Falling Rain, Reigning Power in Reptilian Affairs

The Balancing of Religion and the Environment

Authors

  • Ivette Vargas-O’Bryan Austin College Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.110

Keywords:

animals, Buddhism, environment, klu, medical anthropology, nāga, religion and nature, ritual healing, serpents, Tibetan Buddhism

Abstract

Animals such as the snake (in a herpetological reptilian sense and in its naga variety including the dragon) are prominent subjects in the Buddhist tradition. Snakes are not just partners to humans, or supports or hangings on temples, but are also central figures positioned to convey power struggles within and without the Buddhist tradition. As a Tibetan doctor makes sure he feeds the naga in the little house he built for it behind the hospital or the annual rituals on naga days indicate, there is recognition throughout South Asian Buddhism that nagas are not something to be ignored, but must be reckoned with, respected and incorporated into people's lives. Being possessed or inhabited by a klu (serpent) in the Tibetan medical texts or in a street in Dharamsala, India, indicates the real potential for lack of control and a loss of balance of power. Historically, Tibetan rituals to the klus were used to maintain political prominence, like the rituals rulers would conduct in ancient India and China to maintain the rains for their crops, often linked with ethical conduct, thus, fertile lands maintain a fertile rulership. Snakes in Buddhism command respect and serve as reminders of the ephemeral nature of existence. In juxtaposing ritual alongside narrative, medical and visual texts in the Buddhist traditions of India, Tibet and Nepal, this article will discuss how the presence of snakes have often been indicative of struggles to gain (or regain) prominence against other native traditions, to recover a cultural identity and to protect or create personal wealth, health or knowledge.

Author Biography

  • Ivette Vargas-O’Bryan, Austin College

    Ivette Vargas-O’Bryan received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University in 2003. She is currently Associate Professor of Asian Religious Traditions at Austin College, Sherman, Texas. Her major field is South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist Studies. Her particular interests are in the interaction of doctrine and ritual practice, the rhetoric of illness in Asian literature, and the study of religion and science in Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine. In 2009, she was a Fulbright scholar in Hong Kong and co-headed the “Health in Asia” cluster with Dr. Zhou Xun at the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine in the Faculty of Arts and Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and the University of Hong Kong. She was Affiliate Researcher at the Institut Français de Pondichéry, India, and scholar-in-residence at the Dharmacakra Center in Nepal. In 2008 she was awarded a Mellon Grant Faculty-Student Collaborative Research Project for the project “Healing Pluralism and Bodhisattvas in the Tibetan Region” (Dharamsala, India); while in 2007 she received the same grant for the project “Exotic Exorcists and the Spectacle of Identity: Naxi Nagas in the midst of Modernization” (Lijiang, China and U.S.). One of her edited books on the convergences of religion and medicine is being reviewed by Hong Kong University Press. Prof Vargas-O'Bryan is undertaking two book projects, one on the research/translation work of the Tibetan medical text, the Bdud rtsi snying po yan lag brgyad pa gsang ba man ngag gi rgyud, on leprosy and klu diseases, and the other on the history of Gelongma Pelmo and the fasting ritual lineage. She is author of several articles and contributed to edited books such as Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia. Disease, Possession and Healing (Routledge, 2010), Tibetan Medicine in the Contemporary World (Routledge, 2008), and Teaching Religion and Healing (Oxford University Press, 2006).

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Published

2013-10-08

Issue

Section

Third Tantra: Environment, Myth, Devotion

How to Cite

Vargas-O’Bryan, I. (2013). Falling Rain, Reigning Power in Reptilian Affairs: The Balancing of Religion and the Environment. Religions of South Asia, 7(1-3), 110-125. https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.110