Necessary Questions of Chö: Uses and Abuses of Religion in Dondrup Gyel’s “Tulku”

“Why do you ask questions of roots and branches instead of the necessary questions of chö (Tib. chos)?” asks a character in Tibetan author Dondrup Gyel’s (don rgrub rgyal) controversial 1980 short story, “Tulku” (sprul sku). The Tibetan term chö can be translated in many ways, including to mean ‘the Buddhist teachings,’ ‘religion’ more generally, or even ‘the nature of reality.’ In “Tulku,” however, what chö means is not at all clear, and the various characters claim authority to determine what is legitimate chö. In the story, a Tibetan village is visited by a mysterious stranger claiming to be a tulku—a reincarnated religious leader— but who is actually a fraud. Most scholars have interpreted “Tulku” as a critique of traditional Tibetan religious devotion, and as a call by Gyel for Tibetans to modernize. This paper, however, proposes a new reading of “Tulku.” It suggests that Gyel pairs overt criticism of the corrupt tulku with a subtler critique of the Chinese government’s policy towards Tibetan Buddhism. It argues for such a reading by tracking how the word chö is used in “Tulku.” It shows that Gyel places the word not in the mouths of the Tibetan villagers, but rather in the mouths of the fraudulent tulku and the representatives of the Communist Party. Both thus use chö in order to appeal to the Tibetan villagers, claim power for themselves, and exclude the opposing party. “Tulku” thereby creates parallels between the ways in which the Tulku and the Party use chö to appeal to and manipulate the Tibetan villagers. On this reading, “Tulku” highlights the way chö can be weaponized by both traditional religious authorities and Communist party ideology, and suggests that in this modern period, any claimant to chö must be treated with caution and skepticism.

This Is the End: Earthquake Narratives and Buddhist Prophesies of Decline

“This Is the End” presents findings from research in which the authors asked survivors of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes to describe what they know about earthquakes based on their lifelong cultural and environmental experiences, how they responded to the devastating events, and how they view these earthquakes and their aftermath in terms of cause and consequence. The research settings of Tsum, Nubri, Manang, and Mustang were in the midst of rapid socioeconomic transformations and environmental disruptions when the earthquakes struck. Interviews shortly after the event reveal that many people are familiar with scientific concepts like the movement of tectonic plates, yet they attribute the earthquake’s ultimate cause to human activities that disturb autochthonous deities. Their interpretations suggest parallels with signs of impending doom contained within written prophesies, including a decline in religious devotion, the fraying of social cohesion, and environmental disruptions. The linking of written prophesies with lived experiences points toward a Buddhist understanding of conventional and ultimate realities in which people discuss the material and geophysical causes and consequences of earthquakes while also considering moral and cosmological understandings stemming from socially and environmentally destructive behaviors. This article contributes to a growing literature on the intersections of religion and natural disasters.

Saint-Eustache

This chapter focuses on a series of oratorio performances that took place at the Church of Saint-Eustache in the spring of 1900 and that generated significant controversy in the Parisian press. Opposition to the concerts from high-ranking government and Church officials recalled timeworn debates surrounding “appropriate” utilizations of sacred space, arguments that evoked long-standing tensions between Church and State (i.e., rules forbidding the performances of opera during Lent), but that also masked an underlying (and specifically French) fear that the so-called “theater of Saint-Eustache” was a step toward the Catholic Church’s defeat by the “secularizing” influence of the Republic. At first glance, this dichotomy seems to support the supposed incompatibility between Catholic traditionalists and secular Republicans. This chapter, however, reveals how the Parisian press configured both these performances and the music itself as models of religious devotion and as symbols of Republican ideology. Rather than casting the concerts as engendering a transformation of Saint-Eustache from sacred sanctuary to secular stage, Republican critics instead celebrated them as an absorption of the sacred into the secular through music.

When does reputation lie? Dynamic feedbacks between costly signals, social capital and social prominence

Performing a dramatic act of religious devotion, creating an art exhibit, or releasing a new product are all examples of public acts that signal quality and contribute to building a reputation. Signalling theory predicts that these public displays can reliably reveal quality. However, data from ethnographic work in South India suggests that more prominent individuals gain more from reputation-building religious acts than more marginalized individuals. To understand this phenomenon, we extend signalling theory to include variation in people’s social prominence or social capital, first with an analytical model and then with an agent-based model. We consider two ways in which social prominence/capital may alter signalling: (i) it impacts observers’ priors, and (ii) it alters the signallers’ pay-offs. These two mechanisms can result in both a ‘reputational shield,’ where low quality individuals are able to ‘pass’ as high quality thanks to their greater social prominence/capital, and a ‘reputational poverty trap,’ where high quality individuals are unable to improve their standing owing to a lack of social prominence/capital. These findings bridge the signalling theory tradition prominent in behavioural ecology, anthropology and economics with the work on status hierarchies in sociology, and shed light on the complex ways in which individuals make inferences about others. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

Spanish Amazonia, 1532–1825

Stretching from modern-day southern Venezuela to northern Bolivia, Spanish-controlled Amazonia represented the ultimate frontier to colonial officials. Home to hundreds of native cultures, Crown authorities consistently struggled to extend hegemony to most of the region. Barriers to entry were both physical and motivational. In the shadow of the Andes, the thick vegetation, constant rains, and lack of navigable rivers from Spanish-controlled regions meant that only the most motivated could reach its most valuable natural resources. As a result, only the most intrepid, and perhaps delusional, adventurers tried. For the most part, it was religious devotion that brought Spanish subjects to the region. Therefore, Spanish colonization in Amazonia was represented largely by the mission church than any other organ of the empire. These religious enterprises fluoresced in some places, but in most others they floundered. While the difficulties of colonization meant fewer colonizers than in other parts of the Americas, the native population suffered under colonial impositions that forced changes in their traditional lifestyle, imposed coercive labor regimes, and brought disease. The native population did not accept this passively, resulting in some of the most successful uprisings in the colonial period, including the Juan Santos Atahualpa rebellion.

PATTUPPĀṬṬIL AḶAPEṬAI VAṬIVAṄKAḶ [ALAPEDAI FORMAT IN PATTUPADDU POEM]

The Sangam literature provides very valuable information on the social, economic and political life of the Tamil society. Sanga kaalam (Sangam age) is considered to be the Golden Age of Tamil Literature. The study aims to collect and quantify the scales found in the decimal texts and to classify their types such as verbal, melody, and verbal scales, to distinguish the scales from the following places first, middle, and last, and to look at the measurements at the high level and to identify and measure the measurements in the decimal. The Ten Idylls, known as Pattuppāṭṭu or Ten Lays, is an anthology of ten longer poems in the Sangam literature – the earliest known Tamil literature. They range between about 100 and 800 lines, and the collection includes the celebrated Nakkīrar's Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai (lit. "Guide to Lord Murukan"). The collection was termed as "Ten Idylls" during the colonial era, though this title is considered "very incorrect" by Kamil Zvelebil – a scholar of Tamil literature and history. He suggests "Ten Lays" as the more apt title. Five of these ten ancient poems are lyrical, narrative bardic guides (arruppatai) by which poets directed other bards to the patrons of arts such as kings and chieftains. The others are guides to religious devotion (Murugan) and to major towns, sometimes mixed with akam- or puram-genre poetry.

Nuns and Convents in Colonial Latin America

Soon after European settlements were established in Latin America, the Catholic Church became the most important colonial institution, extending its power to all aspects of life. Prevalent views on gender among the new settlers and religious authorities, and an environment of religious fervor, fostered the rapid creation of female convents in the urban centers of Mexico and Peru in the mid-16th century, spreading to other areas of the continent later during the colony. Female cloisters were already common in the Iberian Peninsula since the Middle Ages, yet they became more popular after the religious revival of the Counter-Reformation (1545–1648). The Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila (b. 1515–d. 1582) became the model for many women to follow in the Hispanic world. Her reform of the Carmelite order brought even more popularity to the already widespread practice of life in the convent for women of all social classes. Nuns followed a religious rule that emulated the life of the saints and Jesus; they kept a strict schedule that included prayer, spiritual exercises, and physical penitence. The reformed orders would also harvest their food, make their clothes, and take care of housekeeping, while the unreformed cloisters allowed servants and slaves to perform those chores. The nuns who entered the latter convents had to provide a dowry, while nuns in reformed convents lived out of charity. Choosing conventual life was common during this time period. However, their choice was not always informed by religious devotion; many times it responded to social circumstances. The convent became a solution for the increasing number of women of European descent who could not find suitable husbands in the postconquest years in Latin America. Religious and gendered views of the time encouraged the protection of women from the dangers of the world. Women were considered weak and more prone to sin, therefore their enclosure and close supervision by male religious authorities was not only deemed ideal but also necessary; at the same time women were seen as simpleminded and therefore more likely to receive spiritual favors from God. Nuns’ prayers were considered beneficial for those whom they interceded for. Ultimately it became a matter of social and spiritual status for a city to be able to establish a convent. However, convents were not monolithic institutions, and significant differences existed between them depending on the place where they were established, the rule they followed, and the political and economic circumstances of the times.

Humility and Influence

In June 1773 Doña Luisa García de Medina filed a lawsuit against the Spanish colonial government demanding the return of her generous donation to the confraternity of Saint Rosalia in Cuenca (Audiencia of Quito). This dispute provides a clear testimony of the influence of religious devotion and the power of female self-fashioning and agency. Doña Luisa’s piety, her promotion of the cult of Saint Rosalia, and her substantial donation allowed her to establish associations with leading local institutions and shape Cuenca’s sacred landscape and its inhabitants’ religious experience. Doña Luisa’s control of the processional route also identified her oratory as a space for spiritual introspection, self-representation, and social exchange. This article illustrates the importance of humility in the advancement of female agency in the colonial period. This research also proves that the study of religious confraternities supports a more inclusive construction of Spanish American history and shows the impact of female patronage in the civic space.

Introduction

The Second World War was a period of “religious revolution” in the Soviet Union. The Introduction describes how this book, focusing on Soviet Muslims, approaches pivotal developments related to this revolution: the way religion was mobilized as a new tool of state propaganda; the way religious repression receded, and then changed shape; and the way Soviet Muslim communities responded to the dawn of unprecedented religious freedoms, some of which were shepherded by the state and some of which were achieved thanks to its incompetence or indifference. The Introduction then addresses debates on the biggest questions of all: Why did the revolution in religious life take place? What role did “popular” religiosity and public religious devotion play? Why did the Soviet state, just a few years after slaughtering religious elites by the tens of thousands during the Great Terror of 1937–38, shift dramatically toward religious tolerance?