Stan Royal Mumford (1936-1993) was associate professor and chair of the department of anthropology and sociology at Albertson College of Idaho. His work has appeared in the American Anthropologist, Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, and other journals. Himalayan Dialogue is the result of three years of fieldwork in Nepal, supported by Princeton University and by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
摘要
In the mountain valleys of Nepal, Tibetan communities have long been established through migrations from the North. Because of these migrations over the last few centuries, Tibetan lamaism, as one of the world's great ritual traditions, can be studied in the Himalayas as a process that emerges through dialogue with the more ancient shamanic tradition which it confronts and criticizes.
Here for the first time is a thorough anthropological study of Tibetan lamaism combining textual analysis with richly contextualized ethnographic data. The rites studied are of the Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In contrast to the textual analyses that have viewed the culture as a finished entity, here we see an unbounded ritual process with unfinished interpretations.
Mumford's focus is on the "dialogue" taking place between the lamaist and the shamanic regimes, as a historic development occurring between different cultural layers. The study powerfully demonstrates that interrelationships between subsystems within a given cultural matrix over time are critical to an understanding of religion as a cultural process.
目次
Research Area 4 Unbounded and Layered Cultures 27 Hierarchy and Narrative Memory 36 Shamanic Sacrifice and Buddhist Renunciation 63 Repudiation of the Red Offering 80 Reciprocal Exchange with the Underworld Serpent 93 Serving the Guardian Deities btsan 117 Expelling the Demons bdud 140 Soul Calling and the Shamanic Matrix 167 Death Cult of the Ghyabre Shaman 180 Tibetan Death Rite 194 Dialogue of Good and Evil Eras 227 Conclusion 245 Appendix A Local Text Written by Lama Chog Lingpa 257 Bibliography 265
