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Honey bee publish details |
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Written by Karma Ura |
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Nature and the Sacred: Conservation through Reverence |
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Environmental awareness can manifest itself in scientific, political and cultural terms. Beliefs and practices in Bhutan point to a management of the environment frequently linked to the invocations of deities and spirits occurring throughout the country. This provides a notable spiritual motivation to protect certain features of the landscape from everyday uses. Modern environmental policies could cultivate the principles inherent in such practices to continue protecting the environment and local cultures.
Divine Territories
Many of the geosensitive areas of Bhutan have been traditionally ascribed, beyond the claims of human ownership, to beings other than plants, animals or humans. These are immortal beings like Nasdag, Zhidag and Yulha, immortal owners or landlords, while successive generations of communities are merely travellers passing through their territory. The perspective that some part of the environment, such as sacred sites, cliffs and lakes, are not accessible as resources to be exploited, displays a deep environmental consciousness. It is part of a different classification paradigm, wherein not every part of geography and natural resources is appropriated for human use.
This has significant biodiversity implications. It implies that these are the areas of uninterrupted evolution of microbes, animals, insects, plants, flowers and trees. Ecologically strategic sites like the confluence of rivers and lakes are identified as the particular domains of various deities and it is no accident that these sensitive sites are places where river life thrives.
Rocks and cliffs, abode of brag tsan (the cliff deity), are typically roosting places for birds, because they are inaccessible to predators and are far away from noise and other pollutions. They are home to rock bees, a vital indicator of the environmental health of the place. The citadels of deities, in the form of sacred groves, often perform the function of wind blockade, standing as protective gateways to inhabited valleys. Most of them are located at the headwaters of springs and rivers. Thanks to a lack of human interference, these are places of undisturbed patches of biodiversity, manifesting a collective attempt at maintaining a protected habitat in the midst of human settlements.
Mountains, too, are the citadels of many great beings like Nasdag (Lord of the Soil or Earth) and Zhidag (Lord of the Settlement). They are primeval places representing natural ecology, perhaps holding in their fold unknown vital crops and seeds. Only passing herders have viewed them from close quarters. As human pressure on the plains and floors of valleys increases, more wildlife will probably flee and adapt to these citadel-sanctuaries in an evolutionary move.
The Role of Invocation and Myth
The prevailing purification, oblation-offerings, and invocation rites, are a synthesis of Buddhism and the religion preceding it, Bon. In an interesting instance, on the occasion celebrating a local deity, Wasidrag Phola, in Bumthang, an exclusive female folk theatre called Ashi Lhamo is replayed every year. The ladies of the village return from Tisila peak in one case and Purshel in another, after collecting a rare flower – nobelia – in September.
Archetypal tales abound of how genetic material is enriched with deity worship. Deities are believed to have mated with humans, in order to acquire superior clan lineages. Other aspects of the worship of deities led to an improvement in livestock breeds. For instance, the necessity of cockerels for sacrificial purposes encourages the preservation of the genetic diversity of poultry birds. Other popular archetypal tales tell of water-bulls emerging from lakes to mate with domesticated cattle and yaks. The mythical water-bulls were simply wild oxen, widely endemic to Bhutan. The ensuing inter-breeding would have led to a new level of vigour and productivity among the livestock population.
The calender of invocations and offerings represents the human community’s attempt to preserve a sense of sacredness about nature. An important part of such rites consists of the members of the community actually visiting the local deities’ citadels and reaffirming their relationships with the environment.
Tales that Teach
Worship of the deities is also closely associated with the critical supply of agricultural resources like irrigation water and rain. A popular story brings out the point. There was inter-communal rivalry between two communities to please the deity Dungnagchen and make him favour an inequitable allocation of irrigation water coming down from the mountain ranges. The Wangphel community wanted to seize a greater share of irrigation water and sacrificed a horse, breaking norms of equity and propitiation ceremony. This was followed by a massive landslide that buried the distributory irrigation channel to Wangphel. As an allegory, one may draw several interpretations from this tale, including one of resolution of conflicts in the uses of collective resources, which the deity personifies.
There are also tales of the deities’ power to avenge themselves if the codes of reverence are broken. Defilement (drip) and pollution are personified by the five mistresses of defilement and pollution (drip dag nag mo nga). They probably represent the ‘revenge’ of the environment on people who pollute and poison media such as air, water, forest and land. When the environment is disturbed, these spirits are believed to unleash storms of epidemics (nad kyi bu yag) and cause diseases to people who pollute. In another instance, the sacred place considered as the citadel of Mongleng in Tashigang, it is believed, cannot be cultivated without repercussions. Legend tells of three persons who tried to clear the land going mad at the end. There are also anecdotes of people going missing for a week or so. Mongleng and other deities are said to take them to a parallel world where they were invisible to human sight.
Water spirits, on the other hand, are viewed as less settled and more vulnerable to human interference. They are portrayed as easily threatened by pollution and prone to running away on being contaminated. The departure of a tsho man mo (lake woman) is signified by a drop in the water level of the lake. The ritual of raising the water level in springs, ponds and lakes by the immersion of substances and medicines appears to symbolise an attempt to restore the harmony in nature. A family that hosts tsho man mo on her journey prospers and becomes rich. There are several narratives about this kind of relationship, underlining the fact that the spirit of the lake is a source of steady wealth: just as availability of water for farming is. Harm to any lu and sadag causes diseases, particularly ulcers and abscesses. This rationalisation probably reflects the need to keep the environment, especially drinking water and the premises around it, safe and clean.
The Future of the Past
However, the invisible power that these deities wield is no longer inviolate. Citadels of deities, like crags, groves and cliffs, have had to make way for roads and other installations beneficial to humans. The perspective of people has changed as a consequence, too. New generations who grow away from the old ways of the communities, do not know enough, nor believe strongly in the invocation rites.
Disconnected from folk traditions, people may no longer possess any deeply felt notions of the sacred character of places. Moreover, the thrust on scientific education makes people believe in such notions less and less. Places are not known in association with local divinities, but merely in terms of agro-ecological and cartographic characteristics, and an assessment of their potential for economic exploitation.
Legislative measures to protect citadels of deities and spirits from business, industrial, residential and urban encroachments could be one way of ensuring their integrity. With modernisation having weakened internalised cultural and spiritual restraints, the only alternative course left to us might be externalised legislative and administrative measures. |
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee, 13(3): 2, 3 & 21, 2002 |
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