The Navel of the Demoness: Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in Highland Nepal

The introduction presents Te as a village of about forty-eight households and around three hundred people in Nepal’s Mustang District. The community is nominally Buddhist but also maintains animal sacrifices to territorial divinities. Ramble explains that the initial research question concerned the interaction between Buddhism and local non-Buddhist religion, but the study gradually shifted toward the concept of civil religion: the way a community sacralizes its own institutions, laws, territory, and collective identity. The book is organized into eleven chapters. It begins with the history and people of Mustang, then narrows to the Sho¨yul enclave and Te’s relations with neighbouring communities. Later chapters examine Te’s clans, households, Buddhist priesthood, territorial gods, the tension between Buddhist and non-Buddhist ritual systems, the annual Lama Guru ceremony, community law, the appointment of headmen, and the possible “disenchantment” of Te in modern times. Maps and photographs, including the image of Te approached from the pasture areas of Kope and Yathang, support the ethnographic and geographical analysis.