Mountains Painted with Turmeric
Page 10
53. The term “Sahu” is applied to anyone to whom a substantial debt is owed, whether he be the owner of the fields a farmer rents or a moneylender who has extended credit to him.
54. Baisakh: mid-April to mid-May; the first month of the year.
55. “Bhorla creepers”: “The creeper, Bauhinia Vahilii, the leaves of which are used for making ghum, or leaf-umbrellas” (Turner 1930:484). “Chilaune trees” could be translated as “itching trees.”
56. Mangsir: mid-November to mid-December.
57. Jeth: mid-May to mid-June.
58. Sagant describes a farmer’s routine at the time of year when the rice is first sown:
In the evening, when everyone has gone home and the mud has settled in the paddy fields, the owner takes his basket and, standing at the edge of the fields, broadcasts the rice. For the next five days he floods the field. At dawn he rushes down the hill and lets in the water, allowing it to flow until evening. The first day he oversees the two casual labourers he has hired to repair the levees along the fields that are to receive the rice seed. The next day he is alone. But he must stay to be sure someone else does not divert the water into his own paddy field. These are the first in a series of water disputes that will go on for two months. (Sagant 1996:256–57)
59. Gharti is the name of a class of people descended from slaves who were freed from bondage by the Rana prime minister, Chandra Shamsher (r. 1901–29) or otherwise emancipated. Until the abolition of slavery in Nepal in 1924, people became enslaved through sale, as the punishment for a crime, or through debt bondage. Höfer warns that the name Gharti is “not solely applied to ex-slaves and their offspring. Gharti seems to be, at the same time, a reservoir for people of ‘notorious’ origin” (1979:130). Sané means “small one” or “minor”; the author clearly means to assign a lowly status to this character.
60. Surya: the sun deity, who rides his chariot across the sky.
61. Thuli calls Maina Bhaujyu, “Elder Brother’s Sister,” while Maina addresses her as Nani, defined by Turner as “baby, small child; girl; term of affection for a young woman” (1930:340). Maina refers to Jhuma as Kanchi, “Last-Born Girl,” while Thuli refers to her as Kanchi Didi, “Last-Born Elder Sister.”
62. The exchange labor system is known as parma:
In the parma system each household sends several members (usually women) to whomever is planting (weeding, harvesting) on a given day. In return, that household gets an equal number of free laborers when its planting day comes. Members of poorer families with less land to cultivate often work for wages instead of labor exchange. The wage for a male laborer in 1975 was six rupees and two measures of flattened rice plus midday snacks and a few cigarettes each day. Women earned only three rupees and one and a half measures of flattened rice for a day’s work. The amount one must work in the fields is a clear measure of one’s status. (Bennett 1983:23–24; see also Gray 1995:174–79)
63. Turner defines abi or abai as an “exclamation of surprise or fear (used esp. by women)” (1930:36). Aabui is one of several variants of this.
64. Ficus nemoralis, a small tree whose branches contain a milky white juice (Shrestha 1979:38; Turner 1930:314), hence the Nepali name, which means “milky.”
65. Asar: mid-June to mid-July, i.e., in four or five months.
66. Arati: a ceremony in which the deity in a temple is worshipped each evening by moving a tray of burning lamps in a circle around its image; the ceremony is usually performed to the accompaniment of various hymns in praise of the deity.
67. The word translated here as “friend” is mitini. Females become one another’s mitini and males one another’s mit in a ceremony that includes an exchange of gifts and creates a lifelong bond of fictive kinship that extends even to mourning obligations.
68. Among traditional upper-caste Nepali Hindus, a widow must wear white clothing for a year after the death of her husband, as must the chief male mourner of a family in which a death has taken place. Widows must never again wear red, “even as a tika mark or hair braid” (Bennett 1983:107). Thus white is a color that is closely associated with mourning and death, and this explains Jhuma’s choice of attire at this juncture in the story.
69. The Legal Code (Muluki Ain), which was first promulgated in 1854, is greatly concerned with rules of commensality and with distinctions between castes and groups whose members are either “water acceptable” (pani calnya) or “water unacceptable” (pani nacalnya) and either “rice acceptable” (bhat calnya) or “rice unacceptable” (bhat nacalnya). Of course the question of who a person might safely accept food and water from is also determined by that person’s caste and ethnic identity. A person who breaks the rules of commensality by sharing food or water with someone who is for them “rice unacceptable” or “water unacceptable” may be punished in various ways, including caste degradation and exclusion from commensal relations with fellow caste members. The 1955 edition of the Legal Code still recognized the caste hierarchy, but the version promulgated in 1963 contained no regulations concerning caste interrelations (Höfer 1979:203). This novel was first published in 1957–58, so it may be assumed that the villager’s reference to the Legal Code is to the 1955 version. Here, it is suspected that Dhané’s family may have been polluted, and his fellow villagers are arguing about what should be done about it. Höfer notes, “certain decisions are left to the relatives and fellow caste-members as, for instance, the question of whether somebody who has violated the rules of commensality is to be excluded from commensality or not” (197).
70. Jhuma assumes that Karki is planning to flee the country and fears that he will be regarded as an abductor.
71. The rite of putting on the vermillion powder (sindur halne) marks the climax of the part of the traditional Bahun-Chetri wedding ceremony that takes place in the bride’s enclosure. The groom sprinkles a line of vermillion powder onto the bride’s forehead and then makes a red line with it in the parting of her hair. “The red powder in the part of the bride’s hair symbolizes the groom’s sexual possession of her. It is said that only after the groom has placed the vermilion mark can the bride call him husband” (Bennett 1983:87).
72. Madhes, literally, “Middle Country,” usually denotes the Tarai lowlands of Nepal or, by extension, the plains of North India.
73. All Bahun and Chetri houses have a tulsi, or sacred basil plant, in one corner of their courtyard. This plant is worshipped as a representation of Vishnu, here called Narayan.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bennett, Lynn. 1983. Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal. New York: Columbia University Press.
Caplan, Lionel. 1970. Land and Social Change in East Nepal: A Study of Hindu-Tribal Relations. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chalmers, Rhoderick. 1999. “Where We Belong: Some Observations on Culture and Society in the Novels of Lainsingh Bangdel.” Journal of Nepalese Studies 2, no. 2: 20–38.
Chettri, Lil Bahadur. 1992 (2049 b.s.). “‘Basain’ dekhi ‘Brahmaputraka Cheuchau’ samma” [From Basain to Brahmaputraka Cheuchau]. Samkalin Sahitya 9:34–45.
——.1989. Towards Unknown Horizon: English version of Nepali novel “Basain.” Trans. Mr. Larry Hartsell. Gangtok: Ankura Prakashan.
——.1957–58/1989–90 (2014 b.s./2046 b.s.). Basain. Kathmandu: Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya. Reprint, Kathmandu: Sajha Prakashan.
English, Richard. 1983. Gorkhali and Kiranti: Political Economy in the Eastern Hills of Nepal. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.
Gray, John. 1995. The Householder’s World: Purity, Power and Dominance in a Nepali Village. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Höfer, Andras. 1979. The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal: A Study of the Muluki Ain of 1854. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner.
Hutt, Michael. 1998. “Going to Mugalan: Nepali Literary Representations of Migration to India and Bhutan.” South Asia Research 18, no. 2: 195–214.
——.1991. Himalaya
n Voices: An Introduction to Modern Nepali Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press.
——.1989. “A Hero or a Traitor? The Gurkha Soldier in Nepali Literature.” South Asia Research 9, no. 1: 21–32. Reprinted in David Arnold and Peter Robb, eds., Institutions and Ideologies: A SOAS South Asia Reader, 91–103. London: Curzon, 1993.
Nepali Brihat Shabdakosh [Concise Nepali dictionary]. 1983–84 (2040 b.s.). Kathmandu: Rajakiya Prajña Pratishthan.
Pradhan, Krishnachandra Singh. 1980–81 (2037 b.s.). Nepali Upanyas ra Upanyaskar [Nepali novels and novelists]. Kathmandu: Sajha Prakashan.
Pradhan, Kumar. 1991. The Gorkha Conquests. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Regmi, Mahesh C. 1978. Thatched Huts and Stucco Palaces: Peasants and Landlords in 19th-Century Nepal. New Delhi: Vikas.
Sagant, Philippe. 1996. The Dozing Shaman: The Limbus of Eastern Nepal. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Shrestha, Keshab. 1979. A Field Guide to Nepali Names for Plants. Kathmandu: Natural History Museum.
Subedi, Rajendra. 1996 (2053 b.s.). Nepali Upanyas Parampara ra Pravritti [The Nepali novel tradition and trends]. Varanasi: Bhumika Prakashan.
Turner, Ralph Lilley. 1930. A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language. Reprint, New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1980.
Wiesethaunet, Hans. 1997. The Real Folk Music of Nepal: “The Nepalese Blues.” CD and booklet. Oslo: Travelling Records.