Navel of the Demoness : Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in ...

86 the navel of the demoness
If we reexamine the matter ...as King Songtsen Gampo says, ‘‘Those
who are drawn to wickedness are more numerous than those who
are drawn to good; well-born people do noble deeds; for the crimes
we have committed we lay the blame on others; for fear that we
ourselves might go hungry we turn our fathers out.’’ So he says,
and leaders such as you must also think this. (pt. 2, ll. 51–57)
The quotation—whose provenance I have not been able to identify—is as
damning an assessment as might be found of the vulnerability of the Shöyul’s
fragile alliance to the self-interested action of its members. ‘‘They are all,’’ we
are later assured, ‘‘wicked deceivers.’’
In spite of their various hardships, however, the Tepas eventually gained
the upper hand. Whatever may have been the historical outcome of these hostilities,
the Complaint gives Te the final credit for the humbling of Tshug:
The Tshugwas, like poisonous snakes, have harmed all the lords and
servants of Serib; the Tepas, like the great khyung in the sky, have
destroyed the poisonous snake at a stroke. (pt. 2, ll. 87–90)
This is the third occasion—if we exclude the reference to the Tepas’ taking
refuge in ‘‘the Cliff Caves of the Birds’’—on which the Tepas are explicitly
assimilated to vultures or the mythical eagle called khyung. In this case, the
image of the khyung is developed more powerfully to accord with the mythology
and iconography of this creature by changing the Tshugwas from sparrows
(which are contrasted with vultures) to snakes, which khyung characteristically
kill and devour.
The Ngolak Pasture Dispute with Gelung
The period covered by the Complaint may have represented an uncommonly
low point in Te’s relations with its neighbours—particularly Tshug—but
conflicts with the surrounding communities continued to arise from time to
time. The two commonest causes of disputes between neighbouring villages
in Mustang are on the one hand shared irrigation sources and on the other
usufruct of pastures. Since the water for Te’s fields is drawn from sources that
are not used or claimed by any other settlements, it has been spared this
problem (unlike, say, Gyaga and Tsele, whose common stream has been a
cause of recurrent and sometimes violent argument). Claims to pastureland,
by contrast, have not always been undisputed. The territory of Te, as we have
seen, adjoins that of six other communities in Mustang: Dzong, Putra, Taye,