseriality by minority subjects who themselves can occupy complex positions in relation to the state.

Notes 1 In late spring 2014, not long after the events described in this chapter sudden subsidence caused by an iron mine in the mountains led to the deaths of three local Mongol herders. Following this accident, the government of the Inner Mongolia

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2 3 4

5 6

7

Autonomous Region called for an immediate halt to private mining operations in the area. Another famous example of a womb cave is found at Wutai Shan in northern China, an important pilgrimage site for Mongols. Owen Lattimore, who passed by the mountain on his travels, mentions this taboo (1928: 140–1). This Mongolian concept translates literally as ‘air horse’ and is represented on Buddhist prayer flags as a flying horse. Mongolians attempt to ‘raise’ (M. sergeeh) their hii-mori, and thus invigorate themselves, through certain practices, including releasing bits of paper with flying horses printed on them to be borne aloft on the breeze: the higher they go, the greater the hii-mori (Humphrey and Hürelbaatar 2012). This place name, as with personal names in this chapter, is pseudonymous. The Muslim Mongols of Alasha are officially members of the Mongol nationality (C. minzu), and some members of the community explain their involvement in Buddhist rituals by saying that ‘Mongols are Buddhists’: being a Muslim Mongol thus means having two religions. Some distinguish the manner of their participation in these rituals from other Mongols by saying that they do not prostrate themselves in front of Buddhist icons in the temple or by claiming that they only attend because of the entertainment provided. In this region, there is also a significant Hui (Chinese Muslim) community, who attend the same mosques as the Muslim Mongols, though they have not been involved in the revival of rituals at Bull Camel Mountain. Alasha League is subdivided into three ‘banners’. The easternmost, and most populous, is Alasha Left Banner, where Bull Camel Mountain is also located.’ Leagues and banners are administrative units unique to the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and are equivalent to municipalities and counties in other parts of China.

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Contesting the Chinese Taiga: spirits, reindeer, and environmental conservation in Northeast China Richard Fraser

Introduction In this chapter, I describe the conflicts surrounding environmental conservation between the Chinese state and the Reindeer-Evenki, an ethnic minority community of reindeer herders and hunters living in the Da Xinganliang mountains of Northeast China. I describe how these conflicts are not just the result of differing attitudes to the environment but of differing ecologies of practice and human-environment relations, which result in different ontological claims and presuppositions, including notions of nonhuman personhood (see Introduction). I show that for the Reindeer-Evenki, the environment consists of various kinds of ‘persons’, only some of which are human. These others range from the reindeer on whom they depend to the animals they hunt and the spirits thought to inhabit the taiga. The taiga is the domain in which to maintain proper relationships with such persons through the quotidian practices of herding, hunting, and dwelling. In recent years, however, the Chinese state has implemented a series of conservation measures that have problematized these practices, including environmental relocation, the establishment of protected areas that restrict reindeer herding, and a much-criticized hunting ban. I show how these are based on very different ontological claims and humanenvironment relations, which limit Evenki interactions with non-human persons and compromise people’s ability for meaning-making. At the same time, I show instances of mediation, flexibility, and mutual coexistence at the level of everyday social relations, such as between Evenki herders and hunters, forestry rangers in the taiga, and even government officials seeking to promote reindeer herding within the ethnic tourism industry. In the process, I argue for a consideration of the role played by non-human actors in better understanding people’s experiences of environmental policy and contestations of the environment.

The Chinese Evenki The Reindeer-Evenki are one of three Evenki sub-groups in China. Numbering just over 230 people, they entered Chinese territory from Yakutia in Russia’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-9

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Sakha Republic during the 1820s (Fraser 2010; Nentwig 2003). The community themselves refer to three major events in recounting their history with the Chinese state. First, in the 1960s, the government conducted a chemical analysis of their reindeer’s antlers – in order to determine their potential in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Recognizing the viability of an antler market, the state transformed the local reindeer economy – which originally was based on subsistence hunting – into a commercial antler industry (Beach 2003). This initiated important transformations such as property rights, marketization, and minority-state relations, but, as Beach remarks, it ultimately proved mutually beneficial as reindeer remained under the care of their previous owners and maintained the original structure of human-environment relations (2003: 27). The second major event was the construction of Aoluguya, a settlement that became the principal domain of the community and included wooden houses and an antler-processing factory (Nentwig 2003: 4). Although widely recognized as instigating sedentarization, its construction was not perceived in a wholly negative light. As people today emphasize, the settlement remained suitably peripheral to the wider nation-state and gradually came to feel like home. This was even the case amongst the forest-dwelling herders who used the settlement as a base from which to engage in subsistence hunting and maintain the antler industry. Accompanying this was the introduction of infrastructural and financial support, specifically, motorized transport, which dramatically reduced the travel time between herding campsites and the settlement and increased access to consumer goods and healthcare (Fraser 2010). The third change was in 2003 when the Reindeer-Evenki were relocated 250 km south to a new purpose-built settlement (also called Aoluguya) on the fringes of Genhe City. This was justified on the grounds of environmental conservation (Fraser 2010). Since then, the majority have remained permanently in the settlement where they receive free housing, electricity, and a monthly welfare payment. Concurrently, between 30 and 40 individuals live and work in the Da Xinganliang taiga, practising mobile reindeer-pastoralism from nine campsites through which they procure and sell antler and other reindeer products (Kolås and Xie 2015). While some in the community had agreed to relocate, specifically those that had been separated from the reindeer economy at an earlier stage, the remainder largely opposed the decision and continue to prioritize the reindeer lifeworld, something problematized by their increased distance from the herding economy and the banning of subsistencehunting (see Fraser 2010). In recent years, the government has refurbished the new Aoluguya to better integrate it into the region’s tourism industry. It now includes a hotel, museum, and private shops from where families sell handicrafts and reindeer products to tourists. While this has created new opportunities, the situation in the forest campsites remains difficult. There the Evenki are subject to increasingly stringent conservation measures, including the restriction of reindeer herding in protected areas and harsher penalties for hunting and harvesting forest resources. In the sections below, I describe these conflicts from the perspective of differing ecologies of practice and human-environment relations.

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First, I show how the state’s conservation policies are based on a naturalistic idea of ‘use’ and ‘reflection’, which has its roots in ancient Chinese philosophy and continues to manifest today. I then show how this differs from the humanenvironment relations amongst the Evenki as manifested in the everyday practices of herding, hunting, and dwelling. In the process, I provide examples of mediation that reveal the flexibility of ontological presuppositions and notions of nonhuman personhood.

Naturalism in the Chinese Taiga Chinese culture has long been characterized by a particular set of humanenvironment relationships (Descola 1992). This can be seen in the dialectic of ‘use’ and ‘reflection’ in early Chinese history. For the former, this involved the management of the environment, including the mass clearing of forests, the terracing of hills, the damming and diversion of rivers, and the domestication of animals. As Elvin remarks: ‘By late-imperial times, there was little that could be called ‘natural’ left untouched by this process of exploitation and adaptation’ (2004: 321). Emerging alongside this was the metaphysical stance of reflection, which drew inspiration from proto-Daoist philosophy and became particularly prominent amongst the Imperial elite. Here the natural world was characterized as something both beautiful and inspirational, an exemplification of the workings of the deepest forces in the cosmos. This didactic crystallized by the middle of the 4th century CE and could be seen in the poetic and philosophical works of the period (Elvin 2004: 331–2). It gradually solidified in the taken-for-granted doxa of Imperial state policy, emphasizing the notion that nature existed for human (cultural) enjoyment and progress. It is interesting to note that the ancient art of bonsai first originated in China, representing perhaps the best example of the use/reflection dialectic (ibid). Such a view attained more concrete expression by the time of the postImperial era, with policies explicitly characterizing human beings as ‘struggling against nature’ and ‘humanity against other animal species’ (Elvin 2004: 453). This underpinned the development of Chinese scientific thought and taxonomy of the natural ecological system (ibid.: 356). It also dissipated within the broader population via the ever-present dangers presented by the environment, as well as lay the foundations for the belief that the state (and emperor) were responsible for ecological management – epitomized by the notion of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’. With the establishment of the PRC in 1949, these ideas not only persisted but became a central tenet of state policy. As Weller (2006) remarks, while traditional Chinese culture possessed no word comparable to the western term ‘nature’, utilizing a range of classical evocations such as tiandi (heaven/earth), shanshui (mountains/water) and wanwu (10,000 things), the PRC standardized the word ziran (‘nature’) – which formalized the conceptualization of a distinct zone of ‘nature’ in official state discourse and society. It is no coincidence that this occurred at the same time as the state embarked upon its own policy of

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industrialization and ecological management, explicitly positioning the environment as something to be controlled. In recent years, this ancient dialectic has once again been emphasized in the political writings and policy prescriptions of Xi Jinping, who explicitly references Daoism in his vision of Chinese economic development via the term ‘ecological civilisation’. Naturalism, green governmentality, and conservation in the Da Xinganliang mountains Since the beginning of the reform-era, the Chinese state has continued to operate on the basis of a naturalistic approach to the environment. The most visible expression of this concerns a series of projects termed ‘ecological construction’, implemented primarily in the western provinces, which, as Yeh (2005: 10) points out, is less of a geographical demarcation and more an ideological one – incorporating about three-quarters of China’s ethnic minorities. Ecological construction involves a two-fold strategy: first, to attract investment linked to the global economy, resulting in major infrastructural developments; and second, to invest heavily in environmental protection by establishing conservation areas and limiting human interactions with the environment. In the Da Xinganliang, this has formed the basis of conservation policies and resultant conflicts with the Reindeer-Evenki. The 2003 relocation was explicitly justified on the grounds of environmental conservation as the state sought to redefine the region as an ecological zone ‘requiring’ state protection. In the words of Dai Wanchun, former vice-governor of Da Xinganliang Prefecture: ‘The relocation is part of the Chinese people’s efforts to protect forest and wild animals. It is in the wake of the 1998 deluge that ravaged the Yangtze River and rivers in northeast China’ (Xinhua 2003). Here parallels are drawn between the relocation of the Evenki and the management of the Yangtze River floodings – China’s perennial ecological problem. In this way, the state presents relocation as necessary. As Wun Nanlan, former mayor of Genhe City, put it: The decision was made for recovering the environment and the development of the tribe. The previous Aoluguya was 250 kilometers away from Genhe City. The hunters seldom communicated with the outside world. New houses and fences for reindeer have been built with modern facilities. The helps the tribe transfer to civilized society. (Xinhua 2003) This has parallels with much of the developing world, where environmental problems such as rangeland degradation, desertification, and loss of wildlife are seen as due to local, indigenous misuse of resources. Accompanying this, policies such as forced relocation ‘are considered vital due to the view that indigenous people are ‘backward’ and so need help to be developed’ (Chatty and Colchester 2002: 4). In minority regions of China, this takes a specific form given the long history of Han-dominated relations, where the state reproduces a discourse that

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affirms fundamental assumptions about the superiority of Han civilization and the benevolence of the CCP (Williams 2002: 203). In China, conservation is implemented via a specific programme called ‘ecological compensation’ (shengtai xiaoyi buchang), involving the allocation of financial and other compensation such as new housing to those affected by relocation and which, in the Evenki case, included the construction of an entirely new settlement. In this regard, although the designation of conservation areas appear distinct from the Maoist era, in fact, the implementation of such projects retains a ‘campaign-style mentality reminiscent of the Maoist era’ (Economy 2004: 14). The 2003 relocation must also be situated in the wider transformation of the Da Xinganliang, which includes China’s largest forested zone. Most notable is the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP) (tiānránlín bǎohù gōngchéng) – described as ‘the largest environmental rehabilitation effort in the world’ (China Daily 2003: 3). In the 1990s, the state began designating protected areas (zìrán bǎohùqū) where human habitation and logging were restricted. Despite this, commercial logging persisted and experts warned that if logging was not stopped, the forests could disappear entirely. In April 2014, the government took the unprecedented decision to ban all logging in the Da Xinganliang for a period of ten years and to initiate a widespread afforestation programme. This was featured in both national and international media and characterized as evidence of China’s commitment to tackling climate change. Connected to this is how the Da Xinganliang is being strategically re-defined as a zone for ‘eco-tourism’ and ‘sustainable development’ in an attempt to restructure the regional economy and generate employment opportunities. State narratives project a future of the Da Xinganliang as ‘Chinese Siberia’ (zhōngguó de xībólìyǎ), where the combination of ‘pristine’ forests, unique wildlife and ethnic minority cultures can promote China’s ‘green’ future. The Evenki are explicitly incorporated into this vision and provides justification for social modernization policies, including relocations, restrictions on forest resources, and the commodification of culture for the ethnic-tourism industry. In the sections below, I describe Evenki human-environment relations based on the everyday practices of herding, hunting, and dwelling. In the process, I show the impact of conservation measures and their conflict with the community, as well as examples of mutual coexistence and convergence between different actors on the ground.

Animism and nonhuman personhood in the Chinese Taiga Virtually all of my Evenki informants experience the environment as animated by a variety of nonhuman agencies, including the animals they hunt, the reindeer they herd, and the spirits thought to inhabit the taiga. These nonhuman entities are thought to have their own degree of personhood with whom people are expected to engage in respectful social relations, and it is through the reproduction of these relationships that meaning and existential security are

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generated. This is something that has been well documented in the classic studies of Shirokogoroff (1929) and Lindgren (1933), as well as more recently by Heyne (1999: 377) and Nentwig (2003), which positions the Evenki on par with other hunters and herders across Northern Asia (Vitebsky 2005; Anderson 2000; Stammler 2004; Willerslev 2007; Ingold 1980; Feit 1973; Hallowell 1960; Nadasdy 2007). As I show below, such notions of nonhuman personhood are not usually based on a coherent and systematic corpus of ideas, but rather, are expressed contextually in everyday actions and interactions, in lived-in knowledge, and in all those things that ‘go without saying’ (also see Descola and Palsson 1996: 86). Tents, Taiga, and the conflict of dwelling Stepping off the train at Alongshan, the nearest settlement to the campsites of the Reindeer-Evenki, one immediately gains a sense of entering what Tsing refers to as a frontier space (2005: 27). Indeed, Alongshan is situated at the extreme end of the railway line – close to the Sino-Russian border – comprising just two roads and surrounded by vast stretches of the taiga. And yet, Alongshan remains a characteristically built environment, comprising a state administrative building, several small hotels, and a timber yard. Just on the outskirts, however, where the tarmac turns to snow and the snow leads to the forest, it becomes clear that life inside the Chinese taiga is, in both a physical and existential sense, distinct from that of the town and city. Walking for around thirty minutes, one arrives at a small clearing, with partially felled trees demarcating a zone of human engagement and revealing a lifeworld no longer characterized by building but by dwelling. Situated within the clearing are two Evenki tents: the first is a larger rectangular-shaped tent consisting of a birch-bark frame covered with canvas material. A small chimney protrudes from the top, emitting a steady stream of smoke, while restless reindeer lie scattered in the distance. Traditionally, the birch-bark frame would be covered with animal hides, and in winter, these would number over 100. However, in recent years synthetic material has proved more manageable in terms of transportation and warmth (also see Vitebsky 2005: 89; Fraser 2015). Situated nearby is a smaller, conical-shaped tent, comparable to a north-American tepee and known locally as a xianrenzhu. Both tents are surrounded by a small fence to prevent reindeer from entering the domestic space, as well as various rudimentary wooden structures for storing goods and drying the reindeer antler during the cropping season. In the distance are several smudge stacks, which are burnt in summer to ward off biting mosquitos. A typical campsite includes two or three tents housing up to five or six people. While some are just five kilometres from the new Aoluguya, the majority are several hundred kilometres away, close to the old settlement prior to relocation. Surrounded on all sides are kilometres of larch and birch trees stretching off into the distance, with thick snow blanketing the dwellings in winter as well as the forested landscape in which they are erected (Figure 9.1).

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Figure 9.1 A traditional Evenki tent in late winter.

Situated within the centre of the tent is a rudimentary stove – a hole allows smoke from the fire to vacate the tent, which maintains warmth and draws the herders together in a circular seating arrangement. Here the stove, chimney, birch bark materials, and seating structure all intertwine to reveal the embeddedness of the Evenki dwelling in its environment, evoking consideration of Heidegger’s description of a Black Forest house in southern Germany (1971: 338). Heidegger famously used the term Dasein (dwelling) to characterize this relationship – where the farmhouse, its inhabitants, and the environment functionally intertwine within the landscape. As Ingold points out, the German verb ‘to build’, bauen, comes from the Old English and High German buan, meaning ‘to dwell’. And, as Heidegger suggested, dwelling here is not limited to one sphere of activity, but rather, it encompasses the whole manner in which one lives one’s life: thus ‘I dwell, you dwell’ is identical to ‘I am, you are’ (in Ingold 2000: 185). In a similar vein, dwelling serves as a useful term to

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characterize the embeddedness of Evenki tents within their ecological surroundings, as well as the ontological presuppositions which they generate. This is not to suggest, however, a romanticized union with ‘nature’ nor to characterize the Evenki as somehow ‘at one’ with their environment. Indeed, such a characterization would be dependent upon a naturalistic dichotomy and seperation of nature and culture. On the contrary, for Evenki themselves, their dwellings are not within ‘nature’ but part of the socialized landscape, what Anderson (2000) calls a ‘sentient ecology’ that overrides the division between the natural and the cultural, the dwelt and the built. As one old hunter remarked: ‘We do not live inside the forest. The forest is a part of us and we are a part of it. Put simply, the forest is our home’. Here ecological relations are intertwined with those of human sociality, with the environment not conceived as a distinct zone of nature (‘out there’) but immediate social environs. As another one of my informants explained: ‘For us the forest is alive with many animals and spirits and everything is interconnected. Life in the town has many comforts but I only really feel comfortable when I am here’. Here Evenki ideas of the environment emerge through a sense of familiarity with the taiga and its animal and nonhuman agencies; for them, the landscape is home and alive (also see King 2003: 77). As such examples suggest, the Evenki mode of dwelling is not geared towards production but life itself, which is contrary to the built environment of Alongshan and the new Aoluguya, where the layout of the towns have been rationalized in accordance with the timber industry and the tourism market, respectively. In the words of one informant: ‘Since the economic reforms we are always told to produce more, make money. Of course, money is important, but reindeer need time to grow. These things are done slowly’. As another hunter explained: ‘It is not easy to live in the forest. You need skills and knowledge. This is why so many young people cannot stay here. They do not know how to live properly’. Here skills and knowledge are referenced as embodied modes of living a meaningful life, put into practice, not by the values of ‘work’ or ‘production’ but life in toto. This is also visible by the way in which Evenki move through – and interact with – the taiga. There are few roads in this part of China and some mountains reach 2,000 metres high. As people move through the landscape, they use particular mountains and rivers as geographical reference points and to decide when and where to establish their encampments. Experienced hunters ‘know’ the forest through cumulative practice and engagement, which is manifested in an embodied sense of familiarity and articulated through memories and storytelling. For Evenki hunters, the taiga is experienced as a multiplicity of sites in which previous actions are embedded, memorized in terms of prior and, therefore, potential affordances. This is comparable with what Myers (1986: 54) notes in regards to the Pintupi of central Australia, where the landscape is not experienced as an inert ‘environment’ but quite literally a lived-in space. This comes to the fore in numerous informal ways, such as people quietly humming a tune to ‘relax the reindeer’ when passing a high cliff or when quickly changing

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directions to access a seemingly unidentifiable path. On one occasion, I noticed an old hunter become excited after crossing a river where he had hunted several years before; and he then proceeded to recount elaborate stories of the animals he hunted, including their size, sex, and interactions with various spirits. This is comparable to Habeck’s (2006: 131) description of the Komi reindeer-herders, where people cover large distances and memorize features of the landscape such as trees, lakes, hills, and ridges which they use as mnemonic devices for narrating stories when they come back to camp. Similarly, for Evenki hunters, places in the taiga are embedded in a temporal and spatial context attached to specific memories and stories of encounters with other hunters, animals, and nonhuman agencies. To paraphrase Ingold, it is through dwelling in a landscape, through the incorporation of its features into a pattern of activity, ‘that it becomes home to hunters and gatherers’ (1991: 356). Such a characterization highlights the role of the taiga in generating meaning. As one person put it: ‘Some people work as teachers and government officials. But I only know how to live with reindeer’. Here it is the quotidian sense of dwelling that grant Evenki existential security and a life that is considered meaningful. As one person put it talking about the relocation: ‘I am from the forest. Why would I want to leave my home?’. Logging, forest resources, and nonhuman actors There is a widespread assumption amongst the Evenki that the government does not understand their way of life. This is manifested in the conflicts surrounding where the herders are allowed to establish their campsites and their use of forest resources. As we have seen, the Da Xinganliang is subject to increasingly stringent conservation measures due to the establishment of protected areas where human habitation and logging are restricted. By the time of the logging ban in 2014, a network of 43 protected areas had been established covering an area of 3.1 million hectares or 16.6% of the region’s total area – meaning that one-quarter of the Da Xinganliang is closed to human habitation. These sites are monitored by forest rangers working inside the mountains in forestry stations and using vehicles to travel between areas. The rangers have permission to impose fines upon individuals caught entering the protected areas and harvesting forest resources, as well as call upon the police to make arrests. This creates significant problems for the Evenki. From their perspective, access to the forest is essential in order to establish their campsites and allow their reindeer to graze. For them, the conservation areas are not distinct from any other part of the mountains and thus a hindrance to not only their movements but to their everyday sense of dwelling. Their migration routes and choice of sites are based on historical knowledge of particular areas suitable for reindeer grazing and accessing features such as water sources. I have spoken with many Evenki who have described their encounters with forest rangers. On some occasions, they have been told to move to another location because of their proximity to a conservation area. At other times, they have been issued warnings for staying

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too long and threatened with fines. And in some cases, people have been fined for refusing to move after several requests. Despite the logging ban, the forestry industry also continues to impact the Evenki negatively. The industry has brought mass immigration of workers and a range of supportive infrastructure, rapidly transforming the landscape and social composition of the area. This includes a vast network of forest tracks, which allow outsiders to engage in illegal hunting and harvest forest resources. The Evenki have long criticized these tracks and identify them, along with the settlements of forestry workers, as the major cause for the decline in wild animals. In China, all forests are state-owned and, in the Da Xinganliang, the logging industry is overseen by work units that manage areas of forest from 360,000–1,170,000 hectares and populations of between 4,000 and 13,000 people (Lundberg and Zhou 2009). These units include their own factories, roads, railroads, schools, hospitals, and even entertainment facilities (ibid.). Due to their location, all Evenki campsites have been affected. As people describe, the landscape has been radically altered over the years – not only in terms of population but physically in terms of the size and quality of forest, water sources such as rivers and streams, and the availability of lichen. Combined with the expansion of conservation areas, the Evenki are increasingly limited in their choices of where to establish their campsites and graze their reindeer. Traditionally, a household would move camp every two months in search of game. Today, as hunting has been replaced with antler cropping, a household will move only three or four times a year. One strategy is to leave the birch bark frames standing after they move to another site, taking only the canvas material. This is not without problems, as the birch bark frames are often damaged by forestry machinery or simply vandalized by passers-by. A second conflict concerns the harvesting of forest resources. As Evenki dwellings are constructed from larch trees, it is essential to harvest good quality wood throughout the year. When people set up a campsite a number of trees will be felled, with four trees required to construct both the larger and smaller tents combined. This is a fact pointed out by the Evenki, who criticize outsiders for overusing the forest. Here there is a purposeful juxtaposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a life within the forest and a life beyond it, articulated in a grounded sense of practical use and a self-defined intimacy with the environment. The taiga is also, however, the place in which Evenki maintain what they consider essential relationships with nonhuman persons, specifically in the form of forest spirits. This is not directly expressed but rather an embodied relationship discernible through the observation of taken-for-granted activities. For example, watching a middle-aged herder cutting down a tree, he offers a short prayer giving thanks to the spirit-masters of the forest. When asked to explain, he stipulates the existence of spirits that need to be appeased. Another example is when observing a young man setting up a campsite and he follows a specific order - specifically to allow for, in his words, ‘good fortune’. These are dimensions of cultural life disregarded by both the state and forestry rangers. While many see the Evenki as responsible for the demise of wild animals, from

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the Evenki perspective, they themselves are the custodians of the taiga and such rituals are what maintain the balance of the forest ecosystem through offerings and ‘proper’ interactions with nonhuman persons. As one hunter explained: ‘In the forest there is not only us. The mountains, trees, and streams all have energies and there are rules to keep everything stable’. This was most discernible in the community-wide ritual organized prior to relocation: ‘When we heard the government was going to move us we decided to pay our respect to the mountain. We travelled to a sacred space and made offerings. Everything has to be thanked’. Here it is not only animals but mountains that have their own degrees of personhood and, importantly, it is from this position that Evenki base their ideas about conservation. Here conservation is conceived not as a humancentric activity for the protection of ‘nature’ but a means of preserving social relationships with the nonhuman actors inside the taiga. This is comparable to other northern hunters such as the Kluane First Nation, for whom ideas of nonhuman personhood underlie ‘an extensive system of traditional knowledge, hunting practices, and effective game conservation’ (Nadasdy 2007: 37). Another significant conflict surrounds fire. Each year between June and September, there is a total ban on lighting fires in the Da Xinganliang. Again, forest rangers can impose heavy fines and also call upon local police to make arrests. Of course, lighting fires is an essential aspect of daily life in the campsites, not only to maintain warmth but to cook and prepare food and to light smudge stacks. As my informants described, they are regularly harangued by forestry rangers during the fire ban. Often a ranger will arrive and scold the family for having too many smudge stacks or for lighting a fire to burn their trash. I have witnessed rangers arriving at a camp and pouring water over several smudge stacks. As one person put it: ‘They don’t understand. The government says it wants to increase the number of reindeer. But how can the reindeer survive if they are attacked by mosquitos all summer?’ For Evenki, the fire ban disregards their own knowledge and skills to protect the forest. As one explained: ‘For thousands of years we never started any fires. Now there are fires every year because of the logging industry and outsiders’. The lighting of fires not only has a practical function but also reveals peoples human-environment relations as distinct from the Chinese state. Indeed, whenever people light a fire, they first dip their finger into a glass of liquor and flick three drops – once towards the sky, once to the ground, and once into the fire – an act reproduced prior to eating and drinking. This is referred to locally as feeding the fire and has been documented across the Far North (Vitebsky 2005: 85; Humphrey 1996; Sneath 2000). It reveals a belief that fire possesses its own degree of personhood comparable to that of animals and spirits (Vitebsky 2005: 159). A number of rules also exist concerning the treatment of fire, specifically, that one is never allowed to thrust a sharp object into the fire, which will cause harm to the spirit. In addition, fire is said to ‘speak to people’ through its cracking, hissing, and burning (also see Brandisauskas 2007: 103) (Figure 9.2). Now, as these examples make clear, there are several conflicts between Evenki and the state. What is most interesting, however, are the discrepancies

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Figure 9.2 A fire burns steadily inside the tent.

between official policy and the situation on the ground, which reveal instances of flexibility, negotiation, and convergence between actors. For example, while no one is officially allowed to live in the Da Xinganliang taiga, harvest forest resources, and light fires, in fact, Evenki households do so and even set up their campsites in protected areas. This is due largely to the fact that the herders are often close friends with the forest rangers. Typically, the rangers will know where a particular campsite is located and, if they conduct a spot-check, they will be invited to stay for a few nights. Over time, they have formed relationships and, it is during these exchanges that most of the conflicts concerning conservation are managed. In my experience, the rangers are generally interested in the Evenki lifestyle and it is only when they receive pressure from their leaders that they impose restrictions. This offers a good example of how everyday social relations supersede potentially divergent ontological frameworks (see Introduction), as well as a certain degree of exceptionalism with regards to the Evenki (also see Kolås and Xie 2015). Indeed, there is a general uncertainty amongst the local government with how to manage what is essentially a unique cultural and environmental situation. On the one hand, state policy is clear regarding conservation measures. At the same time, the government displays flexibility to allow the Evenki to continue mobile reindeer herding (and the practices associated with it). As we have seen, the state now has a vested

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interest to promote the antler economy and ethnic tourism industry. Put simply, without reindeer, the ethnic tourism market would lose its appeal. Hunting animal persons It is important to recognize that the Evenki were traditionally subsistence hunters who used reindeer as pack animals, supplemented with small-scale milking and with reindeer never slaughtered for their meat (Fraser 2010). This is consistent with other reindeer-herding peoples of Inner Asia who comprise the southern-most extreme of reindeer pastoralism (Donahue 2003: 12). Mobility and hunting inculcated intimate relationships between human beings and animals, which manifested in specific ideas about nonhuman personhood and spirits. Most notable is the hunting spirit called Baiyinchaa, who represents the Master of the Forest and is appeased through offerings before any hunt. As we have seen, by the early 1990s, the state began designating protected areas. Connected to this, in 1996, the government prohibited all hunting in the area. The official reason was the sharp decrease of wild animals and the result of a government survey that found minorities could no longer live via hunting alone. In fact, since sedentarization, very few people were supporting their subsistence from hunting. As people remark, the ban was actually founded upon a developmentalist policy, which (still) maintains a teleological vision regarding hunting as a backward way of life, (see Fraser (2015) for a comparable example amongst the neighbouring Orochen). The hunting ban is by far the greatest source of conflict between the state and the Evenki. Not only is it seen as a symbol of their cultural identity, but it is also deemed necessary to protect reindeer from predators. It is common for households to lose several reindeer every year to predation. It is also not uncommon for reindeer to be poached by illegal hunters, particularly in winter when the herds are left to graze further in search of lichen. Illegal hunting is taken very seriously and, if caught, the person will almost certainly face prosecution, a heavy fine, and jail time. Even friendly forestry rangers enforce hunting regulations. And yet hunting also reveals the state of exceptionalism, flexibility, and mediation described above. For example, after long petitioning, the local government granted households special permission to keep one rifle per campsite solely for the purposes of protecting their herds. Of course, this means that households can also engage in secret hunting. As one can be arrested and imprisoned if caught, hunting usually takes place at night or in particularly remote areas. It is also facilitated by drawing upon one’s social network to avoid prosecution. Thus, the usual scenario is for a group of hunters to call friendly forest rangers to avoid detection. In doing so, hunters are able to access temporary ‘safe areas’ within the mountains where they know they will not be targeted. All Evenki see hunting as an essential practice through which to maintain proper relations with the nonhuman agencies inside the taiga. As with other northern hunters, hunting is not, in the first instance, seen as an encounter between human beings and animals, but between different kinds of persons,

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represented by animal spirits and the Master of the Forest (Bayinchaa). Whenever people go hunting, it is commonplace to first make an offering to Bayinchaa. This involves locating a particular tree some distance from the campsite and carving a face into the bark. Offerings of alcohol are then made, followed by short prayers giving thanks for good fortune in hunting. For the Evenki, hunting does not mean the ad hoc killing of wild animals as cultural norms dictate which animals can and cannot be hunted at different times of the year. Contrary to both the illegal hunting practised by Han-Chinese and the conservation policies of the state, for the Evenki hunting is a confrontation with the natural as well as the social environment (also see Bird-David 1999: 132). This was visible when my informants went hunting and frequently referred to past actions, persons, and encounters. While I would point out ‘a beautiful view’, they would describe how some months ago they encountered an animal spirit or their reindeer felt the presence of Bayinchaa. Here nonhuman persons are considered immanent within the landscape itself and hunting is seen as the vehicle through which to maintain proper relationships with such nonhuman persons in a reciprocal cycle of life and death. On one occasion, I followed a group of hunters in search of wild boar. Walking for around thirty minutes, we arrived at a small clearing: ‘I remember him (the boar) passing through here last season. This one always returns to Da Xian’s (an old hunter) stream. Animals are just like us … When you know this, it is easier to think like a boar’. As Hugh-Jones (1994) remarks, because of their proximity to animals, Amazonian and northern hunters are quick to adopt their perspective, demonstrating what Viveiros de Castro (1998) calls perspectival thinking. As in the case above, in hunting, this manifests in people recounting the story of the hunt by adopting the perspective of their prey (also see Willerslev 2007: 90). After several hours one young hunter spotted a number of boars darting through the trees. Bending down quickly, he propped his rifle and, within a few seconds, fired two shots in quick succession, the animals running for a few metres and one of them then collapsing onto the ground. Walking over to the boar, the young hunter kneeled beside it and began the butchering process: removing the organs, skin, and fur and wrapping the flesh so that it could be carried back to the campsite. As he worked, an older hunter told a story about Bayinchaa: A hunter was once out near the Russian border and encountered a sick animal. Bayinchaa told the hunter to leave the animal otherwise he would encounter death. The hunter disobeyed and greedily hunted the animal; a few days later the man’s wife died by falling into a fire. After listening to the story, the young hunter carried the organs of the boar a few metres into the taiga and placed them on top of a broken tree. He then uttered a short prayer giving thanks to the Master of the Forest. This encounter reveals the connection between hunting skills, conceptualizations of nonhuman personhood, and Evenki attitudes to conservation. These are dimensions not recognized by the Chinese state, which see

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hunting as a damaging practice resulting in the loss of wildlife and its banning as a step towards modernization. For Evenki, however, hunting is reciprocity between persons which affords opportunities for meaning-making. It is also here where the attention to skill intersects with Evenki ideas about conservation. Thus, it is through learning particular skills – such as identifying which animals can and cannot be hunted at which times, engaging in respectful relations with animal and forest-masters, adopting particular modes of bodily comportment (e.g. not saying the name of the animal aloud, not shouting, etc.), and performing specific rituals after the hunt (e.g. offering the organs as a gift to the Master of the Forest) – that Evenki ideas of nonhuman personhood fuse with notions of ecological stability, reciprocity, and order in the taiga. For my Evenki informants, hunting is thus not antithetical to conservation, for to hunt ‘properly’ – that is to say, to follow the rules of hunting and which rituals to perform – renders conservation inherent within hunting itself. Reindeer people: human-animal relations and personhood The Evenki collectively own one thousand heads of reindeer. Their form of reindeer husbandry exemplifies what Stammler and Beach (2006: 8) term symbiotic domestication (SD): small-scale reindeer pastoralism necessitating intimate human-reindeer relations. This generates culturally specific notions of reindeer personhood, which also underpin conflicts with regards to conservation (Figure 9.3). For the government and forest rangers, reindeer are classified as a ‘semi-wild’ (ban yesheng) animal and have national-status protection. This means it is illegal to hunt or wound a reindeer and harvest its parts. The first major conflict occurred at the time of the 2003 relocation. Initially, the government constructed pens on the outskirts of Aoluguyaa with the intention of keeping the reindeer ‘domesticated’ and feeding them with fodder. After only a few months, a number of reindeer became ill and died, specifically because reindeer can only feed on fresh lichen found inside the forest. This resulted in the herders dismantling the pens and forcibly taking their reindeer back to their campsites. Since then, the government has accepted the need for reindeer to remain inside the forest. It has also invested in scientific research, with biologists and geneticists brought in to conduct analyses of their health and genetic disorders, with the aim of boosting their numbers. In 2013, China was admitted to membership to the Association of World Reindeer Herders, participating in conferences and hosting foreign experts from Russia and Scandinavia. This suggests the state has a vested interest in the reindeer population and goes some way towards explaining the state of exceptionalism granted to the forestdwelling herders. The state has also sought to promote reindeer as part of the ethnic tourism experience, with Evenki households paid a fee to bring their animals into the settlement during the summer and over Christmas so tourists can take

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Figure 9.3 Surrounded by the herd.

photographs. This has created opportunities but also some problems. As people explain, reindeer can only remain healthy while grazing inside the taiga. As one herder explained: Last summer I brought three reindeer for tourists taking photographs. They were my strongest bulls and I received good income. But by the end of the season they had become weak and I was worried they wouldn’t survive the winter. Another related concern is that reindeer should not be subjected to regular movements back and forth to the settlement. Whenever reindeer are brought to Aoluguya, the animals are transported by truck. The journey itself takes several hours and my informants complain that the animals become stressed, which damages their health. These examples capture the complexities associated with

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integrating reindeer into the tourism economy. On the one hand, it affords new opportunities, particularly those with smaller herds, given their income from antler cropping is limited. At the same time, the conflicts reveal not just differing attitudes to reindeer but of very different ideas of nonhuman personhood. As we have seen, Evenki herders embody what Viveiros de Castro (1998) calls perspectival thinking by adopting the perspective of animals during hunting. I observed a comparable example of this when it came to reindeer personhood. Firstly, the Evenki were quick to confirm questions concerning reindeer agency, characterizing their animals as intelligent, witty, and each with their own specific personalities. All reindeer not only possess names but are frequently referred to as ‘friends’ or ‘children’. Here the intimacy of humanreindeer relations is emphasized to be in contradistinction to the attitude of the Chinese state who, Evenki often say, simply ‘view the reindeer as numbers’. This is the case in particular with members of the older generation who consistently show affection to their reindeer, wrapping their arms around them and speaking to them in highly intimate terms: ‘Oh little star, one day you will grow up to be so strong. Yes… you like licking my face don’t you?’ Evenki attitudes of nonhuman personhood can also be seen in everyday interactions. Each morning people rise early and, following tea, the men set about tracking their reindeer to herd them back to the campsites. The Evenki allow their animals to venture far during the night and reindeer are known for travelling vast distances. After returning to the campsites, the men sit down to drink tea and begin the daily ritual of intricate descriptions of how far the reindeer had travelled during the night, what paths they took, whose deer travelled together, and which ventured the furthest from the campsites. Comments would be made such as ‘Reindeer x managed to get all the way to the valley’, ‘Brown tail is so smart, he got all the way to the river’, or ‘Big Antler is always wishing to travel to the stream. He is looking for Liu Ba (a deceased hunter)’. This occurred on a daily basis and revealed not simply the manner in which the Evenki grant their animals agency but the perspectival relations alluded to above. In telling stories of their reindeer’s movement, they not only emphasized their own personalities and motivations but did so from the perspective of the animals themselves. Evenki herders have detailed knowledge of their reindeer in terms of personalities, genetic lineages, and special characteristics. People know which animals ‘listen well’, which are more stubborn, and which are more wild, and this becomes taken-for-granted knowledge when interacting with them on a daily basis. For Evenki, social relationships extend into the domain of nonhuman animals, forming part of what Habeck calls the ‘multi-person cosmos’ (2006: 133). Importantly, reindeer are not only granted agency but the skills and knowledge typically associated with human activities such as herding, locating water sources, and fending off predators. While the characterization that a reindeer ‘listens well’ might appear anthropomorphic, this is to misapprehend the ontological presuppositions of local human-animal relations. Indeed, from

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an Evenki perspective, an animal that ‘listens well’ and ‘travels far’ is not like a human person, but rather, is a person like a human being. As noted, the Evenki procure antler velvet from their reindeer utilized in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which involves manually cutting the antler during the spring. During this time, the herders will act especially sympathetically to their reindeer, seeking to avoid injury and telling them ‘not to be afraid’. Here there is an embodied intimacy between human and non-human persons that is in sharp contrast to the large-scale pastoralism of the Far North, where thousands of reindeer are slaughtered for their meat (Stammler and Beach 2006). By contrast, Evenki not only tell their animals not to be afraid but emphatically stress their position as autonomous subjects if this comes to be challenged. For example, I observed a Han-Chinese visitor being severely reprimanded for kicking one of the reindeer during the harvesting process. Here we can say the relatively ‘new’ antler industry has merged with Evenki ideas of nonhuman personhood. Just as hunting is a method for maintaining social relations in the Far North (Nadasdy 2007), so antler cropping maintains the web of reciprocity in which they are situated: taking the antler from the reindeer, thanking them, ensuring that they do not feel pain and, in return, continuing to provide for them the necessary sustenance in the form of wild lichens and protection. In this way, antler cropping fulfils the maintenance of generalized reciprocity (Sahlins 2017). It is for this reason why many Evenki describe their relationship with their reindeer as one of life and death: ‘If I am not here, who will look after the reindeer?’. This reveals a system in which human and animal persons are conceived as equals in a reciprocal, symbiotic relationship, ‘not only for their movements in the landscape, but also for their very sustenance and reproduction’ (Stammler and Beach 2006: 12). Here the life and death of the Evenki are seen as coterminous with the life and death of their reindeer. As one person put it: ‘If the reindeer die out then I will die too. The only reason I stay is for them’.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have described the conflicts surrounding environmental conservation between the Chinese state and the Evenki. I described how these conflicts are not just the result of differing attitudes to the environment but of differing ecologies of practice and ideas of nonhuman personhood. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see what form reindeer herding will take as the tourism industry continues to expand. On the one hand, the state has a vested interest in not only protecting but also increasing the reindeer population, and so we can anticipate increased research and support for the animals. Membership to the Association of World Reindeer Herders also carries certain responsibilities, such as regular updates on reindeer health and introduction of the latest scientific techniques. However, it remains to be seen whether comparable support will be offered to the few remaining households engaged in reindeer herding. The state recognizes the problem that few Evenki youths are

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interested in living and working in the forest. One suggested solution is to modernize the encampments through increased electrification via solar panels and more regular transport to and from the settlement. Another proposal is to hire non-Evenki people to work in the campsites. While this would certainly maintain the population, it raises concerns amongst the Evenki. For example, it suggests to them that the state is more committed to maintaining reindeer solely for the tourism industry, with little regard for the needs of the herders. More fundamentally, it suggests little appreciation for the culturally specific understandings about nonhuman personhood, as well as the value of their own knowledge and skills in environmental conservation.

References Anderson, D. 2000. Identity and Ecology in Arctic Siberia: The Number One Reindeer Brigade. Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beach, H. 2003. Milk and Antlers: Chinese Dual-Ownership System Remains a Hopeful Model Despite Forced Relocation from Olguya (Inner Mongolia). Cultural Survival Quarterly 27(1): 33–5. Bird-David, N. 1999. ‘Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology 40: S67–S91. Brandisauskas, D. 2007. Symbolism and Ecological Uses of Fire Among Orochen-Evenki. Sibirica 6(1): 95–119. Chatty, D., and Colchester, M. 2002. (eds.). Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement, and Sustainable Development. Studies in Forced Migration. Vol. 10. New York: Berghahn Books. China Daily. 2003. Reindeer-Evenki on the Move. 1 May. Descola, P. 1992. Societies of Nature and the Nature of Society. In: A. Kuper (ed.), Conceptualising Society. London: Routledge, pp. 107–126. Descola, P., and Palsson G. 1996. Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge. Donahue, B. 2003. The Troubled Taiga: Survival on the Move for the Last Nomadic Reindeer Herders of South Siberia, Mongolia, and China. Cultural Survival Quarterly 27(1): 12–5. Economy, E. 2004. The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future. New York: Cornell University Press. Elvin, M. 2004. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. Yale, CT: Yale University Press. Feit, H. 1973. The Ethnoecology of the Waswanipi Cree: Or How Hunters Can Manage Their Resources. In: B. Cox (ed.), Cultural Ecology: Readings on the Canadian Indians and Eskimos. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, pp. 115–25. Fraser, R. 2010. Forced Relocation Amongst the Reindeer-Evenki of Inner Mongolia. Inner Asia 12(2): 317–346. Fraser, R. 2015. Tents, Taiga, and Tourist Parks. In: A. Kolas (ed.), Reclaiming the Forest: The Ewenki Reindeer Herders of Aoluguya. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, p. 130. Habeck, J.O. 2006. Experience, Mobility, and Mobility: Komi Reindeer Herder’s Perception of the Environment. Nomadic Peoples 10(2): 123–44.

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Hallowell, A.I. 1960. Ojibwa Ontology, Behaviour, and World View. In: S. Diamond (ed.), Culture in History: Essays in Honour of Paul Radin. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 19–52. Heyne, F.G. 1999. The Social Significance of the Shaman Amongst the Chinese Reindeer-Evenki. Asian Folklore Studies 58(2): 377–95. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Hugh-Jones, S. 1994. Shamans, Prophets, Priests, and Pastors. In: Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey (eds.), Shamanism, History, and the State. Ann-Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Humphrey, C., and Onon, U. 1996. Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge, and Power Among the Daur Mongols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ingold, T. 1980. Hunters, Pastoralists, and Ranchers: Reindeer Economies and Their Transformations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ingold, T. 1991. Becoming Persons: Consciousness and Sociality in Human Evolution. Cultural Dynamics 4(3): 355–78. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. London: Routledge. King, A. 2003. Without Deer There Is No Culture. Anthropology and Humanism 27(2): 133–64. Kolås, Å., and Xie, Y. (eds.), 2015. Reclaiming the Forest: The Ewenki Reindeer Herders of Aoluguya. Berghahn Books. Lindgren, E. 1933. Northwest Manchuria and the Reindeer-Tungus. The Geographical Journal 75(6): 518–34. Lundberg, M., and Y. Zhou. 2009. Hunting-Prohibition in the Hunters’ Autonomous Area. International Journal on@@ Minority and Group Rights 16(3): 349–97. Myers, F. 1986. Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. University California Press. Nadasdy, P. 2007. The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and HumanAnimal Sociality. American Ethnologist 34(1): 25–31. Nentwig, I. 2003. Reminiscences About the Reindeer Herders of China. Cultural Survival Quarterly 27(1): 36–8. Sahlins, M. 2017. Stone Age Economics. London: Taylor & Francis. 1935 Shirokogoroff, S.M. 1935. Psychomental Complex of the Tungus. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Sneath, D. 2000. Changing Inner Mongolia: Pastoral Mongolian Society and the Chinese State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stammler, F. 2004. When Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market: Culture, Property, and Globalisation at the ‘End of the Land’. Halle, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Stammler, F., and Beach, H. 2006. Human-Animal Relations in Pastoralism. Nomadic Peoples 10(2): 6–25. Tsing, A. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vitebsky, P. 2005. Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia. London: HarperCollins. Viveiros de Castro, E. 1998. Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4: 469–88.

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Weller, R. 2006. Discovering Nature: Globalisation and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willerslev, R. 2007. Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood Among the Siberian Yukaghirs. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, D.M. 2002. Beyond Great Walls: Environment, Identity, and Development on the Chinese Grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Stanford, CA: Sstanford University Press. Xinhua. 2003. Last Hunting Tribe Gives Up Virgin Forest. August 8. Xinhua News Agency. Yeh, E. 2005. Green Governmentality and Pastoralism in Western China: ‘Converting Pastures to Grasslands’. Nomadic Peoples 9: 9–22.

Part IV

Cosmopolitical ecologies for the 21st century

10 Cosmopolitical ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan: repurposing ritual and re-presenting realities Riamsara Kuyakanon1 and Dorji Gyeltshen2 University of Cambridge; 2Royal University of Bhutan

1

Prelude – memory and encounter

Memory: I remember that one year we had Kanjur Lingkor when I was a monk at Gangtey. There was a problem of rain shortage that year, so the villagers from Gangtey and Phobji came to Gangtey Gonpa and requested Gangtey Tulku to perform a rain ritual. So he decided that we would do ‘solka’, a libation ritual, and the people collected rice and everything and brought it to the monastery. We performed this for almost a week – and still there was no rain. So, as a last resort, they performed the Kanjur Lingkor. I’m not sure whose idea it was, but it came up that there should be Kanjur Lingkor. During the Kanjur Lingkor the villagers were involved in carrying the Kanjur, and others came and lined-up along where they walked, and offered juice, tea – this was new to me! It took more than a day. The Kanjur was brought from Gangtey Gompa to Phobji village, and I think it took two or three days to go around all the villages. I think it was taken to all the places that had rainfall shortage, and to where the people who had sponsored the ritual were. It must have rained after that! – Dorji.

Encounter: It’s a late morning in mid-June 2020 when we drive into Choekor valley in central Bhutan, travelling westward on the national highway. We’d stopped several times on the winding mountain roads to take in the cool air, and to pick wild strawberries. Descending from the pine forests and coming into the valley we enter a populated area where houses sit in fields, and where unseasonably empty tourist lodges sit empty due to the pandemic. Françoise is driving and slows down when we see people in the road, and then we are asked by the traffic police to pull over and wait. David walks over to politely ask the reason for the DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-10

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stoppage. There is a Kanjur Chokor happening because of the Covid pandemic. The road ahead is clear of vehicles, there are piles of evergreens waiting alongside to be lit for smoke offerings, and villagers are lined up waiting, wearing traditional dress. A make-shift table has been set up, covered in yellow ceremonial cloth, with cut fruit, mango juice and water to be offered to the procession as they pass by. One of the organisers is distributing incense; we join the villagers standing by the road. The procession itself can be seen coming from afar, led by the sounds of ritual instruments. It soon reaches us. First are the Desuup in their bright orange uniforms carrying the five elemental colour flags fluttering on tall poles. White, yellow, red, green and blue. They are followed by men carrying the national flag, a dragon on a diagonal of yellow and orange. Then the silk brocade altar hangings, swaying on their long poles, followed by large framed portraits of His Majesty the King of Bhutan, and His Holiness the Je Khenpo. Then monks in their tall red headpieces sounding trumpets, conches, cymbals and drums. The long body of the procession is made up of monks and lay persons carrying volumes of the Kanjur. The large oblong texts are wrapped in maroon, saffron or white cloths and strapped to their backs. The grandmother next to me makes prostrations while others make recitations and bend their heads to receive blessings as the volumes are carried past. It’s a vivid, melodious, colourful and orderly event, a mixture of formality and informality, and ephemeral. All too soon, after the remaining refreshments are shared out among those present, it’s quiet again. The daily noises return. People head back to their homes, calling to each other. The clacking sound of a Maruti minivan reclaims the road, transforming it back into a place of vehicular traffic. As we drive on down the valley, smoking piles of evergreens are the only reminders left. We are heading towards Trongsa, home of the College of Language and Culture Studies, where I’ll meet colleagues to discuss ongoing work for our Himalayan Connections project on climate change, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies. 1Speaking to Lopen Dorji Gyeltshen in his office some days later, I mention the serendipitous encounter along our journey, asking him what he knows about the practice. He recounts his above memory. – Riam

This chapter has begun with our differing encounters and experiences of a ritual event of circumambulation with Buddhist canonical texts, known as Kanjur Chokor or Kanjur Lingkor. Dorji Gyeltshen’s was years earlier when he was a young monk at Gangtey Gompa, and Riam’s was during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. While circumambulation with texts is not uncommon, we were surprised to find so little published on it. In our understanding of the practice in Bhutan, it is very much related to rain-making, but clearly, it was now also being done for Covid-19 protection (Figure 10.1). What can this deployment of Kanjur Chokor tell us about environmental cosmopolitics in Bhutan? We draw on Buddhist texts, participant observation and internet ethnography to probe

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 209 this practice and contingent ritual practices observed during the same period. In what follows, we begin with the assertion that politics in Bhutan has historically been a cosmopolitics, which we support with reference to some major historical events. We then discuss the Kanjur’s significance as a ritual and material object, the practice of Kanjur Chokor and its changing context in light of the COVID19 crisis, and conclude by reflecting on ways our study contributes to thinking on cosmopolitical ecologies.

Bhutan’s political origins through cosmopolitical ecologies lenses The history of Bhutan is one in which the cosmological, political and ecological are co-constituted, very clearly seen in the 17th century foundational period of theocratic rule.2 The beginning of the Bhutanese polity is ascribed to the advent and activities of the Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, a religious hierarch of Ralung, Tibet. Due to succession turmoil, he travelled south to what is today western Bhutan, following a vision led by his protector deity raven-headed Mahakala (las mgon bya rog gdong can). In these southern valleys, he established his base of religio-political power and what would become the southern Drukpa

Figure 10.1 Desuup or ‘guardians of the peace’ lead the Kanjur Chokor procession to protect against COVID-19 as villagers wait alongside the road to receive blessings from the texts. (Bumthang, June 2020, photo: Riamsara Kuyakanon).

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order (lho ‘brug). As the religio-political fusion is obvious and has been much engaged with, here we consider the ecological/environmental elements in this 17th century narrative of conquest and unification that are not usually thought of as distinct and separate from the cosmological or the political. Below we attend to three aspects: the first concerns onto-epistemic claims of perception, the second religio-political organizational structure, and the third religiopolitical practice, with magical warfare as an example. First, the surrounding environment, the land, water, sky, mountains and so on, was perceived as already inhabited by non-human beings such as demons (bdud), mountain gods (lha, btsan), lake goddesses (sman mo) and serpent spirits (klu), who were (and continue to be) forces to be contended with (especially by common folk), and to be subjugated and bound to the dharma by religious masters. The subjugation or taming of the land and its other-than-human denizens (glossed somewhat unsatisfactorily into a group, as ‘local deities’) meant not just their conversion to Buddhism but also signified the Tantric practitioner’s mastery over unruly things such as weather, rockfalls and landslides. Ultimately, this rendering of the environment less ‘wild’ and more habitable and fruitful for humans has been tied to the introduction of agriculture and sedentarization and all the way back to the Tibetan origin myth. In Bhutan, this pattern is evident in the famous story of Guru Rinpoche’s defeating the deity Shelging Karpo to return life force back to the king of Bumthang and fertility to the land, credited to Denma Tsemang in the 9th century (2009).3 In Zhabdrung’s biography, when he arrives in Bhutan almost 900 years later (around 1616), it is described as a land of general lawlessness filled with malevolent spirits who harmed humans (dPal lDan rGya mTsho 1997), similar to descriptions in Guru Rinpoche’s biography. Dissolving the boundaries between material and immaterial, these beings could apparently also appear as animals and dwelled in topological features, with the distinction between the feature or the being unclear at times (see Pommaret 2004; Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen 2017). Whatever critical historical readings may infer about such recorded experiences or biographical tropes – and in Zhabdrung’s subjugation of the nonhuman, the comparison with Padmasambhava was made explicit by the biographer, the point here is that they bring together the cosmological and the political and manifest them within the land and life forms experienced in the new land and that the rhetoric was defined by and fit into existing modes of social thought and perception in which the religious, ecological and political were, in such instances, not separated. The organizational structure of Zhabdrung Rinpoche’s religio-political rule also was in keeping with pre-existing modes. This point is made by both Sonam Kinga (2009) and Karma Phuntsho, among others. For example, western Bhutan ‘was largely ruled by priestly families combining both the roles of a religious lama and civil ruler’ (2013: 257), which Zhabdrung ‘amplified’ and synthesized into the dual system of religious and secular rule (chos srid zung ‘jug). Not only were religion and politics melded in the structure of the fledgling polity, but in its practices, with monks in the roles of political administrators and the apex

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 211 embodiment of religio-political unity in the person of Zhabdrung. The dual system was given magnificent material expression in the physical structures of the fortress-monastery dzong, centres of both political and religious administration, that dominate the land at topographically strategic points. As Phuntsho puts it, They were not merely structural edifices with obvious functions of defense, accommodation, administration, public worship, etc. but loud political statements to mark his dominion and supremacy not only over the human inhabitants but also over the natural landscape and non-human denizens. (2013: 256) A very famous example – in which the cosmological, the political and the ecological, are bounded within the same field of practice, is when Zhabdrung declared his intention to become the ruler and unifier of the territory. After completing a spiritual retreat during which he’d had visionary experiences directing him to build a Drukpa state, Zhabdrung sent out an edict. In Phuntsho’s translation of the classical Tibetan (see dPal lDan rGya mTsho 1997), Zhabdrung declares: ‘all gods, humans and spirits of Lhomonkhazi, from this day, fall under the dominion of the great magician Ngawang Namgyal and everyone must heed to his words’. The edicts, with the accompanying tokens of gifts were sent across the country to be placed on strategic spots at mountain passes, riverbanks, cliffs, forests, monuments and castles. Although ostensibly despatched to the non-human denizens of the land, the edicts had a palpable impact on psychology of the human citizenry. It was Zhabdrung’s first proclamation of his ambition to become the spiritual and temporal ruler of Bhutan and to rule over the many religious leaders and chieftains in the country. (2013: 223) In this example of ‘cosmopolitical ecology’, ecology can be thought of both in the more materialist sense of the environment and its a/biotic communities, as well as in the philosophical sense of ‘ecologies of practice’ (Stengers 2005), as the edict makes it clear that the direct recipients of the message are gods and spirits of the mountains, rivers, cliffs, etc. As intimated in the above translation and commentary, there is also pragmatism of practice here – as Zhabdrung didn’t have many human subjects to send his edict to, widening his subject domain through ontological disregard and non-exemption was politically astute. Lest it is thought that these words were empty, they were not, as it was well known that the claim to dominance could be backed up by action, i.e. the mobilization of power through magical warfare. For example, when Zhabdrung’s Tibetan adversary the Tsangpa ruler and his family died of smallpox in 1621, the Tibetans attributed their demise to Zhabdrung’s magical powers, and ‘In Bhutan, Tsangpa’s death was seen as a testimony to Zhabdrung’s invincible power and the support of the protector gods’ (Phuntsho 2013: 219–20). Magical warfare is

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innately political-ecological insofar as it concerns control over the environment, or what we would call environmental factors (including microbes, in presentist reading) to achieve desired political ends. Religion and politics have been inseparable for most of the history of the Bhutanese polity, though how they were embodied and actualized has continued to change since the 17th century. Most recently, there has been codification and explicit recognition of the separation of religion and politics in the Constitution (Royal Government of Bhutan 2008), though both are symbolically reunited in the person of the king. Turning from national affairs to more modest village affairs, village-level political ecology is often also cosmopolitical, wherein livelihood and agricultural practices cannot be fully appreciated without acknowledging the place of different deities and immaterial beings in people’s social and political lives. For example, in our study of mountain-closure (ridam ladam) in eastern Bhutan, the village religious authority (Lopen Dorji’s maternal great-grandfather) determined when the ritual to propitiate the mountain deity would be held, a decision that had a direct effect on livelihood practices of agriculture and forest resource collection (Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen 2017). Not offending the mountain deity directly correlated to avoiding crop damage from storms and bad weather, within what Huber and Pedersen term a ‘moral climate’ or ‘moral space’, whereby ‘Weather conditions were systematically linked to social life and correlated with a code for proper conduct’ (1997: 588). Having established that a cosmopolitical ecological framing is practically selfgenerating when attending to Bhutan, we turn to look specifically at a ritual, Kanjur Chokor, that seems to have transcended its village origins to become something ‘more’ during the coronavirus pandemic.

Kanjur and Kanjur Chokor The Kanjur is the collection of Buddha Siddharta Gautama’s words translated into classical Tibetan (Kanjur (bka’ ‘gyur) literally means ‘translation of the [Buddha‘s] pronouncements’). As a corpus that forms a major part of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, a vast amount has been written about it across the centuries, from ancient scholastic commentaries to present-day Buddhist Studies and Tibetological scholarship. More recently, in the past decade or so, there has also been a florescence of studies around Tibetan book culture and the Mahayana cult of the book, leading to a much wider understanding of the contexts around which the Buddha’s teachings and Buddhist texts flourished in the Himalayan and Tibetan worlds and beyond.4 In Bhutan, Buddhist texts and the culture of the book that they embody were existent from at least the 11th century CE and widespread from the 12th century (Dorji Gyaltsen 2016). The Kanjur has boundless symbolic value, being no less than the guide to enlightenment, and in different contexts can manifest as the words of the Buddha or the Buddha himself. For example, in the Lotus Sutra (part of the Kanjur), it is stated that whoever would carry this dharma book on their shoulder, that person carries the Buddha on their shoulder. Where ever that

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 213 person goes, all sentient beings should respect them (Chos kyi ‘byung gnas ed. 1733).5 The evergreen smoke offerings (lha bsangs) alongside the road in Choekor valley that Riam noted were lit for the reception of the Kanjur as an honoured ‘personage’. It can be ‘a ritual tool, community relic, a political icon or an economic commodity in yet another context’ (Phuntsho 2011: 21). Though we focus on a material and ritual aspect of the Kanjur in this chapter, it is with an acknowledgement that this cannot be separated from its symbolic, philosophical, pedagogical, doctrinal and other values that underpin its social life and socio-cultural practices around it. To whatever extent people may comprehend its philosophical and doctrinal dimensions, its symbolic value is also carried within its material presence, as is made explicit from the text itself, and also in passages mentioning that wherever the sutra is taken or kept, the place will be blessed, and people who live in that place will be blessed and prosperous. In fact, it also mentions that it can bring rain, and there are many such references in other parts of the Kanjur, such as the Great Cloud Sutra, a topic which we believe merits further study of itself, perhaps as part of the emerging work on rainmaking ritual texts.6 As a material entity, the Kanjur is comprised of around 108 volumes of poti,7 the traditional book format of unbound folios of text stacked between covers, which are usually two carved pieces of wood. The poti is large and oblong in dimension; manuscripts can be as large as 19 cm (width) x 70 cm (length), and depending on their material, heavier woodblocks such as some Lopen Dorji has documented in Paro, can weigh up to 15 kg each. The volumes are often stored in special shelves or cabinets built on either side of the main altar in temples, sometimes called gtsug lag khang, denoting that they are places where these canonical texts are kept.8 Commissioning the production of the Kanjur is considered a very meritorious act. It is done by eminent persons – for example, the 9th Je Khenpo9 Shakya Rinchen (1710–59) initiated three sets of Kanjur writing in his life (Shakya Rin Chen 1974). It is very costly to produce and is kept in few homes because for most people, especially in the east of Bhutan, which is poorer than the western parts of the country, it is expensive and voluminous. For most rituals and events, the Kanjur is read inside the lhakhang, by monks as well as by qualified lay participants. This is usually done for merit or to accumulate virtue, whether it is performed for the village, for the public or for an individual. Kanjur reading remains quite rare in Bhutan, especially in villages or individual homes; it is expensive, as many religious persons need to be invited as readers and there is the cost of hosting them. Reading the Bum (100,000 words) is much more common as it is recited individually. For events outside the lhakhang, the Kanjur needs to be ‘invited’ from the lhakhang, and men, women and children can help carry it, as might be needed. This is not an insignificant task, as each poti is large and heavy, and in the Bhutan Himalaya, the pathways are seldom level. Kanjur Chokor means to circumambulate with the Kanjur (or literally, the dharma), and as far as we can tell from common usage, chokor (chos bskor) is used interchangeably with lingkor (gling bskor) to circumambulate around a place. We speculate that it may be an age-old

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practice, perhaps following on closely to the initial production and dissemination of the texts themselves. It is carried out in some villages in Bhutan and other parts of the Buddhist Himalaya as well as renewed or introduced in places with Tibetan Buddhist influence. Reasons for conducting Kanjur Chokor generally are to do with obtaining blessings and protection for the community, but this will differ in the different places and contexts where it is done. In addition to any specific outcomes desired, supplication and offerings to the Buddha, bodhisattvas (and possibly the relevant local deities – there is ambiguity here), as well as accumulation of merit for the people, are inherent in the practice. In Bhutan, Kanjur Chokor is associated with rainmaking. Reading it inside a lhakhang does not have this association, but parading or circumambulating with it around a territory is associated with bringing about desirable atmospheric effects. For example, the 10th Je Khenpo Tenzin Chogyal’s biography (rnam thar) mentions a drought (than pa) and famine (mu ge) that occurred in Punakha during the 18th century, and when a set of Kanjur that he had requested through the dzongpon (district administrator) and desi (temporal ruler) arrived at Nalanda monastery in Punakha from Tibet, the rain started to fall. The story of how the rain came after the Kanjur arrived from Tibet is as follows: The 10th Je Khenpo Tenzin Chogyal resigned from office in 1762. Then he entered into a three-year retreat at Dorjidhen, which is currently known as Talo Nobgang. While he was in retreat, he asked Dzongpon Sonam Lhundrup to procure a Kanjur for him. Then the Dzongpon asked the Desi and the Desi procured a set of Kanjur printed from the Derge Tshelpar.10 The Kanjur arrived at Dorjidhen on the 4th day of the first month of the Bhutanese calendar in 1765. There was a drought at the time, but when the Kanjur arrived, it started to rain (Yon Tan mTha’ Yas 1985: ff. 103v6). In this instance, simply the advent and presence of the Kanjur has a very beneficial effect on the weather. It is a powerful entity that can change the atmosphere and bring rain. As a textual scholar, Dorji knew that the 9th Je Khenpo had commissioned three sets of the Kanjur in his lifetime and conjectured that when he read the Je Khenpo’s biography, he might find references in there about Kanjur Chokor, but he did not. What might we make of this absence? The possibility exists that perhaps because Kanjur Chokor is considered a village kind of practice, rather than one of the rituals classified as elite and performed by ordained monks, like many other ‘folk’ rituals performed by lay monks and villagers, it is less likely to be recorded in the religious literature.11 While there are references to Kanjur Chokor in 20th and 21st century studies of Tibet and Nepal, these are generally in passing.12 An exception to this is Geoff Childs’ ‘Notes on the Social Usage of the Kanjur (bKa’ ‘gyur)’ in which he details the Kanjur kora13 of Sama village in Nubri, Nepal, to demonstrate ‘the close relationship between texts, rituals, economics, and social organization’ (2005: 41). As performed in 1997, the Sama Kanjur kora is preceded by nine days of reading the text in the village temple. The ritual is led by a lay monk (sngags pa), the reading is done by 50 village lay practitioners (chos pa), with no participation from ordained monks (dge slong), and nuns were discouraged from participating. On the day of the Kanjur kora, the texts were carried by villagers

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 215 and walked around the territory, stopping at five different ‘neighbourhoods’ for feasts hosted by a volunteer household in each neighbourhood. According to a senior sngags pa … The benefits of performing the Kanjur Kora on an annual basis include: crops will flourish and will not be adversely affected by insect infestation; the bovine herds will remain healthy and productive; community members will be free from ailments; and households will prosper. (2005: 43–44) With a focus on village economy, Childs asserts that ‘the Kanjur, as an interactive object of worship, is so important in Sama that an entire tax system was developed to fund a ritual designed to unleash the protective capacity contained within the written words of the Buddha’ (2005: 46). While we do not know if the Kanjur kora is still performed in Sama, this was the only full-length scholarly paper we found.14 We have more recent documentations from Bhutan. The first is a preliminary write-up by Françoise Pommaret (2009) of research data collected on the Hungla Sanyen ritual, held in Tongphu, Trashiyangtse (eastern Bhutan) in August 2003. Today the people of Tokhapung still strongly believe that this ritual brings good harvest and congenial climactic conditions. It diminishes all kinds of natural damage such as soil erosion, hailstorm, etc. On the other hand, if the ritual is neglected it is believed to cause natural calamities such as epidemics and diseases, bad climate, encroachment of wild animals into fields and much more. (2009: 136) Part of this ritual includes a two-day circumambulation of the territory with the Buddhist texts: ‘during the Hungla ritual holy books are taken around the fields in a procession (chos bskor) which lasts two days’ (2009: 121). Pommaret emphasizes the centrality of women in this particular ritual, and it is they who carry the texts around the fields. The data collected include some 13 hours of video footage and nine interviews. It is hoped that researchers will avail themselves of this archive and conduct further study on the material. More recently, Rinzin Dema and Tshering Bidha of the Shejun Agency for Bhutan’s Cultural Documentation and Research (now merged into Loden Foundation) documented Kanjur Lingkor in Paro, western Bhutan, in video and photography (2015). The ritual begins with reading in the lhakhang, done by two groups of men reading different texts (seemingly the ritual of the 16 Arhats and the 8,000 verse Prajnaparamita, the latter being part of the Kanjur). The texts are then strapped onto the backs of men, women and children, and the procession ‘around the entire perimeter of the gewog’ begins.15 We see the texts being carried uphill and downhill, through the field and wooded areas, villagers receiving blessings from the texts as they pass, interspersed with refreshment stops at a chorten (stupa), and in a house under construction. Auspicious songs such as ‘Lay bay’ (legs pas), sung during ceremonial processions (chib gral),

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consecration events, etc., are sung, and dance offerings are made by some four or five women. Most recently, Pema Tshering has posted about chokor in his home village of Chaling, Trashigang, where the procession with the texts is conducted at the end of the village’s five-day annual ritual.16

Kanjur Chokor as an expression of environmental cosmopolitics It itself, the Kanjur Chokor, can easily be understood as an ecological ritual: in Bhutan, as Lopen Dorji recollects above, it is performed to make rain. This is the case in popular understanding, and it is not infrequently reported in the national news, where it has been directly translated as ‘rain ritual’ (BBS 6.06.2012). A search through the databases of Kuensel, The Bhutanese and BBS (Bhutan Broadcasting Service 2012) corroborates with reportage along the lines of, ‘such rituals are only conducted during such dry spells’ (Dawa Gyelmo 21.06.2016). In a study on water availability in Punakha district, villagers’ primary concern was lack of water for agriculture, and the most popular response measure by far amongst households in the different villages was ‘performing religious rituals to request for rain’ (Kusters and Wangdi 2013: 392) (Figure 10.2).17 Such an event usually involves a large group of monks and civil servants (100 +). Together they walk along the main river, passing all the villages and then back to the Dzong, carrying volumes of Buddhist scriptures. This ritual is known as the Kanjur lingkor. At the start of the paddy season in 2012, this special prayer was performed for the sixth consecutive year (Source: Tenzin Tshewang, government official, Toewang). (N. Wangdi and Kusters 2012: 26) In addition to the associations between the dharma and beneficial rain, Kanjur Chokor is a performance of the power of the dharma over weather, imbued with cosmological beliefs.18 It is worth emphasizing that the symbolic and soteriological value of the ritual is not a projection from the outside. As pointed out by Karma Phuntsho, the Kanjur is seen as the dharmakāya, the dharma ‘body’, and seen in this light, is considered more important even than statues. Chokor ‘plays with the notion of Chos ‘khor bskor, which literally means turn the wheel of dharma, as a metaphor for Buddha’s sermons. Taking the dharma books around is like turning the wheel of dharma’ (pers comm 24.05.21). Childs writes: According to a senior sngags pa, the Kanjur Kora is akin to taking refuge in the three jewels (dkon mchog gsum), symbolized during the circumambulation by a statue of the Buddha (sangs rgyas), the volumes of the Kanjur (chos), and the community of devotees who carry the books (dge ‘dun). (2005: 43) As a gesture of giving refuge/pacifying the animate environment and otherthan-human beings, by literally carrying the dharma in procession over the areas

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Figure 10.2 Medicine Buddha as publicly posted by the Zhung Dratshang on 22.12.20, with the following caption in English: ‘Starting today, His Holiness the Je Khenpo will preside over the Sangay Menlha Drubchen at Namdroling Goenzin Dratshang, Autsho, Lhuntse. All are urged to make Medicine Buddha supplications and prayers’.

in question, it is a miniature replay of an age-old practice of Buddhification of the land and its denizens, human and otherwise. It is also socio-political in its communal and territorial performance, economically underpinned by the resources required to conduct the ritual. In short, to perform Kanjur Chokor is to enact environmental cosmopolitics, calling on the power of the Buddhadharma to bring about favourable conditions. The territorial aspect of Kanjur Chokor is a marked feature of it, and empowerment and protection conferred appear to be closely related to the proximity and physical presence of the texts. Circumambulation with the Kanjur proceeds around a generally defined

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territory that will be protected and blessed. Relatedly, it may be worth observing that most acts of Buddhist subjugation are in situ, place-based, against earthly, territorial, demonic forces. While the Kanjur Chokor has a strong association with rainmaking in particular, it also gives protection from other misfortunes and calamities – benefits from it include crop fertility and protection from pests and pestilence as well as general well-being. While we do not know enough about historical connections between drought, famine and disease in Bhutan to remark on the different causalities associated with Kanjur Chokor, it is worth noting that the idea of disease prevention is very much present (and that diseases are often believed to be sent by evil spirits). Of the Hungla ritual, Pommaret notes that ‘Oral history reveals that this ritual was performed when a serious outbreak of famine and diseases engulfed the community, whenever and wherever it was required’ (2009: 136). Of note also is her remark that in Hungla, the chokor became an annual event (ibid.). Likewise, reportage from Pangthang village in eastern Bhutan, where it had apparently existed for hundreds of years but not been done for a long time and was brought back to successfully end the drought (BBS, 06.06.2012), points to the open-endedness of rituals such as this19 and how their performance and messaging can be revived and/or adapted to contemporary situations. This brings us to observations of Kanjur Chokor during the Covid pandemic.

Kanjur Chokor as ritual response to the COVID-19 pandemic: changes of jurisdiction and participants The coronavirus pandemic stimulated processes of change worldwide, including in the performance and meaning of Kanjur Chokor in Bhutan. In what follows, we discuss these changes as shifts in the jurisdiction of ritual performance and composition of actors/actants and implications on thinking about territoriality and fields of practice involved. In early March 2020, Bhutan identified its first positive coronavirus disease case. Observing the country mobilize, and seeing the care and attention given to saving the person’s life, with personal attention from HM the King, was remarkable. At the same time, stories circulated on social media about how the tourist (who contracted the virus prior to arriving in Bhutan) fell ill on the bridge before entering Punakha Dzong for a festival, where doubtless more people would have been infected, had he crossed over. The timing was not considered coincidental but rather indicative that the nation’s protector deities had prevented calamity. Of the two Kanjur Chokor done for COVID-19 that Lopen Dorji observed and the one witnessed by Riam that is described earlier, differences between a village-conducted chokor, and the chokor done for COVID-19, are evident. Pommaret observed that community rituals’ salient features are ‘people of a defined community bound by local circumstances – geography, history, language, and common deities’ … and it is particularly noted that people from other villages, even if nearby, do not come to observe or participate in these

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 219 rituals’ (2009: 8). Usually, such rituals cannot be sponsored by someone from outside the community – it is part of the village economy, or in the case of Sama’s Kanjur kora, shapes the village economy (Childs 2005). Video documentation of Kanjur Lingkor in Hungrel Gewog shows the enthusiastic informality with which members of the gewog (sub-district) participate. The songs are sung in a somewhat ad hoc manner by the processants, who at times stop or improvise. When they ascend the steps around Paro Dzong, a voice can be heard asking them not to make noise, so they stop calling out and instead start to sing the auspicious ‘Lay bay’ song. When they arrive back to the community temple, they are again yelling, which from a formal ritual conduct point of view, would be considered inappropriate for Kanjur Lingkor and more appropriate to the performance of wrathful rituals or when archery matches are won. When performed as a village ritual, if the rain still does not come, the performance can be escalated to sub-district and district levels, seemingly a faithful reflection of modern Bhutan’s decentralized–centralized governance mechanism. In addition to the community-level rituals, sub-district authorities may arrange large-scale rituals to request for rain. Villagers can approach the head of the sub-district to express their worries about the lack of rain. The sub-district head then goes to the Dzong to make arrangements with the Lama’s [sic] of the central monastic body to organise a collective ritual at the sub-district or district level. (N. Wangdi and Kusters 2012: 26) So we have a ritual that is already capable of being ‘scaled upwards’. The deployment of Kanjur Chokor to district-level changes the composition of participants and ‘community’ (the meaning here shifts to encompass those engaged in the practice as dependent upon the perceivers), as well as spaces of territoriality mirroring the desired cosmopolitical hierarchy of Bhutan as a nation-state. Not least, it also changes in economic structure, where such events become funded by the government and monastic body. In the village Kanjur lingkor, all the people carrying the poti are laypeople, including women and children. In the district-level ones conducted by the monk body, often all the Kanjur carriers were monks who were chanting mantras. The Kanjur Chokor Riam witnessed in Bumthang was clearly organized at the district level, with the participation of the monk body, traffic police, civil servants and Desuup, amongst others. All in all, the Hungrel village-level circumambulation is less restrained, while the ones conducted by government or monastics are more disciplined. While the focus of purpose (from rain to specifically, coronavirus) changes and the form or composition changes,20 the overarching intent for human wellbeing remains. What political work such rituals ‘do’ or enable is an enduring question, and in the case of the pandemic, it is unifying, not at the village level but at the district and national level. The Kanjur Chokor, as conducted for the pandemic, is no longer the village rain ritual we started out with. Participants become part of a larger project, defined by coming together in the dharma, in discipline, volunteerism, and in the citizenship of a sovereign state, amongst other things.

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Ecologies of practice: multiple fields of ritual engagement With the shift in jurisdiction level at which the ritual is organized, conducted and funded, during the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen a change in the composition of participants and actors, from villagers and lay monks to central monk body monastics and government. While the state and public volunteers worked ceaselessly with personal oversight from HM the King, here we describe a few of the practices of the Zhung Dratshang (central monastic body) during the pandemic, as the main intercessors of the cosmological. Two weeks after Bhutan’s first coronavirus case was identified, the Je Khenpo gave the country’s first-ever Sangay Menlha (Medicine Buddha) initiation over television and social media platforms. In his preceding speech to the public, His Holiness stated that ‘Putting into practice the instructions given by the Ministry of Health is absolutely essential’, and, I cannot stress enough on how important it is for us to listen to the advice of the health experts. It is critical for us to follow the instructions of the DOs and DON’Ts. Even in my own case, I too, am following instructions given by the health experts. (Tshering Palden, Kuensel 21.03.2020) As a ritual response within a state governance framework, the Je Khenpo’s messaging is aligned with that of the Ministry of Health. At the same time, the monastic body’s field of activity and intervention is with the cosmopolitical. While the clergy no longer comprises the state as it did in Zhabdrung’s time, its task continues to be protecting the state from enemies, whether viral or geopolitical. In Bhutan, in times of war and pandemic, the monastic body is responsible for cosmological protection and here we see the nuts and bolts of the coordination between the Central Monastic Body and the Ministry of Health. In parallel response to the Je Khenpo’s exhortation that all recite the Medicine Buddha mantra, the government (specifically, the National Council) encouraged all civil servants to recite the Medicine Buddha mantra one hundred million times within two weeks (starting on an auspicious day), with daily counts input into a google spreadsheet. One year later, with the arrival of vaccines, the Prime Minister’s Office updated the public that, The COVID-19 vaccination will be rolled out in the country starting March 27, 2021. The auspicious date is determined in consultation with the Zhung Dratshang … Three days Sangay Menlha (Medicine Buddha) drupchen will be conducted before the nationwide rollout. (PMO, 17.03.21) The vaccines were blessed nationwide before they were deployed, and the first person to receive the jab was astrologically selected for auspiciousness: a 30-year old female born in the Monkey year. At the bodily level, many individuals consulted their medically auspicious days and signed up for the jab on that day –

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Figure 10.3 Photo of novel coronavirus torma offering posted by the Paro Zhung Dratshang.

a practice enabled in larger places like Thimphu by the government’s spread of the vaccination period over a week (Figure 10.3). Finally, we turn to the newest actant in this ecology of practice/s: the SARSCoV-2 virus, whose spread and mutations has led to so many changes in human lives and societies, with far-reaching consequences. On 20 August 2020, the Paro monastic body (Rinpung Dratshang) posted photos of the coronavirus torma (ritual effigy) they created for the wrathful deity Pelden Lhamo ritual (Lha mo’i ‘bag chog) that was being conducted by all twenty government monastic bodies (one in each district) at the behest of the Je Khenpo. This was not the first time Rinpung Dratshang was conducting the ritual, but it was a first for the creation of a torma moulded after microscopy images of coronavirus instead of the usual finger-shaped torma (gtor cung / chang-bu’). The innovativeness of this struck us through its departure from customary ritual practice, and it brought up

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many questions for thinking with. Questions of what happens when separate cosmological universes (science and religion) conjoin in the creation of a new ritual effigy? Were popular science and media dissemination leading to innovation in ritual response through digital democratization? Does the change in representation lend to increased efficacy in visualization practice? Could these lead to new ecologies of practice incorporating the physical and metaphysical enabled by the electron microscope? From viral actants represented by ritual effigies to actants potentially changing fields of practice and cognitive mechanisms of engagement, there is a lot of cosmopolitical ecological ground to be explored here.

Conclusion We began this chapter illustrating how Bhutan’s state foundation involving religious hierarchs, religio-political factions, magical warfare and other-thanhuman beings is a ‘cosmopolitical ecological’ story. It includes other-thanhuman beings, politics, cosmology, and the environment within the same discursive realm. This is all very obvious to Lopen Dorji as a Bhutanese (and to a multitude of others, among whom Riam counts herself), but we hope that we have made an argument for the value of this new coinage for scholarship. The Kanjur Chokor is one example of a localized, territorial village practice that is also performed at a district level, then deployed nationally, perhaps commensurately with the perceived threat. By making space for cosmologies and otherthan-human beings through examining ritual practice, we’ve engaged with the cosmopolitical (Latour 2011) and ecologies of practice (Stengers 2005). The political ecology here is in the involvement of ‘environmental’ and human livelihood decisions, including enduring political questions of who or what gets to be engaged or represented and how. Through this cosmopolitical ecological framing, we drew attention to some changes in Kanjur Chokor as it became a state-level ritual deployed to protect against the coronavirus pandemic. In so doing, we have shown how changes in actors/actants can lead to further changes in ecologies of practice, recursively bringing up interesting questions on ritual practice, amongst others. We now conclude with some thoughts on what our empirical procession might add to cosmopolitical ecologies framings. At the beginning of this chapter, we stated that the Kanjur Chokor ritual seems to have transcended its village origins to become something ‘more’ during the coronavirus pandemic. This ‘more’ is many things, including more cosmopolitan – cosmopolitanism is already embodied in the histories of Buddhist culture in the Himalayan and Tibetan world (and now worldwide through globalization and transnational dissemination). The Kanjur is already cosmopolitan in its history (see Cabezón 2010; Debreczeny 2019) and its dissemination (see Formigatti 2014, Elliott et al. 2014). What it has become in the coronavirus pandemic context is more cosmopolitan in the history of modern Bhutan. Our case study demonstrates that as an object with surrounding practices, it bridges Kant’s cosmopolitanism and the

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 223 cosmopolitics of both Stengers and Latour (see volume Introduction). We have also shown how the cosmological is not an abstract, unchanging category but can do political work through ritual engagement composed of changing actants in shifting ecologies of practice. In the case of state-level ritual deployment in Bhutan, there are strong parallels reflecting the late 20th century characterization of Bhutan as a compact, reactive, development-orientated state. Here, the cosmopolitical is contingently composed within complex and shifting ecologies of practice that include villagers, the government, monk body, civil servants, citizens, monks, researchers, and of course, the virus in its different manifestations – as scientific, political and ritual object/actant. Seen through contingent ritual practices such as empowerments, mantra recitation, vaccine purification and blessing, between the central monastic body and the government is an ecology of practice in the enmeshment of how things happened in Bhutan in response to the novel coronavirus, of a tightly looped feedback system21 seldom seen in the larger democracies (such as the US, UK or India). These ecologies of practice are inflected, have tendencies – in the key moments we have noted here, these are towards blending and cooperation within a regulated state governance framework. At the same time, these ecologies of practice (whether it be in conducting Kanjur Chokor or giving televised

Figure 10.4 Blessing of the newly arrived vaccines at Paro airport. Photograph posted publicly by the Paro Zhung Dratshang on March 2021, with the following caption in English: Coinciding with the last day of the Sangay Menlha Drupchen, their Eminences Dorji Lopen & Laytshog Lopen of the Zhung Dratshang performed the purifying ritual (Thrue-soel) for the Covid AstraZeneca vaccines.

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empowerment or blessing vaccines) transcend and reconfigure territorial boundaries, literally and metaphorically. The re-territorialization from in situ proximity (a village’s boundaries) to conceptual sovereignty (a nation-state and its boundaries) brings up absorbing questions around the relationship between territoriality, ecologies of practice and sovereignty in a digitally mediated age. Beyond tightly bound cosmologies or prescribed politics predicated on separation, thinking in terms of cosmopolitical ecologies allows for multivalency and opens up possibilities emanating from place-based practices.

Notes 1 Riam’s fieldwork was part of the ‘Himalayan Connections: Melting Glaciers, Sacred Landscapes and Mobile Technologies’ project (2018–2023) funded by the Research Council of Norway and hosted by the Universities of Oslo and Cambridge. She gratefully acknowledges national project partners, the College of Language and Culture Studies, Royal University of Bhutan. Both authors thank Dr Karma Phuntsho and Dr Françoise Pommaret for kindly commenting on draft versions of this chapter. 2 While lines of distinction between religion and politics have become far more distinct since the 20th century (including a constitutional separation in the early 21st century), this has not been the case for most of Bhutan’s history, and while religion is now firmly placed in the ‘apolitical’ category, this, of course, does not exempt it from political influence or analysis. 3 Guru Rinpoche (alias Padmasambhava) is believed to have visited Bhutan on his way to Tibet in the 8th century, so if one took the chronology at face value, it could be said that the cultural transmission is not received from Tibet but rather prefigures it. 4 See for example Schaeffer (2009), Elliott et al. (2014), Phuntsho (2011), and for a critical/contentious reading of the spread in the West, Donald S. Lopez (1998). 5 གང་གིས་ཆོས་ཀྱི་རྣམ་གྲངས་འདི་ཡི་གེར་བྲིས་ནས་གླེགས་བམ་དུ་བྱས་ཏེ་ཕྲག་པ་ལ་ཐོགས་པ་དེས། དེ་བཞིན་གཤེགས་པ་ཕྲག་པ་ལ་ཐོགས་པར་ འགྱུར་ཏེ། དེ་གང་དང་གང་དུ་འགྲོ་བ་དེ་དང་དེར་སེམས་ཅན་རྣམས་ཀྱིས་ཐལ་མོ་སྦྱར་བར་བྱ། བཀུར་སྟིར་བྱ། བཙུན་པར་བྱ། རི་མོར་བྱ། མཆོད་པར་བྱའོ། ། 6 See Hanung Kim’s recent publication (2020) of an explication of Sumpa Khenpo’s ritual manual on rainmaking, which includes usage of the Great Cloud sutra. 7 The number of poti is variable as there are different manuscript versions of the Kangyur. In Bhutan, the two main ones are the Narthang, with 108 volumes, and the Degé, with 103 volumes. 8 Gtsug lag khang literally translates as ‘head-hand-house’, i.e. a temple, generally the main temple or assembly hall of a monastery, or even the most important one within a region or lineage. Of relevance here to our discussion on texts is that the etymology of this is believed to derive from the fact that this is where the canonical Buddhist texts are housed: ‘gtsug’ referring to the bka’ ‘gyur as texts from the Buddha’s speech (head), and ‘lag’ referring to the bstan ‘gyur as texts from author-commentator (hands). 9 This is the title of the Chief Abbot of Bhutan's Central Monastic Body. 10 The famous printing house in Eastern Tibet. 11 See Cabezón (2010: 18–9) for a brief overview of (mainly western) analytical approaches to ritual in Buddhist Studies and their problematic nature. 12 See Childs’ brief references to Waddell (2015: 226), Kawakita (1957: 199–200), Gutschow (1997: 45) of a ‘Bum kora and a photo in Wangdu and Diemberger (1996: 173). Also see Diemberger (1994). 13 The term ‘kora’ as used here is synonymous with ‘chokor’. 14 Searches for scholarly publications in English and Roman alphabet were done on the iDiscover database (covering all the Cambridge Libraries Collections and Articles resources and online resource searches), and Google Scholar and Google Books. For

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15 16 17

18

19 20

21

reportage, searches were done in the online databases of Kuensel, The Bhutanese, and Bhutan Broadcasting Service using the words and combinations thereof and alternative spellings in English and chos skad: kanjur/chokor/lingkor/’bum kor/kora https://audio-video.shanti.virginia.edu/video/kanjur-lingkor-hungrel-gewog and https:// images.shanti.virginia.edu/image/villagers-carry-buddhist-scriptures-around-gewog accessed 03 March 21). Pema Tshering, Facebook group ‘Hidden History of Bhutan’ public post, 14 October 2020. This was the measure adopted by 71% of respondents in different villages speaking for their households (n = 192). The second-most popular strategy employed by a significantly less 48% of respondents was to modify community water-sharing arrangements (Kusters and Wangdi 2013: 392). This is similar to Childs’ interpretation of the Sama Kanjur Kora as an ‘agricultural rite’ (2005: 44) but, among other observations, differs in that an explicit link with rain-making exists in this case. Perhaps whether the ritual is performed annually or on an ad hoc request, as in Punakha, is relevant here. See Cabezón 2010 for an overview of (mainly western) scholarly ways of conceptualizing ritual. Traditional schemata of opposition between folk and scholastic, etc., lend to the inattention of their generative potential. Conducting a desk-based media review of the Kanjur chokor/lingkor that have been organized in the past decade, it is important to note that while the main reason for them has been to request rain, and undoubtedly the ritual has been re-purposed at the district and national level specifically for the coronavirus, there is evolving diversity. Thus we see it conducted for royal births and birthdays: one conducted at the instigation of two lower secondary schools in Dagana in 2016, and one by Zhemgang District in 2021, and even one that was part of a planned tourist event in 2008. There are certainly cases of mixed or wrong messaging sent out, say from one jurisdiction in contradiction to or contravention of another, but this is usually rather quickly pointed out and resolved.

References Bhutan Broadcasting Service. Anon. 2012. A Prayer for Rain. BBS. Available at: http:// www.bbs.bt/news/?p=13770 (accessed 25 March 2021). Cabezón, José Ignacio. 2010. Introduction. In: Tibetan Ritual. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Childs, Geoff. 2005. How to Fund a Ritual: Notes on the Social Usage of the Kanjur (BKa’’gyur) in a Tibetan Village’. The Tibet Journal 30(2): 41–8. Chos kyi ‘byung gnas. (ed.). 1733. Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-nāma-mahāyāna-sūtra, vol. ga of mdo sde in Dege Kanjur. sde ge: sde dge par khang chen mo. Dawa Gyelmo. 2016. Punakha Performs Kanjur-Lingkor for Rain. Available at: https:// kuenselonline.com/punakha-performs-kanjur-lingkor-for-rain/ (accessed 18 July 2020). Debreczeny, Karl. 2019. Faith and Empire: An Overview. In: K. Debreczeny (ed.), Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism. New York, NY: Rubin Museum of Art. Diemberger, Hildegard. 1994. Mountain-Deities, Ancestral Bones and Sacred Weapons: Sacred Territory and Communal Identity in Eastern Nepal and Southern Tibet. In: P. Kvaerne (ed.), Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 6th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Fagernes 1992: Volume I. Oslo: The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, pp. 144–53. Dorji Gyaltsen. 2016. Early Book Production and Printing in Bhutan. In H. Diemberger,

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Karl Erhard, and P.F. Konicki (eds.), Tibetan Printing: Comparison, Continuities, and Change, Vol. 39, Tibetan Studies Libary. Leiden: Brill. dPal lDan rGya mTsho. 1997. Ngag dbang rnam rgyal gyi rnam thar chos kyi sprin chen po’i dbyangs. New Delhi: Tobden Tshering. Elliott, Mark, Diemberger, Hildegard, and Clemente, Michela (eds.). 2014. Buddha’s Word: The Life of Books in Tibet and Beyond. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Formigatti, Camillo A. 2014. Travelling Books. In: Mark Elliot, Michela Clemente, and Hildegard Diemberger (eds.), Buddha’s Word: The life of books in Tibet and Beyond. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Gutschow, Kim. 1997. Unfocused Merit-Making in Zangskar: A Socio-Economic Account of Karsha Nunnery. The Tibet Journal 22(2): 30–58. Huber, Toni, and Pedersen, Poul. 1997. Meteorological Knowledge and Environmental Ideas in Traditional and Modern Societies: The Case of Tibet. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3(3):577–97. Karma, Phuntsho. 2011. Reflections on Multidisciplinary Approach in Himalayan Studies: The Case of the Book. In: A. McKay and A. Balikci-Denjongpa (eds.), Buddhist Himalaya: Tibet and the Himalaya, Vol. 1. Gangtok, Sikkim: Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, pp. 17–28. Kawakita, Jiro. 1957. Ethno-Geographical Observations on the Nepal Himalaya. In: H. Kihara (ed.), Peoples of Nepal Himalaya, Scientific Results of the Japanese Expeditions to Nepal Himalaya, 1952–1953, v. 3. Kyoto, Japan: Fauna and Flora Research Society, Kyoto University, pp. 1–362. Kim, Hanung. 2020. Rainmakers for the Cosmopolitan Empire: A Historical and Religious Study of 18th Century Tibetan Rainmaking Rituals in the Qing Dynasty. Religions 11(12):630. Kusters, Koen, and Wangdi, Norbu. 2013. The Costs of Adaptation: Changes in Water Availability and Farmers’ Responses in Punakha Distric, Bhutan. International Journal of Global Warming 5(4): 387–99. Kuyakanon, Riamsara, and Gyeltshen, Dorji. 2017. Propitiating the Tsen, Sealing the Mountain: Community Mountain-Closure Ritual and Practice in Eastern Bhutan. Himalaya 37(1): 8–25. Latour, Bruno. 2011. Politics of Nature: East and West Perspectives. Ethics & Global Politics 4(1):71–80. Lopez, Donald S. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Norbu, Wangdi, and Kusters, Koen. 2012. CDKN Loss and Damage in Vulnerability Countries Initiative: BHUTAN Case Study Report, First Draft. Pasang, Wangdu and Diemberger, Hildegard. 1996. Ṅag-dbaṅ-skal-ldan-rgya-mtsho. Shel Dkar Chos’byung. History of the ‘White Crystal’: Religion and Politics of Southern La Stod / Ngag Dbang Skal Ldan Rgya Mtsho; Translation and Facsimile Edition of the Tibetan Text by Pasang Wangdu and Hildegard Diemberger in Cooperation with Guntram Hazod. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Pommaret, Françoise. 2009. Local Community Rituals in Bhutan: Documentation and Tentative Reading. In: S. Jacoby and A. Terrone (eds.), Buddhism Beyond the

Ecologies of COVID-19 in Bhutan 227 Monastery: Tantric Practices and Their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, pp. 111–44. Pommaret, Françoise. 2004. Yul and Yul Lha: The Territory and Its Deity in Bhutan. Bulletin of Tibetology 40(1): 39. Prime Minister’s Office – PMO Bhutan, March 17, 2021. Available at: https:// www.facebook.com/PMOBhutan (accessed 17 March 2021). Rinzin Dema and Tshering Bidha. 2015. The Kanjur Lingkor of Hungrel Gewog. Vol. Oral Cultures of Bhutan. Jangsarbu, Paro, Bhutan: Shejun. Available at: https://audiovideo.shanti.virginia.edu/video/kanjur-lingkor-hungrel-gewog (17 February 2021). Royal Government of Bhutan. 2008. Tsa Thrim: The Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan. Schaeffer, Kurtis R. 2009. The Culture of the Book in Tibet. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Shakya Rin Chen. 1974. Sgrub brgyud bstan pa’I gsal byed shakya rin chen gyi rnam thar. New Delhi: Thams cad smon lam. Sonam Kinga. 2009. Polity, Kingship and Democracy: A Biography of the Bhutanese State. Thimphu, Bhutan: Ministry of Education, Royal Government of Bhutan. Stengers, Isabelle. 2005. Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices. Cultural Studies Review 11(1): 183–96. Tsemang, Denma. 2009. Life of King Sindha [Chakhar Gyalpo] and The Clear Mirror of Predictions (Y. Dargye, ed.). Thimphu, Bhutan: National Library and Archives of Bhutan. Tshering Palden. 2020. Listen to Health Experts: His Holiness the Je Khenpo. KuenselOnline, March 21. Waddell, L. Austine. 2015. Lhasa and Its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903–1904. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yon Tan mTha’ Yas. 1985. Pan di ta bstan ‘dzin chos kyi rgyal po’i rtogs p brjod pa sgyu ma chen po’I gar stabs. Thimphu: Rgal yongs dpe mdzod.

11 Sharing a room with sparrows: Maulana Azad and Muslim ecological thought1 Anand Vivek Taneja

In the pre-dawn hours of 9 August 1942, senior members of the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress were arrested in Bombay, hours after passing a resolution demanding immediate and complete independence of the dominion of India from the British Empire, commonly known as the Quit India Resolution. The prisoners included Jawaharlal Nehru, the future first Prime Minister of India, and the then president of the Congress, Maulana Abul Kalam ‘Azad’. They were kept as political prisoners in Ahmednagar Fort for the next three years, cut off from history overnight. Political prisoners in the midst of the Second World War with the Japanese rapidly conquering the territories of the British Empire in South East Asia, the leaders of the Congress were completely cut off from the eventful time unfolding around them. They had no access to newspapers or the radio. Communication with friends and loved ones on the outside was impossible. Famous and influential leaders, so central to the unfolding narrative of Indian history, suddenly had no news to get, nothing to do, and nowhere to go. They were experiencing, quite literally, a lockdown. The prisoners of Ahmednagar fort experienced confinement and a sudden disjuncture in their experience of time that is similar to the collective global experience of living with lockdowns and drastically altered life experiences during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including altered experiences of time. As I show in this chapter, through engaging with the prison writings of Maulana Azad (1888–1958), these altered experiences of temporality opened up new potentials of political and ecological thought for a major Indian Muslim thinker; potentials which are highly relevant for our own global moment. Azad opens up the potential for us to think of minority rights and ecological thought together, with a shared language, and thus bring together the concerns of racial and ecological justice. *** The writings of Maulana Azad from Ahmednagar Fort were first published in 1946 as Ghubar-e Khatir (The Dust of Memories). Ghubar-e Khatir was written as a series of unposted letters addressed to Azad’s friend, Maulana Habibur Rehman Khan Sherwani. Maulana Azad was not only a major Indian-Muslim political DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-11

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figure, the President of the Indian National Congress from 1940 to 1946, and the first Education Minister of independent India, but also an influential and authoritative religious thinker, with an extensive oeuvre of work on theology, ethics, and an influential translation and exegesis of the Quran.2 Ghubar- e Khatir is seen as more literary than religious or political, but it also embodies the genre of letter writing as an important mode of articulating and cultivating ethical selfhood in pre-colonial Muslim societies (Kinra 2015). Three sequential letters in this collection are of particular interest because they emerge from and engage a long and underexplored tradition of Muslim ecological thought, which I characterize, following the poet Nida Fazli3 (2001: 51), as the ethics of the garden: Bagh men jane ke adab hua karte hain Kisi titli ko na phoolon se uraya jae There are ethics of entering a garden No butterfly is to be made to fly away from the flowers

Muslim environmentalisms, as Anna Gade (2019) shows, have seldom been engaged on their own terms. It is only in recent years, for instance, that Western scholarly attention has been given to the elevated moral status given to plants and animals in the Quran (Tlili 2012) and to long traditions of venerating animals as Muslim saints in South Asia and other parts of the Muslim world (Taneja 2015). The garden as a space for Muslim ecological thought has also largely been ignored. The bagh or garden is a multivalent space in Muslim theology, spatial architecture, and literature (Husain 2000; Ruggles 2008). The Persian chahar-bagh is a making immanent of the garden of paradise, and gardens in Mughal India played an important social role, spaces of refuge from the vain agitation of the city (Wescoat 1996). They were also spaces of pleasure and sacrality, spaces where the human body and subjectivity were deeply permeable to the effects of the ecological surround (Taneja 2018: 181–7). What is not often noted is that in Urdu poetry – an authoritative and popular form of Indian Muslim discourse – the garden is also the space of multi-species encounters. See, for instance, this couplet by the famous 19th century Urdu poet, Mirza Asadullah Khan ‘Ghalib’: Main chaman men kya gaya goya dabistan khul gaya Bulbulen sun kar mere nale ghazalkhwan ho gayin I hardly went into the garden and it was as if a school opened Hearing my laments, the nightingales became ghazal reciters Or the following couplet by the poet Munawar Khan ‘Ghafil’: Munh pe le daman-e gul roenge murghan-e chaman Bagh men khak uraegi saba mere b‘ad

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In the imaginative world of the Urdu ghazal poetic form, the garden is the space where birds can mourn poets, and poets can teach birds how to sing. The garden, in however stylized a fashion, is a space of intimacies and affects shared across species boundaries. It is significant that in the tradition of ghazal poetry, one of the most widespread and authoritative forms of Islamic discourse (Ahmed 2015: 166–7, 339–40) – poets often spoke in the interior voice of birds, as in the following couplet by Ghalib: Qafas men mujh se rudad-e chaman kehte na dar hamdam Giri hai jis pe kal bijli woh mera ashiyan kyon ho? In the cage, don’t be afraid of telling me the events of the garden, friend The one on which lightning fell yesterday, why would it be my nest?

A famous philosophical essay on consciousness and the mind-body problem poses the question of how we can possibly know the subjective experience of another species or what it is like to be a bat (Nagel 1974). But a major literary and ethical tradition of Indian Muslim thought – what I characterize as the ethics of the garden – held open the potential for empathy and identification across species divides. It is this potential that Azad drew on, along with the multivalence of the garden in Indian Islamic tradition – as a vision of the transcendent, as an intimate space of lived experience, as well as a profoundly productive metaphor – to articulate an Islamic ethical vision from a space of confinement. It is a vision in which birds – as they are in much Urdu and Persian poetry4 – are significant moral actors. In the next few sections, I turn to close readings of Azad’s letters. In these letters, particularly in letters 19 and 20, Azad’s relation to tenses is sometimes strange. He switches, in the same descriptive paragraph, from past tense to present, to future subjunctive, some of which I have tried to capture in my translation. This co-presence of multi-temporal experiential registers indicates an altered experience of temporality. Confined in Ahmednagar jail, sharing a barrack room with sparrows, Maulana Azad drew on the long tradition of the ethics of the garden to embody a paradigm of living with human and nonhuman others which asks for a kind of attention to the life of the other which does not lead merely to tolerance – which does not demand engagement with the other – but holds open the potential for the transformation of the self as the very basis of harmonious coexistence. For Azad, such thinking became possible because of sudden confinement and an altered experience of time. I believe that his writing holds open potential for us to rethink our relationships to humans and non-humans, as we are all collectively undergoing similar experiences of disruption – because of a pandemic caused by increasingly exploitative humananimal interactions and the accelerated velocities and interconnections of

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global capitalism and the carbon economy (O’Callaghhan-Gordo and Antó 2020) – which also hold open potentials for rethinking and a radical reimagination of the status quo. *** ‘When we first came here in August last year,’ Azad writes in a letter dated 2 March, 1943, ‘the courtyard of the fort was an absolutely rocky plain. The rains tried again and again to produce some greenery, but the soil gave very little help. The eyes were weary of this colourless scene and yearned for greenery and flowers. The thought arose that why not choose the mashgala (hard work) of gardening, because hard work keeps one busy, and for both people of appearances and people of meaning (ashab e surat aur ashab e maani) it equally provides the material of taste and enjoyment (zauq) (Azad 2013: 194)’.

Brought inside the steep medieval walls of Ahmednagar Fort, garrisoned by troops of the British Indian Army, the political prisoners were housed in barracks surrounding a barren courtyard. For Azad, the collective efforts by the prisoners to create a garden in this unforgiving terrain was not just busy work to keep them occupied in a time of enforced idleness and solitude but a form of spiritual exercise. For the garden within the fort, when it came to bloom, provided not just the visible beauty of flowers but also provided deeper emotional and spiritual experiences and meanings. For Azad, these deeper affective and spiritual meanings were connected, in particular, to the presence of birds, which began to flock to the newly created garden. The song of the birds, in particular the bulbuls (nightingales), reminded him of the poetry of Hafiz and his own, long-ago sojourn in Iran: ‘… Murghan e bagh qafiya sanjad o bazlah go Ta khvaja mai khurad ba ghazalha-e pehlavi

The birds of the garden are eloquent (literally: masterful in rhymes) and witty So may the master drink wine to Persian ghazals It is not an exaggeration that the birds of the gardens speak in rhymes, it is true. In the gardens of Iran I have heard a thousand sing in rhyme myself. With pauses the rhythm will change, and every rhythm will end on the same kind of descent. Which in listening feels absolutely like the measured cadences and rhythms of ghazal poetry. Keep listening for hours and the sequence of these rhymes will not be broken … The truth is that the voice of the bulbul is the angelic song of the heaven of spring … (Azad 2013: 205) Angels are the bringers of revelation to humans from the divine. To say of birds that their song is angelic is then to accord birds an exalted spiritual and moral

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stature and a relation to humans that is one of spiritually and poetically superior beings, the bringers of inspired discourse and affect. They are also bringers of solace and companionship. Azad writes (207–8): Till this time, three pairs of bulbuls have been seen here. All three are of the ordinary hill variety which are known in English by the name of “white whiskered”. One has even made an abode in a vine of flowers. In the afternoon, at first there is absolute silence, then, as soon as I get up from lying down for a bit and sit down to write, their songs will begin, as if they know that this is the very moment at which a fellow singer is opening the bandages of the wounds of his heart and liver (dil o jigar), let’s begin our lamentations in succession. *** The next letter is dated 17 March 1943. In this letter, the scene shifts from the garden to Azad’s room. The protagonists of this story are also different from the last letter, they are sparrows who have made their nests in the eaves of Azad’s room and are dropping plaster and twigs and other nesting material all over his clothes, his desk, and washbasin. And the initial relation between Azad and the sparrows is very different from the relation of affective inspiration he shares with the bulbuls. It is one of antagonism, a battle over shared space. ‘Last August, when we came here, the nest-making of these sparrows had troubled [me] a lot’ (210)... Azad then describes the havoc the sparrows and the construction debris caused in his room in humorous detail and then gives a mock-heroic account of his ‘war’ with the birds: For a few days I was patient, but after a while [my] tolerance categorically gave up, and the decision had to be made that now there is no solution without a fight. Among my possessions here, an umbrella has also come along. I picked it up and made a declaration of war. But in just a little while I found out that a short reach [of the umbrella] is no match for these swift enemies atop arches [that support the room’s ceiling] (211). Azad then found a long bamboo pole used to clean spider webs on the verandah outside his room and managed to chase the sparrows away. Satisfied that he had the room to himself, he sat down to write. But not even fifteen minutes must have passed and the sounds of the enemy’s battle songs and the fluttering of their wings arose again. When I raised my head to look, every crevice in the ceiling was occupied by them. I immediately got up and bringing the bamboo pole again joined in battle … (212).

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This time the sparrows are quite obstinate in holding their ground, but ultimately they retreat and leave the room to Azad. Since they seem scared of the bamboo pole – which Azad, continuing the mock-heroic tone of his account, calls a neza (spear) – he decides to keep it in his room and props it in such a way that the tip of the pole is close to the opening of the oldest of the nests in the room. He then leaves his room for lunch. When he comes back a little while later, he finds that the sparrows are back in all the crevices in the room and seem to be entirely unaffected by the incident. And the most notable thing was that the weapon whose terror I had trusted to such an extent had become an instrument of the enemies’ activities. The tip of the bamboo pole, which was touching the opening of the nest, has started serving as a threshold. They choose their twigs and come sit on this newly erected threshold and with ease and comfort they lay them out in the nest (213). Seeing this state of affairs, Azad realizes that he cannot chase the birds away. ‘And now I thought that I should choose such rituals and ways with which one can live together in one house with uninvited guests’ (213). First, he moved his bed away from the wall so that the debris from the birds’ nest construction wouldn’t fall on his bed. He ordered dust cloths to cover the surfaces of the table and the washbasin. Against the still quite prevalent taboos against men of high stature doing menial work, especially the polluting work of sweeping, Azad hid a broom in his room and would discreetly sweep the room a few times a day when his neighbours in adjacent cells couldn’t see him. See how in being hospitable to these uninvited guests I even had to sweep. Ishq az een bisyaar kardast o kunad. Love has done a lot of things of this kind, and will do more Ek din khayal hua kih jab sulh ho hi gayi hai, to chahiye kih puri tarah sulh ho. Yih thik nahin kih rahen ek hi ghar men aur rahen beganon ki tarah. One day the thought came that when an accommodation has happened [between us], then the peace should be total. It is not right that we live in one home, but we live as strangers (214). I have translated the word sulh, which Azad uses twice in the passage above, as both accommodation and peace. This is in keeping with the multivalent meanings of the word in Islamic legal and ethical traditions and its particular uses in Mughal discourses of governance and selfhood. The concept of sulh-i kull (peace for all), developed in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), is usually understood as a policy of tolerance and peace between Hindus and Muslims. As Rajeev Kinra (2020) shows, the concept, which

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continued to have a life well into early 20th century Urdu literature, was not just a strategy of governance, but also a habitus one aimed to embody and an aspirational state towards which one fashioned the self. This was a spiritual state of being able to deal with one’s fellow (human) beings irrespective of their radical differences, religious or otherwise – with equal consideration and respect, without any bigotry, discrimination, or anger. It is this thicker sense of sulh that Azad seems to be gesturing towards when he uses it the second time. Azad desires to move from the tolerance that the truce-like sulh between him and the birds has brought about to something deeper and more intimate. This is what he wishes to call a complete accommodation or total peace (puri tarah sulh). This fostering of intimacy requires, as Azad recounts, a transformation of the self. You know that far more than the hunted, it is the hunter who has to keep watch upon the self. As soon as their feet turned towards the grains [that Azad had scattered on the rug], I held my breath still, turned my gaze in the other direction, and turned my entire body insensate and inert like a stone, as if it’s not a man but a stone idol placed there. Because I knew that if the gaze of passion, becoming agitated, hastened things even a little bit, then the hunted[birds], having come closer and closer to the net, would fly away. This is but the first stage in the matters of the coquetry of beauty and the sacrifices of love… Anyway, I passed this ordeal akin to [the beloved’s] neglectful behaviour by repeating God’s name, and an idol-mocker (buttannaz) [from among the birds] clearly made his way to the grains… (216). Azad then describes in great detail the approach of the birds to the grains and starts introducing us to individuals within the flock of sparrows, distinctly named in his narrative, persons of distinct and different personalities (I will speak more of this in the next section). He is so taken by these personalities, in his account, that he wishes to have closer, deeper relationships with them. … this male sparrow’s confident step was such a heart pleasing happening, that at the very moment I resolved that I had to have more and more frequent relations with this man of action. I named him Qalandar,5 for in the acts of his heedlessness and freedom, there was also a gallantry that added a lustre to his Qalandar-esque ways (218). Azad started feeding the birds regularly, two or three times a day. After a few days, instead of scattering the grains of rice on the rug, he put them in the inverted lid of a cigarette tin and placed this on the rug. The next day he placed the tin a little bit away from the rug and closer to himself. On the third day, he placed the tin virtually in front of himself. On seeing such closeness (qurb) at first the guests were hesitant. They came close to the rug but there was a hesitant flinch in their steps, and a wavering spoke in their eyes. But at the very moment Qalandar appeared, crying out

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his Qalandaresque slogans. And seeing his non-conforming-libertinesque (rindana) audacities, everyone’s hesitation vanished, as if they had all become followers of Qalandar on this path (219).6 Azad kept bringing the lid of the cigarette tin with its cargo of rice grains closer and closer to himself, by degrees. As before, the birds would hesitate till Qalandar took the first step, and then this ‘stage too opened on all the other birds’ (219). One morning, Azad put the lid with the rice in it right by his side and then became so engrossed in his writing that he forgot about it. In a little while, he heard the loud sound of a bird hitting its beak on something. When I looked out of the corner of the eye I saw that it was our old friend Qalandar who has reached and is using his beak without any hesitation. As the lid was placed right next to me, his tail was touching my knee. In a little while, the other swift moving friends also reached, and then the condition was such that at every moment a group of two or three friends would be jumping around at my side without any hesitation … in their unceremonious prancing it so happened many a time that thinking of my shoulder as the low branch of a tree they thought of making it a target of their exploration but then turned back startled, or touched my shoulder with their wings and passed over. … Anyway, these deer of the air slowly came to the belief that this visage that is always seen on the sofa while being a human, is not dangerous like humans are. See the enchantment of love, which does not tame humans, but tames wild birds …. Many times it happened that I am lost in my thoughts, engrossed in writing. Suddenly, a heart pleasing phrase came to the tip of my pen, or the appropriateness of some lesson made me remember a couplet full of moods and meanings, and without conscious control my head and shoulders started moving in the mood of the couplet, or I exclaimed “ha”, and all of a sudden, loudly, I heard the sound of flying wings. When I looked then I saw that a group of those friends without any formality had been busy with their prancing at my side. Suddenly, they saw that this stone has started moving, so they were afraid and flew off. It would not be strange if they said to themselves, that on the sofa here a stone is placed but sometimes it becomes a man (220–21). *** Aamir Mufti (2007) has read Maulana Azad’s account of sharing his room with birds as an allegory that composed four years before the communal holocaust [of the Partition of India] that was to shake the subcontinent, is a politico-ethical critique of the escalations and political failures that were hurtling society towards its

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Anand Vivek Taneja own disintegration (175) … the allegory is about the relative alignment of forces that structures the life of society into majority and minority domains, and the adjustments called for from the majority in order to achieve an ethical practice of coexistence (174).

This is compelling and plausible reading. Maulana Azad was, after all, a major political figure in pre-Partition India, the most prominent Muslim leader of the Indian National Congress, an opponent of the demand for a separate Muslim homeland articulated by the Muslim league. However, to read Azad’s account of the birds as entirely allegorical and as a critique solely of the human politics and ethics of his time is to not just silence and marginalize the very real birds who are central characters in these letters, but it is also to limit the multivalence of Azad’s thought. Drawing deep on the Indian Islamic tradition, Azad opens up the totality, the kull, at the heart of the politico-ethical concept of sulh-e kull, and includes the non-human within it. Mufti’s reading is important, however, because it allows us to see how Azad opens up the potential for us to think of minority rights and ecological thought together, with a shared language, and thus bring together the concerns of racial and ecological justice. To illustrate what I mean, I turn to the next letter, dated 18 March 1943, in which Azad continues the narrative from the previous day. *** ‘The story that began yesterday, it hasn’t yet finished! Come, today let me tell you another chapter of this “Conference of the Birds” (Mantiq at-Tair)’ (222). The Conference of the Birds is a famous allegorical poem by the Persian poet Farid-ud-Din ‘Attar’ (c.1145–c.1221), in which thirty birds go on a quest to find the legendary king of the birds, a complex avian allegory for the human soul’s journey to find the divine (Attar 1984). Azad’s invocation of the Conference of the Birds is not just humorous, though it is certainly that. Throughout the previous letter, he spoke of the receding fear of the birds and their growing closeness to him, as different stations (maqamat) of a spiritual quest, stages in the transformation of the soul. In the previous letter, Azad wrote of the transformations that his desire for intimacy with the birds had wrought on him. He abjured inter-species violence, he took up the low-status work of sweeping, and he embodied a stillness which turned him into a ‘stone that sometimes becomes a man’. But the journey was not yet complete, and there were more stages to come. Between these friends of the roof and arches and me, there remained a light veil of fear and agitation, but in a few days even this was lifted. To come from the ceiling to the sofa, they needed a few intermediate stages. For the first stage they would use the blades of the ceiling fan, for the second my head and shoulders … from the fan they would descend directly onto my shoulder, chirrup for a little while, and then jump to the sofa. Many times it

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also happened that they would leap from my shoulder and sit atop my head … when matters reached this stage then I thought, why not have another experience? (222–3). One morning Azad put the container with the rice grains on his open palm after a delay in the usual time of his bringing it out. As before, Qalandar was the first sparrow to unhesitatingly jump onto his fingers to peck at the grain. Now I lifted my palm with the container on it so it was hanging in the air. Only a little while had passed when another sparrow came. In a little while you will come to know that her name is Moti (pearl). Moti circled my palm once or twice … then she landed on my elbow and made straight for the wrist … and started pecking at the grains without any hesitation …….But this last experience put this experiment-loving temperament into a different train of thought altogether. I was ashamed at this shortcoming in the flavour of [my] love that my palm is available [for the grain to be pecked from], and I am wasting the lancet-blows of these beaks on a tin lid. The next day I removed the tin lid and placed the grains of rice on the palm of my hand, and I placed my hand, palm open, on the sofa. Moti was the first to come, and she kept raising her neck to see why the lid wasn’t visible today. She is the most beautiful sparrow of this settlement… if we follow the way [of beauty pageants] for Moti, then we can call her Madame Qila Ahmednagar …… a lean body, a graceful neck, a tapering cone-like tail, and in her round eyes a strange kind of innocence speaking. When she comes to peck at the grains, with each grain she will keep looking at me. Both our tongues remain silent, but our eyes have begun to speak. She has begun to understand the language of my glances, I have learned to read her gaze …… Anyway, at this moment too, her spontaneous gaze said something to me, and then without any hesitation, she leapt onto the base of my thumb and started pecking at the grains with her beak. This was not a beak, this was the tip of a lancet, which if she had wanted could have gone clean through my palm, but she would eat the grains giving me only scratches……Every time she would also turn her neck and look at me, as if she was asking me, “you’re not in pain, are you?” What answer could I give, I who could give my life for the pleasure of that pain? (224–6). *** In The Ecological Thought, Timothy Morton7 (2010: 7) writes, ‘The ecological thought doesn’t just occur “in the mind.’ It’s a practice and a process of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings – animal, vegetable, or mineral. Ultimately, this includes thinking about democracy. What would a truly democratic encounter between truly equal beings look like, what would it be – can we even imagine it? Azad, I believe, could

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imagine such an encounter and hence embody it. Azad brought together the rich tradition of bagh men jaane ke adab, the ethics/literature of entering the garden, a language symbolically and metaphysically rich with the language of birds – with his experience of the very real, very unique birds with distinct personalities that he becomes intimate within their shared space of dwelling. This encounter happened when the indomitable sparrows of Ahmadnagar met a religious scholar who named himself ‘Free’ (azad) and who described his own temperament as ‘experiment-loving’ (kavish-pasand). The sparrows and Azad both conducted experiments in cross-species intimacy and in creating the conditions for its flourishing. Azad wrote of these experiments in the language of Sufism and in the language of birds. If we focus only on the human protagonist, Azad here tells a story of radical askesis, of ethical work on the self, prompted by (but not reducible to) the desire to live harmoniously with sparrows. He takes on the task of sweeping, he becomes a stone, he bears the wounds of love. You understand from the literary and poetic references and from the emotional tenor and arc of the letters that these are the stages of a spiritual journey. And the ascent in the stages of one’s own spiritual transformation is marked by the quality of one’s relationship with the non-human other. To begin with, Azad is an aggressor and an enemy, unwilling to live with the birds. Then he realizes the futility of violence and begins the process of reconciliation, a process which for Azad is necessarily one of self-examination and self-transformation. You know that far more than the hunted, it is the hunter who has to keep watch upon the self. This process of selfexamination and self-transformation, in turn, leads to deepening intimacy with the birds and a gradual rescinding of earlier fears and prejudices. In the language of Sufism, the veils are gradually removed. For Azad, this is embodied in both the ‘ishq (the radical love) he shares with the sparrows and also the vivid empiricism with which he describes them and their daily activities (much of which I have skipped over in the excerpts I have translated here). The famous ornithologist Salim Ali, on reading these letters, commented on, ‘his penetrating observations on the temperament, idiosyncrasies, social behaviours and mating habits of each individual sparrow … [had] an insight that would do justice to a trained naturalist (1979: 128)’. *** Locked away from the events of a global war, in lockdown with a newlycreated garden outside, and sharing a room with birds, Azad experienced time differently. This altered experience of time enriched Azad’s experience. He could observe both the other and his own self in relation to another in far greater depth than would otherwise have been possible. This expansion of attention allowed for both a deepening of inter-species intimacy and a related transformation in Azad, a move from agitation and aggression to stillness and vulnerability.

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I first read Ghubar-e Khatir in 2018 while doing research on Muslim ethics and politics in India in the face of aggressive and Islamophobic Hindu nationalism. Azad was one of several thinkers young Indian Muslims were turning to articulate a vision of belonging in India which did not subscribe to the exclusionary and martial discourses of Indian nationalism dominating the media and public discourse. I returned to reading Azad’s letters in March 2020. I had returned from a brief trip to India just in time for the beginning of the pandemic induced lockdowns in Nashville. In my absence, the flowers had started blooming on some of the trees in the backyard, spring had arrived. As our collective experience of confinement grew longer and longer, my experience of time changed, as it did for much of the globe. Maulana Azad’s descriptions of spring in Ahmednagar resonated with my own experience now. I saw spring unfolding in my backyard in a way I never had before, each day bringing its own small but vivid transformations. By the time summer and early fall passed, my children knew much of the fauna whose lives pass through the backyard, the cardinals and rabbits and caterpillars, and now the rabbits don’t run away quite as quickly as they used to, relatively content to browse on the grass with little humans only a few feet away. Why do I share such banal details? Perhaps only because the altered experience of time as a shared global phenomenon has already brought about a moral reckoning in human relations. Our time in lockdown allowed many of us to pay attention to the lives and deaths of (often othered) fellow humans in a way that we did not or could not when our time was dominated by relentless cycles of productivity and entertainment. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these cycles and altered our experience of time. So when George Floyd was killed, the world paid attention. It is not incidental that the amount of time that the policeman’s knee was on Floyd’s neck, eight minutes and forty-six seconds, became a central leitmotif of the global protests that followed. It is as if we collectively needed that altered experience of time, the ability to watch for nearly nine minutes without looking away, to begin to realize the crushing weight of historical injustice (Figure 11.1). Christian Cooper was watching birds in Central Park, New York, when a white woman called the police on him. This happened on the same day that George Floyd was killed. Cooper was not harmed, in part because of the video evidence he recorded of his encounter. Cooper wrote a graphic novel based on his experience. In this novel, a black teenage birder called Jules goes birding with a pair of binoculars that belonged to his grandfather, who was a Korean war veteran and a civil rights activist. When he looks at birds through these binoculars, he also sees the faces of black people killed by police violence (Cooper and Martinez 2020). This double vision is telling. Many of the same historical forces and concepts that have led to the cheapening and making expendable of black lives have also cheapened and made expendable the lives of non-human such as birds (Patel and Moore 2017; Yusoff 2018). An estimated ‘500 million to over 1 billion birds are killed annually in the United States due to anthropogenic sources’ (Erickson

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Figure 11.1 Amadou Diallo and a Scarlet Tanager seen through the Jules’ grandfather’s binoculars. From, Represent Chapter One: It’s a Bird by Christian Cooper and Alitha Martinez, DC Comics, 2020.

et al. 2005). There are 3 billion less birds now in North America than there were in 1970 (Lallensack 2019). Could our altered experience of temporality in lockdown also allow us to acknowledge and mourn these billions of other victims of human systemic violence? Mufti’s allegorical reading helps us see that Azad opens up the potential for us to think of minority rights and ecological thought together in a double vision that mirrors the view from Jules’ binoculars. Could the ethical experiments and transformations that Azad outlines in the account of his relations with the birds of Ahmednagar Fort serve as a basis for ecological thought in our global moment of transformed temporality and moral reckoning? It is with this hope that I conclude this chapter. *****

Notes 1 A Note on Translations: All translations from Urdu are mine unless otherwise noted. For translations from Persian, I am greatly indebted to Mohammad Meerzaei. 2 For further details on the life and thought of Azad, see Douglas (1988) and Hameed (2014). 3 Fazli (2001: 51). 4 Most famously, Farid-ud-din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. See also Asani (2006). 5 Qalandar is a term used for antinomian Sufis. 6 On the long Muslim tradition of understanding animals as religious, and the philosophical consequences thereof, see McGregor (2015). 7 Morton (2010: 7).

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References Ahmed, S. 2015. What Is Islam? The Importance of being Islamic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ali, S. 1979. Bird Study in India: Its History and Importance. India International Center Quarterly 6(2): 127–39. Asani, A. 2006. ‘Oh That I Could Be a Bird and Fly, I Would Rush to the Beloved’: Birds in Islamic Mystical Poetry. In: Paul Waldau and Kimberley Patton (ed.), Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 170–79. Attar, Farid. 1984. The Conference of the Birds (Afkham Darabandi and Dick Davis, trans.). London: Penguin Books. Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam. 2013 [1946]. Ghubar-e Khatir (Malik Ram, ed.). Lahore: Kutubkhana Khurshidiya. Cooper, C., and Martinez, A.. 2020. It’s a Bird. Burbank, CA: DC Comics. Douglas, I.H. 1988. Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Erickson, W.G., Johnson, D., and Young Jr. 2005. A Summary and Comparison of Bird Mortality from Anthropogenic Causes with an Emphasis on Collisions. In: Ralph, C. John, Rich, Terrell D. (eds.), Bird Conservation Implementation and Integration in the Americas: Proceedings of the Third International Partners in Flight Conference. Albany, CA: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, pp. 1029–42. Fazli, N. 2001. Nida Fazli: Ghazalen, Nazmen, Sh‘er aur Jivani (Kanhaiyalal Nandan, ed.). New Delhi: Rajpal and Sons. Gade, A.M. 2019. Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hameed, S.S. 2014. Maulana Azad, Islam, and the Indian National Movement. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Husain, A.A. 2000. Scent in the Islamic Garden: A Study of Deccani Urdu Literary Sources. Karachi: Oxford University Press. Kinra, R. 2015. Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kinra, R. 2020. Revisiting the History and Historiography of Mughal Pluralism. ReOrient 5(2): 137–82. Lallensack, 2019. North America Has Lost Nearly 3 Billion Birds Since 1970. Smithsonian Magazine, September 19, 2019. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sciencenature/north-america-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-birds-180973178/ (accessed 12 January 2021). Mcgregor, R. 2015. Religions and the Religion of Animals: Ethics, Self and Language in Tenth Century Iraq. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35(2): 222–31. Morton, T. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mufti, A. 2007. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Nagel, T. 1974. What It Is Like to Be a Bat. The Philosophical Review 83(4): 435–50. O’Callaghhan-Gordo, C., and Antó, J.M. 2020. Covid-19: The Disease of the Anthropocene. Environmental Research 187. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC7227607/

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Patel, R., and Moore J.W. 2017. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ruggles, D.F. 2008. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Taneja, A.V.I. 2015. Saintly Animals: The Shifting Moral and Ecological Landscapes of North India. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 35(2): 204–21. Taneja, A.V. 2018. Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Tlili, S. 2012. Animals in the Qur’an. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wescoat, J.L. Jr. 1996. Gardens, Urbanization and Urbanism in Mughal Lahore: 1526–1957. In: James L. Wescoat, Jr., and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (eds.), Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects. Washington, WA: Dumbarton Oaks, pp. 139–170. Yusoff, K. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

12 Druids and Jhakris: conservation and conversations between spirits of place and spirit-workers from Britain and Nepal Jonathan Woolley The problem: What is the connection between animism and environmentalism? Following a vivid assessment of the animism of the Nayaka people of South India, Nurit Bird-David set out a series of avenues for further work, one of which is the subject of this chapter. Bird-David asked – ‘How does hunter gatherer animism compare with the current radical environmental discourses that some scholars have described as the “new animism” … what other forms of animism are they?’ (Bird-David 1999: S79). In referring to ‘some scholars’, Bird-David cites Paul Bouissac’s review of Tim Ingold’s 1988 publication What is an animal? as an example (Bouissac 1989). This question arises naturally in response to Bird-David’s broader argument: that animism is a universal human propensity to explore ‘relational epistemology’. But if animism is a universal tendency, then why would modern societies so comprehensively reject it as a childish superstition (Guthrie 1993; Piaget 1931)? And do movements exist in modern societies – such as environmentalism – where forms of animism might be found? While animism has received a great deal of subsequent attention from anthropologists (e.g. Descola 2013; Holbraad and Pedersen 2017; Willerslev 2007) since Bird-David’s article, such efforts have largely side-stepped the comparative gauntlet Bird-David threw down at the end of her paper, preferring to focus instead on critiquing her primary claims. Animism is not a matter of epistemology, they say, but instead one of ontology (Henare et al. 2006; Holbraad and Pedersen 2017). Much of this ‘Ontological Turn’s’ interest in animism presupposes a ‘radical alterity’ between Western societies – including the global environmental movement – and hunter-gatherer societies like the Nayaka (Laidlaw 2012; Sahlins 2014; Taylor 2013; Viveiros De Castro, 2015). With this position in mind, it is only natural that the latter questions Bird-David raises would be set to one side by scholars engaged in the Ontological Turn in anthropology. If the Nayaka differ from Western Environmentalists on ontological grounds, setting out to determine whether there might be similarities between the two is almost a non-starter – when I discussed this topic with one prominent anthropologist of ontology, he stated that he ‘could not see the point’ in studying Western new religious movements. DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-12

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The aim of this chapter is not to sift through the debris of the Ontological Turn nor to adjudicate between the epistemological and ontological studies of animism. The theme of this volume – environmental cosmopolitics – serves as an invitation to shift focus from such theoretical intricacies and instead develop a comparison that places questions of power, rather than being or knowing, at the centre. This approach follows in the vein of Rane Willerslev’s exhortation that we take animism seriously, but not too seriously – recognizing that animistic experience and thought will not always be consistent or freighted with the same degree of solemnity in all situations (Willerslev 2013). Rather than attempt to find a consistent or coherent core to Nepali or druidic ontology (which may or may not exist), the aim here is to explore the definite political and social relevance of spiritual beings in both contexts, the effects of which can often be clearly seen. Taking it seriously, in my view, should involve giving the political impacts of animism due attention while taking it too seriously can involve reifying animism into something that is overly static and bounded as a cultural form. Insisting on such rigid distinctions between the (supposedly) non-animistic West and animistic societies faces other issues too. As Todd has argued, indigenous scholars in disciplines like History (e.g. Deloria 1994), Law (Black 2016; Napoleon 2013), and Indigenous Studies (Graham 1999; Kimmerer 2015) have explored the intersections between Western and animistic philosophies for decades – such scholarship is simply not engaged with by the Ontological Turn. This shortcoming, as Todd points out, is a significant lacuna and highly colonialist besides (Todd, 2016). And some of this indigenous scholarship has reflected upon the intersections between druidic and indigenous animisms. Vine Deloria – a renowned Lakota historian – entertained the possibility of common ground between Druidry and indigenous teachings (Deloria 1994: 288). By contrast, Adrienne Keene, a Cherokee scholar of American Studies and Ethnic Studies, has critiqued the appropriation of indigenous spiritual customs – including the use of white sage – by commercial expressions of Neopagan Witchcraft (Keene, 2018). The varied guises of Western animisms generate a broad spectrum of possible intersections with Indigenous philosophies; they can recapitulate white supremacy and reveal common ground between societies with radically different historical and political experiences. Exploring these complex interconnections in detail is clearly worthwhile, even though it is not something the Ontological Turn can realistically accomplish (Owen 2016). I, therefore, wish to use this paper to establish an alternative comparative foundation that responds more directly to Nurit-David’s original provocation and helps make sense of the complex cosmopolitics of environmentalism across cultural differences. Below I sketch out a direction of travel for future comparative work, responding to Bird-David’s original provocation with a hypothesis that can be subjected to further scrutiny. Both instances are organized in broadly the same way – as a montage of cultural features or events that relate to the cosmopolitics in the two field sites (Grimshaw 2001: 11).

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Example 1: Druidry an anti-fracking activism It is 8 July 2014. A typical, balmy summer is playing out across the Somerset countryside, but in an old, derelict pump room in the market town of Glastonbury, magic is afoot. Candles and incense grace the cool, dark interior, as the sound of rushing water is joined by the resonance of chanting and the murmur of prayers. Shadowy figures pass in the shimmering dark, their occult movements veiled by robes and cloaks. The god Nodens in the form of a man sits before an altar, decorated with antlers and dried foliage, attended to by a hooded figure playing with fire. In the bowels of the vaulted chamber stands the Goddess Bride carrying a vessel of holy water. She is the living embodiment of the plashing spring before which she stands, flowing here through an aquifer from the Mendips Hills, some 15 miles away. A drumbeat sounds from behind an ivy screen, and the gates to the pump room are opened. From the world outside, a steady stream of people enters the chamber to be blessed by Nodens and to offer a blessing in return to Bride and to the sacred waters she carries. As the chanted names of the various goddesses of artesian wells and rivers across the British Isles ring through the air – Senua, Sulis, Sabrina, Tamesis, Coventina, Belisama, Avon … A stream of pilgrims, locals, and tourists move slowly through the pump room, being salved with and drinking the fresh spring water as it gushes forth, filled the numinous powers presiding all around. After briefly touching the Otherworld of the Spirits, the worshippers are guided back out of the shrine, where the White Spring flows from the pump room out onto Wellhead Road, as trouble brews on the horizon. Rumours whisper in the warm summer breeze: hydraulic fracturing – or ‘fracking’ – is coming to the Mendips. This industrial process – that fractures rock strata deep underground in order to release the oil and gas they contain – was greatly feared, as it was felt there was a risk it would pollute the sacred waters of the White Spring (Figures 12.1 and 12.2).1 Months pass. I am seated in the Barn Café at Whitlingham Country Park near Norwich, interviewing a member of The Warriors’ Call.2 The Warriors’ Call was the group that organized the ritual in the pump room, with the intent of allowing worshippers to bless the Goddess with protection from fracking. The druid I am interviewing is shaking. Her forehead is furrowed, her eyes closed, her cheeks wet with tears; she recalls her experience of the ritual at the White Spring after having wandered up there because in her recollection, ‘the water is so lovely to drink’. She vividly recollected the sound of the flowing water, the light of the candles flickering through the wickerwork, and the sound of the singing. She said she could not remember what she had pledged to the Goddess in so many words, but it had been an ‘offering from my heart … the outside world we live in distracts us so greatly, that we can’t remember who we are, where we’re going, what we’re doing … and these rituals bring us to our centre. I’m glad to say I was on the right path, and the virtues in my heart are true’. The inaugural ritual of the Warrior’s Call was almost a year prior to the pump room ceremony at Glastonbury Tor on Saturday, 28 September 2013. The UK government announced their desire to actively promote unconventional fossil

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Figure 12.1 Anti-fracking Shrine.

fuel extraction in the summer of that year and released a number of extraction licences in the South West of England, primarily for Coal Bed Methane (CBM). Aware of horrifying stories from America and Australia of burning rivers, foul vapours, and poisoned water coming out of taps, a number of druids met together and decided to hold a ritual at Glastonbury Tor. In advance of the ritual itself, a Facebook event page was created. This subsequently went viral, with over 1,000 people volunteering to get involved within three weeks of the page going live. The size of the event attracted the attention of local media and the police – who were out in Glastonbury in force on the day. The central rite at the Tor took place unimpeded, however, with around 400 people in attendance, with a further thousand or so spiritually ‘“tuning in’” from further afield, holding their own rituals in their own localities. The rite at Glastonbury involved three main components. After a standard opening invocation invoking the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, represented by dragon figures held by dancers; the goddess Bride of the White Spring, and the god Gwynn ap Nudd, who is resident within the Tor, were summoned. With their blessing, a cone of power3 was raised through drumming and dancing, and this was used to create a ‘web of protective energy’, using the Tor itself as a kind of conduit into the British landscape. The two gods blessed a vessel containing spring water from across the country before the ritual was brought to a close. Afterwards, participants were invited to ascend the Tor and make a vow to protect Britain from fracking, both magically and practically.

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Figure 12.2 The White Spring.

The rite has numerous features that are highly specific to Glastonbury; Bride and Gwynn ap Nudd dwell within the springs and the Tor, respectively, and the Tor itself as a place of power lent vital power to the rite, fuelling its efficacy. During the Calling of the Quarters, celebrants acknowledged features of the local landscape connected with the elements – the hearth-fires of Glastonbury in the South, the springs at the foot of the Tor in the West - and the dragon figures – considered by Druids to be land spirits – were used to demarcate the sacred circle. However, such ceremonies are notable for their translocal resonance. Many of the participants claimed that Glastonbury was the ‘Heart Chakra’ for the planet as a whole, and several of the organizers indicated that their specific intent was to use Glastonbury Tor as a charismatic symbol for the entire English landscape. It was hoped that – in addition to its esoteric power – the Tor’s beloved status internationally would encourage many practitioners all over the world to lend their power to the working. During the ritual itself,

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blessings were sent out to other similar campaigns against oil and gas extraction, including ones involving indigenous peoples – most notably the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline, which was occurring around the same time (Grady Benson 2013). As the ritual unfolded, a spontaneous feeling of affection swept the crowd. This was picked up by one of the celebrants, who shouted ‘We love you!’ as part of her evocation to the Spirits of Earth – a speech act that was taken up by the other three celebrants and the assembled participants and repeated for each element. Several people remarked afterwards that a heart-shaped cloud had appeared above the crowd in response. Rumours also circulated of how a pregnant woman visiting the White Spring had given birth while the ritual was being conducted. These putatively miraculous events were read by participants as signifying what Druids were felt to have, but mainstream European society lacks; namely, the capacity to empathize with non-humans in the environment (see Coates 1998: 13–7; Naess 1989: 27–30), who respond to such sentiments in meaningful, often dramatic ways. One of my Druid informants, Barry Patterson, discusses eco-activism extensively in his book The Art of Conversation with the Genius Locus (2013). He describes a campaign to protect Canley Ford, a beauty spot near Coventry threatened with development: ‘We participated in the campaign on a grass roots level … and we went down there and worked with the Spirit of the Place in as supportive a way as we could’ (Patterson 2013: 109–110). Throughout the text, Patterson stresses the importance of working with particular spirit-beings resident within and intimately connected to locations in the landscape. The moral consequences of this place-based animism were best articulated by Gillian Kavanagh, who, when asked by me, ‘What do you think the role or position of humanity is, in relation to the rest of existence?’ responded with: By this I presume you are separating humans from all other living beings? … We are not separate from other existences, we are all part of it, and equal in it … What we do affects the whole web of creation and impacts back upon us, it may not be today, but it will in time affect our children and their children … The sooner humanity grasps this, the sooner the world will become a more harmonious and balanced world for all beings. Because all beings are ‘part of it [the cosmos]’, they all deserve equal moral consideration, even though they might be different from us. This became particularly apparent during a Beltane celebration one year when a tree was felled in order to create a May Pole. A friend of mine remarked that at 24 years old, the tree was young for its species, and so it ‘must have been scared of dying’. It was explained that our sadness for the tree, and the tree’s own death, unveiled that the tree, like us, had its own spirit: a fact that we were told was frequently and erroneously concealed under Western modernity (Harvey 2006: 95). Feeling sympathy for the suffering of the tree, to the Druidic mind, highlights its being an individual, despite having a quite different existence from a human Druid.

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There was, nonetheless, a strong disagreement within the community about how the tree should be treated – although we thanked the tree for felling it, others felt that we should have apologized instead. Druids will also say the following during every ritual: Grant, oh *Gods/Goddess/Spirit,* thy protection; And in protection, strength; And in strength, understanding; And in understanding, knowledge; And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice; And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it; And in the love of it, the love of all existences; And in the love of all existences; The love of *the Gods/Goddess/Spirit* and All Goodness. This prayer was originally composed by the Welsh antiquarian Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826), one of the founders of contemporary Druidry. Although a tree is not the same as a human being – and is not treated the same – its distinct and different existence from humanity is nonetheless deserving of love, the experience of which in turn highlights its spiritual nature. Example 2: Nepali Banjhakris and roadbuilding, lu and littering In the Autumn of 2017, I visited the Okhaldunga and Solu districts of eastern Nepal at the invitation of a local jhakrini – a female shamanic practitioner. The previous year, in a conversation around the fireplace, this highly respected spirit medium belonging to the Magar ethnic group had asked my colleague Hildegard Diemberger whether spirits did exist in her world. Expecting a negative answer, she was surprised when she was told about British spiritual traditions and Druids. Mindful of the practice of modern witchcraft (Luhrmann 1989), Druidry (Owen 2016), and neo-shamanism in Britain (Wallis 2003), my colleague had revealed that – in fact – there were many people working with spirits in Britain and other European countries. The jhakrini expressed an interest in meeting one of these British practitioners. As both an anthropologist of contemporary nature spirituality in Britain and a practitioner of Druidry – following in the footsteps of other auto-ethnographers of Pagan traditions (Harvey 1997; Kirner 2015; Magliocco 2004), I was an obvious candidate to facilitate such cultural exchange. The plan sounded exciting, a journey across Sherpa, Tamang and Magar territories and an actual meeting of spirits across very different traditions. Unfortunately, I broke my ankle before reaching the jhakrini’s village, ensuring we were not able to meet in person. The particular spirit of the Magar jhakrini remained elusive (and still does as the Covid crisis forced the postponement of a follow-up visit). On the way, however, I had a range of other spiritual encounters. I did meet two Sherpa bombos – male shamans, who deal with different

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spirits to jhakrinis – and visited a series of shrines and sacred spaces in the region. My own brief visit – combined with evidence collected by other ethnographers, allows for the beginnings of a comparative framework between Nepali and British animism to be established. Amidst the mountain valleys of Okhaldunga and Solu in Nepal, spirits are commonly found in a variety of locations and they reflect the blending of very different traditions. The forests are haunted by the banjhakris (meaning ‘forest shamans’, indicating both the forest beings and the mediums they possess), diminutive humanoids dressed in the same fashion as human shamans, who are said to dwell in rock faces. Freshwater springs and pools are the home of the lu, water spirits that are subject to considerable veneration among Tibetans and Tibet related peoples (see Diemberger, this volume). Other, more dangerous spirits and divinities dwell here, too – including the tiger god bhagradeva linked to the Indo-Nepalese traditions. The spirit beings of these landscapes are experienced as highly responsive to human behaviour, affecting individuals and communities both positively or negatively. They can react to ‘disturbing’ changes in their environment, responding by altering the places in which they live and impacting people’s prosperity. What might be deemed to be neutral or even positive forms of rural development in other contexts can therefore have profound impacts on existing relationships between humans and spirits, thus gaining profound moral relevance. The morality of human conduct, therefore, becomes intimately bound up with ecological consequences in the places where it occurs (see also Cruikshank 2005). In the words of one of the Sherpa bombo, banjhakris are disturbed when roads are built alongside the cliffs in which they live; they respond to this by causing rockfalls and other traffic accidents. Such concerns have animated local criticism of road development and other forms of construction in places or ways that are deemed to be spiritually dangerous (Tsomu, this volume). Immoral behaviour by local people – such as greed – is repulsive to the lu, who can withhold the water flowing to the surface in the springs in which they live, causing the springs to dry up (Tsomu and Diemberger, both this volume). During my visit, the signs of people’s respect for the spirits were clear to see – from avoiding sites that were deemed to be spiritually dangerous or decorating a spring inhabited by the Lu with flags. When a local women’s group began putting out locally woven baskets as litter bins across the village to prevent littering, one of these bins was placed next to the spring. While these bins were also placed at less significant locations, the desire to keep the spring free of litter is, I suggest, instructive of a broader sense that this was a place where pollution would be unwelcome. Perhaps it also reflected a creative engagement with ideas of ‘pollution’, as actions considered to be defiling (typically urinating, defecating, washing, cutting trees, etc.) would not have normally included littering since non-compostable waste is a relatively new phenomenon (Figures 12.3 and 12.4). While the above examples are indicative of the cosmopolitical significance of spiritual interventions in eastern Nepal, there is another vignette that is

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Figure 12.3 Sacred Spring, Nepal.

particularly relevant to the kind of comparative foundation I wish to establish regarding environmentalism. One day, I was sitting with a bombo named Sarki in the Bakhre Health Clinic set up by the Okhaldhunga Nine Hills Association, surrounded by other members of the local community, who were assisting with translating our conversation. Bombo Sarki and I were discussing the aspects of Sherpa and Druid cosmology, as well as stories that were told about spirits in our respective communities. I duly told one of the most important stories within modern Druidry, regarding the Salmon of Knowledge (bradán feasa), a creature that dwells in a pool at the source of the holy river Boyne in Ireland. It is said that the Salmon gained his knowledge from eating the nuts that fall from the hazel trees that grow around the pool – and that the great hero Fionn mac Cumhaill gained his own peerless wisdom by catching the salmon and imbibing the three drops of inspiration that flew in the form of oil from the salmon’s body as it cooked. When I had finished, Bombo Sarki responded in a way that surprised me: he looked a little sheepish and then took pains to explain that, unlike me, he had not been to university and so had not heard of such stories. This response was totally unexpected. I had imagined that the bombo would – as I did – view the practice of shamanism in Nepal as part of a separate cultural sphere to the spirit work with which I was familiar in Britain. There was no reason – I assumed – that we would both know the same stories. The bombo’s words suggest he

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Figure 12.4 Bombo Sarki during ritual in Damar. Photograph: Charlie Lumby.

held a different view; that there was some kind of expectation that he’d also know these stories, and the fact that he did not require an explanation – namely, that he hadn’t had access to the kind of education that I had. This statement was reflected in the general opinions expressed by other people I met. My impression – admittedly one that was brief and mediated through translation – was that while they’d not met a British druid or witch before, they did not seem overly surprised that such people might exist. While people tended to hold the view that Britain didn’t have its own equivalent of bombos or jhakrinis – no doubt informed by a dominant discourse within the Himalaya and beyond about what is ‘modern’, ‘developed’, and ‘educated’ and what is not, perhaps perpetuated by previous

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Christian or Secularist Western visitors – the revelation that this view was incorrect didn’t seem to overly surprise people. The Sherpas I met expressed a polite curiosity to meet a British practitioner; when I showed them pictures of rituals and ceremonies conducted by British practitioners I knew, they asked questions that presumed similarity and nodded vigorously when we found particular points in common. Bombo Sarki’s remark could indicate a potential explanation for this – that the Sherpas I spoke to saw it as perfectly reasonable that other people from faraway places like Britain would have shamans; and in the process, these British shamans could be expected to experience the same animate cosmology as their Nepali counterparts. Bombo Sarki had not come across the story I had brought with me – as we were both shamans, and he was much more experienced than I, the story was potentially being attributed to something we did not share – namely, a university education. Bombo Sarki may therefore have sought to set apart his own place-based expertise and its canon of stories from mine with reference to a clear distinguishing feature between us both. What was perhaps most striking was the bombo’s willingness to make sense of the world I was coming from, creating an ad hoc comparative lens. This reminded me of Hildegard Diemberger’s account of a similar bombo she had met a few valleys further to the East. On one occasion, this bombo had travelled to Italy and was confronted with a building site that disturbed a spring and the surrounding wood. In horror, he stated that this was totally inappropriate, prognosticating that there would be consequences for the people inhabiting the site as the lu would be disturbed. It was not entirely surprising that in the following months and years, buildings in the surrounding area started to show cracks (which could be explained in geomorphological terms). At the same time, the neighbourhood started to complain about the loss of green space for the kids. When told about all this, the bombo felt vindicated.

Analysis: places of power The range of ethnographic material presented above clearly relates to two quite distinct societies, and yet, as Bombo Sarki might expect, certain points of commonality emerge. Firstly, it is powerfully clear that both druids and Nepali shamans share ‘notions of the subjective personhood of nonhuman beings’ (Sahlins 2014: 281). Unless the allegation is made that the British rituals described above are conducted purely in bad faith, it is rather hard to make the case that a speaker of English as their first language means something other than animism when they say, ‘By this, I presume you are separating humans from all other living beings? …We are not separate from other existences’, especially in the context of an interview where they are discussing a spiritual practice that involves visionary journeys to meet the souls of animals, plants, gods and the like. While druids could be lying or deceiving themselves, quite powerful evidence would be required to make this point – and that evidence is simply not there. Druids are sincere in their practice. It is also clear that, in both cases, that the animacy of

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the landscape has cosmopolitical consequences – that is, politics where ‘cosmos refers to the unknown constituted by these multiple, divergent worlds and to the articulation of which they would eventually be capable’. (De La Cadena 2010: 346; citing Stengers 2005: 995). By dint of the fact that spirits and gods dwell within hills, trees, cliffs, and springs, they will protect these places from disturbance – often aggressively – a world of possibilities that often collides with modern discourses and endeavours of resource extraction. Just as humans and animals have homes that they rely upon and will (consequently) protect them from harm, in both Nepal and Britain, it is assumed that spirits (what De La Cadena refers to as ‘earth beings’) will seek to do the same. The European experience of animate landscapes where spirits make their homes is the subject of a seminal essay by anthropologist Jane Schneider (1990). Schneider argues that throughout recorded history, there has been a tension between rural populations – who tend to recognize the environment and its components as animate – and urban elites – who tend to repudiate these beliefs. For Schneider, this reflects fundamentally different ethical priorities. Whereas rural communities are highly respectful of the spirits of their environment, seeking to maintain fair relationships with them – something Schneider calls ‘equity consciousness’ (1990: 31) – more hierarchical urban contexts were characterized by an ethos of unconditional love, especially oriented around a distant, infinitely superior and singular creator God (1990: 40), that rejected notions of equity tout court. An animate landscape marbled with competing claims on finite resources by diverse spiritual and mortal agencies contains innumerable obstacles to increased extraction; sacred groves cannot be felled, holy mountains cannot be mined, divine waters cannot be dammed – even hunting becomes, as Eduardo Kohn puts it, a ‘tricky business’ (2013: 118). If the environment is understood differently – say, as a disenchanted terrain, devoid of any agency save human tenure and management – the resources it contains become much simpler to exploit (Biersack 1999; Robbins 1995). Disenchanted landscapes are thus much more amenable to capitalist exploitation (1990: 49–50). Therefore, a dialectical struggle emerges between the ‘sophisticated’ but hierarchical world of the cities, compared to the ‘primitive’, egalitarian and animistic cosmos of the countryside. Over time, proponents of the former have persecuted animistic beliefs and destroyed places inhabited by spirits – such as shrines, sacred trees, and so on – across the continent. Though usually retaining a Christian identity for themselves, practitioners of ecstatic folk traditions that involved relationships with fairy beings and familiar spirits through altered states of conscious, lived at constant risk of being arrested, tried, and executed for heresy and witchcraft (Ginzburg 2004; Waters 2019; Wilby 2005). This has continued even to the point where animism is widely deemed to be fundamentally incompatible with secular Western culture today (Ingold 2000: 40). Such a process stands in sharp contrast to the situations that the word cosmopolitics was coined to describe. In cases such as ceremonies honouring the Mongolian State beside sacred mountains, the mountains themselves can make

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their presence felt in a broad range of ways, and the human persons involved respond accordingly (Sneath 2014: 458–472). The political realities that these relations create reflect, rather than efface, the agency of the landscape. Capitalism, in Schneider’s reading, could therefore be argued to be the zenith of a longstanding trend in Europe, one where animate cosmologies are progressively eroded in order to render raw materials more easily accessible and alienable from their original context – a kind of ‘anti-cosmopolitics’. Schneider’s approach can be helpfully combined with the concept from Marxist Geography of the metabolic rift – the process whereby capitalist production removes physical materials from natural cycles or stores in one location – such as the nutrients in food only to use them elsewhere4 before they are dumped into habitats where they act as pollutants – such as treated sewage in rivers (Foster 1999; Moore 2011). A similar point is often made in Indigenous Studies scholarship and by indigenous elders – many of whom have long argued that the West is fundamentally out of balance with the natural world (Parra Witte 2018) as well as fundamentally unjust (Alfred 2008; Cheyfitz, 2011). Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses the principle of only taking what is freely given and then giving back your care in return, something she calls The Honourable Harvest (Kimmerer, 2015). What determines this is whether or not a resource can be gathered in a subsistence context with minimal harm - sunlight, fruit and clean water are natural features of the landscape that can be harvested in ways that support the continued flourishing of the landscape from which they come, whereas fossil fuels, that must be extracted through intensive and devastating industrial processes are not (2015: 187). The anti-cosmopolitics of disenchantment has arguably emerged as the superstructural counterpart to the metabolic rift in the base (Salleh 2010). Within the ethnographic cases above, we see classic cases of the dynamics of disenchanted economic activity and the risk posed by the metabolic rift playing out. In Nepal, roads associated with capitalist development cut directly through landscapes inhabited by banjhakris, while pollution in the form of litter poses a potential threat to sacred pools. In Britain, the interests of the capital push for the exploitation of unconventional reserves of oil and gas, despite the potential risk of pollution of sacred springs inhabited by ancient goddesses. And yet, even though the impact of disenchanted logic is clear, those logics can still have cosmopolitical consequences. Banjhakris respond by blocking roads with rockfalls; water goddesses show their support to druidic activists by placing omens in the sky. Sherpa women install litter bins to reduce the amount of pollution around sacred wells to ensure that they keep flowing, while druids mobilize to defend the homes of the spirits they love, working closely with those spirits through elaborate ceremonies that ensure the purity of water is maintained. While disenchantment and the metabolic rift help us to contextualize the cosmopolitical repercussions of development in Britain and Nepal, it is also important to reflect upon the inner lives of the human persons involved; why is it that the notion of spirits dwelling in specific places has the specific political implications that it does? What motivates people to respond in the way that

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they do? A helpful concept here is that of ‘dysplacement’ – a concept developed by anthropologist Deborah Davis Jackson to describe ‘a profound feeling of disorientation toward ancestral land that has, because of heavy polluting industrial plants surrounding the [Aamjiwnaang First Nations] reserve, become permeated with toxins’ (Jackson 2011). Inspired by the work of Keith Basso (1997), Jackson points out that sensory experiences of the place are a powerful medium through which we experience a sense of affinity with our surroundings. However, for the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, these familiar smells have been permanently disrupted and marred by the malodorous presence of toxic chemicals emitted by nearby industries. For Aamjiwnaang community members, this contamination exists in synergy with a deeper history of colonial displacement from their traditional homelands. The lesson is clear – inhabitants do not need to be removed entirely from a place to experience a sense of alienation and estrangement from deeply familiar surroundings; the sensations of defilement can be powerfully disruptive. While Druids do not have a heritage of colonial displacement, the fact that the water of the White Spring is ‘so lovely to drink’”, and the close relationships Druids have with the spirits who preside there would be threatened – several druids expressed their anxieties over the risk that the water of their beloved springs would become undrinkable; covered with an oily film or marred by leaking natural gas. Similar anxieties are at play in Nepal – significant levels of littering on the slopes of the holy mountain of Sagarmatha have fostered campaigns to promote awareness and better disposal practices (Miller 2014). I would suggest that such vividly sensory anxieties – when juxtaposed with the presence of spirits at home in a common environment with human persons – imbue threatened places in the animistic landscape with an elevated level of salience (Taylor and Fiske 1978); the notion of home generates a close sense of affinity with the spirits of that place, while the visceral sense of threat is easy to imagine.

Conclusion: animism and place-based environmentalism In 2016, I attended COP21 – the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Kyoto Protocol – as part of the Climate Histories delegation from Cambridge University. As I walked through the door, the first sight that greeted me was a group of Christians, processing through the Green Zone drumming and singing. My eyes were then drawn up towards a vast plywood tree, placed in the centre of the entry hall, covered with post-it notes – upon each was written a wish for a more sustainable future. This installation was reminiscent of the practice of tying cloth strips to sacred trees, a practice I witnessed in both Nepal and in Britain. I wondered, would any Druids be present at COP21? As it turned out, I didn’t encounter any – although I did later find out that at least two were present after I blogged about my experiences after the conference, and they mentioned they had been there, albeit in a professional rather than spiritual capacity (Woolley 2015). I did, however, encounter a wide range of other religious voices. These were captured well by a civil society panel on Climate

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Change and Spirituality. Two of the spiritual leaders on the panel – Sraddhalu Ranade, a Hindu spiritual leader, and Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a Sundancer of the Lakota Nation. Sraddhalu Renade – spoke in support of the kind of ‘equity consciousness’ described so vividly by Schneider above. Ranade stated that every morning when he got out of bed, he apologized to Mother Earth before he trod on her back. Tiokasin Ghosthorse said that he went one deeper – and asked permission first.5 The acts Ranade and Ghosthorse insist upon – contrition and requesting permission – assume agency on the part of Mother Earth and the possibility of a personal relationship between her and us. An apology can be accepted or dismissed; permission can be granted or withheld. Their views were necessarily relational. My argument here would be that the cosmopolitics of druidic and Nepali spirits presumes a relationship in much the same way. Like the Nayaka, druids and jhakris gain knowledge of their environment in a profoundly relational way, where more potential for respect and relational fairness is experienced in the cosmology that they inhabit. Virtue, while not absent here, is understood in the context of these dynamic personal relationships rather than through broad statements about individual character expressed through personal conformity to abstract environmental ethics. The presence of such voices at a UN Conference of Parties is indicative of the importance of the comparative foundation I have sought to set out here – regardless of what radical alterity might exist between the different worlds of animists and the West, the inhabitants of those worlds (human and otherwise) are actively working to shape our political and ecological future. Anthropologists would do well to subject this to greater study. It is perhaps this emphasis upon specific places – and close relationships with the spirits that inhabit them - that explains why druids have been such a prominent part of anti-fracking activism and the road protest movement in the 1990s (Letcher 2001) but were largely absent from COP21 and climate activism more generally until comparatively recently. Climate change was for many years an abstract problem in developed countries; a form of slow violence that unfolded subtly or in places where druids do not live (Nixon 2011), with Britain being less vulnerable to swings in climate than other parts of the world. This meant that, until recently, the homes and bodies of the spirits and gods that druids worship were only affected to a limited degree; dysplacement was, therefore, more likely to be caused by pollution and industrial development. But as the climate crisis intensifies, more and more landscapes around the world are suddenly devastated by extreme weather events, as the Australian Bushire Season of 2019 has amply demonstrated. Indigenous journalist Lorena Allam puts it bluntly, I’ve watched in anguish and horror as fire lays waste to precious Yuin6 land, taking everything with it – lives, homes, animals, trees – but for First Nations people it is also burning up our memories, our sacred places, all the things which make us who we are. (Allam 2020)

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Tellingly, since my period of fieldwork ended, druids who contributed to my research have got involved in the Extinction Rebellion movement, with some citing changes to important natural events in the year – such as flowers blooming too early – as a motivating factor. As druids in Britain share news stories about extreme weather events such as the Australian Bushfires of 2019, the threat of similar ecological devastation falling upon the animate springs, woods, and hills they love and revere is clearly a force for their mobilization. At the European Association for the Study of Religion (EASR) Conference in 2014, I sat down at the plenary lecture and realized, to my surprise, I was sitting next to the sociologist Bruno Latour. We fell to talking, and he asked me if I was presenting and what I was presenting on. When I explained that I was giving a paper on British Druidry’s relationship to the environment, he asked me, ‘And do you think they [druids] can save Gaia?’ If it relies on connections with specific places – as it appears to do in the cases above – then the environmental cosmopolitics of Druidry entails a world in which climate change’s visibility is utterly contingent. Systemic threats that are not localized upon specific beings and slow to take effect can slip under the radar, as people focus their attention on immediate threats rather than bigger and ultimately more dangerous risks. A cosmos where specific places hold power through respectful relationships is perhaps one where the mechanistic logic of climate change – by themselves – lack legibility; until their impacts become plain to see on the ground. However, once such impacts appear, those respectful relationships represent a potent imperative for action. Furthermore, with Schneider’s argument in mind, it might be suggested that if those respectful relationships had been maintained more comprehensively, perhaps the Climate Crisis would not have occurred. By improving the salience of the non-human components of the environment, animist environmentalisms could have enormous advantages over approaches that rely purely upon enlightened selfinterest or broad moral imperatives (Crook 2011), neither of which have been especially successful at mobilizing climate action. If recent quantitative research on the power of cultural heritage and beautiful imagery to foster positive attitudes towards conservation are anything to go by, Druidic eco-animism could hold powerful lessons for the wider effort to engage broad publics in the environmental transition (Hopper et al. 2019; Luque-Lora 2020; Weston 2017). Further research would be enormously helpful in exploring these effects in greater detail.

Notes 1 See (Small et al. 2014) for a discussion of the risks involved. 2 Though druids understood the technical differences between these modes of extraction – coal bed methane extraction doesn’t necessarily involve hydraulic fracturing, for example – they would frequently use the colloquial term of ‘fracking’ to refer to all forms of unconventional fossil fuel extraction. 3 A @@magickal operation frequently used for protective purposes. The most famous, semi-historical occasion of its use was when the founder of Wicca, Gerald Gardiner,

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together with the New Forest Coven, used this method against the looming Nazi invasion of Britain in 1940; part of what has been subsequently dubbed in the British Pagan community ‘The Magickal Battle of Britain’. 4 Especially in urban areas. 5 It is interesting to note that the rest of the panel took a starkly different view of both Ghosthorse and Ranade. The other five panellists – representatives of Western Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist organizations – all claimed that the problem was not a lack of respect for nature; it was too much selfishness. These panellists argued that we ignored the fact that we are all one with the Earth, the cosmos, and one another. In short, they were attempting to address the ecological crisis with reference to the universalist ethos of unconditional love that Schneider describes above. However, as I have sought to establish here, that universalist ethos is itself an important ingredient in the modes of extraction that have caused the problem in the first place. 6 The Yuin are an Australian First Nation who are the traditional owners of a broad stretch of the southern coast of New South Wales – an area that was devastated by bushfires in 2019.

References Alfred, T. 2008. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Don Mills, Ontario, and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Allam, L. 2020. For First Nations People the Bushfires Bring a Particular Grief, Burning What Makes Us Who We Are. The Guardian, 5 January. Available at: https:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/06/for-first-nations-people-the-bushfiresbring-a-particular-grief-burning-what-makes-us-who-we-are (accessed 6 January 2021). Basso, Keith. 1997. Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache landscape. In: Feld, S. and Basso, K. (eds.), Senses of Place. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Biersack, A. 1999. The Mount Kare Python and His Gold: Totemism and Ecology in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist 101: 68–87. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1999.101.1.68 (accessed 29 January 2021). Bird-David, N. 1999. Animism @@Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.Current Anthropology40(Supplement): 67–91. Black, C.F. 2016. A Mosaic of Indigenous Legal Thought: Legendary Tales and Other Writings. Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, NY: Routledge. Bouissac, P. 1989. What Is a Human? Ecological Semiotics and the New Animism [Review]. Semiotica 77: 497–532. available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1989.77.4.497 (accessed 5 January 2021). Coates, P. 1998. Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times(Revised ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cheyfitz, E. 2011. What Is a Just Society? Native American Philosophies and the Limits of Capitalism’s Imagination: A Brief Manifesto. In E. Cheyfitz, S.M. Huhndorf, and N.B. Duthu (eds.), Sovereignty, Indigeneity, and the Law. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crook, T.A. 2011. Gore’s Holography of Breath, Presented at the Department of Social Anthropology Senior Seminar, University of Cambridge. Cruikshank, J. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. De La Cadena, M. 2010. Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics’. Cultural Anthropology 25: 334–70.

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Deloria, V. 1994. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Descola, P. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Foster, J.B. 1999. Marx’ Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations in Environmental Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 105: 366–405. Ginzburg, C. 2004. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Grady Benson, J. 2013. The Keystone XL Pipeline: Background Information. Indigenous Uprising. Available at: https://indigenousuprising.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/thekeystone-xl-pipeline-background-information/ (accessed 24 December 2020). Graham, M. 1999. Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews. Worldviews 3: 105–118. DOI: 10.1163/156853599X00090 (accessed 5 January 2021). Grimshaw, A. 2001. The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guthrie, S. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New edition). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Harvey, G. 1997. Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth. New York, NY: New York University Press. Harvey, G. 2006. Animism: Respecting the Living World. London: Hurst. Henare, A., Holbraad, M., and Wastell, S. 2006. Introduction: Thinking Through Things. In M. Hobraad, S. Wastell, and A. Henare (eds.), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London: Routledge. Holbraad, M., and Pedersen, M.A. 2017. The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition, New Departures in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781316218907 (Acessed 5 January 2021). Hopper, N.G., Gosler, A.G., Sadler, J.P., and Reynolds, S.J. 2019. Species’ Cultural Heritage Inspires a Conservation Ethos: The Evidence in Black and White. Conservation Letters 12. Available at: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/1 0.1111/conl.12636 (accessed 6 January 2021). Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. London and New York: Routledge. Jackson, D.D. 2011. Scents of Place: The Dysplacement of a First Nations Community in Canada. American Anthropologist 113: 606–18. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2011.01373.x (accessed 5 January 2021). Keene, A. 2018. Sephora’s ‘Starter Witch Kit’ and Spiritual Theft [WWW Document]. Native Appropriations. Available at: http://nativeappropriations.com/2018/09/sephorasstarter-witch-kit-and-spiritual-theft.html (accessed 1 June 2020). Kimmerer, R.W. 2015. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions. Kirner, K. 2015. Pursuing the Salmon of Wisdom: The Sacred in Folk Botanical Knowledge Revival among Modern Druids. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 9(4): 448–82. Kohn, E. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Laidlaw, J. 2012. Ontologically Challenged, Book Review in Anthropology of This Century (4), May. Available at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/ontologically-challenged/ (accessed 29 January 2021).

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Letcher, A. 2001. The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture. Folklore 112: 147–61. Luhrmann, T. 1989. Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Luque-Lora, R. (2020) The Disenchantment and Reenchantment of Nature, and Their Environmental Implications, UK thesis, University of Cambridge. Available at: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25275.57120 (accessed 29 January 2021). Magliocco, S. 2004. Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Miller, M. 2014. Cleaning up Everest | Nation | Nepali Times [WWW Document]. The Nepali Times. Available at: https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/cleaning-upeverest,1408 (Accessed 24 December 2020). Moore, J. 2011. Transcending the Metabolic Rift: A Theory of Crises in the Capitalist World-Ecology. The Journal of Peasant Studies 38: 1–46. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.201 0.538579 (accessed 29 January 2021). Naess, A. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Napoleon, V. 2013. Thinking About Indigenous Legal Orders. In: R. Provost and C. Sheppard (eds.), Dialogues on Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. 245Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, pp. 229–. Available at: 10.1007/978-94-007-4710-4_11 (accessed 5 January 2021). Nixon, R. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Owen, S. 2016. Druidry and the Definition of Indigenous Religion. In: J.L. Cox (ed.), Critical Reflections on Indigenous Religions. London: Routledge. Parra Witte, F.X. 2018. Living the Law of Origin: The Cosmological, Ontological, Epistemological, and Ecological Framework of Kogi Environmental Politics, Thesis, University of Cambridge. Available at: 10.17863/CAM.22047 (accessed 5 January 2021). Patterson, B. 2013. The Art of Conversation with the Genius Locus. Taunton, UK: Capall Bann Publishing. Piaget, J. 1931. Children’s Philosophies. In: C. Murshisen (ed.), A Handbook of Child Psychology. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press. Robbins, J. 1995. Dispossessing the Spirits: Christian Transformations of Desire and Ecology among the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea. Ethnology 34: 211–24. Available at: 10.2307/3773824 (accessed 29 January 2021). Sahlins, M. 2014. On the Ontological Scheme of Beyond Nature and Culture. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4: 281–90. Salleh, A. 2010. From Metabolic Rift to ‘Metabolic Value’: Reflections on Environmental Sociology and the Alternative Globalization Movement. Organization & Environment 23: 205–19. DOI: 10.1177/1086026610372134 (accessed 6 January 2021). Schneider, J. 1990. Spirits and the Spirit of Capitalism. In: E. Badone (ed.), Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Small, M., Stern, Paul C., Bomberg, Elizabeth, Christopherson, Susan M., Goldstein, Bernard D., Israel, Andrei L., ... Zielinska, Barbara. 2014. Risk and Risk Governance in Unconventional Shale Gas Development. Environmental Science & Technology48, 8289–97.

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Sneath, D. 2014. Nationalising Civilisational Resources: Sacred Mountains and Cosmopolitical Ritual in Mongolia. Asian Ethnicity 15: 458–72. DOI: 10.1080/146313 69.2014.939330 (accessed 5 January 2021). Stengers, I. 2011. Cosmopolitics II. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Stengers, I. 2005. The Cosmopolitical Proposal. In: B. Latour, P. Weibel, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Taylor, A. 2013. Distinguishing Ontologies. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3: 201–4. Taylor, S.E. and Fiske, S.T. 1978. Salience, Attention, and Attribution: Top of the Head Phenomena. In L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, pp. 249–88. Available at: 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60009-X (accessed 6 January 2021). Todd, Z. 2016. An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism. Journal of Historical Sociology 29: 4–22. Viveiros De Castro, E. 2015. Who Is Afraid of the Ontological Wolf? Some Comments on an Ongoing Anthropological Debate. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology. DOI: 10.3167/ca.2015.330102 Wallis, R.J. 2003. Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. London and New York: Routledge. Waters, T. 2019. Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Weston, K. 2017. Animate Planet: Making Visceral Sense of Living in a High-Tech Ecologically Damaged World. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wilby, E. 2005. Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Willerslev, R. 2013. Taking Animism Seriously, but Perhaps Not Too Seriously?. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 4, 41–57. Willerslev, R. 2007. Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood Among the Siberian Yukaghirs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Woolley, J. 2015. I’ll Meet You on the Field of Mars – A Druid’s View of COP21. GODS & RADICALS. Available at: https://godsandradicals.org/2015/12/28/ill-meet-you-onthe-field-of-mars-a-druids-view-of-cop21/ (accessed 29 January 2021).

Afterword

13 Cosmopolitical ecologies in translation Hildegard Diemberger, Riamsara Kuyakanon, and David Sneath

When comparing research experiences on how humans, non-humans and otherthan-human beings relate in a variety of environments across Asia, the editors of this volume found that these accounts resonated with each other. This was the starting point of a metaphorical ‘journey’ that brought together a wider range of scholars from different disciplines. Engaging with ongoing debates in environmental humanities by looking at different Asian ethnographic and historical contexts, placing these studies in conversation brings to bear commensurable and incommensurable aspects of human experience. From this point of view, thinking with situated ecologies of practice and processes of mediation, they search for a middle path between incommensurable onto-epistemological alterities and the collapsing of perspectives often implied in social constructivism. The chapters of this book, speaking with many different voices, have referred to ‘cosmopolitical ecologies’ as a concept to think with, rather than a single frame of analysis. Used analytically or heuristically, it highlights meanings and uses of concepts from different languages and lifeways as encountered in historic and current living practices. The cosmopolitical ecologies lenses have been brought to bear on conceptual areas of interest that are traditionally distinct (politics, ritual, cosmos, environment and ecological management), yet are here re-framed in terms of cosmopolitics, political ecology and ecologies of practice in the contributed chapters. This approach brings insights of critical analytics to a range of concepts such as ‘spiritual ecology’, ‘religious ecology’ or even ‘religious environmentalism’ addressing the inseparable ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ dimensions of the world we inhabit. Engaging with their entanglements, vocabularies and political situatedness (including manipulation for populistic agendas), it makes a distinctive contribution to environmental humanities. Archival sources in multiple languages and texts used in a variety of living settings suggest a contextualization of translation practices not necessarily focused on colonial encounters; this exceeds the use of English as a global scholarly language. Whilst it is essential to take on board critical engagements with notions such as ‘belief’, ‘god(s)’, ‘spirit(s)’ or ‘religion’ and remain as close as possible to the meaning of words in context, in creating a readable English narrative one is still forced to accept the unavoidable compromises and specificities of ‘translation’– keeping in mind that in some cases the same text can be DOI: 10.4324/9781003036272-13

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translated differently for different audiences or even for different forms of scholarly engagement within a single publication. Translation emerges thus as a situated form of mediation. Cutting across onto-epistemic boundaries in a variety of ways, it can allow for the creative freedom of a translator to navigate ‘literal’ and ‘literary’ choices or be constrained, as in the case of translations by committee, negotiating meaning in politically sensitive contexts. Remembering Marilyn Strathern’s invitation to reflect on the actual process of translating, when working on the 15th century Tibetan biography of Chokyi Dronma (Diemberger 2007 with Strathern forward), Hildegard Diemberger became increasingly aware that what is said is as important as the unsaid and the assumed; translations turn out to be more multiple and complex than suggested by assessments marking them as just accurate or inaccurate. Working with Tibetan colleagues to do this kind of work was, and still is, a - sometimes unsettling process of negotiation or, in de la Cadena’s words, ‘co-labouring’ (de la Cadena 2015; see also Yeh 2007: 69–98). Cosmopolitical ecologies of practice involve, implicitly or explicitly, a critical engagement with the politics of translation(s) since “discursive negotiation of conflictual and competing narratives is realized in and through acts of translation and interpreting” (Baker 2006: 1). These inform the ‘partial connections’ (Strathern 2004) that link people with each other (across languages and ontoepistemic boundaries) and with political formations - be these empires, nationstates or agencies of global governance as illustrated in numerous chapters in this volume (especially White, Fraser and Sneath and Turk). Methodologically, taking inspiration from de la Cadena’s work but reconsidering it in light of Asian ethnographic and historical materials, we are prompted to think about translation processes in a non-binary way - decentring colonial encounters and the anglophone setting that is so often the implied term of comparison/reference. As illustrated by many chapters in this volume, textual sources reflect voices, debates and translation processes that developed partly or entirely independently from European cultural history and historiography. One of the common challenges that can be found in multiple Asian contexts lies in vocabularies that do not assume a distinction between the material and the immaterial, the binary of matter and spirit that we find in wordings influenced by the Greco-Christian cultural heritage. For example, the name of a mountain can indicate both the mountain as we engage sensorily with it as well as its immaterial qualities that people and other sentient beings relate to. Classified in Tibetan cosmological taxonomies as lha, a mountain can be considered as the owner and protector of a certain place with the term sadag, lit ‘land owner/master’ (see also Diemberger this volume). This term can indicate an actual mountain, a land ‘owning’ deity, as well as a human landlord or even a temporal ruler (often a divine ruler). It is the context of use and a variety of strategies of disambiguation that conveys the appropriate specific meaning whilst implicitly evoking the wider range of possible associations that transcend the material/immaterial distinction.

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This kind of view is sometimes equated to ‘animism’ – a concept steeped in ontological assumptions that, re-claimed from Tylor (1871), has been rediscovered in new guises (e.g. Weston 2017). Whilst truly inspirational in certain analytical language, in other contexts, the use of the term ‘animism’ is more likely to reflect problematic associations with ideas of ‘superstition’ and ‘backwardness’ or romanticizing orientalism (especially in modernist secularist perspectives associated with administration and development). Terminologies and practices associated with what Basso would call ‘lived topographies’ (Basso 1996) across Asia point to a fluid intersecting of perspectives, historically linked to encounters of different religious and knowledge traditions, invariably politically situated. In a sort of strategic ambiguity, a concept such as lha can be used suspending or upholding distinctions between material and immaterial dimensions of topographical features or can even be used to support a secular suppression of a ‘spiritual’ dimension of landscape. This complex layering of perspectives exceeds the binary (typically an ethnic ‘other’ vs English or another colonial language). For example, the Sanskrit term naga (snakes and snake-like deities associated with water) was translated into Tibetan as lu (klu), using an existing cosmological concept of beings associated with waters and the underground; the same Buddhified term was transplanted into the Mongolian context as lus, using a Tibetan loanword often associated with the savdag/sadag (see also Sneath and Turk this volume). In a Buddhist perspective, these beings, as ‘worldly deities’ associated with natural features, have been accepted but only in a limited way, as part of the ‘conventional truth’ to be ultimately transcended (see Diemberger in this volume and also Studley 2019). With their relative powers, they may be invoked in rituals and depicted on temple walls. In Mao’s China (and its ethnic minority regions), beings of this kind were considered to be part of feudal superstition (Ch. mixin) and their rituality suppressed or, at best, tolerated as something that will disappear with the presumed ‘disenchantment’ of the world.1 After the suppression, they have promptly re-emerged in post-socialist contexts. As elements in complex layers of interpretation, these kinds of being have informed tensions and paradoxes in Asian ‘varieties of secularism’ (Bubandt and Van Beek 2011), which may even include the integration of secular political figures into local fractured and recombined cosmologies (see Diemberger this volume; see Ng [2020] in relation to China and Navaro [2021] in relation to Turkey). Cosmological beings that connect the material and the immaterial features of landscape offer an interesting area for conversations across ontoepistemic boundaries, as highlighted in Woolley’s and White’s chapters. They are also central to issues of local and ethnic identity, as illustrated by Tsomu. As such, they are at the heart of the politics of translation, which is often not only strategically ambiguous but also shifting as pointed out by Bulag (2003: 753–63): Marisol de la Cadena, who aptly translates the Peruvian tirakuna as ‘earth-beings’ rather than ‘earth spirits’ finds a brilliant solution to the problem of translation by exploring the etymology and literal meaning of the Quechua term (tira = ‘earth’ and kuna = ‘being’) and engaging critically with more conventional vocabulary (such as ‘spirits’ and ‘shrines’) that reflects the legacy of the colonial encounter

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with the Spaniards. She takes on board and is inspired by Chakrabarty’s and Guha’s revisitings of historical political movements in India and their reassessing of the involvement of ‘gods’ in the political arena (Chakrabarty 2000; Guha 1988: 83), but she distances herself from the language of ‘religion’ they use in the Indian context. Cassaniti, in her chapter on North Thailand, echoes some of these debates and their very practical implications for agricultural life: examining land management fires from a cosmological and political perspective, she moves the analysis away from a narrow focus on material practices towards relations with the other-than-human. Considering the role of a variety of ‘beings’ in agricultural life, she draws attention to shifting cosmopolitical attitudes about land and identity. Marisol de la Cadena’s literal translation of the Quechua term tirakuna as ‘earth-beings’ lends itself particularly well to the discussion of the ontological ‘openings’ that underpin her book. When commenting on her conversations with the Quechua speaker Nazario Turpo, she observed: Our worlds were not necessarily commensurable, but this did not mean we could not communicate. Indeed we could, insofar I accepted that I was going to leave something behind, as with any translation…Borrowing a notion from Marilyn Strathern, ours was a ‘partially connected’ conversation (2004)…. we shared conversations across different onto-epistemic formations (de la Cadena 2015: xxv) Marisol de la Cadena (e.g. de la Cadena and Medina 2020: 369–84) returned to ‘translation’ in later works; discussing cows in Colombia, she retained the visibility of the translation process, opening up analytic possibilities. Similar processes are reflected in several chapters in this collection and highlight the complexity of language both in terms of meaning and contextual use, especially in the context of place-making in Inner Asia. This is particularly evident in toponyms and their translations, as they are intimately linked to both remembering and forgetting in politically situated memory practices. The way language relates to place also informs its gendering as illustrated by Caroline Humphrey’s chapter. Naming and ritual practices reflect a differential approach of men and women to these landscapes that are not understood in a singular and necessarily coherent interpretative framework. For example, Buddhist landscape rituality may reflect and underpin gendered social hierarchies but can also be used to challenge them. This can result in the same or similar cosmological notions being used in conservative, transgressive or even oppositional ways. Whilst the analysis of meanings and uses of vernacular terms are central to most chapters, the ethnographic explorations include many non-verbal communicative practices and sensory engagements with places. These are expressed in daily activities, non-verbal communication, experiential narratives, ritual gestures and naming practices that often reflect intersecting traditions. What can be described with the words of Basso (1996) as ‘lived topography’ does things to people (and other sentient beings). For example, through sensory

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engagement, places can heal or make ill: a mountain speaking through a medium, a blessing encounter with a holy site on a pilgrimage, revisiting one’s own ‘birth deity’ location or a mountain experience for a tourist can restore well-being, just as offended place-deities, sacred locations stained by sinful deeds or polluted sites can be a source of illness. The healing power of topography is compellingly illustrated in Sneath and Turk’s chapter discussing Mongolian landscape rituals. In a different way, other-than-human beings described in the chapter by Anand Taneja act on Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of several major leaders of the Indian independence movement, as he was enduring confinement in Ahmednagar Fort from 1942 to 1945. In this case, the altered experience of time led to a transformative intimacy with other beings, the sparrows he shared a room with. What seems a truly democratic encounter across species led to a wider cosmo-theological ecology of practice resonant with experiences of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Asian places described in these chapters emerge as sites of power – they are points of encounter, negotiation and translation but also potential disconnection, and even conflict, between different epistemic communities, as clearly illustrated, for example, by the chapter by Hovden and Havnevik on Limi and also in that by Fraser on the Evenki. The cosmological or ontoepistemological incommensurability that may haunt meetings between Limi inhabitants, NGOs and government officials (see also Saxer 2013) reminds us of other types of bureaucratic incommensurability – for example, that encountered by UK Druids and government officials (see Woolley’s chapter). It might even recall that of the UK homeless (and ex-homeless) people whose sociality is separated by a seemingly insurmountable gap of mistrust from people embodying state structures supposed to support them; as they often say, with bitterness, they inhabit a ‘different world’, with its spaces and times (Lenhard forthcoming). A shepherd or a Buddhist monk may navigate different forms of knowledge, some of which involve incommensurable ontological assumptions, to plan actions or take decisions (see e.g. Tsomu’s chapter). People who speak the same language may live worlds apart in what can be seen as ‘experiential incommensurability’. Places can also offer an opportunity for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary exploration. Addressing the challenges of interdisciplinarity, Marilyn Strathern observed that: The reason we have sometimes been looking in the wrong place is that we have been so focused on incommensurability, on the difficulties disciplines have as discrete entities in ‘talking’ to one another, that we do not see what we all know. Namely that they are all alike in thinking that they have this problem. (Strathern 2006: 93). Developing her argument on useful knowledge, she suggests that we should look at research and management practices as ‘interfolding’ rather than ‘collapsing’. The concept of ‘interfolding’ may usefully capture a sense of mediation that is partial, limited and open-ended, which can apply both to interdisciplinarity and

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to cultural translation practices. It may reflect connections among different worlds with commensurable and incommensurable differences (de la Cadena 2015: 62). Despite being haunted by what was, and is, ‘lost in translation’ (but also added and changed), the history of Inner Asia tells us that engagement has been possible across linguistic and cultural boundaries for centuries. It is a world that has been shaped by a history of translations and where ‘translators’ can mediate not only across languages but also between ‘spirits’ and humans (see Diemberger in this volume). Recently, in a wide range of Asian contexts (some of which inform the chapters in this book), local cosmologies of place have been dovetailing with ecological agendas and governmental green imaging. Different forms of knowledge seem to interfold in decision making processes that concern the environment. This does not necessarily mean that aims and actions are identical or even converge, and they can be the source of significant frictions (Tsing 2005, see also Makley 2014). Disconnections, non-engagements, fractured relationships are reflected on multiple scales as observed by Mike Hulme in addressing the changing climate, as different ethical and epistemic frameworks lead us to disagree about climate change (Hulme 2009). Incommensurabilities are sometimes the source of paradoxical effects; for example, animals set free as part of merit-making rituals in sacred sites2 may become an ecological problem, as do the innumerable khatak scarves of (non-biodegradable) synthetic material offered in respect to sacred lakes and ponds. Notwithstanding contradictions and complexities, the recognition of ‘spiritual’ characteristics of place (sometimes within the framework of ‘cultural ecosystem services’, see Diemberger this volume) has certainly become important in supporting environmentalist agendas; the way this is played out depends strongly on narratives, practices and agencies in specific contexts. Continuity and discontinuity can be asserted in different ways, from claiming the re-enactment of centuries-old sacredness to the celebration of a secular ‘modernity’ in contrast to ‘tradition’. The mobilization of cosmological elements that appear similar across different spaces and times (e.g. beings such a lu and sadag) as well as distinctive in their instantiation, can be understood only by fully appreciating the discursive and performative nature of these ‘traditions’: there is a dynamic and creative process involved in their manifestations even when these are enacted while claiming continuity, or when cosmological innovation is presented as a re-enactment of a legacy of the past to fulfil religious and/or political agendas (see for example Sneath and Turk interrogating the sense of tradition in Mongolian contexts; see also Lewis’s chapter describing Japanese creative engagement with ‘nature’ related rituality encompassing digital modernity). Re-purposing rituals is also a powerful way for humans to relate to new challenges such as the Covid epidemic reframing new uncertainty in familiar terms, as illustrated in the Bhutanese context by Kuyakanon and Gyeltshen’s chapter. Looking at the kaleidoscope of ‘beings’ across Asian landscapes suggests that cosmopolitical ecologies framings open up possibilities

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for comparisons across space and time, be these ‘frontal’ or ‘lateral’ and with various kinds of intricacies (see Candea 2019). Ritual deployments of a certain vocabulary and gestures often refer to ancient imperial cosmologies to elicit a sense of continuity with a glorious past (see for example the ‘imperial metaphor’ discussed by Feuchtwang 2001 in the context of China’s popular religion). Among the Henan people of Amdo, for example, the latse ritual is characterized by the presence of a rope produced by the community’s women called muthag, i.e. the same name as the rope of light that enabled the descent of the first Tibetan King (see Diemberger 2007: 109–34). This evokes the cosmological setting described in the first and second chapters in this volume (see Diemberger and Tsomu). Landscape-related cosmopolitical features are often combined with a wide range of Buddhist notions so that the potential for Buddhist environmentalist engagement may appear in different guises, even within the same context, as highlighted by Emily Yeh (2014a, 2014b). A telling example of Buddhist environmental engagement across ontoepistemic boundaries is the account of latse rituals used as a powerful community mobilizer to defend the land and oppose mining and hydropower development perceived as detrimental to the local environment (see Tsomu in this volume). They are, in many ways, reminiscent of the tirakuna, the Peruvian ‘earth beings’ whose presence was an active part of land-related political mobilization and processes (de la Cadena 2015: 93–8), and whose leader even bested the Spaniards (de la Cadena 2015: 113). This kind of relation is not only political but also affective. As illustrated by several chapters, beings that embody both material and immaterial aspects of landscapes are often conceptualized in terms of kinship. They are engaged in mutual relationships with humans and all kinds of sentient beings inhabiting their lands. These features have persisted whilst being continuously re-invented and re-enacted with religious and political transformations of landscapes. When exploring the affective relationality of the lived world by referring to ‘kinship’, ‘relatedness’ or ‘mutuality of being’ among humans and non-humans/other-than-humans, the study of the environment seems to fruitfully dovetail with the anthropology of kinship and care. It is a ‘caring’ attitude that seems to be elicited by the awareness of the sacredness of certain landscape features – even when this may be compounded with anxiety, overshadowed by awe, or even eliciting transgression (and certain forms of green governmentality evoke some sinister application of the term ‘care’). Approaches that recognize the affective relationality of humans with their environment can be seen as powerfully reflected in the environmentalist engagement of many spiritual leaders, including the Karmapa (2017), who speaks of interconnectedness, the Dalai Lama, who invites humans to take responsibility for ‘Mother Earth’,3 and Pope Francis. This latter’s choice to refer to St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticum creaturarum or Cantico di Frate Sole (‘song of brother sun’), in his Laudato si environmental encyclical to elicit a caring response, is particularly telling. Whether it is ‘brother sun’ (It. frate sole), ‘sister moon’ (It. sora luna) and ‘sister mother earth’ (It sora madre terra), or Tibetan landscape features such as the

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earth foundation mother (sashi ama), or mountains and lakes as mother/father/ sister/brother etc., addressing natural features in terms of kinship does not necessarily express an ontological claim but rather a relational and affective way of being in the world. It is also telling that the subtitle of the encyclical is ‘on the care of our common home’ (see also Francis 2015). In a similar way, the notion of ‘care’ has also been increasingly mobilized in scientific contexts when promoting engagement that addresses environmental challenges – for example, the Research Council UK scheme ‘care for the future’.4 None of these religious and knowledge frameworks are inherently environmentalist, though; often it is easier to find convergences across different epistemological traditions when looking for evidence of ‘green’ engagement than it is to bridge the huge differences on environmental issues between contrasting positions within each tradition (e.g. human stewardship of the Earth addressing climate change and climate change denialist positions within Christian traditions). Recognizing spiritual qualities, affective relationships and even personhood of landscape features have underpinned a wide range of movements for the attribution of rights to mountains, rivers, trees etc., as well as the fulfilment of ritual obligations such as funerals normally attributed to humans and occasionally other sentient beings. Most famous examples are the giving of Buddhist ordination of trees in Thailand to protect them from destruction (Darlington 1998, 2012; Ives 2016), the recognition of the rights of the earth goddess Pachamama enshrined in the 2008 constitution in Equador (see Acosta 2010; Tanasescu 2013: 846–61; Rühs and Jones 2016: 1–19) and the recognition of the Whanganui River as a Legal Person (Tanasescu 2017). In a similar vein, the Tibetan notion of sadag was suggested as the basis for claims to legal personhood of topographical features (Studley 2019). Understanding these as cosmopolitical ecologies offers an opportunity to engage not only with the relational values of places for all those who inhabit them and for wider communities across the globe. It offers an opportunity to reflect on the politics at play in the valorization of care, how disregarded incommensurabilites play out in practice, and what might be their ‘cost’, in the broadest sense of the term, recognizing their affective multidimensional implications. In 2019, glaciers on different mountains across the globe were mourned as if they were dead or dying relatives. Setting out from the glacier Okjokull in Iceland5 a flurry of requiems for glaciers across the Alps was organized by a variety of environmental organizations and local agencies. Wide-ranging coverage in the press and the social media of these events of mourning has secured popular participation beyond the limited groups of mountain lovers, who actually went to the basins where the glaciers used to be to commemorate their demise with music and prayers.6 In light of the disappearance or quasi disappearance of these majestic ice formations, people have been rediscovering their affective relationship to these landscapes. Looking at what is left of the Lys glacier on Mt Rosa brings to mind Julie Cruickshank’s question ‘Do glaciers listen?’ (Cruickshank 2006) elicited by the glacial landscapes of Mt Saint Elias in British Columbia and the entanglements of perceptions and forms of knowledge. The sad look of mountain peaks stripped of their whiteness recalls a

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Tibetan song in the Himalaya declaring that ‘the honour of the mountains is the snow’, which inspired a collaborative article on climate change in the Himalaya (see Diemberger et al. 2015: 249–71). It also brings to mind the notion of la (bla), an almost untranslatable Tibetan concept, often glossed as ‘soul’, that indicates both a relation and an entity connecting people to places as well as non-human animals and things (see Tsomu in this volume). Like innumerable other people who were children in the 1960s, two of the editors were fascinated by the first pictures of planet Earth taken from space. This was our home, with all its beauty and limits, staring at us through the flickering screen. In the following decades, these images became crucial for environmentalist movements worldwide. Looking again at these breath-taking pictures of the Earth with its delicate blue and white shades of colour, the ‘animate planet’ evoked by Kath Weston (2017), as well as by the spiritual leaders of many traditions, comes to mind. Does this imply a global cosmopolitical ecology in which the need for humans, non-humans and other-thanhumans to engage at the planetary level is in constant tension with the infinite worlds we inhabit? Perhaps, using the words of Yudru Tsomu at the end of her chapter, through infinite ‘partial connections’, we are all ’in search of the lost la of this planet’, in urgent need of ‘healing’ and ‘restoration’.

Notes 1 “It is the peasants who put up the idols and, when the time comes, they will throw the idols out with their own hands … It is wrong for anybody else to do it for them” Mao Zedong [1949], Selected Works I 1961–65: 46, cited in Welch (1972: 2). 2 The setting free (tsethar, tshe thar ) of animals destined for slaughter or hard work is a common way of merit making in a Buddhist perspective. This is also a common way in which animal sacrifice has been replaced in territorial cults to comply with Buddhist moral tenets. 3 The Dalai Lama has made several statements in this direction, including passages that refer to mother earth as a way of eliciting a sense of responsibility. See for example ‘This blue planet is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life; its future is our future. The Earth, indeed, acts like a mother to us all. Like children, we are dependent on her …. Our Mother Earth is now teaching us a critical evolutionary lesson – a lesson in universal responsibility. On it depends the survival of millions of species, even our own’ (The Dalai Lama XIV 2009: 22). 4 ‘Care for the Future’ was a scheme promoted by the Research Councils UK, especially the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). See https://ahrc.ukri.org/ research/fundedthemesandprogrammes/themes/careforthefuture/ 5 The funeral of the Iceland glacier had wide-ranging media coverage, see for example the BBC article “Iceland’s Okjokull glacier commemorated with plaque” by Toby Luckhhurst, 18 August 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49345912. It also saw a sustained engagement by anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer, who produced a documentary on the subject. 6 See for example: Gressoney, veglia funebre per il ghiacciaio del Lys: “Ricordiamo ciò che di buono ci ha lasciato” 27 September 2019. https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/ torino/gressoney-veglia-funebre-per-il-ghiacciaio-del-lys-ricordiamo-cio-che-di-buonoci-ha-lasciato/344599/345181

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Hildegard Diemberger et al.

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