Y ALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Piers Vitebsky's study of religion and psychology in tribal India focusses upon a unique form of dialogue between the living and the dead, conducted through the medium of a shaman in trance. The dead sometimes nurture their living descendants, yet at other times they inflict upon them the very illnesses from which they died. Through intimate dialogue, the Sora use the occasion of death to explore their closest emotional attachments in all their ambivalence. Dr Vitebsky analyses the actors' words and relationships over several years and develops a typology of moods among the dead and of kinds of memory among the living. In comparing Sora shamanism with the treatment of bereavement in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, he higblights a contrast in their assumptions which has far reaching consequences for the social and professional scope of the two kinds of practice. A list o.fbooks in this series will befollnd at the end o.fthe Folume Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Editors: Ernest Gellner, Jack Goody, Stephen Gudeman, Michael Herzfeld, Jonathan Parry 88 Dialogues with the dead • DIALOGUES WITH THE DEAD The discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India PIERS VITEBSKY Seoll Polar Research IlIslilllle. Ullil'ersily of' Call/bridge 0' ..I ' I .r ' .. ., I " ~ ;:'': .... ·r· ,', :,.~. At a funeral: the widow speaks to her dead husband through a shaman (right). '. .. '). ~ " . " Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge To my Sora friends, their ancestors and descendants The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 I RP and to my own family 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011--4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1993 First published 1993 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge A calaloglle record Jor IlIis book is available ji'01ll Ihe Brilish Library Library oj COllgress calalogllillg ill pllblicalioll dow Vitebsky, Piers. Dialogues with the dead: the discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India I Piers Vitebsky. p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology; 88) Includes bibliograpllical references and index. ISBN 0 521 384478 I. Savara (Indic people) - Funeral customs and rites. 2. Savara (Indic people) - Religion. 3. Bereavement. 4. Savara (Indic people) - Psychology. I. Title. 11. Series. DS432.S37V58 1992 306.9'0899595 - dc20 92-5723 CIP ISBN 0 521 384478 hardback L VN f..) .,.~~ \ " ~.<, • Contents Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak List of plates page XII Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. List a/figures XIII Macbeth, IV.iii.209- 10 List of texts xv Preface xvii Part I Son urn: the continuation of consciousness after death Dialogues between the living and the dead 3 The encounter 3 An outline of the argument 7 A note on 'shamans' and other intermediaries 18 2 The Sora people 24 A 'tribe' in Hindu India 24 Main personalities 33 3 The formation of the Sora person 46 Gradual transformations in the journey from birth to death and beyond 46 Sun-Woman as blacksmith and embryologist: heat, form and the development of consciousness 50 Naming the baby: childbearing and the husband's lineage 54 Destiny a nd susceptibility to other persons 63 x Contents COl/tel/ts Xl 4 Interpreting and persuading the dead 66 9 Forgetting the dead 216 Ancestor and Experience: mapping two distinct The progressive dissolution of the person after modes of being dead 66 death 216 Encountering, welcoming and dismissing sonums 76 The c~mpletion of inheritance and the waning of From medical history to biography 81 Earth-Memory sites 219 Speaking for oneself: formal debates and ordinary The joy of naming a baby: retrieving a crucial conversations 89 a ttri bu te of the deceased 224 The ultimate residue of the person and the final death of Memories 231 Part II Responding to a new death 95 10 Dialogues with the self? Sora bereavement and the 5 Transcription of a dialogue from the inquest on lamano 99 presuppositions of contemporary psychotherapy 236 Deteriorating relations between lamano and Mengalu 99 lamano's death and the first inquest at his cremation 99 Appendix 1: List of somons recorded in Alinsing 260 The second inquest at lamano's stone-planting 103 264 Notes List of references 275 6 Redeeming the dead and protecting the living 121 Index 282 lamano's funeral continued: cosmic rescue by his Ancestors 121 Social order among the dead: Earth-Sonum as a transitional stage between Experience and Ancestor 132 The kaleidoscope of feelings between the living and the dead 142 Part III Operating the calculus of all previous deaths 147 7 Transcription of a dialogue with nineteen dead persons 149 8 Memories and rememberers: states of mind among the dead and the living 176 Emotional tone and degrees of redemption 176 Conversations with two partially redeemed sonums 180 A metaphysical crux: translating sonums as private 'Memories' in a public arena 195 Verb forms: how the dead transfer their own states of mind to the living 202 Figures Plates page 2 General location of the Sora At a funeral: the widow speaks to her dead husband through a shaman l.l 26 Approximate location of the Lanjia Sora frontispiece 2.1 Genealogy showing relationships between central Shamans in trance sit side by side at a funeral, 2.2 40 characters in the book, with quarrels surrounded by mourners page 6 The succession of funeral shamans through incestuous 2 Bystanders unclench the bodies of a funeral shaman and 3.1 58 cross-cousin marriage in the Underworld his daughter-apprentice in trance 20 62 The transmission of a woman's name to her descendants 3 A shaman's wall painting 57 3.2 67 Ancestor space and Experience space 4 After a day's dancing at a stone-planting 72 4.1 74 Experience sonums with their broad characteristics 5 A divining and healing shaman banishes Ra'tud-Sonum 4.2 Sites of Experience sonums around Alinsing, showing their 4.3 along the path leading out of the village 79 77 main residential sites, outposts and sacrificial points 6 A divining and healing shaman in trance 87 The cycle of illness and dea th as experienced in the 5.1 7 Eating at a stone-planting feast 124 100 biography of one person 8 Washing in pig's blood to block the contagion of an Vertical map of sonum space, showing points of heat and 6.1 accidental death 131 134 coolness, becoming and being 9 Dancing in the street at the annual kGlja 225 Genealogy of Mengalu's relatives who died through the 6.2 10 The turmeric fight at a toddler's name-giving ceremony 226 138 agency of Hollow Water and Rere Earth-Sonum sites II Ancestor-Men untying the Ancestors' rings at a 139 Chain of recruitment of victims of Rere Earth-Sonum site 6.3 name-giving ceremony 227 Simplified genealogy of Sagalo's lineage showing order of 7.1 150 dead speakers 155 7.2 Dramatis personae of dialogue, dead and living 162 7.3 Chain of suicide deaths linking Rumbana and Palda 8.1 Sagalo's cross-cousin relationships with his wife Panderi 186 and her attacker Sunia XIV Lisl a/figures 8.2 Genealogy relevant to Palda's case, showing births of children and changes of residence in the Underworld and above ground 188 8.3 Effect of my own past on my present 199 Texts 8.4 Effect of your past on my present 199 8.5 The object of an ordinary transitive verb 204 8.6 Active and passive verb forms in the first person singular 204 8.7 Chain of subjects and objects under the aggressive action of Experience Memories 205 8.8 Grammatical relations between members of a chain of suicides 205 8.9 Sentence about Memory containing agent, verb and patient 205 8.10 Sentence about Memory containing unspecified agent, verb The term 'text' is used to denote the main passages where the Sora speak for and specific patient 207 themselves. The texts are sometimes interspersed with commentary. 8.1/ Middle verb form in the first person singular 208 8.12 Chain of successive namesakes using the middle verb, 1.I Dialogue between a dead little girl and her living aunt page 3 18 representing benign succession 209 1.2 Extract from a shaman's invocation to her predecessors 59 8.13 The progress through successive verb forms of a person 3.1 The story of Pubic-Haired Sompa 86 passing from life into death 212- 13 4.1 How Kantino's father was killed by a leopard 104 9.1 Connections between some cultivators and nearby 5.1 Transcription of a dialogue from the inquest on Jamano 123 Earth-Memory sites 222 6.1 Redemption song of the male Ancestors 128 9.2 The overlapping existence of successive persons bearing 6.2 Extract from the redemption song of the female Ancestors 140 the same name 232 6.3 Song to heal Mengalu's pain in urinating 156 9.3 The cyclical transmission of names between persons 233 7.1 Transcription of a dialogue with nineteen dead persons 10.1 Freudian and Sora models of relations between the living and the dead during bereavement 242-3 Preface ] lived for four years on the Indian subcontinent between 1976 and 1983. This book is based on eighteen months which I spent among the Sora, mostly during 1976-7 and 1979, and the ethnographic present refers mostly to the second of these periods. I also made brief return visits in 1984 and 1992. I am indebted for substantial financial support at various times to the Social Science Research Council of the UK for an initial postgraduate studentship; to Girton College, Cambridge, for a Margaret Smith Research Fellowship; to the Perrott-Warwick Fund for Psychical Research; and to my parents. I also received supplementary assistance from the Governing Body of the School of Oriental and African Studies; the Emslie Horniman Fund of the Royal Anthropological Institute; and the South Asia Language and Area Center of the University of Chicago. Many people have read part or all of the manuscript and many more have given me hospitality or encouraged me in other ways. J am grateful to Pramod Kumar Behera, Andre Beteille, Jean Briggs, Audrey Cantlie, Michael Carrithers, Elisabeth Chaussin, Tony Cohen, Daniel de Coppet, Susan Drucker-Brown, Dorothy Emmet, John Forrester, Doris and Meyer Fortes, Christoph von Fiirer-Haimendorf, Jean-Claude Galey, Ernest Gellner, Kathleen Gough, Roberte Hamayon, Sarah Harrison, Olivier and Arlette Herrenschmidt, Mark Hobart, Caroline Humphrey, Ron Inden, N. S. Kumaraswamy, Celia and Edmund Leach, Godfrey Lienhardt, Julius Lipner, Roland Littlewood, Geoffrey Lloyd, Alan Macfarlane, T. N. Madan, Laxman Mahapatra, Sitakant Mahapatra, Adrian Mayer, Rod ney Needham, Charlie Nuckolls, Gananath Obeyesekere, Dorinda Out ram, Robert Paine, Michel Panoff, Dave Parkin, Johnny Parry, Prakash Pashpureddy, Bala Patnaik, D. P. Pattanayak, James Peacock, Terence