43.
“Remarkably Good Theater”
American anthropologist John T. Hitchcock spent four years in Nepal studying shamanism. He provides a detailed and lively report of a shaman’s performance, which calls attention to its theatrical nature. Hitchcock found people consulting the shaman as a healer and as an oracle in a barn. He also found magic arrows.
Sakrante, the shaman, turned and looked at me, and in the dim fire-light his eyes were black and staring. Suddenly, still squatting, he began hopping toward me. With each jump the bells on his leather jacket jangled and clattered, and in the gloom behind him, I could hear his assistant beating steadily on the drum. A final noisy hop and he had reached me and had grabbed my shoulders in both hands. Thrusting his face close to mine, he began snuffling along my neck. I felt the feathers from his head-dress on my cheeks. He paused a moment, grunting and breathing loudly; then quickly, with the steely strength of a blacksmith’s arms and hands, he twisted my torso to have a look at my back; and after snuffling along it, he twisted me back again, facing him. He was staring intently at my left shoulder. Sweat was running down his cheeks and his charcoal-smeared eyes were opening wider and wider.
“Ho!” he bellowed and lunged at my shoulder with the point of his drumstick. I felt a sharp pain as he jabbed and pressed the point deeply into my shoulder. Holding the stick tight against me he placed the palm of his other hand over the end of the stick, and began sucking with immense effort on the back of his hand. His lips made loud smacking noises and his rapid drawn-in breaths became muffled growls in his throat. The drum pounded on insistently, and gradually Sakrante began sucking in time with its rhythm. Making a final, deeper thrust, he quickly drew away and still squatting, hopped backwards. To avoid the fire pit he lurched sideways and fell to the ground. There was a raucous clatter of bells and tins. “Water! Water!” he yelled as he rose to his knees and the host who sat near the fire handed him a brass vessel. Tilting his head back he poured a stream of water into his mouth. Bulging his cheeks he swished it about and gestured impatiently toward the host’s son. The young man held a brass vessel toward him. With a vomiting spasm that ended in a long groan, Sakrante emptied his mouth. The liquid was viscous and bloody. Fearfully the young man covered the vessel with a corner of his blanket. He would bury the contents—an abhorent substance shot into me by an evil spirit’s magic arrow—in one of the rocky places his family used as a latrine.
When Sakrante stared at me at the close of his all-night séance I felt a twinge of genuine apprehension. How possible it then seemed that something was in my shoulder and how real its ugliness and danger! And how confidently relaxed I had felt when he finished treating me, for it was easy that night to accept his power to cleanse and to heal.
Both my apprehension and my confidence derived from the skill of an accomplished actor; and were released in me by the same suspension of disbelief that I experience during a good play or dramatic film. Sakrante’s acting and his all-night “play” belong to an ancient Himalayan shamanistic tradition, handed down for countless generations, and making a connection so far as I now can tell, between him and shamans who once performed for reindeer-herders on the frigid Siberian tundra. It may well be that this tradition is—in anything like its old Siberian vitality—only to be found today where I experienced it, on the southerly slopes of the immense Dhaulagiri massif.
I do not think it does Sakrante or his shamanistic tradition a disservice to speak of it as remarkably good theater. I know Sakrante thought of himself as a performer, a better performer than other shamans. He paid careful attention to stage effects and he took pride in his costuming and music. He knew that during the course of his evening’s work, he would transform himself from the person everyone knew as one of the valley’s Untouchable blacksmiths into a Culture Hero who lived during the First Age of the World: Rama himself, the very First Shaman. He also knew (whatever else he may have believed) that by his acting, and his use of traditional props, he would make real—more real than neighboring shamans—the world of spirits whose help he would require and whose powers he would test.
The quick winter darkness had fallen when he began his séance that night. Up and down the valley, as was their custom, people had barred their doors and had gathered around their flickering firepits to chat for a while and have a last pipe before rolling up in their thick wool blankets.
Sakrante’s stage was a small section, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet, in the center of a long cattle shed, with walls and roof made of bamboo matting. At one end a row of cattle were tethered, and at the other, a row of buffaloes.
Sakrante had been called by a young man and his wife, members of a trading group, who wished for general protection. They were suffering from no particular ills, were engaged in no specially intense competition or quarrel. Yet they were uneasy, perhaps because nothing lately had gone very wrong. As a precaution they wanted Sakrante to foretell the future, to pry out any witch-evil that might be lurking and discover any malalignment of their stars.
Sakrante and his nephew, a young man who had become his pupil and always carried his heavy wicker basket of gear, had come to the cattle shed just at sundown and had been well fed. One of the rewards of being a shaman was such a meal, a brass tray heaped with rice, a little bowl of heavily spiced chicken and butter, and another little bowl of home-distilled liquor. By the time he and his nephew had finished eating, family members from nearby houses in the small hamlet had begun crowding into the cattle shed. They were squeezed together, wrapped in blankets and formed a semi-circle opposite Sakrante, who had seated himself before a small fire. They bantered and chatted, and drew deeply on hand pipes that were passed back and forth; but all were aware of Sakrante and knew that he was about to begin. To some extent he already had been removed from his everyday self. For after the meal the host had purified the place where he was now sitting by washing it with a mixture of cowdung, mud and water—the usual way of setting a place aside for a special, and often sacred purpose. . . .
In the early portion of the séance the dramatic theme most heavily stressed is danger from the other world—though at the same time that the danger is being made more real, so is Sakrante’s power, for he is showing also how he can control it. Drumming and singing and calling out the names of many spirits, as Sakrante does during a séance, is like opening a door to the other world. The first to come is the tutelary deity, followed by other spirits Sakrante calls. But at the same time uncalled spirits may crowd in. Some of them are not associated with any particular place in the vicinity, but others are known to live nearby, in a waterfall, a spring, a rock, or a part of the forest. All are potentially dangerous and can “strike” the shaman, his client, and the audience. One of the methods used for “striking” is a magic arrow that pierces the skin and leaves a festering head like the one Sakrante removed from my shoulder. . . .
Some hostile and uncontrolled spirits are apt to enter the cattle shed, and even more frightening, some person present—a close and apparently friendly neighbor or relative—may be a witch, whose mere glance can cause illness and other misfortunes. To enable himself to see the witch, as well as any spirits who may have wormed their way into the enclosure, Sakrante says a spell over some pieces of charcoal as he crumbles them in his hand. Using the dust he smears his eyelids. In the near darkness this makes his eye sockets seem even deeper set and his dark eyes still more dark and large. By doing this Sakrante now can see, even though his audience can’t, any witch that may be present or any lurking spirit. As he carefully scans the shed and the audience, he provides protection for himself by smearing each shoulder and each knee and then rubs a vertical thumbmark of charcoal on his forehead. To protect the audience and his client he gets up and goes about making a similar mark on each forehead, including those of the children. These marks protect but do not give supernormal sight. . . .
His drum has been propped by the fire so as to warm the head and make it taut. He picks it up, together with his drumstick, says a spell over both, bows his head to the drum, bangs it a few times, testing the timbre. Then he holds it before his face and makes a number of respectful bows to each section of the audience. He is ready to begin singing.
His song, to which he drums rhythmically and with constantly varying dynamics, stresses further the theme of protection. For what he sings is a spell to make helpless any fearsome spirits. In the song they are named one by one and by magic means are “tied up”—though the word here means more like what we mean when we say “tie up in knots.” The song is long, the names many, and for the audience the recital brings to mind the hosts of dangerous beings that are hovering all about. . . .
To bring his tutelary spirit and other spirits to him and get them to possess him, he begins drumming and singing another spell. During the long spell, spirits begin to appear. Sakrante says they come upside down, with their feet toward the roof. Eventually they swarm onto his body and then enter it, some through his mouth, ears, leg and arm joints—but mostly through his nose, where they give off an odor that he says is slightly excremental. Possession occurs when one of them enters his heart. He sees a flash of fire and feels drunk.
The audience knows what is happening because Sakrante begins to drum more rapidly. Then his drumming gets slower and slower, as if he could only move his hand with a tremendous effort. The drumming stops and now instead of singing he forces air loudly through his lips, shouts unintelligible syllables, and groans. As the possession deepens, he snaps the drum out at arm’s length and one hears the jangle of the ring fastenings on the handles and the tinkle of a little bell that is fastened inside. Suddenly Sakrante falls over on the ground, jerking his arms, head and legs spasmodically. A moment later he is up and has begun to dance drunkenly about the fire, using the well-known shaman’s dance beat. Still dancing he leans down and in his teeth picks up the iron tripod beside the fire pit and tosses it toward a part of the audience who rapidly pull themselves out of the way. Lurching to his stool, he sits down on it. The drumming ceases. He merely quivers. The only sound is the tense jingling of the drum’s bell and handle links.
The audience knows that this possession is for any one of them who wishes to know the future. Covered with his blanket, the son of the host’s brother creeps forward and places a folded piece of birchbark between Sakrante’s toes. Sakrante resumes his drumming, more smoothly and steadily now, and then still drumming and using a kind of recitative, he begins chanting the words of the spirit who is possessing him. As he begins uttering the spirit’s words, the person addressed, as well as older members of the audience, call out greetings. They address the spirit respectfully using the word “God,” but the spirit does not reply in kind. To emphasize the immense superiority of its insight compared to an ordinary human’s, it replies, “O you, donkeys, listen well!” And then it begins to foretell the future for the person who has placed the birchbark, but in a very oblique way. Regarding time, for instance, it reports: “In the month of June, or if I am mistaken, in the month of July or August.” It is equally imprecise about the nature of the coming event, though it is evil of some kind, may affect humans or animals, and looms from the direction of the young man’s in-laws. When Sakrante stops speaking, he gradually lowers the drum, so that it rests between his legs. Although he still is trembling, the initial state of possession is over and he is ready to answer questions about what the spirit has said. . . .
During the subsequent part of the evening, or if necessary during a second and even third all-night session, shamans in this part of Nepal may perform a number of different rituals, all of them involving long story-songs. The most common ritual is performed to remove effects of witch-power. Others change a harmful astrological configuration, bring back a strayed portion of the soul, propitiate the Forest Spirit, or frighten and drive away the troublesome spirit of a dead child. . . .
The last ritual that evening was devoted to extraction of evil substances and Sakrante performed it as I have described, not only for me but for the host and his wife and a number of others who were present. During this final performance, a hint of dawn light could be glimpsed through the crack over the cattle shed door; and when at last he had finished, Sakrante sat exhausted on his stool, his drum finally still.
I remember that even after Sakrante had removed his costume, slowly and carefully putting each item away in the wicker basket, the spell cast by his drumming and singing remained on us all. Not until a section of bamboo matting had been rolled aside and we had filed out to stretch ourselves in the warmth of the rising sun, did the lingering awareness of this man, not as blacksmith but as powerful First Shaman, begin to dissolve and fade. I recall how much the effect was like leaving a city theater, with the same momentary sense of duality—of a clash between the vivid footlight world, like Sakrante’s world of unseen spirits, and the newly impinging sidewalk world of street lights and neon. My confusion that morning between the fire light and sun light is perhaps my best tribute to Sakrante’s artistry and its dramatic embodiment of a mountain tradition.