Anthropological models which have portrayed "two levels" of great and little traditions, one canonical and literary, the other folk and oral, have tended to promote an a-historical understanding of religious and ideological consciousness. In contrast, this dissertation examines a process of historical becoming, in which rival perspectives are continuously transformed through interaction.
This is an anthropological study of the oral and textual tradition of an indigenous Tibetan community in northern Nepal. The community is surrounded by Ghale and Gurung peoples who still practice a shamanism similar to the early Bon religion of pre-Buddhist Tibet. The study examines the rivalry between the Tibetan Buddhist and the shamanic regimes. The thesis is that when Tibetan Buddhist culture is embedded in a village context it continuously transmutes and synthesizes images from its rivals, in this case the shamanic perspective, through a process of dialogue.
The main research strategy has been to compare equivalent rituals of both traditions in their context of performance. Both the Tibetan Lamas and the Gurung shamans have rituals that exchange with the underworld, serve guardian deities, exorcise demons, recall the soul and guide the consciousness after death. The main line of inquiry has been to find in each ritual type the mode of argument between Lamaist and shamanic practitioners concerning the meaning of the rites, the ethical issues involved, and the manner in which the Lama transmutes the shamanic model of time recurrence into the linear sequence of Buddhist realization.
While a number of theoretical issues are examined, the main conclusion is that great and little tradition comparison can best be made through the study of intersubjective dialogue as a temporal process. The analysis shows that Tibetan Lamaism in a local historical context, far from representing a completed textual tradition, continues to evolve through argument with the shamanic tradition that it seeks to encompass. Further, the particular insight and project of Tibetan Buddhism: the fusion of samsara and nirvana, is illuminated through the dialogical paradigm.
