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- Convenor:
-
Paolo E. Rosati
(Independent scholar)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Carola Lorea
(University of Tübingen)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Epsilon room
- Sessions:
- Thursday 7 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to shed light on tools, environments and ecology of magic-shamanic contexts in mainstream Indic, tantric, vernacular, and tribal religions across Monsoon Asia. Perspective authors are expected to focus on that practices often labelled as phenomena outside the mainstream religiosity.
Long Abstract:
This panel considers Monsoon Asia as a geographical area—which includes the Indian subcontinent, Tibet, mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, and Southern China—where several religious practices are shared, hence, a socio-cultural unity of the region is marked. In fact, Indic mainstream (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism), tantric, vernacular, and tribal religions, share several socio-religious traits whose origin could be traced back to an ancient common, and complex substratum. The resilience of magic-shamanic elements is among these common traits.
This panel aims to shed light on that (material or intangible) instruments, which have been used as ritual, magic, or shamanic tools since pre-modern history of Monsoon Asia. Indeed, usually mastering magic and shamanic powers is closely related to meditation, yogic practices, severe penances, manipulation of bodily fluids, the consumption of intoxicating substances, the use of bones and skulls as talismans, the use of ashes, mantras, spells and spell-books, geometric diagrams (such as maṇḍalas and yantras), music instruments (particularly drums and other percussions), etc. Panel’s papers discuss in depth the role of these and other tools in magic-shamanic contexts and how they affected practices such as ecstatic possession, shapeshifting, trance and other altered states of consciousness, healing and/or harmful capacities, alchemy, divination (such as scapulimancy and plastromancy) in mainstream, tantric, folk, and tribal traditions across pre-modern and modern Monsoon Asia. Furthermore, this panel invites to analyze the ecology of magic-shamanic contexts in order to better understand the role of the locus sacer as a sacred space where the practitioners can cross the borders with the supra-human world or may reach the enlightenment or other transcendental states.
Perspective authors are expected to use both empirical and theoretical methodology and to engage the subject with a multidisciplinary approach, considering disciplines such as textual studies, history, art history, archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, folkloric studies, religious studies, etc.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 7 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
This presentation will look into the magical traditions of two indigenous communities of Northeast India, the Khasi and Karbi. Through material derived from fieldwork, I will describe, document, and try to make sense of the myntor/mintor magical practice and the instruments that are utilised.
Paper long abstract:
The Instruments of ‘Magic’: Perspectives from Indigenous Traditions in Northeast India
Located at the intersections of Khasi and Karbi Indigenous belief worlds, the practice of Ka Myntor/Mintor is so secret and taboo, that any discussions of it are prohibited in social or sacred spaces. The Khasi and Karbi are two disparate indigenous communities that reside in territories that are geographically contiguous. The practice of mintor among the Karbi indigenous community utilises the medium of speech forms that are never codified, but exist in variation each time it is practiced. The core of mintor practice is intent, sometimes, killing intent. The instruments of magic for myntor/mintor include undisclosed speech forms, ritual objects, and live animals like turtles, caterpillars, maggots, snakes, etc.Among Khasi on the other hand, myntor is a deity that can erase entire lineages of clans
While the practice of this magical tradition is contextual and vastly differing, one aspect is continual: the ascribed malignance of the practice. This talk has three intentions: first, it serves as a documentation of how myntor is demonised to the extent that it is never talked about (among Karbi). Among Khasi, the tradition is not known at all outside the circle of those who practice it. Second, I will show how the layers of secrecy and fear woven around the practice has unintendedly served to preserve the tradition (among Khasi), while the rhetoric of social exclusion has led to mob violence against and lynching of, people who are ascribed to practice it (among Karbi). Thirdly, the presence of secret magical practices like myntor (amongst others) among indigenous people have historically led to their being marginalised and demonised in the contexts they have existed in.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines ordinary objects that may act as portals to ‘otherworlds’ in the Himalayan religion of Donyipolo (‘Sun-moon’). Household items, kitchen staples, and nature tokens may spontaneously or ritually allow communication with the other-than-human, or transport the human to ‘otherworlds’.
Paper long abstract:
Donyipolo (‘Sun-moon’), the Indigenous religion of the Tani peoples in the Eastern Himalayas, is a cosmic-wilderness ontology: at its heart is the personhood, and occasional divinity, of celestial bodies and aspects of landscape. Non-domestic terrain encompasses multiple simultaneous, parallel ‘mirror realms’ through which people may travel deliberately, accidentally, or unwillingly. This paper examines ordinary objects that may, at times, act as portals to ‘otherworlds’, allowing for communication with the other-than-human (including the formerly human) as well as for inter-realm travel across ‘congruent geographies’. Household items may undergo spontaneous enchantment: the eye of a dried squirrel hanging above a door frame transported the Adi child who touched it to the ‘land of souls’—or they may be deliberately manipulated in ritual for divination purposes: eggs are chanted over, boiled, peeled, and then cut with a pig’s hair by an Apatani specialist to facilitate his communication with well-meaning after-death entities. Pebbles and entrails can similarly be used for divining purposes, either casually or formally. Leaves and shells, when they appear in certain contexts, may be read as an intricate code through which jungle beings communicate with humans. Some believe that a tangible depiction of an entity becomes that entity—exemplified in the example of the Adi man who, himself a were-tiger, created a statue of a deity to relieve his own were-tiger ‘warm desire towards the jungle’; the statue subsequently ate many children in his village, including his own. Based on fieldwork conducted over 10 years across Arunachal Pradesh, this paper explores how, in Donyipolo, the mundane becomes the medium for the making of magic: with the right words, or the wrong look, ordinary objects may be endowed with the ability to traverse dimensional boundaries, often taking the humans who hold these objects in their palms along with them.
Paper short abstract:
This paper, through the analysis of pre-modern textual sources and inscriptions, aims to outline an intersection between alchemy, tantrism, and supernatural powers in the yoni cult at Kāmākhyā (Assam).
Paper long abstract:
Kāmākhyā-pīṭha is a famous śākta-tantric site in the Brahmaputra valley (Assam), where the Goddess is worshipped in the non-anthropomorphic form of a yoni (vulva)-stone. This sacred stone is housed into a dark sanctum and it is completely covered by a natural subterranean water-stream that oozes out from a cleft of the rock. The sanctum, thus, clearly recalls the maternal symbolism associated to the feminine womb ad its sexual fluids. According to pre-modern texts and inscriptions, this shrine was an ancient natural cave associated to both the Earth goddess and a quicksilver vein. This paper aims to explore the intersection of alchemical and tantric traditions in order to shed light on the origin of the yoni as a “matrix” (Urban 2008) of supernatural powers.
Paper short abstract:
The research focuses on the ritual of Jadu Patuas, whose performance, it is believed, allows them to cross the boundaries of the real world. Against the global homogeneity, they provide an alternate perspective to study the subtleties of organic solidarity and sustainable growth across Monsoon Asia.
Paper long abstract:
Believed to have a mystic connection with the dead, the legendary Jadu Patua community of Jharkhand and the West Bengal district in India have always been elusive to urbanization. Unlike other Pata painting traditions that are hugely affected by extreme commercialization and commodification in the contemporary era, Jadu Patas are discrete in their characteristics and, most importantly, in their functionality. As part of the ritual, a Pata or a painting of the deceased is brought to the bereaved family, and the iris of the image is drawn afterward, so the soul of the deceased can travel to the realm of the ancestors. By performing this, together with the Jadu Pata and the family of the deceased person, the Jadu Patuas cross the edges of formal physical boundaries that lie between the real and the ethereal world. By doing so, the cult of the Jadu Patuas provides an alternate perspective to study the relationships and dynamics between the marginal people and their surrounding physical environment, which exist in parallel with the mainstream religious practices and rituals. This study would take a multidisciplinary approach by considering textual studies, history, art history, ethnography, anthropology, and folkloric studies. In a time of worldwide homogeneity, augmented by globalization, this research aims to shed light on the intangible cultural heritage of the Jadu Patuas and how these art forms can redirect our focus towards cultural exclusivity and a need to grow empathy for the same. It is anticipated that the knowledge would contribute to proliferating organic solidarity and sustainable growth en masse.