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

108 the navel of the demoness
In either case, the name Yul is derived by opposition to the Dzong, whether
as the village near the lord’s castle or the valley below the hill; but it is
likely that when the Tepas first began to use the name to designate the settlement
taking shape on the south side of the Dangdagyung, they framed it in
imaginary inverted commas.
Unlike the Dzong, the Yul is not a single massive block but a far more
heterogeneous accretion of houses. The entire group is subdivided into the
following five named areas.
Yangba Thewa
Yangba Cangba
Sumdu
Töpa
Madang
These five units and the Dzong also form the basis of a fourfold sectoral organisation
of the entire community that I shall explore in more detail. All these
areas are built in essentially the same style, but Sumdu is the most complex.
Gutschow again:
In the neighbouring [to Dzong] cluster of Sumdu the situation is
even more extreme. Within a cluster of forty to thirty metres, comprising
25 built entities, only 25 square metres of skylights are
equal to not more than two per cent. If the ratio between built space
and openness serves as the most convincing factor that defines a
cluster, those of Dzong and Sumdu have to be counted among
the densest known in the history of architecture (1996: 51).
Farmland, Wilderness, and Peripheral Dwellings
Te is the butt of a revealing joke that is current in Manang, the district immediately
to the east of Mustang: the Tepas are mildly saddened by the death
of a close relative, but are grieved to tears by the collapse of a wall. One of the
most striking features about Te is the degree to which it is constructed. Quite
apart from the complex and unusual architecture of the habitations themselves,
the effort that has gone into the building and maintenance of field
terraces, irrigation canals, threshing yards, and retaining walls is simply staggering.
A feature of the irrigation system that is, I believe, unique in Mustang
is the connection of certain areas of fields to arterial canals by subterranean
aqueducts (chigung, < Tib. chu khung or ’chu khung, ‘‘water tunnel’’ or ‘‘irri-