Spreading Peace, Banning Animal Sacrifice: The Propagation of Buddhism Among Non-Buddhist Minority Groups in Present-Day Bhutan

This paper discusses non-Buddhist animal sacrifice offerings carried out by two indigenous minority groups in Bhutan, and the attempts of Buddhist practitioners to ban these based on the Buddhist principle of life-saving (Dz: srog skyabs). It draws on my long-term ethnographic research among the Lhop and Monpa communities, as well as interviews with the involved community-outsiders propagating Buddhism. It looks at the currently ongoing efforts to prohibit animal sacrifice in the Lhop community and the complete abandoning of these practices by the Monpa around fifty years ago. The paper lays out the arguments and perception of the situation of the two opposing sides, the progress of events that involves outsiders entering the communities with an agenda and the resulting discontinuation of animal sacrifice. I look at the power relations of the two minorities on one side and members of the mainstream majority culture on the other, both groups being citizens within the nation state of the ‘last Vajrayana Kingdom’. Understanding animal sacrifice as a key practice of the Lhop and Monpa to connect to their communal protective deities, I consider the effects of this interruption of human-deity-relationship fostering activities. Further on, I ask if the banning of non-Buddhist animal sacrifice might be the stimulus event for full conversion to Buddhism.

The majority of the Lhop community in the South-West of Bhutan still performs sok buya chotat (Lkp, ‘giving-life offering’), the slaughtering of oxen, pigs and cocks for funeral and household rituals. These practices based on the traditional Lhop non-Buddhist belief system have been recently called into question by a group of engaged lay Buddhist followers which includes authorities like the district judge and local school’s headmaster. Under the guidance of two Buddhist lamas, the group seeks to terminate the animal sacrifices, with their stated motivation being for well-being of the community according to Buddhist principles. Several rounds of negotiations were carried out in between the two disagreeing parties in which the Lhop elders insisted on the imperative of their ancestral traditions. Running out of arguments, the Buddhist practitioners resorted to their hegemonic position, and issued an actual ban on Lhop animal sacrifice. With the aim to promulgate peace within the Lhop community, the outsiders started building stupas in the entire region, and thereby creating facts on the ground aiming for the conversion of the Lhop to Buddhism entirely. Lhop elders are devastated as they fear to anger their protective deities by not serving them well and face the risk of not being able to provide their deceased family members a secure passage through the ‘dark world’ (Lkp: nak ka yue ka). According to Lhop belief, the deceased ones are only able to cross the nak ka yue ka with the help of an ox by holding on to its tail. Lhop are bewildered of being deprived of their core cultural asset defining them as Lhop and connecting them to their ancestors.

The Monpa in Central Bhutan were forced to stop so dam (Mk, ‘life oath’) in the 1980’s, equally by outsider lamas and government officials from their district capital in Trongsa. Monpa elders, who are now full-fledged Buddhists, remember the series of high-ranking lamas coming to their community to convince them to abandon so dam and make them change to dkar mchod (Dz, ‘white offering’), which meant substituting eggs and other non-meat items for sacrificial animals. The orally transmitted stories of how Monpa remember their transition to Buddhism as part of their communicative memory and which started with the banning of animal sacrifice, take interesting turns. While the supremacy of Buddhism over non-Buddhist sacrificing practices is acknowledged in their narrative, the Monpa accounts nonetheless tell us about a masterful Monpa Bonpo who displayed his magic potency in front of the district governor showcasing his superior powers. The deaths of a number of renowned Buddhist lamas, such as the eminent 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche who died in Bhutan in 1980, are ascribed to the deities who were angered by the invaders’ forceful missionary actions.

Although both Monpa and Lhop speak distinctive languages which are not related to Dzongkha and chos skad (Dz, dharma language), and at least the Lhop still practice non-Buddhist beliefs at present, the terms used in both languages denoting animal sacrifice offerings seem to be borrowings from Dzongkha/Tibetan. Additionally, both communities do not use the common Bhutanese term dmar mchod (Dz/T, literally ‘red offering’ of flesh and blood). The Lhop apply the term sok buya chotat, which literally translates to ‘giving-life offering’ and which might be a borrowing of the equivalent Dzongkha srog phul mchod. The Monpa use the term so dam, which stands for ‘life oath’ and is borrowed from Dzongkha srog dam. So dam refers to the oath that is reconstituted with the deity by offering the life of a sentient being to it. I look at what the borrowings of Dzongkha/Buddhist terms into Lhop and Monpa languages might tell us about the spatial co-existence of Buddhist and non-Buddhist communities within Bhutan reaching back into the past.

Buddhism is the faith of the majority of Bhutanese, but non-Buddhist religions/beliefs are not condemned in Bhutan and de facto legally protected by freedom of religion since the initiation of the democracy in 2008. And while Bon-labelled practices like the Srid-pa’i lha cult (Huber, 2020) are indeed widely practiced side-by-side with Buddhism in the communities, animal sacrificing rituals are the main target of the propagation of Buddhist principles. Dmar mchod have not been only part of non-Buddhist practices, but could still be found until recently within Buddhist communities of Nyingma followers. Nonetheless, as shows the case of the Monpa in Trongsa, the banning of animal sacrifice seems to be the first step in turning away from non-Buddhist beliefs towards full conversion to Buddhism.

Dzongkha (Dz)/Tibetan (T) are transliterated by using Wylie; Monkha (Mk)/Lhokpu (Lkp) are transcribed phonetically.

Source:

Huber, T. (2020). Source of Life. Revitalisation Rites and Bon Shamans in Bhutan and the Eastern Himalayas. Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Österreich, Wien.