Living Without the Dead

...... Living without the DeaD ......

...... Living without the DeaD Loss anD ReDemption in a JungLe Cosmos ......

Piers Vitebsky

the UniVersity of ChiCago Press

Chicago and London Piers Vitebsky is Emeritus Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, England. He is also professor at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway, as well as honorary professor at the M. K. Ammosov North- Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, Siberia, Russia. Further photos, films, and linguistic documentation can be found at http://www.piersvitebsky.org.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2017 by Piers Vitebsky All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5

isbn-1 3: 978-0- 226- 85777- 0 (cloth) isbn-1 3: 978-0- 226- 47562- 2 (paper) isbn-1 3: 978-0- 226- 40787- 6 (e-book) Doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226407876.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Vitebsky, Piers, author. Title: Living without the dead : loss and redemption in a jungle cosmos / Piers Vitebsky. Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCn 2016058030 | isbn 9780226857770 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226475622 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226407876 (e-book) Subjects: LCsh: Savara (Indic people)—Funeral customs and rites. | Spiritualism—India. | Shamanism—India. Classification: LCC Ds432.s37 V58 2017 | DDC 305.8959/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn .loc .gov /20 16058030

♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). To my Sora friends, may their ancestors and descendants not lose each other through religious conflict; to all the generations of my own family; and to the inventors of portable voice recorders, who have made it so much more possible to know other worlds . . . so that what humans have done should not fade with time (ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται) heroDotUs, Histories (meaning “Researches,” the first surviving work of anthropology, ca. 430 BC) 1.1

There are none now in Phoenicia, that lament the death of Adonis; nor any in Libya, Creta, Thessalia, or elsewhere, that ask counsaile or helpe from Jupiter. The great god Pan hath broken his pipes. sir WaLter raLeigh, The History of the World (London, 1614), bk. 1, chap. 6, para. viii, p. 96

All over the world we can sense . . . the Great God Pan breaking his pipes; and it is now open to us, as it was scarcely open to Raleigh, to see this process as the essence of human history . . . the brutal natural selection of belief systems. john DUnn (1979: 59)

I don’t care about debts or illness, I’d be sad to be a Christian. Lokami, Sora shamaness, 2005 (author’s field notes 62.53)