The illness is the other people : cross representations and ritual management of alterity and illness among the Kulung (Nepal)

Overview & Synopsis

This article focuses on the presence of the Other in rituals among the Kulung, a small tibeto-burmese group living in the Nepalese Himalayas. These figures of the Other are those of errant and predatory spirits, emanations of the dangerous otherness of other groups. The presentation of these spirits reveal the existence of two sets: spirits from dead belonging to other Kirant groups, whose ritual is done in "ritual language", and spirits from Indo-Nepalese deaths, whose rituals are performed in Nepali. We show how the mode of pacification of these spirits betrays the relationship that the Kulung maintain with the groups of which these spirits are said to emanate. In conclusion, attention is paid to the importance of diviners, another form of presence of others in the ritual, since they can belong to any group, in the emergence of a form of regional religiosity.