The Ends of Kinship. Sienna R. Craig
into middle age and through the process of becoming a scholar-teacher.
My personal, academic, and creative paths have shifted over the years. My desire to reckon the worlds in which I was raised and into which I have been welcomed as an anthropologist remains constant. I take responsibility for this book’s errors—of omission, of misunderstanding, of ignorance. Although this work is centered on one relatively small community, I hope it will encourage cross-cultural thinking and invite reflection on what we share as human beings. I hope that people from Mustang will find this book meaningful—particularly younger generations who are working so hard to retain cultural footholds and to chart their own course. This has remained my guiding intention.
Aside from these four core relationships and public figures, all other names in this book are pseudonyms. Still, there are so many individuals and institutions to whom I am grateful. I name those I can below.
In and beyond Mustang: Angya, Palsang, Tsering, Dolma, Lhachi, Lumo, Karma Sherab, and ibi Sonam; Tshampa Ngawang, Karma, Zompa, Tsewang Gyurme, and Jamyang (Jimmy); rokmo Dawa, Kunga (Mahendra), Sonam Chöten, and Tenki as well as Nhunzin, Jigmi, Jigme Wangmo, and Tseyang; Jigme Singe Palbar Bista and Doyang; Tsewang and Maya didi; Raju and Tharik; Surendra, Karsang, Karchung, and Tsewang Jigme; Chimi Dolkar, Tshampa Angyal, Sangye Pao, and Tenkyi (Apple); Amchi Gyatso, Amchi Tenjing, Lhundup Gyatso, Tsewang Rinzin, Chimi, Rinzin Angmo, Rapsang, and Tashi Yangchen; Palsang, Tsewang Tenzin, Chimi Dolkar, Kemi, and Suresh; Amchi Nyima, Nyima Bhuti, Kunga, Yungdung, and Pasang; Nyima Drandul; Nirmal and Laxmi Wangdi; Lama Tashi, meme Tshultrim, and the Namgyal and Kag khenpo; Pema Dolkar (junior and senior), Tenzin Sherab, and Yuden; Norbu Gyaltsen, Laxmi, and Tsering; Amchi Tenjing Dharkye; Yangchen, Lhakpa, and Tashi; Chemi.
Dartmouth compatriots in and throughout the writing process: Ann Armbrecht, Dwai Banerjee, Sabrina Billings, Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, Maron Greenleaf, Grant Gutierrez, Tracey Heatherington, Chelsey Kivland, Abby Neely, Bernie Perley, Yana Stainova, Jesse Weaver-Shipley. And a special debt of gratitude to Laura Ogden, who has taught me so much about loss and wonder.
Exemplars: Vincanne Adams, Charlotte Bacon, Keith Basso, Ruth Behar, João Biehl, Kevin Bubriski, Andrea Clearfield, Teju Cole, Robert Desjarlais, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Davydd Greenwood, Pico Iyer, Marianne Lien, Christine Montross, Kirin Narayan, Stacy Pigg, Harold Roth, Volker Scheid, Kathleen Stewart, Paul Stoller, Manjushree Thapa, Kesang Tseten, Mark Unno.
Mentors: Edmund Morris (1940–2019) and Sylvia Jukes Morris (1935–2020). Edmund taught me about play of form. He demanded authenticity, instilled in me a love of writing by hand, and embodied cadence and humor—in writing and in life. Sylvia was as graceful as she was meticulous. She inspired me to be ever curious about the textures of people’s lives, to resist the obvious. Their love for each other—through marriage and as writers—was unparalleled, miraculous, and beautiful to behold.
Scholars and friends who have shaped my thinking: Mark Aldenderfer, Cynthia Beall, Calum Blaikie, Geoff Childs, David Citrin, Gen. Sir Sam Cowan, Fidel Devkota, Ramesh Dhungel, Carroll Dunham, Andrew Fischer, James Fisher, William Fisher, Heidi Fjeld, David Gellner, Barbara Gerke, Melvyn Goldstein, Arjun Guneratne, John Harrison, Sondra Hausner, Kabir Mansingh Heimsath, Kristine Hildebrandt, Resi Hofer, David Holmberg, Jim Igoe, Daniel Kaufman, Thomas Kelly, Stephan Kloos, Tim Lahey, Austin Lord, Christian Luczanits, Kathryn March, Carole McGranahan, Manish Mishra, Galen Murton, Ross Perlin, Anne Rademacher, Charles Ramble, Geoffrey Samuel, Martin Saxer, Tsering Shakya, Fr. Greg Sharkey, Pasang Sherpa, Sara Shneiderman, Nicolas Sihlé, Bandita Sijapati, Deepak Thapa, Tawni Tidwell, Mark Turin, Emily Yeh.
Artists: Tenzin Norbu and Bidhata KC.
Students: Hannah (McGehee) Anderson, Liana Chase, Pawan Dhakal, Phurwa Dhondrup, Kripa Dongol, Michael Everett, Katie Gougelet, Singer Horsecapture, Rebekah Scott, Edom Wessenleyeh.
For supporting the work: the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation. At Dartmouth College, the Dean of the Faculty, the Office of the Provost, the Department of Anthropology’s Claire Garber Goodman Fund, the Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
At University of Washington Press: executive editor Lorri Hagman, Global South Asia series editor Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, and two anonymous reviewers.
Family, born into and chosen: Steve Craig, Mary Heebner, Charles Rowley, Macduff Everton, Robert Everton, Regina and Brian Mair, Larry and Sylvie Bauer, Lesa Heebner, Don Davis, Lise Apatoff, Daniella Mayer, Kiki Thorpe, Lucy Raimes, Pia Baker.
Ken and Aida: my kin, my heart.
Mustang, Nepal. Map created by M. Roy Cartography, based on a hand-drawn map by John Harrison and used with permission of both.
Himalayan languages in New York City, including Tibetan variants spoken by people from Mustang, Nepal. Map created by M. Roy Cartography, based on a map of the languages of New York created in collaboration with the Endangered Language Alliance.
INTRODUCTION
People choose, he said, people choose, and they choose on behalf of others.
—TEJU COLE, OPEN CITY
On December 16, 2016, just before noon, I was walking through a forest steeped in snow in rural Vermont. Sun came and went between clouds. It was quiet, spare. Crystalline light reflected off the frozen surface of a nearby pond. The world felt peaceful, filled with grace and presence, even as it was marked by absence: bare birch trees, pale winter light.
I did not know it at the time, but as I was walking, Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista, the twenty-fifth King of Lo, was leaving the shell of his body, his consciousness released. He was eighty-six years old. Although he died in Kathmandu, Bista ruled his cultural and political domain in the northern reaches of Mustang District, Nepal, for more than half a century. I had the good fortune to have known him, in some small way, for twenty years. We shared an affinity for horses and a love of the place he called home.
Mustang’s northern border abuts the Tibetan Plateau. Much of the district lies in the rain shadow of Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain in the world, and the Annapurna massif. This geological effect burnishes Mustang’s landscape ochre, with pockets of verdant irrigated fields under a cerulean sky. Village homes of rammed earth and mud brick, stone and timber, are whitewashed and striped with pigments that invoke protector deities who guard this land. Sand-colored ruins of castles, cairns, and fortresses dot the landscape. These architectural palimpsests recall this area’s place in the history of western Tibetan dynasties. The kingdom of Lo itself dates to the fourteenth century. Mustang’s caves, in turn, hold much earlier histories of high-altitude human settlement, indigenous religion, and early traces of Buddhism. The Kali Gandaki river runs like a spine through this land, the gorge it creates a centuries-old conduit for trade between high Asia and the Gangetic plains to the south. Until the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1959, and the closing of the Nepal-China border soon thereafter, the kingdom of Lo and its leaders retained close ties with neighboring Tibetan communities, even with Lhasa, Tibet’s capital.
Jigme Dorje Palbar Bista was known by many names. As a way of signaling his status, he was granted the high caste Hindu surname Bista by the royal family of Nepal, themselves descendants of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the figure whose armies “unified” the country through military and cultural conquests during the eighteenth century. Nepal’s unification included strategies of alliance, including incorporation of the territory that would come to be known as Mustang. In this and other senses, the people of Mustang are, and are not, Tibetans. Like most of us, they hold multiple identities—ways of knowing themselves and being known by the world that can render the specifics of belonging transparent and opaque, by turns.
In Nepali, people referred to Bista as the Mustang Raja. He was one of four “petty kings”—including local rulers in the districts of Bajhang, Salyan, and Jajarkot—who retained regional power even as their territories