
Order in Paradox
Myth and Ritual Among Nepal's Tamang
David Holmberg(Author)
Cornell University Press
Published on 14. July 1992
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-8014-8055-3 (ISBN)
Description
David H. Holmberg here examines the social forms, ritual practices, and history of a western Tamang community of Himalayan Nepal. Exploring the central question of ritual complexity, Order in Paradox demonstrates how a religious system that contains Buddhist, shamanic, and sacrificial practices may be understood as a whole.
Holmberg begins by recounting the history of the Tamang and reexamining the meaning of caste, tribe, and ethnicity in greater Nepal. Holmberg reveals how cultural patterns thought to be uniquely Tamang reflect this people's development of an "involuted" "tribal" form of Buddhist religious expression-an evolution he interprets as a result in part of the unification of the Nepalese state. Holmberg then offers descriptions of the culture, mythic imagination, and ritual field of the Tamang. Exploring both structural and historical dimensions of Tamang rituals, Holmberg shows how they form a system linked to a cultural logic of exchange upon which Tamang society is built. He also sheds light on the relationship between gender and ritual, considering in detail the close association between femaleness and the shamanic in Tamang culture.
Holmberg begins by recounting the history of the Tamang and reexamining the meaning of caste, tribe, and ethnicity in greater Nepal. Holmberg reveals how cultural patterns thought to be uniquely Tamang reflect this people's development of an "involuted" "tribal" form of Buddhist religious expression-an evolution he interprets as a result in part of the unification of the Nepalese state. Holmberg then offers descriptions of the culture, mythic imagination, and ritual field of the Tamang. Exploring both structural and historical dimensions of Tamang rituals, Holmberg shows how they form a system linked to a cultural logic of exchange upon which Tamang society is built. He also sheds light on the relationship between gender and ritual, considering in detail the close association between femaleness and the shamanic in Tamang culture.
Reviews / Votes
A major contribution to the ethnography of the Tamangs of Nepal. On this basis alone it would be an important work for Himalayan specialists. But it is also an interpretive work, and a work of culture theory. Holmberg's rich ethnographic description of Tamang ritual life is the basis for insightful interpretation, showing that the ritual practices, mythic visions, and fundamental structures of Tamang social existence are deeply interconnected. As an interpretive work, it is of interest to anyone interested in ritual and culture. Holmberg has done a superb job.(Journal of Ritual Studies) Graceful, clear, and cogent. A meticulous, insightful, and sensitive ethnography that is also a valuable theoretical contribution.
(American Ethnologist) This lively account of ritual, religion, and exchange in the Tamang society of Nepal is sophisticated and well written. Holmberg draws on his informative descriptions of Tamang Buddhism for comparativist insights into marriage exchange, caste, sacrifice, and the coherence of religious fields.... The study illuminates the diversity of types of sacrifice, the interplay of spoken and written ritual languages, and the paradox of exchange that differentiates while promising to unify. Holmberg eloquently testifies to the diverse, irreducible perspectives through which Tamang men and women attempt to unify a religious field defined by shamans, Buddhist lamas, and sacrificers.
(Choice)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8014-8055-3 (9780801480553)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
David H. Holmberg is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University.
Content
1. Introduction: Elementary Structures in Ritual Life
2. Tamang Comparatively Reconstructed
3. A Culture of Exchange and Its Paradoxes
4. Panoramas of Cosmic and Temporal Orders
5. Sacrificial Ordination
6. Shamanic Soundings
7. An Amonastic Buddhism
8. Ritual Polarities, Mythic Imagination, and HistoryGlossary
Bibliography
Index
2. Tamang Comparatively Reconstructed
3. A Culture of Exchange and Its Paradoxes
4. Panoramas of Cosmic and Temporal Orders
5. Sacrificial Ordination
6. Shamanic Soundings
7. An Amonastic Buddhism
8. Ritual Polarities, Mythic Imagination, and HistoryGlossary
Bibliography
Index