THE CONSTITUTION AND CONTESTATION OF DARHAD SHAMANS’ POWER IN CONTEMPORARY MONGOLIA The morning after his father’s séance, the shaman’s son donned his father’s shamanic headgear and shamanized with a cooking pot lid (Ulaanbaatar, 29 October 2003). THE CONSTITUTION AND CONTESTATION OF DARHAD SHAMANS’ POWER IN CONTEMPORARY MONGOLIA By Judith Hangartner UNIVERSITY OF BERN Inner Asia Series: Vol. 5 THE CONSTITUTION AND CONTESTATION OF DARHAD SHAMANS’ POWER IN CONTEMPORARY MONGOLIA By Judith Hangartner First published 2011 by GLOBAL ORIENTAL PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP UK Global Oriental is an imprint of Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. www.brill.nl/globaloriental © Judith Hangartner 2011 ISBN 978-1-906876-11-1 All rights reserved. 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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library Set in Garamond 11.5 on 13pt by Dataworks, Chennai, India Printed and bound in The Netherlands CONTENTS List of Illustrations (Maps and Figures) viii List of Photographs viii Acknowledgments x Note on Transcriptions and Translations xii Chapter 1: Introduction: Power of the Margins 1 A rethinking of the socialist past 5 The Darhad as a foil for the twentieth-century Mongolian nation 9 “Shamanism” as heterogeneous discourses 13 Chapter arrangement 15 Chapter 2: Intruding into People’s Lives 19 The intrusion of shamans’ spirits in the guides’ life 25 Rethinking the ethnographic fi eld 26 Exploring the fi eld of travel encounters 31 Notions of “rapport” and “conspiracy” in arrival anecdotes 39 Why a white horse should be devoted to the spirits 48 Chapter 3: Exploring Inspirational Ontologies 51 The emergence of “shaman-ism” as a belief system 55 Armchair anthropologists’ theories on shamanism 57 Shamanism in Mongol Studies 61 A new focus on practice, marginality, and the state 64 The production of explanations during my fi eldwork 66 Ongod as the main spiritual counterpart 70 The ongod’s relations to lus savdag and tenger 77 The absence of the tripartite world concept 82 The ongod as hybrids between “nature” and “culture” 85 Chapter 4: Topographies of Affl iction in Postsocialism 88 Yura’s healing séances in Mörön 91 Contents vi Rising poverty in a postsocialist economy of risk 97 Unemployment and informal work 101 Worsening and bettering of health problems 104 Postsocialist risk and the re-imagination of socialism 107 The resurgence of traditional healing 110 Shamanic diagnoses 113 Commentaries on social disorder 116 Shamans’ practices adapting to historical circumstances 119 Chapter 5: Performance of Inspirational Power 123 Trance and the production of the authenticity of the shaman’s séance 125 Staging the relations between humans and non-humans 130 The enactment of ongod visiting a family 134 The séance of Umban’s daughter Höhrii 139 Shamanizing as ritualized communication 157 The elusive meaning of the chants 160 The staging of power relations 162 Power deriving from the performance of powerlessness 165 Chapter 6: Legitimization by Illness and Ancestor Shamans 170 Failed attempts to shamanize 172 The inspirational exercises of Othüü 175 A further unsuccessful séance 180 Failings despite multiple authorizations 184 Authentication instead of categorization 186 How the young man Tulgat started to shamanize 190 How Batmönh’s ancestors hindered her 198 Shamanic inheritance 204 Authorization by a scholarly genealogy 216 Inheritance as contested fi eld 220 Teacher and disciples legitimizing each other 225 Chapter 7: The shamans’ Economy of Reputation 228 How shamans are belittled in local arenas 230 Traveling south to the capital 235 The institutionalization of the urban scene 238 Associations authorizing shamans 246 Nationalizing shamanism 251 Darhad shamanism as a “national” tradition 254 Criticism of shamans’ remuneration 259 Gendered features 262 Contents vii Enhtuya’s economy of reputation 266 Performance of chiefl y power 276 Marginalizing shamans 284 Chapter 8: Imaginations of Powerful Shamans 288 Mend and Zönög zairan as heroic outcasts 289 Agarin Hairhan as powerless resistance fi ghter 294 Magical competitions between shamans and monks 296 Scholarly perceptions of the Buddhist past 300 The identifi cation of the Darhad with shamans 303 Glorifi cation of “socialist” shamans 307 The “white” shaman Chagdar 312 Chapter 9: Beyond Power and Authenticity 321 Scholarly doubts about shamans’ authenticity 323 Questioning of shamans’ power in the past 330 Bibliography 335 Index 357 MAPS, FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS LIST OF MAPS Map 1. Mongolia xiii Map 2. The Darhad area xiv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. “What are ongod?” 76 Figure 2. Enhtuya’s drawings showing her ongod 78 Figure 3. Umban’s drawing of a shamanic landscape 82 Figure 4. The genealogies of the Mongolian Tsagaan Huular clan shamans 207 Figure 5. Cluster of Darhad shamans 210 LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS 1. Chinbat by the river Tengis 21 2. Davaanyam, somewhere on the way 22 3. Vanchii on the way to his hay fi elds 23 4. Buyanölzii, during a break on one of our journeys 24 5. Buyanölzii’s family leaving their summer camp 29 6. On the pass of the Hor’dol Sar’dag range 30 7. The earlier administration building of Renchinlhümbe 34 8. The shaman Davaajav talking with the author 38 9. Davaajav studying the map of his homeland 39 10. The shaman Baljir with his family 42 11. Ulambayar, Uranbayar, Otgontsetseg and their brother Baaska 49 12. The shaman Goostoi and his niece Handai 67 13. The shaman Umban venerating the ongod Javartin Eej 72 14. The shaman Umban worshipping his mother-ongod 75 Maps, Figures and Photographs ix 15. The shaman Enhtuya with her home ongod 77 16. The shaman Yura just before starting her séance 93 17. The shaman Moko presenting a big vulture 119 18. A picture requested by an ongod 128 19. The shaman Umban with his family 135 20. The shaman Höhrii and her assistant Oyuna at Lake Hövsgöl 140 21. Umban and his daughter Höhrii posing in their suits of armor 169 22. The shaman Baljir’s headdress 170 23. Othüü and her mother Avid 177 24. The shaman Badrah examining his divining mirror 181 25. The shaman Tulgat 193 26. Batmönh with her grandson 199 27. Marx looking down on Lenin and Sühbaatar 201 28. The shaman Mönhöö 202 29. The shamans Nergüi and Baldandorj 211 30. The shaman “Mich”baatar with his wife and son 224 31. A storm is coming up over the Shishget depression 226 32. The shaman Batbayar while performing on Lake Hövsgöl 242 33. Enhtuya is interviewed in her tepee by Lake Hövsgöl 267 34. Mongolian tourists visiting Enhtuya 268 35. Enhtuya’s camp on Lake Hövsgöl during the tourist season 272 36. The Shaman Byambadorj during the New Year ceremony 283 37. The hunter Renchindavaa 292 38. The ongod of the shaman Chagdar zairan 314 39. Enhtuya, her husband Düjii, and her French disciple Corine 328 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is a reworked version of my PhD thesis. The study was facilitated by a one-year doctoral fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and a position as a teaching assistant at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland. My gratitude fi rst goes to my PhD supervisors, Heinzpeter Znoj and Hans-Rudolf Wicker, for their advice, criticism, and encour- agement. Heinzpeter Znoj introduced me to a wide range of theoretical perspectives on shamanism during my undergraduate studies, which gave me a solid base on which to build my disserta- tion. With her skeptical stance against the concept of shamanism, Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz inspired me to formulate one of my cen- tral approaches. I thank my colleagues of our institute’s doctoral seminar as well as the participants of the Swiss Graduate School in Anthropology for their comments on earlier drafts of chapters and the many discussions we had outside the seminar room. In particular, I appreciated the exchange with Anna Bally and her careful consid- erations of my ideas. Faye Ginsburg, who was visiting the Graduate School, presented me with a term that became an important con- cept within my thesis. I was able to profi t much from the colleagues who have conducted their studies on shamanism in Mongolia or in neighboring fi elds; I thank Manduhai Buyandelgeriyn, Brian Donahoe, Ippei Shimamura, Laetitia Merli, Bumochir Dulam, and Zeljko Jokic. The unremitting help of my friend Rudolf Trapp was invaluable. I am indebted to Steven Parham for his corrections of the draft. I thank my brother, Gilbert Hangartner, for the layout and computer support. In Mongolia, I benefi ted from the generous support of L. Chuluunbaatar, the head of the School for Mongol Studies Acknowledgments xi at the National University in Ulaanbaatar. For their insightful information, I am grateful to Udo Barkmann of the School for Mongol studies, to the historian O. Pürev, and to O. Sühbaatar from the Academy of Chinggis Khaan. I am much obliged to D. Oyundelger, his wife Goyotsetseg, his sister Solongo and the whole family for their endeavors in settling my administrative problems and for the friendship developing over the many years since we met during my fi rst stay in Mongolia in 1996. My greatest gratitude goes to the people I lived and worked with in the Shishget depression between 2002 and 2004. My work was fully dependent on their generosity in sharing their knowledge and thoughts with me and granting me insight into their lives.