Marginal Spaces, Violence, and Buddhism in Tibet and the Himalayas

The papers in this panel approach a range of marginal spaces and marginal beings in Tibet and the Himalayas from ethnographic and religious studies vantage points. Each paper conceptualizes the margin in a different way, but generally draws on the marginal locations of the groups and places that they consider, whether these be in Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Qinghai, or Yunnan. The marginal beings involved include nomads in Qinghai, the minority Monpa and Lhop ethnic groups in Bhutan, yetis and goddesses in Gyalthang, mountain deities in Sikkim, and religious tourists in Kathmandu. The spaces that define interactions between these beings are unpermitted temples, unauthorized stupas, invisible villages, and a peace park adjacent to a massive stupa. The stakes range from the local (animal sacrifice, pollution, transgression) to the regional (Sikkimese identity) and the transnational (Nepal-China peace). The themes overlap, such that the papers are in meaningful conversation with one another on, for instance, the concept of Buddhist “hidden lands,” on the power to claim space through the erection of Buddhist monasteries and stupas, and on the constitutive power of stories and narratives.

The first paper, by a senior scholar and folkloricist, takes us to Gyalthang, at the southeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, to investigate the tales that people tell about “invisible villages” (zi göh) populated sometimes by beautiful goddesses, other times by hairy and frightening nenekö (i.e., ‘wildmen’ or yetis), and often by both. In these tales the villages reveal themselves behind rocks or waterfalls only due to a precipitating event, usually in the form of a transgression. This can be an unlawful entry by a human, or a taboo broken by the non-human inhabitants. The invisible villages are precarious, and their revelation can transform their idyllic and divine inhabitants into humans who then mix with neighboring mundane, visible villages. The paper explores how the invisible villages’ dynamics of concealment, transgression, and revelation are roughly the inverse of those that inform the more well-known Tibetan Buddhist concept of the “hidden land” (beyul; Tib. sbas yul), a place that can only be perceived and then “revealed” by an enlightened master possessed of pure vision.

Numerous Himalayan valleys have been identified as hidden lands from approximately the 14th century onward. One such hidden land, the kingdom of Sikkim, is the setting for the second paper, which comes from a junior scholar who hails from Sikkim and is based in Europe. In a context of landslides, rampant and unplanned urbanization, and unreliable roads, different communities in Sikkim have turned to their local divinities, narratives, and repertoires of “sacred landscapes” to take protective measures. Using competing narratives, collected from multiple informants from different communities, the paper examines stories, conflict reports, and the display of religious symbols, objects, and materials at various sites that serve to negotiate 'sacredness.' It asks question such as Whose landscape is it? Who has the authority to form a sacred site? By doing so, the paper illustrates how local communities merge, transform, and make sacred landscapes by negotiating beliefs and performing rituals.

The third paper, by a junior scholar trained in Europe and based in Australia, investigates similar dynamics of conflict in a neighboring hidden land, Bhutan. Drawing on ethnographic research among the Lhop and Monpa, two minority ethnic groups in southwest Bhutan, the paper explores how Bhutanese Buddhists succeeded in outlawing animal sacrifice among the Monpa in 1980, and how they are attempting to do the same among the Lhop today. One part of this strategy entails building Buddhist stupas on Lhop land without permission. The Lhop, meanwhile, fear that these structures will anger their local deities, and that ending the practice of animal sacrifice will undermine the safe passage of their deceased family members through the ‘dark world’ (Lkp: nak ka yue ka) through which they must be led by an ox. Appreciating such high stakes of the struggle over animal sacrifice, the paper attends to the spatial coexistence of Dzongka-speaking Bhutanese and their non-Buddhist Lhop neighbors, and to the words and customs that pass between them.

The fourth paper, by a PhD candidate at a US university, moves far north to the grasslands around Lake Kokonor to explore a somewhat parallel dynamic of using Buddhist architecture to lay claim to territory. Tibetan pastoralists in 19th-century Amdo defied the Qing and fought with the Khoshud Mongols to build their own monasteries that served as cultural and spiritual centers. Linked to larger, “mother” monasteries and to charismatic lamas, these monasteries welcomed the children of their pastoralist patrons and created opportunities for reciprocal relationships between different patron communities. In some cases, such as that of Kangtsa Monastery, these acts of place-making created new centers that became influential enough to define and name the surrounding area, i.e., Kangtsa County.

The final paper, by a full professor based in Germany, returns to the Himalayas to investigate the construction, following the 2015 earthquake, of the “Ghyoi Lisang Peace Park” in a previously undeveloped area peripheral to Boudha stupa. Built in an ethnic Tibetan and Tamang enclave of Kathmandu, and featuring a Tamang name, the park includes a central statue of Padmasambhava along with statues of his eight manifestations and other figures. The paper approaches the park’s peripheral location to Boudha stupa in the context of Tibet’s “borderland complex,” in which Boudha stupa figures prominently as either a stop on the way to, or else a suitable substitute for, the main Buddhist sites of north central India. Querying Tibet’s “borderland complex,” and its possible application to a Nepalese setting, the paper details how both Boudha and the Ghyoi Lisang Peace Park can be analysed as local centers that are simultaneously peripheries and parts of more “central” pilgrimage, tourist and religio-economic networks.

Drawing our themes together, our panel aims to open a wider discussion and to further deepen the engagement of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies with scholarship on the organization of space, on spatial networks, mountain deities, marginality, and religious (non)violence.