Monpa Clans in Eastern Himalaya: Their History, Continuity and Contemporary Significance in the Context of State Systems
Final Report Abstract
What can be described as clan social organization persists today in long-established village Himalayan communities in the Mon-yul Corridor. This is the case in spite of the historical disappearance of clan social organization from immediately neighbouring and ethnically and linguistically related states, including Bhutan and pre-1959 Central Tibet. The premodern Tibetan state that annexed the Mon-yul Corridor for two and half centuries, was administratively weak at the local level, and generally disinterested in the region aside from pursuing direct economic extractions (taxation and a trade monopoly). Both factors favour the continuation of clan social organization. Evidence from this project indicates that the state either favoured, or at least was neutral towards, clans because at the level of the village community the represented an existing and well-articulated assemblage of stable corporate units for enacting strategic relations with. The evidence from this project on the existence of clans both historically and into the present-day in the region should cause scholars working on social history to completely reconsider the accepted view of the past in the Mon-yul Corridor and neighbouring eastern Bhutan. The explicitly Tibetan Buddhist-oriented Jo-bo clan complex much described in existing sources is little in evidence, whereas the Bon-oriented so-called “commoner” clans barely mentioned in existing sources are in fact ubiquitous in newly discovered older local documents from the region and most of them still exist as surviving lineages today. The results of this project reveal that earlier claims by scholars describing the research region as being clan-less, with only “status groups” or “castes”, are false due to superficial research.
Publications
- 2013. “The Iconography of gShen Priests in the Ethnographic Context of the Extended Eastern Himalayas, and Reflections on the Development of Bon Religion”, In F.-K. Ehrhard and P. Maurer (eds.). Nepalica-Tibetica. Festgabe for Christoph Cüppers, Band 1. Andiast: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, pp.263-294
Huber, T.
- “Hunting for the Cure: A Bon Healing Narrative from Eastern Bhutan”, in: C. Rambler and U. Roesler (eds.) Tibetan and Himalayan Healing: an Anthology for Anthony Aris. Kathmandu, Vajra Books (2015): 371-382
Huber, T.
