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Special issue - Rekindling Narratives and Heroes of Nepal

From hunting to photography. Cult of territorial deities and individualistic ethics within the dynamic of environmental interactions

De la chasse à la photographie. Culte des divinités territoriales et individualisme moral dans la dynamique des interactions environnementales
Théophile Johnson

Résumés

Cet article explore les transformations des interactions environnementales et des croyances liées aux divinités à Manang (Népal). Il met en lumière des découvertes significatives concernant l’impact de l’interdiction de la chasse. La place autrefois centrale de la divinité locale Dorje Legpa a été affaiblie en raison des transitions religieuses et politiques. La recherche note comment les anciens rituels, tels que le Paten, ont été supplantés par la syncrétisation des divinités locales avec des figures bouddhistes, reflétant une transition des sacrifices communautaires vers une moralité individuelle. Cette évolution aboutit aujourd’hui, à Manang, au festival de Syakumbre, qui prône une logique de « l’animal voisin » et assimile l’ascète yogique Milarepa comme nouvelle figure de culte. Tandis que les savoirs autochtones déclinent, notamment parmi les jeunes générations, les populations animales, telles que les bharals et les panthères, prolifèrent et adoptent des comportements inédits. Par ailleurs, l’interdiction de la chasse déclenche des réponses culturelles inédites : certains jeunes se tournent ainsi vers la photographie animalière pour documenter la faune et réinventer leurs liens communautaires avec les autres espèces. Ce récit sous-jacent constitue une tapisserie complexe de fils culturels, religieux et environnementaux, où l’éthique bouddhiste, les changements dans les structures de pouvoir local et les relations avec les entités non-humaines s’entrelacent. Ce cas d’ethnographie multifacette illustre comment une interdiction stricte de la chasse pousse une communauté vers de nouvelles formes d’expression et de compréhension, encapsulant la trajectoire historique plus large des relations socio-environnementales de Manang.

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Introduction

  • 1 Here we use ‘shamanic’ as an analytical category that does not have any implication of a historical (...)

1During my first months in Manang, Nepal, in 2017, I encountered a certain unease in discussing issues concerning deities. After numerous refusals to answer my questions, I was invariably referred to the lama of the village who referred me to a higher authority, to a Rimpoche in Kathmandu. At the mention of terms such as jhāṁkrī (Nep); tamu (Gur) (Pettigrew 1999) or ghyabre (Gur) (shamans1), despite the fact that they are liberally mentioned in local literature (Cooke 1985) and that a vast regional literature refers to them (Blondeau et al 1996, Ramble 2008, Pommaret 2004, Buffetrille et al 2002, Dollfus 2003, Nebesky-Wojkowitz 1996, Sagant 1990, Karmay 1996, Riaboff 1996, Steinmann 1996), everyone would feign ignorance. Nicolas Sihlé (2013: 49–50) also mentions a ritual called Paten. It was practised in Manang in the last century and involved human sacrifices. When I sought clarification from Poltu, the matriarch with whom I was staying, she flew into a rage, accusing me of wanting to attract evil spirits (bdud) into the house. ‘We mustn’t talk about it here!’ she shouted at me. Similarly, Amrit, a very good friend with whom I wished to discuss the subject, silenced me for the same reason when I broached the topic at night in his house.

Fig 1: Map of the study area: Manang district.

Fig 1: Map of the study area: Manang district.

Design by Théophile Johnson, 2024.

2This ethnographic research was conducted over a period spanning 2017 to 2023, encompassing a total of 16 months’ fieldwork. The study focused primarily on participatory ethnography in yak settlements located on high-altitude pastures of Manang village. In addition to these core sites, I visited several villages across the Manang valley, the neighbouring Naar-Phu valley and a village in Gyasumdo (Thanchok), the third valley of the district (Fig 1). Overall, the study covered ten villages within Manang district, situated in the trans-Himalayan region of northern Nepal. Manang district comprises three valleys, each inhabited by distinct communities. Manang (also called Niyshang by locals) and Gyasumdo are home to Ghale and Gurung populations, whereas Bothias reside mostly in Naar-Phu. The village of Manang, located at an altitude of 3,500m on the northern slopes of the Annapurna range, serves as a focal point for this study. Livelihoods in the region have traditionally been rooted in agriculture, livestock rearing and trade. Historically, this village gained prominence in the mid-twentieth century as a hub for the trade of musk and turquoise. Anthropologists such as Van Spengen (2000) or Ratanapruck (2007) have extensively documented its intricate trade networks. Today, the village boasts a new identity as an essential stopover along Nepal’s second most frequented trekking route and is part of the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal’s first national park. Conservation and livelihood development policies that have been promoted alongside the booming tourism industry have transformed the region’s socio-economic landscape. Manang has become a very cosmopolitan village since welcoming the first Tibetans who fled the war in Tibet, a number of Dolpalis after a huge famine struck the massif, then Gorkhalis who came for the harvesting season and to work in hotels and restaurants, and now even Sherpas. Everyone speaks their own language and Nepali has become the vehicular language of the valley. Sherpas, Bhotias and Manangis speak their own Tibetan languages, Ghorkalis speak a Gurung dialect, just as Ghales and officials in the Annapurna Conservation Area and policemen speak only Nepali to locals. During my various stays, I spoke Nepali for the most part with my interlocutors, and couldn’t understand conversations in the other languages. The multilingual and multicultural situation certainly has to be taken into account.

3This ethnography gradually reveals individual and collective transformations that unfolded over the course of the twentieth century and continue to reshape the ecosystemic balance between humans and their environment. While the data for this paper was not originally the primary focus of the inquiry, it became increasingly evident, as the research progressed, that the relationships between Manang inhabitants and their animals are deeply intertwined with broader religious and political imaginaries. While addressing a pervasive silence surrounding former religious practices, the study relied on iterative cross-referencing with existing literature from other regions of Nepal, Tibet or even northern Asia to interpret the subtle reappearances of older local deities, whether in casual conversations or through notable events in daily life.

  • 2 Refers here to multiple families of entities such as lhu, yhul-lha or btsan, ma-mo or bdud etc made (...)

4May 2017. ‘The old gods2 have been driven away’, whispered a shop owner. ‘If we talk about them, they’ll come back and we’ll have to make offerings to them again. We’ll no longer be able to drive them away. There aren’t enough good lamas left in the valley’. It took me a long time to understand the place local deities occupy in the Manang imagination. Who are these deities that have been driven away? What are the practices that have been abandoned and what have they been replaced with? I mistakenly believed that the deities were perfectly conceptualised, discursive entities, or at least discussed as a presence, and that the preferred means of obtaining information was interviews. However, this was not the case. The realm of deities remained confined to the unspoken and the intimate experience of inhabitants. My direct questions nonetheless had a strong emotional impact depending on the social status of the people I interviewed. Shepherds were very evasive, hotel owners aggressive, lamas haughty and immigrants timid regarding the subject. Their relationship with the deities only emerged through snippets of information gleaned over cups of tea, during breaks while working in the fields or in Kathmandu, outside the living space of the deities, among people less directly connected to the village space. In the end, the most explicit information came from the neighbouring valley of Nar-Phu where people seemed to be more disposed to broach the subject of the Paten ritual and human sacrifices. It was only in December 2022, five years later, during my third stay in Manang, that the first open conversation on the subject finally took place. After completing our daily tasks, we’d all gathered at Leny’s roadside shop. This young father, in a generous mood, had invited us all to come and have tea while enjoying the winter sunlight.

  • 3 Hindi term used in Nepal to refer to a figure of veneration. This term is increasingly used by youn (...)
  • 4 This individual religious practice aims to improve a person’s karma. It is noteworthy that it focus (...)

‘There’s no water in Gangapurna Lake. Before, the glacier came right up to our feet’, a woman exclaimed sadly as she looked at the glacier in front of us. ‘There was no river like now, it was more like a peaceful stream. We lived peacefully. Now, there are floods all the time. In the past, to prevent this from happening, we sacrificed a yak near the river. Afterwards, we only poured blood onto the river stones, but before that, we even sacrificed people. Seven died for the deity Bhagwaan.’3
- What’s his name? I asked, finally, to put a name to the trauma.
- We are not allowed to say it; otherwise, he’ll come back.
- Why? Does he move from place to place?
- Yes, he resides in Khansar, Pisang and Ngawal. When we stopped making sacrifices, you know, many people died the following year, at least 70. We paid a heavy price.
- Now, if he returns, we’ll not know what to do. We no longer have any good lamas. In order to stop sacrifices, they danced by the river.
- Our lamas don’t even know how to conduct our funerals, said Leny, looking at me, a sad expression on his face.
- That’s crazy! his brother blurted out.
- Yes, did you know that one of the girls who was sacrificed didn’t feel any pain? She was very different from other humans.
- Now that we’ve stopped (making sacrifices), the glacier is disappearing. People now only recite mane;4 they don’t even know how to perform rituals (puja).
- I ate the meat of one of the sacrificed yaks when I was a kid. Everyone was entitled to one or two kilos.

5I then had to wait another two months for a new piece of information to emerge. When I returned after rounding up the herd with Pundung, a Tibetan from the village of Tanki, and Raju, a Sherpa from Solo Khumbu, I picked up a femur, apparently from a horse, from the ground and took it with me without saying anything. I intended to take it back to France to make a flute out of it. Pundung had obviously noticed what I was doing. I confessed in a light-hearted tone of voice to wanting to use the bone for a project. However, the atmosphere between us suddenly became tense and a long silence settled before Pundung whispered to me that it was not a good idea to take the bone to the village. ‘It would be frowned upon. These are objects that call upon the gods, and no one wants to call them. If you’re the reason for their coming, the village will make you regret it’. The presence within the village enclosure of objects derived from animal carcasses is a source of benevolent concern for Pundung. Bringing back the femur might attract invisible entities into the village enclosure. By forbidding me from bringing back the femur, Pundung showed me that objects, particularly animal parts, were associated with certain places. I remembered a previous conversation in which it was said that the god had been driven away from the village because there were no longer any practitioners capable of appeasing it without performing blood offerings.

  • 5 Gcod (literally ‘cutting through’) is a branch of Tibetan Buddhism that often takes the form of sel (...)

6Human and animal femurs are often used by Buddhist practitioners of Gcod5 rituals. Flutes made of bone, known as kangling (rkang-gling), therefore have the power to call upon demons. In Nar, as opposed to Manang, these ritual instruments are still used in many domestic and clerical ritual practices: clan offerings to ancestors, domestic rituals aimed at purging the household of bdud (malevolent spirits), the house itself or family members. As this anecdote shows, the situation in Manang is unique.

  • 6 A btsan is one of the three primary types of territorial deities identified in the trans-Himalayan (...)

7I would later learn, once back in Paris, that the tutelary deity of the Manangis is a btsan6 called Dorje Legpa (rDo rje legs pa). My conversation with Pundung led me to understand the emotional connection that links the generation of thirty years olds to ancient practices and the interpretation they make of the consequences of their abandonment of the environment. However, who was Dorje Legpa? What powers do the Manangis attribute to him and what worship was dedicated to him? How did they get rid of the deity and what were the consequences?

  • 7 Philippe Sagant stayed in Manang in 1982 and 1990.
  • 8 Tihar or Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is one of Nepal’s most important festivals. It takes place (...)

8The following year, boosted by the knowledge I’d acquired from the archives of Philippe Sagant7 at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) in in Paris-Nanterre university, I met Nims for the first time. He is Poltu’s eldest son. He is a lama (religious practitioner, was trained at a Buddhist school in Kathmandu and offers his services to households or monasteries) at two monasteries in Kathmandu. I was convinced that he could provide me with information about the three pages of a religious manuscript I’d seen in the archives. Nims arrived with Yang ji, one of Poltu’s daughters. They both carried sacks of potatoes that Poltu had just had delivered to them by a microbus so that they could sell them for a good price in Kathmandu and earn some money. Manang’s ‘organic’ vegetables fetch a high price in the capital. As there were no cafés open due to the Tihar8 Festival, we went to have tea at the hostel where I was staying and surprised Poltu with an unannounced call via Messenger. The matriarch seemed genuinely happy to see us all gathered together. I therefore took advantage of her presence to ask Nims if he could translate three sheets of paper for me. ‘It’s an old book’, he began. He chanted for a few moments then, on realising its content, stopped and continued reading in silence. ‘I can’t read it aloud. I’m not authorised to translate it. If I did, something bad would happen to me. I know a Rimpoche, who has the power to read it, but he’s travelling abroad. These pages are about Dorje Legpa. The text describes his physical appearance. It says that he is tall and his mind (Nep dimāg) is perfect. He lives in the east.’ He skipped some passages and read some parts of sentences. ‘I can do it like this if you want.’ ‘By reciting these words, it becomes possible to see him if you go where he resides. Then, the text describes what he looks like, but I can’t tell you.’ He didn’t seem to associate this with Manang and Paten, or else he pretended not to. This conversation encouraged me to pursue my investigation. What had happened during the twentieth century for me to encounter so much resistance to any mention of this deity? Is it due to the deity or to the human sacrifices associated with it?

9This article sets out to investigate some sort of unspeakable presence of Dorje Legpa, the tutelary deity of the village of Manang, whose power is still strong and feared. We shall see that the unease surrounding the deity’s existence, though tangible yet unspeakable, lies at the heart of the religious, political and environmental transformations Manang experienced throughout the twentieth century. We will then have a clearer idea of what this fear of the deity’s return, by merely evoking it, suggests about the transformation of the Manangi relationship with the environment. After a short summary of the religious history of Manang – which dates back to the eighth century – and more specifically during the last century, we explore the hypothesis that the ban on hunting and blood sacrifices caused the Manang human community to operate a shift in its relationship to the invisible realm, which is inseparable from other living beings. Deities are not only the projection of power but also the expression of intimate interactions with the environment. We examine how religious changes are intrinsically linked to the deterritorialisation of political power centres, which redirects the imagination towards the individual. And in this sense, we analyse three important rituals in the annual cycle: first, Paten which pushed sacrificial logic to the extreme, to human sacrifice, which became the subject of cultural trauma; second, the Syakumbre festival which brought together three local communities under the aegis of Milarepa, a great historic master of Tibetan Buddhism, and the fable of the ban on hunting that accompanies it; and finally, the rituals of life in Gyasumdo and, more specifically, the sacrifice of a wild deer that shamans (gyabre) used to perform, tells of the brutal ban on animal sacrifices in the neighbouring valley of Gyasumdo which is part of the three inseparable communities. As hunting was forbidden, the unease due to multiple waves of conversion to Buddhism led to a loss of knowledge about the deities among some of Manang’s younger generation, who are now reconnecting with this imaginary through wildlife photography. To conclude, we look into how the ban on hunting is the keystone of the dynamic transformations of Manangi society and the latter’s relationship to the environment, as well as its beliefs about the invisible. Manang thus offers a striking example of how a radical ban on a certain way of interacting with the environment influences political, religious practices and interspecific relations.

History of political and religious conversions in the Himalayas

  • 9 This can be translated by ‘the master, deity of the territory’.

10The Paten ritual was abandoned in 1960, then rehabilitated in folkloric form in 2000 before being dispensed with again in 2008. It was the most important triennial ritual in Manang Valley’s calendar cycle; much of the valley’s renown in neighbouring mountain ranges stemmed from this ritual (Sihlé 2013: 49–50). Its weighty history, due to the human sacrifices it involved, prompts us to question its profound meaning and the reasons for abandoning it, as well as the silence that weighs heavily on testimonies to it. The only remaining traces of this ritual that can be gleaned from the village’s cultural museum which naively describes it as a series of masked dances. Philippe Sagant has long been interested in the relationship between the worship of sacred mountains and political organisation, and he dedicated an article to the Paten ritual: ‘The large Paten ritual used to bring together all villages of the Three Communities to worship a deity called Dorje Legpa, a btsan. Until 1961, animals were sacrificed to him; and at one time, the sacrifices were human’ (Sagant 1990: 158, translated by Matthew Cunningham 2021). The links between political power and religious representation in the adoption of deities in Buddhicised territories have been the subject of investigation of some research trends in Tibetan studies. As Katia Buffertrille explains: ‘Symbol of the regional identity of the population, the mountain that protects the land has always had a politico-religious role, but the modalities have varied. The worship of the “god of the land”, which is linked to a pre-Buddhist background, but which, in its contemporary forms, is highly Buddhist, is practised mainly by laypeople. It allowed the renewal of the environment and that of the society that derives its subsistence from it, but above all, it traditionally founded a political organisation. It has been proposed that the “god of the land” granted the power of the leaders’ (Buffetrille 2002). The cult to Dorje Legpa in Manang (Sagant 1990) consists in this type of ritual. Renunciation of it could thus be explained by the loss of political power over the territory during the integration of Manang into a larger kingdom by King Khe, prince of Gorkha, and recently into the nation state; however, in my opinion, this reason alone is not sufficient. For Sagant, the Paten ritual tells the story of the arrival of royalty in Manang in the sixteenth century. This political mutation led to the transition from a system based on the morality of exploit to one that confers authority on the basis of age and clan descent. As Sagant explains, King Khe, who introduced Buddhism to Manang, turned worship of the god of the soil (Yul-lha), the Manang peak and Lake Braga into worship of the gods of the soil (Jo bo yul sa9) – confined to the village – and of the god of the armies, controlled by the king (Sagant 1990: 162). This particularly heuristic analysis helps to understand the political transformations of the valley but also allows us, as we shall see, to grasp the changes in the relationship to the ecosystem that play out in the background.

11Dorje Legpa is a canonical figure in Tibetan Buddhism. It was often the case during massive conversions of Himalayan populations to Buddhism that local deities took canonical forms of names. Thus, according to Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1996: 154), Dorje Legpa is one of the four main Yul-lhas of the Tibetan pantheon, even if other classifications exist. The name of the village’s tutelary deity is a clue to the first conversion to Buddhism that took place in the eighth century. During that time, so the legend says (Jacob 2004: 764), Padmasambhava gathered all the local deities on a mountain north of Lhasa to subjugate them. However, this first conversion of local deities to Buddhism was never completely achieved and, for many, was even refused. In the sixteenth century a new political transformation took place which centralised power in Manang, first around the kingdoms of the Lamjung princes (sixteenth century), then in those of the Gurkha kings of Nepal (eighteenth century) (Sagant 1990). This relocation of power and the new myths surrounding it allowed the canonisation of territorial deities and the Tibetanisation of the ritual language and therefore of the symbols to which it refers (Ramble, personal paper, 2024, 2008). In the Manang case study, political power, which was previously wielded by individuals elected by the deities of the territory, is now contingent on chefs (rgyal po) within the village perimeter.

  • 10 See National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, 2029 (1973) www.lawcomission.gov.nep

12Finally, the ban on hunting in Nepal in 197310 was accompanied by the last wave of conversions to Buddhism of many populations in the northern mountain regions. Ethnic groups, which maintained a degree of relative autonomy in each valley until 1962, were consolidated into a state structure with the introduction of the panchayat (local council) system by King Mahendra. This process was further reinforced by the establishment of environmental regulations, including Nepal’s first national park and the Wildlife Conservation Act of 1973, which, in conjunction with Buddhist precepts, led to a ban on hunting. We argue that this transformation finalises the deterritorialisation of local gods, as all Buddhist regions of Nepal regard Lhasa as the religious centre and Kathmandu as the political centre. Political authority no longer derives from the governance of individual communities within their respective territories but instead hinges on a distant religious and political nexus. This concept is consistent with Samuel’s framework in Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (1995). He argues that, while clerical Buddhism is associated with centralised states, shamanic lamas were able to rise to important positions of power in Tibet because of the limited nature of its centralised political control (Balicki 2008: 22). Samuel’s analysis, linking clerical Buddhism to centralised states and shamanic Buddhism to decentralised or less structured regions, received some criticism. Pommaret (1996) points out that attempting to apply this model to the whole of the Tibetan cultural area may be somewhat reductionist. However, as Balicki (2008) argues, in Sikkim – which was never a firmly centralised state – Samuel’s model appears to apply relatively well. This also seems to be the case in Manang.

13The imaginary correlated with the logic of exchange between the human community and the ecosystem has indeed lost its meaning in Manang. With the ban on blood sacrifices imposed by Buddhist law, the ban on hunting by state policy once again disrupted the collective imagination of the relationship to the ecosystems. The silence surrounding the local deity underscores its importance in the history of the village and the powers conferred on it because it reflects both the ancient conversion to Buddhism and the new rules concerning means of subsistence (ban on hunting). Indeed, the ban on hunting, which concerns wild animals and the ban on blood sacrifices, which concerns domestic animals (and humans) are intertwined in Buddhist precepts. Consequently, the ban renders inhabitants increasingly dependent on the importation of foodstuffs, whereas they once enjoyed a subsistence economy. This recent directive, which began in the 1960s and intensified with the opening of a motorable road in 2014, marked a shift in subsistence practices and once again transformed the connection to the invisible. As we saw in the introduction, the cessation of blood sacrifices associated with the absence of a lama to appease the deities has led, for the inhabitants of the village, to something other than a political transformation.

14Between 1981 and 1983, Stan Mumford conducted a study on the interactions between Tamu shamans (Gurung) and Buddhist lamas in Gysumdo. He observed that Gurung shamanic rituals primarily aim to restore harmony within society and between the upper and lower worlds of the cosmos. By contrast, the rites and teachings of Tibetan Buddhist lamas, rooted in textual traditions, lay greater emphasis on individual religious destiny rather than communal harmony (Mumford 1990: 23). Despite their contrasting focuses, territorial deities of the mountains remain central to both practices, with lamas often acting as intermediaries between individual morality and the appeasement of these deities. This syncretism underscores the continued significance of territorial spirits, even though their influence appears to be muted in Manang.

15The relationship between Buddhism and local shamanic practices has been a recurring theme in the ethnographic study of Tibetan Himalayan communities. Early accounts, such as Gorer’s work in 1938, highlight the peaceful coexistence between the two ritual systems. However, subsequent literature has shifted its focus, often portraying a dichotomy. For instance, scholars such as Mumford (1989), Desjarlais (1992) and Adams (1992) put shamanism on a par with relationalism and Buddhism on a par with individualism, as noted by Ortner (1995: 369) and later discussed by Balicki (2008: 18). Nonetheless, this perspective has been challenged in more recent analyses. Ramble, for example, observes no significant conflict between Buddhism and what he terms ‘pagan rituals’ in the Mustang village of Te (Ramble 2008). Ortner herself revisited her earlier research on Sherpa communities and cautioned against rigidly associating the shamanism/Buddhism dichotomy with relationalism/individualism, noting that such oppositions are overly simplistic (Ortner 1995: 370).

16In Manang district, however, Mumford documents what he described as a ‘contemporary clash’ between Buddhist lamas and Gurung shamans. He argues that this ongoing tension mirrors historical confrontations in rural Tibet where shamanic traditions have repeatedly been challenged by the spread of Tibetan Buddhism (Mumford 1989: 6–7). My own findings, introduced earlier, support Mumford’s observations and highlight the persistence of this clash. To further explore this dynamic, let us now examine the creation of a relatively recent annual festival, Syakumbre. This festival, which has taken on many of the political and religious functions previously associated with Paten, exemplifies the evolving relationship between ritual systems and the environment.

Syakumbre or environmental individualism

  • 11 See also Mumford’s description of the myth and his observation of the Syakumbre festival in Himalay (...)

17At dawn,11 all the villagers set out. Their baskets full, the convoy like a procession – the lamas at the front – begins the ascent to Syakumbre, the hermitage of Milarepa. In the distance, we catch sight of crowds from other villages in the valley and even from Nar-Phu who crossed the Kang-la pass (5,300m) the day before. Halfway up, we all stop for a festive picnic. The path is marked by numerous mani stones on which mantras are painted. After a final hurdle during our ascent we finally catch sight of the monastery. The gigantic Ganesh Himal glacier, black with turquoise reflections, seems ready to engulf us in its moraine. We are preparing to stay three days in this holy place. Tents pop up like mushrooms and groups of friends meet up. Here alcohol and cigarettes are banned. Since I don’t have a tent, I sleep in the common room with Disco, my double, brother and friend with whom we cut the wood needed to prepare the meals. We go to chop logs from dead trunks in the nearby forest.

  • 12 Caves in gullies and stone shelters built at the foot of a cliff where one can isolate oneself and (...)
  • 13 Milarepa lived in the eleventh century. The account of his life was written by Tsangnyön Heruka in (...)

18Although the Paten ritual has been abandoned, Syakumbre has fully taken over its social and political functions, serving as a unifying force for the three communities described by Sagant (1990) in relation to Paten’s ritual. Here, time is spent searching for rare plants, meditating for devotees in the rgour-da12 and contemplating the statue of the yogi Milarepa located higher up at the entrance to the cave where he is supposed to have resided. At night, we dance and tell ghost stories around a large bonfire. A trickle of water from a spring in the cliff flows onto the statue of the ascetic painted in gold. The bow of the mythical hunter, founder of the village, is hung, as if suspended on the cliff. In the temple the lamas begin the recitation of the religious manuscript13 recounting the life of Milarepa; this lasts for the next three days. Legend has it that after sending his students to different hermitages, the yogi discovered the Nyishang valley, isolated between Nepal and Tibet, and decided to reside there.

  • 14 The myth was first translated from Tibetan by Paul Draghi, 1980. A Comparative Study of the Theme o (...)
  • 15 The deer’s tears are the subject of numerous hunting legends and myths. Stepanoff, in his book The (...)

19In the story, Milarepa,14 in his hermitage, heard a dog barking, followed by the cry of a deer echoing far away in the mountains. He left the cave and sat on a large stone. After a while, a black deer came running, terrorised. Milarepa sang to the stag to calm it and to stop it from bolting, and invited it to join him. The deer, crying,15 joined him and sat down beside him. A little later, a fierce bitch appeared. Likewise, Milarepa sang to the hound for it to release her hatred. Like the deer, weeping, she came to lay down beside him. Some time later, a tall man appeared. He looked proud and strong. His eyes shone with ruthlessness. In one hand he held a bow and arrow, in the other a long lasso. Seeing his dog sitting next to Milarepa, he flew into a rage and fired at the ascetic, but missed, despite being the best hunter in the valley. His name was Chirawa Gwumbo Dorje. Milarepa thought: ‘If even ignorant animals have heard my teachings, he must be able to hear them too, because after all, he’s human’. So he sang to the hunter. However, the bowman needed convincing, so Milarepa described his way of life in song. The hunter’s faith in the ascetic grew and he decided to join him. He wept a great deal and bowed down, like the bitch and the deer. He offered his bow and lasso to the yogi. He implored the latter to free the bitch and the deer in the higher realms, and to teach him the Dharma to lead him on the path to liberation. Through the practice of these teachings, he became one of Milarepa’s pupils. Legend has it that the bow and arrows are still in the cave.

  • 16 This tale is an English translation published by the new monastery in the village, built in 2020, a (...)
  • 17 For an analysis of Tibetan vegetarianism, refer to Barstow’s Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, vegetaria (...)

20The legend of Milarepa is striking. The succession of the deer crying, then the bitch and finally the hunter places them all on the same level facing the ascetic. In direct continuity, all three are caught in the throes of fear and hope. However, the deer and the bitch seem more receptive than the hunter who needs to be further convinced by Milarepa’s demonstrations and reasoning. In the original text,16 the two animals, through their gestures – licking clothes, shedding tears and whimpering – express their agreement with Milarepa. Their gestures are mediums of communication. Milarepa’s singing calls for them to abandon the outside quest in order to focus on the inner quest. In the song to the hunter, Milarepa advocates non-thinking. Moreover, animal species, whether wild or domestic, stars and invisible deities all are to be considered his neighbours. He puts an end to the distinction the hunter made between the outside world and his own community; the song also reminds us that the interactions an individual has with their environment reflect what is happening within them. Let us recall the story of the kangling. Deities inhabit the outside world and animate the environment. For Milarepa, the hunter abandons hunting because every being, deer, dog or man must pursue the same quest for liberation from fear and hope. It is ultimately ontological unity from an analogist perspective that considers animals and humans as sentient beings and that lies at the centre of the ban on the right to kill17 (Mumford 1989).

21I suggest that the recent transition from the Paten ritual to Syakumbre festival shows a shift from the cult of a local deity ensuring the wealth of the community to one promoting an individual moral relationship to the environment. While it is important to acknowledge that Buddhism’s complex and multifaceted philosophy emphasises the interdependence of phenomena alongside universal compassion, the branch associated with Milarepa is a distinct and somewhat controversial tradition known as Mahayana (‘the king’s way’). According to this branch, an individual can free themselves (thar-pa) from the life circle of reincarnation and attain enlightenment within a lifetime (Paul 1976). Many Manangis bear in mind this ethic and egocentric vision. It is also important to note that both festive events fulfil the same social function of connecting multiple communities.

  • 18 This has been largely respected in Manang even though numerous contributions show that the ban on h (...)

22What I recognised in Manang during my stays there is a long historical process of religious transformations that combined and culminated in one joint political and religious ban on hunting in the 1960s. The political and religious shift that occurred throughout the second half of the twentieth century transformed local collective worship of the land into the practice of individual morality. This shift seems to be commonplace among people who spend all their lives in the village. Those who live in Kathmandu have a more idealised way of seeing their past ritual system. Through my interpretation here, I would like to propose that the relationship with the environment also shifts. It is no longer the community as a whole that complies with the injunctions of local deities (for the well-being of the environment), but the individual who enters into a moral agreement to interact with every living being and the deities that inhabit the mountains. The three songs sung by Milarepa illustrate a moral reconfiguration that reshapes the instinctive dynamics between the three species – flight (the deer), capture (the bitch) and conquest (the human) – into a shared pursuit to overcome the vagaries of the mind. Today, these interactions between humans and animals, understood as neighbourhood relationships, are manifested through practices such as herding, ritual offerings and daily coexistence within shared spaces. Every year, the inhabitants of the Naar Valley visit a specific stone site near the village to offer salt to the bharals, despite these animals not belonging to the domestic sphere. Furthermore, new practices have emerged, such as younger villagers photographing animals, as we will explore later. But this fable above all marks the definitive end to hunting18 as a means of subsistence. Let us now turn to how the adoption of Buddhism in Gyasumdo, the neighbouring valley where shamanic practices were more firmly established than in Manang, translates.

Fig 2: During the Syakumbre festival, a lama holds a page of a manuscript.

Fig 2: During the Syakumbre festival, a lama holds a page of a manuscript.

The Gonpo Dorje legend constitutes the 26th chapter of the Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa compiled by qTsanq-smyon He-ru-ka (1452–1507) (Draghi, 1980)

Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2019.

Life rituals in Gyasumdo

23Stan Mumford (1989) observed and compared the Buddhist and shamanic practices performed in Gyasumdo. In the chapters dedicated to life rituals, he describes the worship of a bird called Kle-Nyima that demands the sacrifice of a deer to bring together the sky deities representing the ancestors of royal families, the underground lhu, humans and bstan in the middle world. The sacrifice of a deer in spring is performed to bring rain. Although a different kind of divinity is involved, which is more inclusive than the btsan, the similarities are worth noting. Even though it bears another name, this divinity is associated with the royal lineage of the Ghales from Tibet. The deer is first captured alive early in the morning and then sacrificed by tearing out its heart. In Gyasumdo, it is the same Kle clan of the Ghale king that brought the villages together. The Tibetan term for the clan is Jobo (master), like the yul-lha of Manang. However, a difference can be observed with the Manang Paten ritual. In Manang, sacrifices involved members of the village and later on domestic yaks, whereas in Gyasumdo, the selected species is linked to hunting prey that inhabits the jaṅgale, or wild spaces. There is a certain continuity between the two rituals but the one described by Mumford involves the wild yak, not the domestic one. Sagant (1990) points out that in Manang the king’s emblem is the yak’s tail. In Gyasumdo, the Ghales’ ancestral deity is also called Drong, which is the Tibetan word for wild yak. Sagant adds ‘Deer and yak may have been interchangeable among early nomadic carriers of inner Asian shamanism’ (Mumford 1990: 64). This symbolic similarity can only prompt us to compare these two rituals in order to understand how ritual practices have been transformed in the two valleys.

  • 19 White offerings consist of figurines made of barley-flour paste, known as torma. The nomenclature o (...)

24During his stay, Mumford studied the textbook written by Lama Chog Lingpa 20 years earlier to transform Buddhism logic and to incorporate it in shamanic logic in Gyasumdo. He explains how he succeeded in negotiating with the Lhäpon (lha-dpon) to transform red offerings into white offerings.19 Mumford analyses the consequences of this ritual and the moral changes. After describing the spring sacrifice of a deer to the clan divinity and analysing the incorporation of clan deity allegiance into a broader complex of btsan called Srungma in Tshap village (Mumford 1990: 119), the text examines how these practices reflect local cosmological frameworks. The Buddhist btsan figure, like Doje Legpa, followed the same process. It is a clan deity associated with political power, as analysed by Sagant (1990), and linked to a Tibetan figure who affiliates local clans within the Tibetan pantheon. Manang thus underwent the same process as Gyasumdo, that is the transmutation of the cult logic of a local territorial divinity into a btsan with reference to royalty and red sacrifices, and finally into the Buddhist cult of Milarepa (ibid, p77). According to Sagant’s analysis, this transmutation between the two logics turns the focus from the cycle of life, from the community as a whole to a moral and ego-centred vision of the individual.

  • 20 One might wonder to what extent this process influences the moral transformations made by climate c (...)

25This transformation of meat consumption and modes of production is an extension of what Mumford (1989: 75) calls the transmutation of Buddhism through the story of the hunter and Milarepa. The new myth proposed by the Lamaist tradition, ‘refutes the model and transmutes the theme’ of the sacrifice. Between sacrificial logic and individual Buddhist morality there is a transition from a life cycle, which demands the exchange of life between the human community and the external environment, to an ethical line oriented towards the future and an interiorised ego-centred objective.20 These two morals appear to be irreconcilable. ‘The shaman and the Lama can be viewed as two historical layers of tradition that have become opposed as rival models of hierarchy and retribution’ (Mumford 1989: 245). As we will see now, ‘a third layer is that which is emerging between them’ (ibid). However, neither prevails over the other and, despite young Manangi inhabitants’ forgetting the numina, people find themselves willing to maintain all present and past deities in a precarious balance, as we shall now explain. What were the consequences of this turnaround in daily life? Can there be a correlation between the ban on hunting and this moral vision turned towards the individual?

26This symbolic ban is actually the source of significant environmental degradation. Beyond the political form expressed through the Paten ritual, what does this ban imply in the relationship Manangis maintain with other species? It is indeed not the place to yet again discuss the foundations of this idea but to link the religious and political transformations with what Blanc et al (2017) call environmental humanities and to focus on the impact these transformations have on the ecosystemic place of humans in the Manang mountains and the consequences these transformations have on other species.

The ban on hunting and the redefinition of the right to kill

27Let us analyse the consequences of the ban on hunting by looking at a broader anthropological framework of hunting practices and the link between hunting and political power. In hunting stories recounted in the 1950s among the Buryats of Siberia, one reads: ‘The hunter engages with the maximum chances, assured of complicity or neutrality, having contracted assurances with the “other side”. As a result, the enterprise takes on a legal colour: an implicit pact is concluded between the parties. It is almost a market: the right to kill is paid for, like a hunting licence issued by higher powers. In exchange for sacrifices, the deities grant abundant game. Without sacrifice, luck will desert the hunter’ (Lot-Falck 1953: 9, as cited in Delaplace 2023, my translation). This right to kill, the abundance associated with sacrifices, the community’s allegiance to the deities, these themes in the cult of Dorje Legpa pa contrast with the way of life advocated by Milarepa.

  • 21 Fascicle published by the village committee with the original version of the myth. It has been prin (...)

28Today, hunting is again at the heart of anthropological concerns about ecological imaginations. Stépanoff shows in his book L’Animal et la Mort: Chasses, modernité et crise du sauvage (2021) how hunting, whether practised in Siberia or France, produces a direct relationship with the environment. Hamayon, in her theory of Siberian shamanism (1990), places hunting at the centre of the elaboration of animistic cosmology and the production of a supernatural order, which is established through the act of capturing or killing the animal. Does the ban on hunting cause the death of the wilderness, as Mumford believes? It would seem that Buddhist imaginative cosmology has indeed transformed a model that confronts the community with the wild world through shamans with a model where human and animal communities are joined together in the same domestic space. Milarepa’s song echoes the myth with a striking parallel:21

The deer, the argali, and the antelope,
These three are Mila’s herd,
If you satisfy them, you can follow me.

29By seeking correspondence between hunting practices and the election of chiefs, Sagant (1996: 5) emphasises the critical role of the raven in Tibetan hunting rituals, describing it as a cornerstone of the region’s cosmological logic. According to this perspective, the raven’s appearance is far more than an omen; it signifies divine intervention that ensures the success of the hunt and validates the hunter’s favour with the gods. This symbolic relationship underpins not only the ritual aspects of the hunt but also the political elevation of hunters, as their achievements are perceived as manifestations of divine will. Depending on the ethnologist’s approach to such narratives, the raven may be interpreted either as a purely symbolic figure or as part of a broader historical and cultural tradition linking man and nature through a mythological framework. Schaller, a biologist who travelled through the Himalayas and Tibet to discover its fauna, recounted the role of the raven in spotting wild animals in Dolpo, where hunting was also prohibited, just as in the neighbouring Manang massif.

30Schaller (1979: 247) illustrates the cultural significance of bharal deaths within Tibetan communities, where the sudden demise of a female bharal near a monastery led to a flurry of activity among locals. The scavengers’ discovery of the carcass acted as a signal, prompting villagers to gather and partake in the distribution of the remains according to established customs. Rules governing the division of carrion were deeply rooted in social and religious structures: bharals dying near the hermitage were reserved for the lama, while those found closer to the monastery were claimed by villagers. This structured approach to sharing illustrates the intertwined relationship between local ecology, social norms and religious practices. Although hunting has also been banned in Dolpo, we find in the above observation some distinctive elements of ritual hunting and the ideology of the hunter: first, like the deer, the bharal is one of the beasts of the mountain god’s herd; second, the sharing of the animal refers precisely to the practices of ritual hunts – a hind leg goes to whoever sees the beast first, and the head to whoever killed it –; third, the rights to the animal are linked to the territory of the local god; and finally, the animal’s head also indicates the recognition of political power. But above all, it is once again the raven from among other birds that is there to guide man to his prey.

  • 22 The Soiot of Buryatia (Oehler 2016: 99), despite sharing a common history concerning the introducti (...)
  • 23 Regulations regarding the right to kill other living beings for consumption by human communities ar (...)

31In Manang, since the ban on hunting, this form of election of chiefs through the animal as ‘offered’ by the deities of the mountain or territory to humans is no longer justifiable22. However, in Dolpo, these practices are still commonplace. In Manang, the young generation is said to be deprived of the right to kill.23 The relationship with the environment promoted by Milarepa’s new founding myth places the neighbouring animal at the centre of morality. However, this ideal struggles to find a practical application in the daily lives of these mountains where meat production from local carcasses remains essential due to imports still failing to meet the population’s needs. Thus, I have often found myself confronted with more or less paradoxical situations regarding meat consumption.

32In the kitchen of the spring campsite, Khusi serves us meat soup with a mischievous look on his face. ‘You’ll enjoy it’, he hastens to say. But as soon as Mizhiung tastes it, he almost spits it out. ‘It’s bharal meat!’ he cries out to Khusi who is attending to the customers in the main hall. ‘It’s forbidden to eat meat from the mountain. But if you eat it, I can make an exception with you. It’s true that it’s excellent.’ ‘Don’t tell anyone please’. Khusi explains: ‘I took it from a carcass killed by a panther the other day. The meat’s still tender, even when dried’.

  • 24 I would like to thank Eric Garine for his insights on the subject.

33Mizhiung was permitted to eat the soup because the animal had not been killed; instead, the meat was obtained from a carcass. This value placed on consuming meat from a carcass contrasts sharply with practices in France, where all meat intended for human consumption must come from a healthy animal slaughtered for the purpose. In France, meat consumption entails the duty to kill the animal, reinforcing the separation between the natural realms of humans and animals. However, the logic of ontological individualism conveyed in Milarepa’s myth fosters a growing perception of fleshly continuities that lessens the emphasis on the duty to kill. Here the ban on hunting appears to be associated with a moral transformation geared towards individualism, which is itself the consequence of the dispossession of the right to kill24 that was previously framed by a morality oriented towards the vitality of the community through sacrificial practices. Myths and religious imaginary are not therefore a symbolic set disconnected from empirical realities. As Sagant concludes in an article devoted to ‘hunter stories’:

34Sometimes, I have the impression that today’s ethnology tends too much to oppose symbols to reality. Not to seek, to understand how institutions are experienced. To take everything for representations that have no reality. Tribute, therefore, to the stories of the hunters and to those who collected them! Sometimes they show that beautiful stories are true too. (Sagant 1996: 424, my translation)

35Let us now explore how territorial deities, such as Dorje Legpa, as well as others like lhu or yul-lha, remain conspicuously unspoken of in Manang yet subtly reappear anonymously in the practices of some village youths and their interactions with the environment.

Reconnecting with the imaginary of the place through photography

Fig 3: Waiting for the snow leopard – the photo-hunters

Fig 3: Waiting for the snow leopard – the photo-hunters

Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2023.

36For the past few years, a group of thirty-year-olds from the village has become passionate about photography. Using their mobile phones at first, then cameras brought back from Seoul or Doha by brothers-in-law and cousins, they set out in search of the panther. Knowing perfectly well that they wouldn’t capture the desired shots in one hunting spree, they have taken up photography as a hobby which allows them to venture outside the village limits, out of sight. I followed Amrit and Bikash for two weeks as they wandered in search of the panther’s routes, passages, ledges and favourite places. One of the first pieces of advice Amrit gave me was that ‘to find the panther, you must observe all species, which are easier to see and which can betray its presence. The presence of vultures on the ground and columns of ravens indicates the presence of a carcass; a group of bharals fleeing for no apparent reason denotes the presence of a predator. But the most effective allies in indicating the exact location of the panther are ravens. If, while flying over a ridge, a raven croaks, it means something’s there’. Although they have little knowledge of hunting practices, which were not passed down to them by their parents, Amrit and Bikash have also learned that ravens are messengers. These birds, through their flight and their senses, and particularly their sight, see what is imperceptible to the hunter and indicate by an ostentatious sign a presence that is beyond a person’s visual field. Through the interactions humans maintain with them, whether in mythical tales of hunters or in Amrit’s accounts, ravens reveal what is not yet visible. The invisible is characterised by its absence but always possesses the power to reveal itself to us through perceptions permitted by the observation of other species that guide us.

  • 25 Stepanoff notes in numerous English and French hunting treatises dating from the fourteenth to the (...)
  • 26 See also Mortensen’s PhD dissertation: Raven Augury in Tibet, Northwest Yunnan, Inner Asia, and Cir (...)
  • 27 The term ‘mediating animal’ could indeed be applied to many other triadic relationships between spe (...)
  • 28 Only some youths practise photography in order to observe the snow leopard, though this fascination (...)

37From the Himalayas to Tibet, or in northern Asia (Sagant 1996) and even in Europe25 (Stépanoff, 2021), the raven26 plays this role of mediator between the visible and the invisible through the practice of hunting. As with ritual hunts, young people of the village of Manang are in search of a certain elective power produced by the encounter with the panther and proof of this election through photography which they do not hesitate to show whenever they have the chance. Ritual hunting and wildlife photography thus carry analogous meanings. The raven reveals itself as a mediating animal27 placed between man and animals of prey and between man and the panther. I associate this obsession that a large part of the village youth28 has with the snow leopard with a certain fascination for the right to kill that the predator alone possesses today. In keeping with Sagant’s ideas, it appears that power is centralised around a particular figure from the moment one of the members of a community maintains elective relationships with animals, sent by the deity of the territory, in ritual hunting practices. The former village chief now finds a comparable figure in the photographer who succeeds in not killing the animal but in taking a picture of the panther.

38To conclude, the dynamics of the twentieth century that we have addressed here are deeply rooted in the relationship that young people have with animals and deities today. The raven, as a messenger of the invisible, plays a central role in many regions of the world by guiding hunters to the animal which, too cunning for human sensory faculties, has to be revealed to the eyes of men. Interactions with ravens, whether mythical or contemporary, reveal the elective nature of power, a consequence of interactions with other species and a persistent fascination with the right to kill. Thus, the implications of the assignment of the right to kill in relation to the living manifest themselves not only in ritual hunting but also in other practices related to meat consumption, and even in the village youths’ photographic expeditions.

The musk and the warmth of heat

39By the fire one winter morning, Bikash tells me one of his stories: ‘I was with my dog. It was the depths of winter. I went out for a stroll, as I often enjoy doing, with my camera. Suddenly, my dog started running. I lost sight of him for a few moments and then I saw him frantically scratching at the snow. I couldn’t understand why but I was sure there was something there. I caught up with him, panting. He was doing that for a reason, so I started digging with him, and a few feet below we uncovered a musk deer carcass that a panther had killed. You could clearly see the bite marks on its frozen skin. The carcass was rather old; the vultures had made good use of it for their dinner. But when we had unearthed it completely, a strong smell hit me, making me dizzy, or rather a sensation of warmth throughout my body. I looked inside the carcass and found a ball; it was the size of my palm. I didn’t know what it was. Neither the vultures nor the panther had touched it, and my dog was moving away from it. This ball gave off an intoxicating smell. It was the only internal part that hadn’t decomposed. I smelt it again, and that dizziness and warmth enveloped my entire body again. It was very intense. I slipped the ball into my bag and left. I showed it to a lama and asked what it was. The elders had never taught me what it was because hunting was banned. I had no idea what it could be. The lama scolded me, even though I’d found it in a carcass, and offered to buy it for NPR 12,000. ‘It’s a sacred substance’, he told me. It must not be used for personal purposes, only for offerings. It was actually a musk ball. It’s incredible, the power of that smell. You can’t understand until you’ve smelt it.’

40Through this story Bikash tells me about his own discovery of musk. This substance, abandoned by other species with unsuspected powers, was in a carcass killed by a panther and was unearthed thanks to Bikash’s dog. The knowledge of this substance relies on the direct and indirect interactions it had with all species, where knowledge transmission between humans had failed and oblivion had taken over. It’s the story of an exploratory discovery arising from sharing a carcass in which man finds his place and feeds the sense of sacredness in Bikash. The various legislative bans, such as the killing of cows and musk deer, and the protection of the panther, together with the religious ban on practising ‘red offerings’ and, as a corollary, the ban on hunting, both of which occurred during the twentieth century, have led to gradual oblivion among the young generation who attempt a coherent reconstruction with the fragments left by their parents. Some of them also told me that they read books by anthropologists about their village or about the bön tradition, and they say that ‘it’s like looking at any exotic culture’. The parents of this generation of thirty-year-olds and younger people, for the most part, did not receive as an inheritance the names of the deities or the ritual practices associated with them. Their parents experience a certain unease when talking about this because it no longer corresponds to the values of modernity they wish to inculcate in their children. This individualistic alternative surely stems from a liberal ideology deeply rooted in Manang (Van Spengen 2000).

41Young people, in practising wildlife photography, reconstruct their relationship with other living beings through their own experiences. The search for the panther and Bikash’s discovery of musk suggests that animal encounters are a way of reconnecting with local sacrality. The multiple expressions of the environment, such as an avalanche on the glacier that echoes throughout the valley, the wind whistling along a ridge, torrential rains battering the village in autumn or lightning striking in the fog and echoing in a muffled roar through the clouds, or the panther approaching the village are all interpreted as expressions of invisible forces.

Fig 4: Snow leopard photographed in January 2022 with Tashi R Ghale and Amrit, two of the village wildlife photographers

Fig 4: Snow leopard photographed in January 2022 with Tashi R Ghale and Amrit, two of the village wildlife photographers

Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2022.

Conclusion

42We have observed that transformations of the imagination have direct consequences on interspecies interactions. The inhabitants of Manang observe that bharals come closer and closer to the villages and graze in cultivated fields. The same goes for the panther that ventures onto terraced roofs and into stables. It’s only now that I understand the importance of this transformation. In the Creuse region in France, a neighbour once told me, ‘you know, an animal that’s not hunted has no reason to flee!’ Indeed, as we can see in Manang, animals are getting closer to humans and villages. The ban on hunting, in the long transformation of naming deities from the Tibetan pantheon and political power through standardisation, has profoundly transformed the circulation of species like bharals or the panther within the ecosystem of the Manang mountains.

  • 29 The transformation of the collective relationship with nature into an individual moral relationship (...)
  • 30 Liogier (2009) uses the term ‘individuo-globalism’ to describe this globalised phenomenon that has (...)
  • 31  This expression is a direct reference to Deleuze and Guattari (1972) who define deterritorialisati (...)
  • 32 The conflict of modernity experienced by the Manangis therefore arises from local history. However, (...)

43We notice that moral individualism is at the heart of these transformations of man’s place within the structures of the environment. The first consequences of this great transformation of the twentieth century are reflected in the close links between livestock, meat consumption and hunting. These changes have broken allegiances to one deity or another. The relationship with the invisible is as unstable as our relationship with the environment, and both are permeable to the reorganisations of political power. The inhabitants of Manang appear to have fully embraced this moral flexibility, enabling them to transform their worldview into a new imaginary. Through the example of Manang, we observe a shift in logic – from a cyclical system of collective dependence on the state of the environment, which necessitates reciprocal interactions with living beings, to an ethical framework oriented towards the future.29 This ethical line places the individual’s moral choices30 at the forefront of their behaviour towards the environment. There therefore seems to be a direct correspondence between an imaginary that places the individual and moral line at the forefront, the deterritorialisation of political power31 and the ban on hunting.32 The inhabitants of Manang have fully integrated this second logic, relegating the first logic to silence, although a latent fear of the consequences of their choices persists: the past is never far away. The younger generation, who no longer receives the teachings of their parents – who also turned away from old practices –, are now reconnecting with their environment and the species that inhabit it through alternative means, such as photography. They assign a sacred character to animals, to which they attribute powers in order to establish an overall coherence that integrates new environmentalist rules.

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Notes

1 Here we use ‘shamanic’ as an analytical category that does not have any implication of a historical association with Siberian shamans (Balicki 2008: 21).

2 Refers here to multiple families of entities such as lhu, yhul-lha or btsan, ma-mo or bdud etc made up of various divinities which are named and assigned to a particular place. For further details, see Mumford, 1990: 84–86.

3 Hindi term used in Nepal to refer to a figure of veneration. This term is increasingly used by younger generations to characterise mountain deities instead of referring to their proper names, which is often strongly influenced by Bollywood culture and serves as a form of shared imaginary.

4 This individual religious practice aims to improve a person’s karma. It is noteworthy that it focuses on a relationship with religion that is increasingly centred on the individual rather than the prosperity of the entire community, as was the case in the past.

5 Gcod (literally ‘cutting through’) is a branch of Tibetan Buddhism that often takes the form of self-sacrifice. This practice enables the practitioner to remain in a state free of fear by directly confronting demons. It developed primarily outside the monastic system. Gcod is traditionally considered to be dangerous.

6 A btsan is one of the three primary types of territorial deities identified in the trans-Himalayan region, often referred to as ‘divinities of the middle’ due to their position mid-way between the earth and the sky. They are traditionally associated with the colour red and are frequently depicted as horsemen riding with the wind, emphasising their dynamic and mobile nature. Known for their temperamental disposition, btsan are easily angered and have to be suitably propitiated. They are often linked to warriors and military imagery, symbolising strength, protection and the capacity for both violence and defense.

7 Philippe Sagant stayed in Manang in 1982 and 1990.

8 Tihar or Diwali, the Festival of Lights, is one of Nepal’s most important festivals. It takes place between the months of October and November and lasts five days. The first four days pay homage to an animal (cow, bull, dog, crow) while the last day is reserved for brothers who are honoured by their sisters.

9 This can be translated by ‘the master, deity of the territory’.

10 See National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, 2029 (1973) www.lawcomission.gov.nep

11 See also Mumford’s description of the myth and his observation of the Syakumbre festival in Himalayan dialogue: Tibetan Lamas and Gurung Shamans in Nepal (1990: 74)

12 Caves in gullies and stone shelters built at the foot of a cliff where one can isolate oneself and meditate. Many tsa tsas (mortuary figurines in the shape of stupas) are often placed there.

13 Milarepa lived in the eleventh century. The account of his life was written by Tsangnyön Heruka in 1488 (Quintman 2014).

14 The myth was first translated from Tibetan by Paul Draghi, 1980. A Comparative Study of the Theme of the Conversion of a Hunter in Tibetan, Bhutanese, and Medieval Sources. PhD dissertation, Indiana University.

15 The deer’s tears are the subject of numerous hunting legends and myths. Stepanoff, in his book The Animal and Death (2020), devotes an entire chapter to the debates generated by hunters’ observations of this phenomenon. He has demonstrated how they were one of the first arguments regarding animal sensitivity and the empathy that hunters feel for the animal at the time of its death. The same sign of the deer’s emotional capacity is found in this narrative.

16 This tale is an English translation published by the new monastery in the village, built in 2020, and dedicated to the figure of Milarepa. There are also Chinese, Nepali and Tibetan versions. The publication of this abridged version of the village’s new founding myth says a lot about Manang’s leaders’ desire to be associated with the yogi rather than with the old practices.

17 For an analysis of Tibetan vegetarianism, refer to Barstow’s Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, vegetarianism, and the limits of Buddhism in Tibet. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York (N Y): Columbia University Press, 2018.

18 This has been largely respected in Manang even though numerous contributions show that the ban on hunting hasn’t been observed by locals in many regions of the Buddhist area.

19 White offerings consist of figurines made of barley-flour paste, known as torma. The nomenclature of torma is extremely complex (Blondeau and Steinkellner 1996: 98), with each torma shape dedicated to a specific deity.

20 One might wonder to what extent this process influences the moral transformations made by climate change in the West.

21 Fascicle published by the village committee with the original version of the myth. It has been printed in Chinese, English and Tibetan and distributed in the Milarepa Gumpa of Manang village to locals and in hotels to trekkers.

22 The Soiot of Buryatia (Oehler 2016: 99), despite sharing a common history concerning the introduction of Buddhism, have remained herders and hunters. Oehler shows that both modes of relationship with the environment coexist depending on the contexts of activities in which they find themselves. Buddhist logic is more closely associated with the herding context, while shamanic logic is linked to the hunting context. In Manang, this coexistence has proved impossible to maintain, although it persists in new practices among the young generation.

23 Regulations regarding the right to kill other living beings for consumption by human communities are one of the pillars of the self-regulatory mechanisms of ecosystems because the experience of exchanging deaths imposes a filial relationship.

24 I would like to thank Eric Garine for his insights on the subject.

25 Stepanoff notes in numerous English and French hunting treatises dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century the practice of giving the corbin bone to ravens for their part in hunting (2022: 405).

26 See also Mortensen’s PhD dissertation: Raven Augury in Tibet, Northwest Yunnan, Inner Asia, and Circumpolar Regions, Harvard (2003).

27 The term ‘mediating animal’ could indeed be applied to many other triadic relationships between species, such as between a fungus and different species of trees, between a bacterium and a fungus, or between insects. It is characterised by an animal from another kingdom of life that facilitates interaction between two species of the same kingdom of life.

28 Only some youths practise photography in order to observe the snow leopard, though this fascination has become quite commonplace.

29 The transformation of the collective relationship with nature into an individual moral relationship also leads to a reversal of temporal experience. The life cycle is replaced by a projection towards a moral goal situated in the future. This forward-looking approach particularly characterises the dynamics of individualism.

30 Liogier (2009) uses the term ‘individuo-globalism’ to describe this globalised phenomenon that has spread through all religions since the twentieth century.

31  This expression is a direct reference to Deleuze and Guattari (1972) who define deterritorialisation as follows: ‘Far from seeing in the State the principle of a territorialization that would inscribe people according to their residence, we should see in the principle of residence the effect of a movement of deterritorialization that divides the earth as an object and subjects men to the new imperial inscription, to the new full body, to the new socius.’ (1983: 195) As they define it upstream, the establishment of a new socius ‘challenges the lateral alliances and the extended filiations of the old community. He imposes a new alliance system and places himself in direct filiation with the deity: the people must follow.’ (1983: 192)

32 The conflict of modernity experienced by the Manangis therefore arises from local history. However, this local modernity is very similar to the transformations of Western modernity. Is there a continuity of modernity despite a multiplicity of centres from which it emerges? ‘It is as if, on a local scale and in the absence of any Western influence, a kind of conflict of modernity is taking place, identical in many respects to the idea that this term evokes on our side of the planet. This shows that local historical dynamics make it possible to legitimise the application (by means of anthropological analysis) of the notion of modernity, but giving it a meaning other than that of academicism with a universal vocation, while retaining its status as a concept and some of the properties associated with it. What we have here is an “indigenous” modernity, not derived from the frame of reference of Western modernism but born in the (religious) crucible of local history’ (Obadia 2006: 5).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig 1: Map of the study area: Manang district.
Crédits Design by Théophile Johnson, 2024.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/docannexe/image/2949/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 487k
Titre Fig 2: During the Syakumbre festival, a lama holds a page of a manuscript.
Légende The Gonpo Dorje legend constitutes the 26th chapter of the Hundred-Thousand Songs of Milarepa compiled by qTsanq-smyon He-ru-ka (1452–1507) (Draghi, 1980)
Crédits Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2019.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/docannexe/image/2949/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 2,9M
Titre Fig 3: Waiting for the snow leopard – the photo-hunters
Crédits Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2023.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/docannexe/image/2949/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 2,6M
Titre Fig 4: Snow leopard photographed in January 2022 with Tashi R Ghale and Amrit, two of the village wildlife photographers
Crédits Photograph by Théophile Johnson, Manang, 2022.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/docannexe/image/2949/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,3M
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Référence électronique

Théophile Johnson, « From hunting to photography. Cult of territorial deities and individualistic ethics within the dynamic of environmental interactions »European Bulletin of Himalayan Research [En ligne], 63 | 2024, mis en ligne le 20 décembre 2024, consulté le 21 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ebhr/2949 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13mzw

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Auteur

Théophile Johnson

Théophile Johnson is a PhD student in social anthropology at Université Paris Nanterre. His doctoral dissertation entitled Overlapping Worlds: Cosmopolitics of yak herders in the Himalayas is supervised by Anne de Sales. He is studying the relationships between yak herders and their herds as well as the cultural, social and historical dynamics of the socio-ecosystem of the three valleys of Manang district in Nepal. He has published work in various forms, such as graphic magazines, collective books or joint scientific papers. He promotes pluri-disciplinary approaches mixing ethology and network theory, social anthropology and ecology for a better understanding of the multispecies cultural and social processes within domestication. He also works as a shepherd in the French Alps. His ethnographic work is interwoven with photography which he uses to display his ethnographic work in a more response-provoking format. He exhibits his work directly along footpaths of Alpine valleys.

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