The Sinfulness of Subjugating Vampires in Mustang, Nepal

07/05/2010 - 16:00

7 May 2010 
16:00 – 17:30 hrs.

Venue: Gravensteen (room 111), Pieterskerkhof 6, Leiden

Buddhist Studies Lecture by Charles Ramble (Lecturer in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, Oxford University / Directeur d'Etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris)

The repertoire of apotropaic rituals performed by Tibetan tantric lamas of both the Buddhist and Bon traditions includes the rite of vampire-subjugation (sri-mnan). As the culmination of the ceremony, an effigy of the vampire in question is sealed inside an animal-skull or a yak horn, depending on the particular class of predatory spirits to which it belongs, and buried in the earth. In spite of the fact that the demand for this ritual by the local lay population has remained constant, the past few decades have seen a growing reluctance on the part of Bonpo tantrists to perform it on the grounds that it generates “sin” (sdig-pa). The lamas’ explanations are unconvincing, not least because other rituals that entail the same destructive procedures are not regarded as sinful. The paper offers the tentative suggestion that an explanation for the lamas’ reticence may be found in a close examination of the myth of the vampire itself, seen in the light of recent social changes in the ethnically Tibetan enclave of Mustang.