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Accepted Paper:

Translating substances: brokering sensory agreement across boundaries.  
Will Tuladhar-Douglas (University of Hamburg)

Paper short abstract:

The Bania of Kathmandu are expert wholesalers of materia medica whose real skill is negotiating sensory agreement across cultural boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

The Bania, a small Newar subcaste, were the hub of a network for collecting and trading medicinal substances that, until 1950, extended from Madras to Beijing. Although only a few shops still remain, the remaining Banias are recognized as peerless wholesalers of materia medica. Their skill consists in much more than a knowledge of the correct sensory properties of the materials they buy and the medical qualities (guna) of the materials they sell; this, they say (and others agree) is something any competent middleman should know. Rather, they are experts in translating substances across social boundaries. In each business deal they are negotiating between local ecologies and literate canons, between highland and lowland, between dozens of locally particular sensory regimes that frame collectors, and the three or more medical systems (Ä€yurveda, Tibetan, Newar, and several informal systems) all of whose practitioners come to the Bania shops when the highest quality ingredients are necessary. They deal in trust and translation. By caste they are forbidden to make pilgrimages into the fertile mountains from which these substances come. Focussing on the 'dried' materials, the Banias remain able to generate both medical efficacy and profit through brokering cross-cultural sensory agreement.

Panel P22
Taste
  Session 1