Abstract
Sowa Rigpa, publicly known as Tibetan medicine, is a healthcare system that has been (re)formed and (re)shaped through centuries-long practices along with cultural, economic, political, and social dimensions in and beyond the trans-Himalayan region. That said, Sowa Rigpa is not a homogenous entity but an open and contingent assemblage that is always subject to changes amidst the mobility of people, goods and ideas. Its practices in the Nepal Himalaya exemplify a continuous process of indigenous identification, wherein everyday bordering and networking by an ensemble of actors are exercised by re-inventing traditions, re-assembling ideas and materials, re-negotiating ownerships and re-making norms, and rules and policies. The recent industrialisation of Sowa Rigpa has witnessed growing attention to the subsequent expansion of cross-border trade and border governance. Most of the studies have treated the recent development in a binary manner, that is, the powerful commercial and political forces on the one hand and the less powerful or even passive roles played by ordinary practitioners, from pickers and farmers to dealers, on the other hand. While several scholars have unravelled the internal fragmentation of Sowa Rigpa and the inter-clan/community politics in its history of geographic expansion, the heterogeneity of Sowa Rigpa has yet to be treated seriously in current development. The present study, by contrast, aims to understand the multiple interpretations of transnational Sowa Rigpa re-constructed by multiple identicers in the process of everyday practice in the Nepal Himalaya.The conceptual framework for this study borrows insights from three research areas: identification and vernacularisation, material assemblage, and institutional border. The study treats Sowa Rigpa as a process of identification by a variety of actors instead of a binary elite-identicer and member-identity receiver relationship. Identification and vernacularisation open the door to both educational organisations and ethnic actors involved in the process and allow us to observe their encounters in everyday lives. Since its beginning, Sowa Rigpa has been formed and reformed through networked and border-transcending activities. Its components, from tangible materials to intangible knowledge, ideas, and principles, have been assembled from different locales. The institutional border, also known as borderwork, allows us to delve into and explore everyday practices of networking and bordering. The objectives are threefold. The first objective is to understand the imperial identification of Sowa Rigpa constructed by elites in a historical setting. The second objective is to understand the multi-faceted interpretation and construction of norms about Sowa Rigpa, which entails the re-invention of traditions, re-assemblage of ideas and materials, re-negotiation of ownerships, and re-making of norms, rules, and policies in Nepal. The third objective involves exploring the changing configuration of actors and how their power relationship affected everyday practices of growing, collecting, and trading herbs, exercising Sowa Rigpa treatments and delivering respective knowledge in/across villages at the Nepal-China border. Two field sites were selected, focusing on Bhotiya ethnicity at Bhotkhola in North-eastern Nepal and multi-ethnic institutional actors in Kathmandu, central Nepal. The qualitative data were collected from ethnography, semi-open interviews, oral narratives, textual and discourse analysis, and historical and archival research.
This study has three significant findings. First, traditional medicine in Samye, the original capital of Tibet, was translated into Tibetan language from the neighbouring countries by invited scholars and physicians along with their religion (Tibetan Buddhism) and scripts, among other subjects, during the reign of powerful emperors in the 7th and 8th centuries. Then the medical practice was assembled and re-assembled by foreign physicians and learned scholars climaxed with the theoretical foundation of the Four Tantras by the 13th century. Further, elites reconstructed and institutionalised Sowa Rigpa and transmitted it through the prestigious monasteries and patrilineal and master-disciple lineages within and across the Tibetan plateau.
Second, the heterogeneity of Sowa Rigpa in Nepal is observed at individual and organisational levels. Mendok, one form of situating Sowa Rigpa, is preserved and practised by Bhotiya Amchi at the individual level. The Bhotiya people in northeast Nepal sustain its fragmenting layer. This study recorded 28 medicinal plants, five animal products and two types of minerals locally used to prepare Mendok products and amulets. Two main groups of identicers are responsible for reforming institutionalising layers of Sowa Rigpa. One is the monastic-trained healers who struggle to preserve and continue their medical system, conserving medicinal plants. They collaborate with local and national networks in down-to-up approaches as the "Insiders" images. The other group involves Sowa Rigpa doctors and elites collaborating with international Sowa Rigpa influencers in an up-to-down approach as an "Outsiders" image. The modern Sowa Rigpa organisations provide healthcare and education to attract non-Himalayan communities and overseas students, thus dominating the monastic organisations. Increasing numbers of Sowa Rigpa clinics and small-scale pharmacies are operated in Kathmandu, targeting consumers beyond Himalayan communities, Buddhists, and Tibetan refugees. The government authorities regulate and monitor Sowa Rigpa institutions’ affiliations, practitioners’ registration, medical product quality, and medicinal plant supply chain that directly or indirectly reshape Sowa Rigpa's identification.
Third, the industrialisation of Sowa Rigpa reveals shifting gender patterns, including social change, women empowerment, traditional roles, and health care. In Bhotkhola, Bhotiya women's empowerment and involvement are crucial to increasing the productivity of overall medicinal plants, cross-village/border supply and improving livelihood, which relies on the cultural and religious imagination of Sowa Rigpa. However, at the same time, it has double exploited women to work on the lower nodes of the supply chain of agricultural and forest products, in addition to their traditional caring roles for the family and household. Women are excluded from theoretical medical practices, amulet preparation, and commercial activities such as trading and exporting medicinal plants. However, women practise fragmenting Mendok locally as consumers of medicinal plants and seasonally as long-distance prescribers of Tibetan medication. In monastic and modern Sowa Rigpa education organisations, the enrolment of female students has increased significantly, empowering institutionally trained Nepali women physicians to continue the Sowa Rigpa living tradition.
In sum, this research contributes to understanding the multiple interpretations of trans-national traditional Asian medicine in Nepal Himalaya in the context of the industrialisation of Sowa Rigpa after the 1980s and the booming demands of Nepalese medicinal plants, including how these contemporary issues affect the ground practices and the adaptive behaviours of educational organisations and Bhotiya people to reshape the process.
| Date of Award | 22 Feb 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Jun WANG (Supervisor) |