Funeral dance in Mamangkhe (22/06/07)

Itung Tapheng: Ritual for good harvest of cardamom, millet and maize (12/7/07)

Preparing to offer the first chicken


Holding the three chickens together


The altar with offerings of the two (of three) chickens


Examining a corn cob whilst chanting

Extract from fieldnotes (12/7/07)

Itung Tapheng (ituŋ taphεŋ)
When I arrive he is in the corn/millet terrace closest to his house facing the mountains (east wards) on the same level as the house. He has sprinkled soil on a large stone that lies on the edge of the terrace. On the soil he places four strips of banana leaf. He calls out to Indra B to make sure it is 4 and not 6. He did the puja last year but can't remember perfectly well. He has brought a plate with rice on it, and a bowl with ground corn. There is a bowl of water and he makes a wand with the remaining banana leaf and leans it on the bowl.
The rice is sprinkled on the leaves, an egg is placed on the first leaf (from the left), and corn flour has already been sprinkled on the earth below the leaves in small amounts.
A seat is prepared for IndraB the Pma, on a stool and a woven mat. He sits down, examines the wand and seems satisfied with it. He coughs to clear his throat and begins.

What he does is call in the three spirits that this puja is for. Two males and a female. A big chicken for the mountain spirit of toksombo (male) , and small chickens for tambhungma (female) and siring (male). I'm not sure I have it clear as to who the male and females are.
In any case, during the puja at a certain point he asks Tikka-sir where his alaichi are, he names about 6 places, and IndraB adds another two that Tikka-sir has missed out. He mentions "AlAichi bAri" a few times, as well as mandok and maki (millet and corn). The puja is done around the time of the breaking of corn, where the stems are broken and the corn fruit is picked. This will take place in around a week from now.
During the puja IndraB shakes severely and is almost unable to speak thrice. He puja lasts around 10 minutes outside including the actual killing of the chickens. This is done quickly by holding the neck down against the blade (which faces outwards) of Tika-sirs bampok and quickly cutting the neck whilst holding the body and head apart.
The head is placed on the banana leaf, three heads on the three leaf-strips excluding the one with the egg on it. The body is held up side down to let some blood trickle on the leaf, and then it is let go to run around the field for a few minutes. It is then recovered and aninner feather is pulled out and put on the altar with the chicken heads. The puja then is short, a few more words chanted, and IndraB heads up to the house to drink a tongba (it's absence about which he had jokingly complained about earlier: "they don't give tongba or raksi here....kasto mAnche!".

In the house the chicken feathers are plucked off using hot water and it's innard examined. This tells something about the year to come. There is gland behind the liver, is this the gall-bladder? kwiying (L); पित्ता (N) (which I think is the gallbladder, bile-making gland!). If this is green then all is well. If it is white then the season will be bad. If it is big, good; and small, bad again.
Equally, the small intestine, tomrum (L), is also examined, and if along it's length there is a split, or the intenstine is marked with black lines or a black spot, "there will be a death".

Funeral in Mamangkhe

1,2 - The procession through the village


Looking over the body


Preparing the pyre (which will also be the tomb)


Resting after the first act.



Lighting the pyre


Preparing a mini-tongba (millet beer drinking-vessel) to offer to the spirit of the deceased on the tomb.


Drinking millet-beer after the funeral (behind is the new Limbu museum)

Funeral in early June 2007. I had just arrived back in the village after a short stint in Kathmandu. 4 shamans in charge of capturing, controlling and properly releasing the spirit of the dead man walked across the village banging small cymbals and followed by most villagers, who each carried one piece of firewood. As the man died accidentally whilst hunting high up above the village, shamans are needed to make sure his spirit is properly dealt with and does not become an angry ghost, lingering around the village and attacking his relatives. At every river crossing or fork in the path, a small ritual is performed was performed by the head shaman, to encourage the spirit to follow the procession.

Sansari puja

The Sansari puja, performed on three Saturdays around the Nepali new year. Here are photos of the first puja, held on the 7th of April.

Extract from fieldnotes:

"....Overall, this is a puja for the protection and well-being of all the inhabitants of Mamangkhe (excluding the villages on the other side of the river who apparently conduct their own pujas...therefore this is for all the wards in the VDC from 1-7 - excluding 8,9.) The river puja was conducted in Nepali. Mention was made of all the different groups in the village, and other groups perhaps spontaneously thought of by Deoman - Rai, Gurung, Limbu, Kami, Sarki, and others. I don't think I heard Brahmin mentioned., but then there are none here (I think).
The other pujas were conducted in Limbu, with use of Nepali for dates and years, and occassional mixing...."

Funeral in Paua (neighbouring village)

A funeral, 45 days after the death of the mother of a family in Paua, ward 7 in the Mamangkhe VCD.
1. Empty tongba (millet beer) drinking containers;
2. The phedangma (shaman), beginning proceedings which will end tomorrow with the final safe-journey away from earth of the dead-mother's spirit;
3. A view of the temporary structures and space prepared for the "celebration". Some 300-400 people attended.

Dungdunge Puja

This was a week after my arrival in the village, on my longer stint.
From my fieldnotes:

"ketipathi, a scented plant, in large amounts. The bamboo leg-tops were the actual plant top, long leaves spouting upwards.
The altar was a sort of extension of the terrace, a sort of balcony basically, facing south when one looked towards it. There were four men initially working on it, tying it all together. One of them was the sparkly eyed man I had met a few days before at the shop. Two others were the drunk Limbus I had met and chatted with the day before. The other was a younger Limbu I think I may have seen before but couldn't remember.
Later another, (what turned out to be the fourth and youngest Phedangma) turned up with a container of millet (whose was this? his? why was he bringing millet to a puja he was "working" at?).
There were a largish number of women, 4-5 coming and going, getting firewood, boiling water, boiling rice, getting tongbas served up, bringing mats to sit on.
The rice was cooked and laid out on a tightly woven mat (the food kind as opposed to sitting-on-kind): (names/terms missing here!).
It was immediately busily and skillfully shaped into two largish statues (15cm high and 20 wide), representations of mountain spirits of some kind, and much of the rest of the rice was patted into little cones, much like the little statues one sees in Tibetan monasteries. 32 little ones in total and 2 big ones. The same was done with millet-flour which had been cooked into a sort of polenta, so that in total 64 little statues and 4 big ones had been made. These were placed on the altar on top of a woven mat on either side of a pair of brass plates with kethipathi and uncooked rice, in 5 lines of 6, with the remaining two placed diagonally just below. (plenty of photos of this).
Flags of some kind were places in the big and small statues, and little lizard like models were placed on the outside of the altar, on banana leaves.
The puja got going with two lines of chanting, in front the younger looking phedangmas, and behind the older looking ones, one of whom beat the drum and the other started the chanting. It was sort of fugal in style, there must be a technical term for this, where the older phedangma would start and the younger one would repeat his words a split second later, as if he didn't really know them himself.
There were a number of interesting things about the puja. There was an informality about the proceedings, about the sitting arrangement, about the breaks taken by the phedangmas very frequently between long verses. I was asked over by the drummer to sit next to him and he made jokes in between drumming about who I should marry of the Limbu girls among the group (there must have been a total of some 20 people)."










The Dungdunge puja, performed for the entire village including non-Limbus) by 4 Phedangmas (Limbu shaman), on the 31st March. This is a puja to appease a particularly "mad" spirit. The only way to do this, so explains one of the Phedangmas, is to perform a live sacrifice of a goat (that is, the goat's heart is removed while the goat is still otherwise alive; it is then placed on a stick in the centre of the altar - still beating!)

The top two photos show the altar being prepared. Three more photos show the tiny statues being prepared to place in the altar. The white ones are made of rice, black of ground-and-boiled millet.Other photos show the altar from a distance.