Fieldwork The Sherdukpen
Sherdukpen
Introduction - The Project among the Sherdukpens - How to write Sherdukpen ? - Sherdukpen society, a summary description - Sherdukpens and their neighbours - The road to the North, Tawang, Tibet and Bhutan - The road to the south, to Kachari country and Assam - Rupa, an interesting history – Clans – Language.
Introduction
The Sherdukpen people, speaking Sherdukpen language and with their own social and ritual organisation, are settled mostly in and around the small township of Rupa (Arunachal Pradesh, West Kameng District). They are about 5.000 people. Rupa is built on the confluence of the Ziding and Dinik rivers, about 1500 m high; Shergaon is not far from 2000 meters ; some villages are still higher.
Maps have been drawn by Coline Fontaine.
They are distinct from the two so-called Monpa populations of the Tawang valley, and of the western valleys up to the Bhutan border and through it. They are also distinct from the Aka (=Hrusso) to the east, and from the smaller Bugun population on the north-east. They have traditional links with the Assam foothills where, about 40 years ago still, the whole Sherdukpen population migrated every winter during four months.
Ritual exhibition of the ceremonial dresses in the Sri Kamcha site, Khiksaba 2011.
Buddhism is certainly present among the Sherdukpens, but less so than among the two close-by Monpa groups. Actually, Sherdukpens have they own religious life with local mountain gods, specific priests and the very interesting Khiksaba festival which usually takes place in December.
The Project among the Sherdukpens
Two researchers in the Project, anthropologist P. Dollfus and linguist F. Jacquesson, visited the region and especially Rupa during the winters of 2009/2010, 2010/2011 and 2011/2012. With the very helpful assistance of the population and the Rupa Council, they investigated the social, religious and legal customs, the language, and the great Khiksaba festival. Very many photos and small films were taken on several occasions, and old photos gathered from various European or US institutions (whom we thank) were presented to the Sherdukpen people who could often spot their elders in them, and to the small museum in the Rupa Gompa. The people who were especially helpful are too numerous to be cited here, but they will be duly acknowledged in the publications to come.
During the first winter, we visited a good number of places in the Kameng corridor up to Tawang, where the Rinpoche (who was born in the region and has a feeling for the Sherdukpens) kindly talked with us. The main result was that we decided to concentrate on the Sherdukpen people, because we thought they lived in a central position and they formed a sound basis on which the other groups could be compared ; moreover, many among them still had vivid memories of the now abandoned besme, the yearly trip to Assam.
During the second winter, a rather short stay, we began discovering Rupa itself, its history, buildings, places. For us, Rupa was to become the key for the Sherdukpen country, not only because a convenient stay could be arranged for us there by local authorities (whom we also heartily thank), but because this is the place where Sherdukpen activities converge, and older monuments remain.
The Khik Zizi, the ceremonial priests of the Sherdukpens
During the third winter, after we visited the Assam places where Sherdukpens still have close trade and ritual contacts, Sherdukpen elders and very many people helped us to attend the 5-days Khiksaba festival, and to understand it. Gaonburas, priests, important members in the various clans, responsible persons in the Tukpen Council, but also many other ones, helped us before, during and after the festival in the difficult task of disentangling the many aspects of the ceremonies. Yet, many things remain mysterious…
Two books hopefully will be published, apart from what is accessible (still somewhat under construction) on this website. One book about the Khiksaba festival, another about the Sherdukpen society and its neighbours. It is impossible to tell everything about this complex society, its people and its history. We had to choose certain specific and easily intelligible paths. For the Khiksaba festival, we decided the chronological plan was the best, with a number of complements. For Sherdukpens and their Neighbours, we adopt a more conventional way, by successive (but selected) topics, and we choose as the guideline the contacts of the Sherdukpens with the other populations around.
A Sherdukpen lady receiving ritual gifts
How to write Sherdukpen ?
A first requisite, before describing the Sherdukpens, is to decide a convenient and stable way to write the language. Sherdukpen people do not write their language so often. They do it sometimes but there is no standard orthography: we had to devise one, and certainly it will not always answer the expectations, since they happen to be so diverse in this respect. One solid advantage of what we chose is its consistency : the same names, and words, will always be written in the same way. Normally, the same definite sounds of the language will be spelt in the same way throughout. The result is sometimes different from Sherdukpen usage, when it exists. For instance we write mokphẽ what is sometimes written ‘mokfe’, ‘makfe’, ‘mokphe’, ‘makphen’ etc.
For more detailed explanations about this, see the chapter “Language and Writing”. We do not see our method as a “law” ; it is only a convenient and sound way of writing. Sherdukpens will do what they feel like doing, of course.
Sherdukpen society, a summary description
The Sherdukpens live in Rupa and in about twelve small villages in the region, the farther one being the stranded townlet of Shergaon. The word Sher-duk-pen is a probably recent coinage for people from Sher village (Shergaon) and Tuk region (the Rupa area, as far as Jigaon). The two regions are distinct and if people may marry “above the border”, the important tukpen Council is not responsible for affairs in Shergaon, although they speak, roughly speaking, the same language.
Map of the Sherdukpen villages (a black disk)
Wangho is a Bugun village, Kelong and Domkho are Western Monpa’s
Among the Tukpen people, who are the majority, exist 9 clans, but a social bar separates the Upper clans: Thongdok, Thongchi, Thongon, Musobi, Thongdok Chung, Khrime; and the Lower clans which are labelled Chao: Dingla, Megẽji, Mejiji. There are some subdivisions and finesses that are not taken into account here. Males belong to their father’s clan, females to their husband’s clan. You cannot marry into your own, nor into related clans, according to a chart that will be described in another chapter.
A Sherdukpen house in Thungri
A stone basement, a plank body, a cane upper floor, a wooden roof.
In the past, say one or two generations ago, the Chao were supposed to be workers or servants for the Thong people. The situation certainly has changed, although one obvious aim of the festivals is to assert or mimick the stituation of old. There are now rich people among the Chao, and some elderly Thong gentlemen (not all of them) complain about the rough behaviour of present-day Chao. Yet, whatever the changes that have been taking place, and which are transparent in many open legal decisions, the land remains mostly in the hands of the Thong clans. Part of the trade as well. But Indian government posts are for everybody, and in some cases important positions go to the servant families of the recent past.
A Khiksaba singer at the gate of a Clan House
One challenge that remains – seen from modern eyes – is the status of women. Women are excluded from all social status, nearly all social or religious activities, all positions in the local administration. One of the authors of this report, who happens to be a woman, was absolutely alone of her sex in all official and/or religious manifestations we attended. If Sherdukpens never remarked upon that and found, on the contrary, her presence quite welcome, she indeed remarked it, and sometimes voiced the remark.
Women at a funeral anniversary in Jigaon
Another criterion which divides the Sherdukpens, but in a very different way, is the taxation groups or Chkok. These groups are different from clans, but there are not local either: for instance, they are not distributed according to Rupa’s quarters. The reason behind it, is that Tukpen authorities, namely the Blu or Council, take care that all Chkok have approximately the same number of members. So that when a chkok looses members because of death, new members are appointed preferably to this chkok. This is important for us, for instance because computing the chkok members is one of the quickest way to finding the number of Sherdukpen houses, and then to a better approximation of the number of the Sherdukpens.
Sherdukpens and their neighbours
The Sherdukpen language is not intelligible for neighbours, although most languages around also belong to the Tibeto-Burman linguistic group. This is not strange in the region: it is striking how different are the languages of these small ethnic or cultural groups in the great system of valleys that unites Tibet to Assam. Even the very few Bugun, who are less than 2,000 people, have a language of their own, absolutely opaque for any “tribal group” around them.
But in the case of Sherdukpens, there is one exception, which introduces us into the labyrinth of their history. A group of villages to the north (the most prominent being Khoina and Rahung) also speak a Sherdukpen dialect, follow many Sherdukpen customs including a sort of Khiksaba festival, and in a still remembered past appeared in some Rupa ceremonies. It is said that priests, Khik zizi, were from Rahung in olden times. Nowadays, those northern villages are considered ‘Monpa’, not Sherdukpen; but Sherdukpen learned people (that is: Sherdukpen people who love comparing and weighing their elders’ souvenirs) know very well that there was a link between the Rahung-Khoina valley and the present-day Sherdukpen country. It is even said that Sherdukpens came from those villages. In fact, it is rather a surprise that these villages came to be considered different.
One elder Sherdukpen in Thungri village
If we examine not the names, but the political contrasts, one thing is obvious since the British political reports during the 19th century down to Independence: the menacing presence of the Aka “tribe”. Akas live in Jamiri and north east of this little town. They were frightening warriors, expecting service and crops and cash whenever they felt like having it. They raided the villages or just promenaded (as the British did later on) through them, and one had to give them what they wanted, in fear of worse. Akas appeared like haughty warriors plundering the trading routes (Tawang to Bomdi-La to Rupa to Assam) and the relatively well-to-do villages. The most suffering of all were the Buguns, apparently because they were a very small group, or because they settled there in difficult times or (on the contrary perhaps) because they were the older inhabitants of those places. During the 19th century, all British administrators systematically take side with the poor Buguns against the wicked Akas.
The road to the North, Tawang, Tibet and Bhutan
Today, the road to the north easily brings you to the Bomdi Pass (Bomdi La, 2600 m) where the administrative center was recently built (see map in the introduction). But in 1962, during the Chinese aggression, Bomdila did not exist, the country was jungle, and the road was a path with tigers and elephants during summer. Yet, the path was used by a good number of people, because this was one of the best way to Dirang and its citadel, and from there to Tawang the celebrated temple and trading city, and from there to Tsona/Cona in Tibet. The Chinese army in 1962 used that path, or parts of it, because it leads through the passes, and especially through the icy and windy Se La (3300 m) that gives access to, or allows you to escape, the fascinating and secluded Tawang valley - a world of its own.
The renovated dzong in Dirang Dzong.
Few Sherdukpen people have ever been to Tawang, and the name still has a ring of magic. The Tawang merchants came down to Rupa, very few in number. But they were not alone. Firstly, because they came with the monks from Tawang, who consistently claimed the right to taxing the country. The interesting system of bulky citadels or dzong, some of them impressive still now (after some repairs) makes the chain of power quite obvious. The most remarkable is in Dirang. From Dirang to the North you reach the Sela Pass, Jung and Tawang country; from Dirang to the South you reach the Bomdi Pass and the Sherdukpen country, which is the key to Assam.
Nuns entering the great Tawang monastery
The second reason why the Tawang merchants were not isolated, was the proximity of Tibet and Bhutan. Still now, the border with Bhutan is quite frail, and local people cross it easily. The same ‘Monpa’ language is spoken on both sides, which means that Dirang people understand those in Kalaktang and in eastern Bhutan. Still now, Bhutanese traders come to Rupa every year and are the most reliable providers for a number of important goods: some baskets, furs, hats, coats, skins, and some metal implements. It seems that, at least in the recent and present period, this kind of slow and discreet trade is more from Bhutan than from Tibet. Of course, the border with China is now quite a formidable thing. But even there...
The road to the south, to Kachari country and Assam
Every year in November, everybody packed one’s things, took the cattle and the children, put the heavy things on horses, closed the houses, and the whole long file slowly moved up to Thungri, an old village which is now quite a good place to visit, and moved on and up through jungle along the Bugun border to the passes and, after two nights on the road, brought the villagers to Doimara.
Hardly anything is left now in Doimara proper, at the confluence of two rivers that will quickly reach Assam. In the 1970s, a settlement was established two kilometers further down, for the purpose of sawing timber when the frenzy of cutting trees for cash began. But more recently, a law was passed to slow down the havoc, and the settlement is now reduced to few people. Nevertheless, a kind a festive revival of the old winter camp takes place there now.
A view on the older Doimara camping place: from the ‘Merchant’s Tripod’
Neither the older Doimara settlement where people camped for three or four months in bamboo huts, nor the new one, are in Assam. They are just above the line where forest stops and the plains begin. As if the Sherdukpens stopped on the very verge of the Brahmaputra realm. From Doimara you could walk to the next Boro or Assamese villages, a one day march. The consequence was that a continuous fringe or Lowland villages was within reach of the Sherdukpen winter camp. And this fringe became a kind of kingdom in its own way.
In these villages, still now, Sherdukpens come every winter just before Khiksaba with a triple purpose. The first one is the offering, in a good number of houses in specific villages, of a special chilli and Sichuan pepper that grow only in the mountains. The second one is gathering, from the same houses, of various goods the most important of which is a fresh bunch of areca nuts – without which the Khiksaba festival up in Rupa cannot begin. Those first two aims are both a kind of trade and a ritual. The third one is the renewal of friendly relations with traditional family connections in these villages, which are locally called bohita.
Rupa, an interesting history
The Rupa gompa on its compound
The town of Rupa is situated on the confluence of the Ziding and the Dinik rivers. It is linked with the main road, the bigger Tawang-Bomdila-Charduar-Balukpong-Tezpur road, that passes to the east. You leave Rupa by a bridge after the Bazar quarter, turning on the right and after two kms and another bridge find the main road.
A sketch of Rupa, between its two rivers.
Sri Kamcha, Loblang and the Gompa are important religious or ritual places
Yuser, Thük Akhong, Praoding and Bazar are quarters in Rupa
Small discs (o) are Clan Houses.
Nowadays, the first obvious thing for people who branch from the Bomdila road and arrive above Rupa is the pervasive presence of the Indian army. Army camps are spread all over the few flat valleys, for instance at the entrance of Rupa before and after the bridge, or in the Ziding valley, although the land has been partly given back to Sherdukpens for agriculture. But no military personnel is settled in Rupa itself.
Moreover, the Bazar quarter is a rather recent development, and one or two generations ago the real entrance of the Village was the Old Gate, in the Yuser quarter. The older village was concentrated in the Thük Akhong part – a name which means ‘Old Village’ in Sherdukpen. The Gompa was also a dzong, a fortress, until it was recently rebuilt on nearly the same plot of land. The most important ritual places, Loblang and Sri Kamcha, were on the outer fringe of the village proper, Sri Kamcha on its hillock dominating the Ziding valley farther down, and Loblang, on the contrary, being like a gate to the mountain (and the mountain path) which begins right in its steep back. As to the Praoding quarter along the Dinik river, many people remember the time (before the 1980s) when no house was there, and it was just land. And people will tell you how the land just south-west of Loblang (now with the good road to the administrative quarters, and to Thungri, with many new houses) was jungle, with high bamboos, and dangerous animals reaching the village by that side.
Until the 1960s the place for the dead was a hill slope, along the Ziding (on the western limit of the sketch). There were caves where dead people were buried, or rather ‘placed’. The members of Upper clans or thong were arranged inside there in a sitting position, while the chao people were lying at their feet on the floor.
A view on an assembly in the Gompa courtyard
Most meetings of the Tukpen Council take place in the courtyard of the Gompa, situated right in the middle of the old village, and still now easily accessible. The Council even has its office in the Gompa precincts, but Buddhism nor the Buddhist priest who is not Sherdukpen do not interfere in any way in these meetings, while the Sherdukpen local priests, the Khik zizi, do attend and formally open the sittings.
Clans
Log cabins in the hills: to take care of the slash-and-burn fields
The Sherdukpen society is based on a fundamental division in two socially differentiated and hierarchized groups: the Thong and the Chao. The Thong are regarded as the descendants of the mythical ancestor Asu Gyaptong and form the upper group. The Chao, on the other hand, are considered to be the progeny of the servants who accompanied Asu Gyaptong on his way to Rupa and form the lower group. Both Thong and Chao are ascribed statuses (i.e. a status people are either born with or had no control over).
Each Chao clan is attached to a Thong clan and is expected to perform menial work as well as ceremonial duties for it.
Language
Sherdukpen language is spoken among the Sherdukpens of the Rupa ‘province’ (Tukpen) and of Shergaon village ; it is also spoken, in a different way, by the people of the Khoina-But-Rahung valley, to the north (see the map further down), although these people are often considered as ‘Monpas’.
A big fishtrap at the Jigaon - Shergaon ‘border’.
The language, from its lexicon and some features of its grammar, belongs to the very large Tibeto-Burman group. The group numbers more than 300 different languages, and was called ‘Tibeto-Burman’ (or Tibeto-Burmese) by the earlier researchers because Tibetan and Burmese were the more famous members of the group, and among the earliest to be investigated in depth. Most Tibeto-Burman languages are rarely written, if at all, and this is also the case with Sherdukpen. It seems likely that, at least for some parts of the vocabulary, the Tibeto-Burman languages of a remote past sounded much like the older forms of the Chinese languages; this is the reason why linguists sometimes speak of a ‘Sino-Tibetan’ group of languages.
One can sometimes read about the ‘Mongoloid’ populations of the olden times. ‘Mongoloid’ is an old-fashioned term (not very reliable according to modern science) for a number of physical or bodily features, which neither have nor had at any time anything to do with language. Consequently, to speak of ‘Mongoloid languages’ is a nonsense. In particular, the Mongol language of Mongolia has nothing to do with Tibeto-Burman languages.
A sketch map: where Sherdukpen is spoken, with neighbour languages
The black spots indicate villages where Sherdukpen is spoken.
They group in two distinct batches: one is south of the Bomdi La (Pass) : Sherdukpen proper.
One is north of the Bomdi La: Rahung, But, Khoina.
Sherdukpen belongs to this rather large class of Tibeto-Burman languages that compound syllables to make a word, in contradistinction with languages like typical Chinese where (ideally) each syllable makes an independent word. Sherdukpen nouns and verbs tend to add syllable at the end of each unit, less so in the beginning;
war gi thük-ko dzao-ba ‘they live in the village’
they village-in live-PF
Here –ko and –ba are suffixes, the first one on a noun, the second on a verb. They are suffixes and not independent words because they may slightly change according to the word which they are appended to. For instance, ‘in the house’ is yam-go, not *yam-ko. The particle gi is not affected in the same way, it is not a suffix. This particle gi is very common and marks what the speech is about, which is often the subject of the sentence, for instance in:
gu gi anu khau be’e ‘I am not the elder sister’
I sister elder not.be
In this case, gi is important because gu anu khau would mean ‘my elder sister’ : the presence of gi makes things clear.
An interesting exception from the tendency to suffixation, is the negation. When a verb has to be negative, a prefix is added :
wa gi be-khe’-pa ‘he does not cry’
he NEG-cry-PF
The sentence wa gi khe’-pa means ‘he cries’; it is easily seen that the negation be- comes just before the verb. Since it may change its form depending on the verb which follows, it is also a prefix, not an independent word. Another prefixed negation is the negative imperative:
de-khe’ ‘don’t cry’
The personal pronouns are not really parallel in the singular and in the plural. In Rupa, the normal batch is:
gu I nang you wa he/she
ga we na you plural war they
In Shergaon, people do not use wa, but ya instead.
In order to illustrate the difference between Standard Sherdukpen in Rupa and the Rahung speech, one can use the names for the first numbers:
|
Rupa |
Rahung |
1 |
han |
han |
2 |
nyit |
nik |
3 |
uŋ |
uŋ > ũŋ |
4 |
bisi |
bisi > psi |
5 |
khu |
khu |
6 |
khit |
tsük |
7 |
sit |
sik |
8 |
sardzat |
sardza, sarge |
9 |
dikhi |
tkhü |
10 |
sõ |
sã |
11 |
sa han |
sã lo hen |
12 |
si nyit |
sã lo nik |
The difference is not very great, especially because in Rupa also there is some variation. In Rupa also many words ending in –t may be heard with a –k instead. The most noticeable difference between the two lists is the name for ‘6’.
Because of the rather widespread idea that Sherdukpen ancestors ‘came from’ the north, and had a stage in places that are now Rahung and Khoina, the dialect of these villages is sometimes described as archaic. Actually, nothing corroborates this idea. The manner of speaking in Khoina or Rahung is not ‘more archaic’ than the speech of Rupa.