The Sacred Town of Sankhu: The Anthropology of Newar Ritual, Religion and Society in Nepal (original) (raw)
This book presents a detailed view of Newar society and culture, and its socio-economic, socio-religious and ritual aspects, concentrating on the Newar town of Sankhu in the Valley of Nepal. The foundation of the town of Sankhu is attributed to the goddess Vajrayoginī, venerated by both Buddhists and Hindus in Nepal and beyond. Myths, history, and topographical details of the town and the sanctuary of the goddess Vajrayoginī and her cult are discussed on the basis of published sources, unpublished chronicles, and inscriptions. The book deals with the relation between Hinduism and Buddhism, with the interrelations between the Newar castes (jāt), caste-bound associations (sī guthi), and above all with the numerous socio-religious associations (guthi) that uphold ritual life of the Newars. All major and minor Newar feasts, festivals, dances, fasts and processions of gods and goddesses are discussed. http://www.cambridgescholars.com/the-sacred-town-of-sankhu-18
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Religion Compass
Among all the Sanskrit story narratives available in the vast archive of textual collections in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, certain Buddhist tales among them found special provenance in the Mahāyāna culture of the Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of this surviving oasis of later Indic Hindu-Buddhist civilization. This paper will examine how two stories, the Sṛṇgabheri Avadāna and the Siṃhalasārthabāhu Avadāna, have been domesticated into the local religious field and adopted with special meaning for subgroups in the local society. The former recounts the consecutive, linked lives of a husband and wife, in a story of karmic retribution and reunion, a narrative that has a role in contemporary Buddhist widow mourning rites at the major stūpa in Nepal, Svayambhu. The latter, among the most popular jātaka narratives in the Buddhist world, relates the fate of a group of Buddhist merchants who are shipwrecked and captured by cannibalistic demonesses; in Nepal, this story was transposed into a tale of trans-Himalayan conf lict, and its central figure is regarded as a hometown hero. Until today, a three-day festival procession of him circumnavigates the city of Kathmandu. This paper will explore these local domestications of Buddhist stories and analyze how these traditional celebrations have changed in the context of the shifting regional and political landscape of Nepal and the region. Among all the Sanskrit story narratives available in the vast archive of textual collections in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, certain Buddhist tales among them found special provenance in the Mahāyāna culture of the Newars, the indigenous inhabitants of this surviving oasis of later Indic Hindu-Buddhist civilization. Although they speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, Newars preserve the many strands of culture characteristic of later Indic Buddhism. In a community whose living Buddhist traditions trace its origins back at least 1500 years, and where later traditions of Vajrayāna Buddhism have been woven into a rich fabric of Mahāyāna Buddhism, it is still the case today that jātaka and avadāna narratives remain central to Newar Buddhists. This paper examines the prominent stories that have been domesticated into the local religious field and adopted with special meaning for subgroups in the local society. I have defined 'domestication' as the dialectical process by which a religious tradition is adapted to a region's or ethnic group's socioeconomic and cultural life. 1 While 'Great traditions' supply a clear spiritual direction to followers who are close to the charismatic founders, including norms of orthodox adaptation and missionizing, religious traditions' historical survival is related-often paradoxically-to their being 'multivocalic' so that later devotees have a large spectrum of doctrine, situational instructions, and exemplary folktales to draw on. The study of 'religious domestication' seeks to demonstrate the underlying reasons for selectivity from the whole as the tradition evolves in specific places and times to the 'logic of the locality' (Figure 1).
Abstract In this dissertation, I examine the different socio-cultural, political, ritual, religious, historical and environmental-geographical importance/relevance of the village shrine called Maharaj Than or Gramthan among the Rajbansi people, an indigenous people from Nepalʼs easternmost Tarai, Morang. Taking Nisi Puja and the practice of making Bhakal or ʻpetition/requestʼ as an analytic theme in the study of Gramthan, I investigate and argue that the fundamental relation or relevance of the Gramthan and Nisi Puja among the Rajbansi people is to reproduce and give continuity to the Rajbansi community as ʻmoral community.ʼ This analytic theme is important for my ethnographic study because it provides an insights or approach to see Gramthan which not only functions as a site of everyday and annual religious performance; but they also become embedded in the wider socio-religious and political relationship of the respective religious community and beyond. Based on two months long ethnographic fieldwork in the three VDCs of Morang, and frequent visits made especially during the festival called Siruwa Pawani of 2015 and 2016, my ethnographic study not only provides a better/deeper anthropological understanding or insights on how religious practice, culture, and structure of the Rajbansi society are historically interlinked or reflected with the structure of the Maharaj Than, but it also provides an alternative insight to look at the Gramthan and its associated annual ritual performance showing that the everyday and annual ritual among the Rajbansi was a survival strategy in a given time or adverse ecological conditions, environments; i.e. epidemics, threats of wilds and powerful beings.
Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology
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