32 Spring 2008 EBHR EUROPEAN BULLETIN OF HIMALAYAN RESEARCH European Bulletin of Himalayan Research The European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (EBHR) was founded by the late Richard Burghart in 1991 and has appeared twice yearly ever since. It is a product of collaboration and edited on a rotating basis between France (CNRS), Germany (South Asia Institute) and the UK (SOAS). Since January 2006 onwards the French editorship has been run as a collective, presently including Pascale Dollfus, András Höfer, Marie Lecomte-Tilouine, Boyd Michailowsky, Philippe Ramirez, Blandine Ripert, and Anne de Sales. We take the Himalayas to mean, the Karakoram, Hindukush, Ladakh, southern Tibet, Kashmir, north-west India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and northeast India. The subjects we cover range from geography and economics to anthropology, sociology, philology, history, art history, and history of religions. In addition to scholarly articles, we publish book reviews, reports on research projects, information on Himalayan archives, news of forthcoming conferences, and funding opportunities. Manuscripts submitted are subject to a process of peer-review. Address for correspondence and submissions : EBHR, CNRS UPR 299 7 rue Guy Môquet 94801 Villejuif Cedex, France [email protected] fax: (33) 01 49 58 37 38 For subscription details and back issues (>3 years) http://www.digitalhimalaya.com/ebhr Contributing editors: Martin Gaenszle, Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde Uni-Campus AAKh, Hof 2.1, Spitalgasse 2-4, A-1090 Wien, Austria [email protected] András Höfer, Elvira Graner South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University Im Neuenheimer Feld 330, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany Michael Hutt, David Gellner, Ben Campbell School of Oriental and African Studies Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H oXG, U.K. [email protected] Mark Turin Himalayan Languages Project, Silodam 355 1013 AW Amsterdam, Netherlands [email protected] English editing: Bernadette Sellers, CNRS UPR 299 The Bulletin is published from Kathmandu in collaboration with Social Science Baha (http://www.soscbaha.org) EBHR 32 Spring 2008 IN MEMORIAM A Tribute to Dr. Karen Lundström-Baudais 8 by Andrea Nightingale ARTICLES Discovering Boro-Garo 14 History of an analytical and descriptive linguistic category François Jacquesson Matriliny, Reproductive Health, and Reproductive Rights 50 Tanka Subba The Notion of Virginity in South Asia and its Impact on Religious 66 Practices and Oral Literature Emilie Arrago-Boruah Plight of the igus: notes on shamanism among the Idu Mishmis of 84 Arunachal Pradesh, India Sarit Chaudhuri The Kinship Terminology of the Rongmei Nagas 109 Pascal Bouchery and Kiudamliu Gangmei Tourism Development in Northeast India: 143 Changing Recreational Demand, Developmental Challenges and Issues associated with Sustainability Prasanta Bhattacharya CORRESPONDENCE, ANNOUNCEMENTS REPORTS 164 BOOK REVIEWS Peter Marczell: Alexander Csoma de Kőrös 166 John Bray 4 EDITORIAL Northeast India has been chosen as the theme for this new issue of EBHR. This part of the Himalayas had hardly ever been covered by the Bulletin. One of the main reasons for this is that foreigners were denied access to the region until 1995. Restrictions have now been largely lifted and never as now has there been such intense research activity in Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. From all angles, this area is culturally a very complex one, even more so than those we are familiar with further to the west. Thus, despite the work undertaken by our Indian colleagues over the last forty years, a great deal of research is needed to at least understand the basic anthropological and environmental setting surrounding the Brahmaputra Valley. In this issue, we have collected contributions in equal proportions from both Indian and European authors. We hope they will give a fair idea of the type of research presently being done in the Northeast. And we also hope these works will find an echo among specialists of other Himalayan regions, and that they will stir new callings among younger scholars. As you might have noticed, this issue has been published with some delay. We beg for the leniency of our subscribers. We shall make all efforts to fill the gap, possibly by offering thicker issues in the near future. Marie Lecomte-Tilouine is now preparing a promising n°33 issue on Social Changes in Nepal during the People's War. Finally, we regret to say that the Bulletin has recently been suffering from a relative lack of proposals. Whatever the reasons, we would like to encourage all of you to take up your pens and submit articles, as well as to advertise the EBHR. Book reviews would particularly be appreciated. Similarly, let us know if you have any ideas about special issues on your favorite topics of research, as well as about authors who might contribute to such issues. Philippe Ramirez Notes on contributors Emilie Arrago-Boruah is PhD candidate. After studying philosophy in Sorbonne, she has joined EHESS in Paris as a student of social anthropology. Since 2002, she has conducted many fieldworks in Assam and is currently working on religious anthropology, history and vernacular literature related to the cult of a local goddess. Her present research is financed by the CNRS under a programme on North-East India. In addition, she is preparing a manual of Assamese language. Prasanta Bhattacharya is a lecturer in Dept. of Geography, Gauhati University and guest faculty of tourism in North Eastern Regional Institute of Management, Guwahati. He has done pioneering work in the field of tourism studies in Assam (Tourism in Assam: trend and potentialities. Guwahati: Bani Mandir, 2004). [email protected] Pascal Bouchery is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Poitiers, where he teaches Political Anthropology and Environmental Anthropology. He has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Paris X. He is currently conducting fieldwork in Northeast India, where he first travelled in 1979 and 1980. More specifically he is carrying out comparative research into kinship and is also involved in a project to help preserve the Apatani language of Arunachal Pradesh. Sarit Chaudhury teaches anthropology in Arunachal University, Itanagar. Since 1990 he has been doing research among the tribes of Northeast India and has jointly edited three books. Currently he is working in the field of tribal art, traditional institutions and culture change in Arunachal Pradesh. Kiudamliu Gangmei is working as Operations Manager for KES College Regional Office in Delhi. Her command of the Rongmei language has benefited from her father’s work as a translator of books (gospel literature) and religious chants from English to Rongmei. François Jacquesson is a researcher in linguistics within the French CNRS. See his page at http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/membres/jacquesson.htm He has been working in Northeast India since 1995, especially on eastern Boro- Garo languages. He has published a description of the Deori language. He is also interested in anthropology and history. Tanka B Subba is a Professor of Social Anthropology at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. He has published several books on the anthropology of Darjeeling, Sikkim, Meghalaya and the Nepalis in the Northeast, including among others: Dynamics of a Hill Society (1989), Religion and Society in the Himalayas (1995) and The Anthropology of North-East India (2005). IN MEMORIAM A Tribute to Dr. Karen Lundström-Baudais: Paleo- ethnobotanist, ethnographer and Western Nepal specialist by Andrea Nightingale, University of Edinburgh & Dominique Baudais Dr. Karen Lundström-Baudais (1949-2006) was a woman with amazing energy and life force who fell in love with Nepal and devoted a significant portion of her intellectual efforts to understanding the culture, rituals and agricultural processes there. Yet despite the time and energy she invested into western Nepal, very little of her work is published. She ended a two and a half year battle with cancer in January 2006, radically cutting short her long-term vision of developing the Nepal work further. As a result, most of her data remains unpublished and her contribution to the field is not as well known, as it should be. Her meticulous field notes contain a wealth of information that could be developed into a series of articles on agriculture, caste, ritual and everyday life in Jumla. Karen originally trained as a biologist in the United States and then as an archaeo-botanist in France. She held a position at CNRS (UMR 6565) in the Chrono-ecology laboratory at University of Besançon from 1986 until 2006. Prior to taking up that appointment, she travelled to Nepal in 1983 with her husband, Dominique Baudais, visiting the Langtang region and trekking along the ancient trade routes between Pokhara and Kathmandu, visiting places that even today are rarely visited by non-Nepalese. During their next visit to Nepal in 1985 they travelled to Jumla, with the intention of trekking through Dolpo. On the way, they found the Matwali Chhetri caste village of Bata, three hours’ walk from Jumla bazaar in the Chaudhabisa river valley (Jumla Karnali region). Little did they or the people of Bata know that this was the beginning of a twenty-one year relationship that was to make a significant mark on all their lives. Karen’s professional work centred on the analysis of grain found on archaeological sites, specialising on the Neolithic, Bronze and Middle Ages in Europe. Her specialty was cereal grains, wheat, barley, millet, and oats. Millet in particular was rarely studied, yet was second only to wheat and barley as an important cereal crop in pre-historic Europe. It was gradually replaced by the introduction of maize starting in the 16th century and now has almost completely disappeared from European diets, yet it remains important in other parts of the world. Karen was a pioneer in developing techniques for interpreting grain processing mounds and molecular transformations of cereals in pre-historic Europe, mainly in the Alps and the surrounding region in France.