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"This book analyses the social, political and religious life of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Highlighting patterns of change and adaptation, it addresses the Shamanic-Buddhist interface that exists in the animated landscape of the Himalayas. Opening with an analysis of the ethnic revival of Nepal, the book first considers the Himalayan religious landscape and its people. Specific attention is then given to Helambu, home of the Hyolmo people, within the framework of Tibetan Buddhism. The discussion then turns to the persisting shamanic tradition of the region and the ritual dynamics of Hyolmo culture. The book concludes by considering broader questions of Hyolmo identity in the Nepalese context, as well as reflecting on the interconnection of landscape, ritual and identity. Offering a unique insight into a fascinating Himalayan culture and its formation, this book will be of great interest to scholars of indigenous peoples and religion across religious studies, Buddhist studies, cultural anthropology and South Asian studies"--

This chapter will explore and analyze dynamics of cultural production in a particular context, the Helambu valley (Nepal). The valley is home to the Hyolmo, a Nepalese minority of Tibetan origin, whose culture seems to have been shaped by the particular agency, within a sacred geography (Yolmo Gangra), of a specific class of cultural agents, namely the so-called reincarnated lamas and treasure discoverers. One of them, in particular, could be considered the cultural hero par excellence of the Hyolmo due to his role in establishing and maintaining long lasting relationships between distant power places, and to his spiritual charisma. His legacy still lives on among the people of Helambu, and his person is still revered as the great master who opened the outer, inner, and secret doors of the Yolmo Gangra. The role of treasure discoverers – or tertön (gter ston)1 – in the spread of Buddhism across the Himalayas is related to particular conceptions regarding the landscape and especially to the key-theme of the "hidden lands" or beyul (sbas yul). But the bonds linking a community to its territory are not simply an historical by-product. As in the case of the Hyolmo, the relationship between people, landscape, and memory is one of the main features of the identity-construction processes that constitute one of the most relevant elements of contemporary Nepalese politics.

One of the most relevant aspects of contemporary political life in Nepal is the rise of ethnic minorities. From the early 1990s, the movement for democracy started campaigning against Hindu Monarchic autocracy for the lifting of the ban on political parties, the recognition of multiculturalism and freedom of religion. Many things have changed since then: a Maoist-led insurgency and a new people's movement have managed to topple the monarchy and to transform the Himalayan country into a republic. As a reaction to the state-enforced Hinduization of the people, supporting the caste system and maintaining the power in the hands of high caste Hindus, many groups are now campaigning to revive their local cultures and traditions. Religion is one of the key areas of confrontation, and the struggle for secularism has created space for the revival of the religious traditions of marginalized groups.

Through an analysis of colonial and orientalist literature, this article will show how South Asian fauna, through the lenses of Colonial enterprise, came to epitomize a whole system of social relations which can be easily tri-partite: the ruler, the ruled and the unruly. The complex colonial apparatus of dominance and repression clearly surfaces in many of the texts produced by the literates working, living or simply travelling through the British Indian Empire. Fascination for the wildest creatures of the jungle or the domesticated flocks reflected and re-shaped discourses about Western dominance. Eventually it entered European culture and modified our perception of South Asia. As long as the boundaries between the human and the non-human remain thin and blurred, non-human animals were rapidly equated to the human subjects of the Empire. The imperialist discourse, a mythology in the making, was made up of a series of performative utterances used to conveniently describe and to shape the new world. A world to be subjugated, tamed and ruled upon by a self-appointed superior authority. The living landscape of South Asia cannot escape the literary cage of the Empire. Human and nonhuman indigenous animals, or even the hybrid system they form, are discussed like a vast, uncharted and uncanny new territory to conquest with sword and pen alike. The article eventually argues that the colonialism of the mind exerted by the British Empire did not spare non-human animals and such perdurable effects still linger and affect uncritical policies of exploitation.

The shamaness at the threshold : gender, religions and the state in Asia / Sophie Roche and Davide Torri -- The shamaness' new clothes. On the qualities of resisting bodies / Davide Torri -- Shamanesses high and low : gender-based relationships to spiritual entities in Siberia / Roberte Hamayon -- Retrospectives : what I got wrong in my first book / Laurel Kendall -- Shamanism and gender (in)equality in South and South-east Asia : the chepang of Nepal and the semang-negrito of Peninsular Malaysia / Diana Riboli -- Shamans, Islam and the state medical policy in post-Soviet Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan / Danuta Penkala-Gawęcka -- From clanic shamaness to Burkhanist messenger transformations of religious roles of Altaian women (19th-21st centuries) / Clément Jacquemoud -- "Let me take your pain away" : female shamanism in Central Asian soundscape / Razia Sultanova -- Female shamanhood in the southern Siberia at the turn of millennium : a revival of an ancient archetype, modernization or declining of "traditional" shamanism? / Galina B. Sychenko -- Women's sociability : the qalandar khona of Khujand (Tajikistan) in the context of political events / Sophie Roche -- Shamanism and gender construction among the Kavalan of Taiwan : men and women's illness caused by different spirits / Pi-chen Liu -- Mirroring values in possession ritual : a biographic-narrative study of female participants in the zār ritual in the hormozgān province of Iran / Maryam Abbasi -- Shamanism in Mongolia : women, mother-earth and the world / Laetitia Merli.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Dark and Light Shamanisms: Themes of Conflict, Ambivalence and Healing -- 2 Enchantment and Destruction -- 3 Shamans Emerging from Repression in Siberia: Lightning Rods of Fear and Hope -- 4 Experiences of Mongol Shamans in China: Victims and Agents of Violence -- 5 Variations of Violence at the Vital Core of Chinese and Korean Shamanic Ritual Worlds -- 6 Words of Violence: a Shamanic Curse in a Sagay Text -- 7 Exorcism Death in Virginia: On the Misrepresentation of Korean Shamans -- 8 Contesting Power, Negotiating Influence: Rai Shamans and New Religious Movements in Eastern Nepal -- 9 Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Himalayan Encounters with Human and Other-Than-Human Opponents -- 10 Of Angry Thunders, Smelly Intruders and Human-Tigers. Shamanic Representations of Violence and Conflict in Non-Violent Peoples: The Semang-Negrito (Malaysia) -- 11 Appendix: Divine Hunger – The Cannibal War-Machine -- Bibliography

Chapter 1. Introduction, Diana Riboli and Davide Torri -- Chapter 2. "The War Has Just Begun." Nature's Fury against Neocolonial 'Spirit/s': Shamanic Perceptions of Natural Disasters in Comparative Perspective, Diana Riboli -- Chapter 3. The Spirits of Extractivism: Non-human Meddling, Shamanic Diplomacy and Cosmo-political Strategy among the Urarina (Peruvian Amazon), Emanuele Fabiano -- Chapter 4. Batek Cosmopolitics in the Early 21st Century, Ivan Tracey -- Chapter 5. Jinn Pinn Dance in the Floods: Perceptions of Flood Disasters among the Kalasha of Pakistan, Taj Khan Kalash -- Chapter 6. Eco-Cosmologies: Renewable Energy , Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern -- Chapter 7. The Earth and the Tree in Alekh Shamanism in Koraput/ Odisha, Lidia Guzy -- Chapter 8. Sacred, Alive, Dangerous and Endangered: Humans, Non-humans and Landscape in the Himalayas, Davide Torri -- Chapter 9. Shamanism, Magic and Indigenous Ontologies: Eco-critical Perspectives on Environmental Changes in India, Stefano Beggiora -- Chapter 10. Unblocking the Blockage between Earth and Heaven: Shamanic Space for Cultural Intimacy in China, Naran Bilik -- Chapter 11. Burying gold, digging the past: remembering Ma Bufang regime in Qinghai (PRC), Valentina Punzi.