Women religious; Religious expression; Tibetan Buddhism; Songs; Nuns; Kinnaur; India
摘要
Jomos are nuns, celibate women devoted to the practice of Buddhism; Kinnaur is a Himalayan tribal district on the Tibet border in Himachal Pradesh, India. This dissertation, a first study of Kinnauri jomos, draws on fifteen months of field research focused on the songs and self-narrated lives of these Indian women in the context of village Buddhism in Kinnaur. Buddhism is known for its ability to integrate local beliefs and traditions, and this ability is one of its greatest strengths. While Mumford (1989) and Ortner (1978) have studied the encounter between Buddhism and local traditions by focusing on lama-shaman relationships and rituals, this dissertation focuses on nuns' lives and oral traditions. It argues that jomos have been major agents of Buddhism's assimilation in Kinnaur. The jomos have accomplished this in two ways. First, they compose and/or sing songs in Kinnauri vernacular ( githang) and in Tibetan (mgurma) that present Buddhist narratives, history, and ideology in local formats, language, and contexts. For example, some of the jomos' songs represent indigenous “Hindu” village gods as supporters of Buddhist projects. Secondly, jomos have created (or inherited) lifestyles and identities that are liminal, neither fully lay nor fully renunciant; and their life stories reveal their struggles to balance these two sides: on the one hand, their need to work (for family, temple, or survival) and on the other hand, their devotional and intellectual ambitions to study and practice Buddhism. This dissertation argues that because or in spite of their ambiguous position, jomos are key figures in embodying and expressing the process by which Buddhism is reproduced and given meaning locally. Chapter 1 is an overview of jomos' lives; chapter 2 looks at ideal and actual gurus and disciples; chapter 3 compares the two song genres; and chapter 4 examines jomos' self-presentations in songs and stories and asks why jomos as a rule do not sing about jomos.
