$Unique_ID{bob00414} $Pretitle{} $Title{Nepal Chapter 10. Social Values} $Subtitle{} $Author{George L. Harris} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{caste knowledge social buddhist hindu status family nepal values buddhists} $Date{1973} $Log{} Title: Nepal Book: Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, An Area Study: Nepal Author: George L. Harris Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1973 Chapter 10. Social Values Social values vary from group to group in the multiethnic society of Nepal. The Buddhist farmer and stockbreeder of the high Himalayas and the ricegrowing Hindu peasant of the Tarai differ not only in language, customs and environmental circumstance but in their conception of the nature of reality and in what they regard as normal and abnormal, desirable and undesirable in human affairs. Even within a single ethnic group, differences in respect to urban and rural residence, economic status and education carry with them diverse ways of thinking and feeling, and such differences have been sharpened in the local and regional isolation created by mountainous terrain and poor communications. Uniformities and elements of integration, however, are not absent. Most Nepalese, for example, are subsistence farmers, and through their cultural differences run the common denominators of village life and the agricultural round. The political ferment of the 1950s and the continuing impact of a central government under a monarch determined to rule directly and vigorously have produced the beginnings of a public sense of national identity and shared goals. Only a minority as yet enjoy the advantages of formal education, but an expanding public school system is gradually disseminating basic elements of knowledge and common attitudes throughout the country. Hinduism and Buddhism are sharply contrasting religious dispensations, but in Nepal they have largely submerged an old substratum of highly varied shamanist belief. Moreover, certain shared concepts in the two religions reveal both their common Indian origin and their extensive mutual borrowing and interpenetration. Most broadly, Nepalese social values can be seen in terms of one major contrast and a number of shared orientations. The contrast is between the values associated with Hinduism and Indian-derived culture patterns and those associated with Buddhism and Tibetan cultural connections. The shared orientations are reflected in certain values characteristic of the Hindus or the Buddhists, or common to both. Such an approach reveals little of the actual variation of values in Nepal's pluralistic social setting. It does suggest something of the range of variation and indicate some general value orientations. The contrasts between Nepalese Hinduism and Buddhism tend to be softened by the ways in which each has been influenced by the other. The Buddhists, in particular, have accommodated to the numerically and politically dominant Hindus, assimilating Hindu deities to the Buddhist pantheon and adjusting in various ways to the caste system. Both religions accept the notion of a cycle of reincarnation or rebirth in higher or lower forms depending on merit gained or lost in earlier existences and, for those who have acquired sufficient merit, ultimate release from rebirth and union with the infinite. For Hindus and Buddhists alike, charity, honesty, moderation and abstention from taking life are prime merits. The two sectors differ significantly, however, in the way in which each has translated these and other general ideals into a pattern of individual feeling and conduct and group relations. The Hindu caste system stratifies the community on a scale of ritual purity. Theoretically, each caste is a hermetically sealed compartment, shut out from those above whom it would pollute, and shutting out those below who would pollute it. The system in India, and especially in Nepal, has fallen short of this logical rigor, but it has had definite consequences in the realm of social values. Thus, the Hindu preoccupation with trespass against a multitude of ritual boundaries has tended to overshadow moral principles with legalistic rules. The standard of right and wrong is not universal but relative to status, and the same act may be good or bad, depending upon the caste of the person involved. Concern is with the social rather than the personal effects of conduct. Ritual pollution, for example, is contagious, the violator of caste rules transmitting his impurity to all who come in contact with him. The family finds protection by subordinating its members to the family head and, in effect, alienating their individual ethical competence to him. Within limits, caste boundaries are, in fact, overlooked in the daily intercourse of all but the most orthodox, and there are other rungs on the status ladder than those of caste. In tendency, however, the system blocks upward movement in the community with hereditary impediments, while leaving open the way to the loss of status through ritual pollution. The outcome in terms of value orientation and temperament has been a defensive concern for status, an indifference to the affairs of those outside one's immediate circle, an impersonal quality in dealing with others, and a pervasive pessimism. In the Hindu tradition the only real escape from caste is in renunciation of the world for the ascetic life of the holy mendicant (sannyasi). This alternative, however, involving, as it does, withdrawal from the responsibilities of family and caste elicits only ambivalent approval. The Buddhists are ethnically even more varied than are the much more numerous Hindus. Some, like certain Bhote groups in the North do not differ in culture from Tibetans across the adjacent frontier. Others-especially the Buddhist section of the Newar-have developed highly distinctive patterns of their own. Through all this variation Buddhism impart conditions and in part corresponds with a value complex which, in contrast to that of the Hindus, owes more to Tibet than to India. The Buddhist communities-again with the exception of the Newar-are not organized on caste lines, and the absence of this elaborate and rigid compartmentalization of society has favored the acceptance of certain basic Buddhist principles. In place of the exclusiveness of caste, for example, there is the universalistic Buddhist belief in the brotherhood of man and a concept of right and wrong which is independent of social status. All act is judged to be good or bad without regard to the social position of the one who commits it. Hospitality, kindness, and respect for others are held to be meritorious in all circumstances, and the estranging idea of ritual pollution is absent. Moral worth for the Buddhists tends to be an attribute of the individual rather than of the group, and responsibility to be personal rather than collective. Value focus shifts accordingly. Buddhists and Hindus alike accord considerable importance to the efficacy of prayer and ritual acts in the acquisition of merit, and both formally acknowledge largely the same cardinal virtues. However, whereas the most fundamental obligations of the Hindu are dictated by caste status and family affiliation, the Buddhist is expected to be guided by universal principles applicable in the relations of all men, irrespective of birth. The contrast is between Hindu particularism, collective responsibility, concern with group status and emphasis on enforcement of roles, on the one hand, and on Buddhist universalism, individual responsibility, concern with personal relationships, and emphasis on internalized sanctions, on the other. In terms of emotional texture of cummunity life, the difference in these two value configurations seems to be reflected among the Buddhists in less formality and tension, in an emphasis on restraint over assertiveness, in a more sanguine and cheerful outlook and in a greater readiness to form new friendships. A central point of value in literally all groups is knowledge. Formal knowledge, traditionally associated in Nepal with Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, has acquired for the Nepalese a sacred quality. Not only was the pursuit of knowledge virtuous, but its possession brought power. These two attributes still strongly adhere to knowledge-secular as well as religious-but with an apparent difference of emphasis in the Hindu and Buddhist sectors of the society. The Buddhist disposition is to treat knowledge as virtue. The sanctity of the Lamaist monk is enhanced by learning, and, although there are many poorly educated monks, the ability to read and recite the sutras is a prestigious mark of the religious vocation. The end of knowledge is seen to be virtue and spiritual enlightenment, and, while it is held that knowledge is not the only or even sufficient path to these, means and end have in effect come to be identified. Something of this attitude carries over into the respect in which modern learning is held and accompanies the practical motives in the eagerness of parents to obtain an education for their children. Knowledge for similar reasons has a connotation of virtue among Hindus, but for them it has no less clearly an attribute of power. This perception of knowledge no doubt owes something of Tantric influence, which in Nepal has penetrated both Hinduism and Buddhism. In its more esoteric forms, Tantrism claims a body of occult knowledge capable of releasing great cosmic and psychic forces. Knowledge as power, however, would seem more importantly to result from caste-defined Brahman domination of orthodox religious learning and of the high castes' general monopoly of the secular and religious knowledge needed to rule. Knowledge, in effect, became not merely a benefit of birth and wealth but a hereditary asset, vital to the preservation of high status, like ritual purity itself, and not to be shared with those below or with potential competitors lest the advantage be lost. This attitude was reflected in the antipathy of the Ranas to the development of popular education. The policy changed with the fall of the Ranas, and public schools have increased rapidly. The old attitudes, however, have not altogether disappeared, and the evaluation of knowledge as power still carries with it the tendency to hoard it as alienable treasure. Hierarchy and authority stand out in the pattern of Nepalese social life. The caste system carries the hierarchical principle to an extreme, and only in modern times has an absolutist tradition of public authority encountered an opposing concept of popular and private right. The hierarchical and authoritarian emphasis is greatest in the Hindu sector of the society, but in lesser degree it is also present among some Buddhist groups in an hereditary division of the Tibetan type between aristocrats and commoners and in the penetration of Hindu influence. The hierarchical ordering of all the most important relationships in the Hindu community has given special importance to formal attitudes and types of social behavior calculated to recognize and preserve a wide range of status difference. The appropriate postures in the dealings of superiors and inferiors are dignity and distance on the part of those above, and respect and submissiveness on the part of those below. This pattern finds expression within the family circle itself, all members of which are expected to subordinate themselves to the final authority of the male head and to be governed in their relations with each other by an order of precedence which ranks males above females, age above youth and lineal above affinal kinsmen. The formalization of individual and group relations within the restrictive hereditary structure of caste has made for certain conflicts between the real and the ideal. In the traditional ideal, the individual accepts without complaint or envy the place to which he had been born. Actually, a frustrated preoccupation with status appears to be general. It has evidently been sharpened by the fact that the nature of the caste system tends to restrict opportunities for advancement to competition for relative position among one's peers. The less privileged constantly seek ways of advancement, and, although they have little hope of being assimilated into groups above them, they adopt their ways as far as possible to display superiority over their fellows. Wealth is no doubt desired for the security and comfort it can bring, but a central motive appears to be elevation of social position. Even the semblance of wealth is prized, and people will entertain lavishly and mark family occasions with expensive ceremonies at the cost of mounting debts. Unquestioning obedience to authority is also a qualified ideal not only because of the impingement of modern influences but because of an apparent traditional factor. The characteristic relationship between persons of high and low caste has been that of patron and client. Service and obedience were expected of the client, but the patronage he received came less as a right or a reciprocal favor than as an alms-like bounty. The pattern gave little reinforcement to the motive of loyalty between superior and subordinate, and such relationships have tended to be unstable. The result has been that while the principle of authority has been strongly upheld, there has been little compunction about ignoring or avoiding its commands. A warrior tradition has given value to courage and strength among the Nepalese, especially the hill peoples. The kingdom was won by the military prowess of the Thakuri and Chetri castes of Gorkha, and the more or less Hinduized ethnic groups of central and eastern Nepal subsequently created a legend in the ranks of the Gurkha battalions in the service of Great Britain and India. The high Himalayas have also provided the setting for a hardy mountaineering tradition. The "Tiger" Sherpa is a man with the distinction of having served as a porter at elevations about 24,000 feet. Not only men, but women, take pride in their ability to carry heavy loads over steep and often dangerous mountain trials. Contact with the outside world and a planned program of domestic development are beginning to affect the traditional scheme of values. Such changes as are observable are most apparent in the few urban centers, and notably the Katmandu Valley, but there are indications that new material expectations, social wants and political goals are penetrating the rural areas as well. The impact of change is differential also in that it is felt first by men and young people. Frequently, the old and new concepts come into conflict within the same household, the older women clinging to tradition, while the young people and men whose contacts reach outside the household, begin to accept newer ways. Western influence entering Nepal through motion pictures, radio, printed matter and Nepalese who have traveled abroad and resident foreigners is affecting traditional concepts of family and caste. More and more frequently sons are setting up their own households before the death of their father, and even though brothers may continue to live in their father's house, they are less apt than formerly to pool their earnings in the joint family purse. Western notions of courtship and marriage are beginning to compete with the traditional concept of family-arranged matches. Caste rules are also loosening, and the penalties for intercaste marriage have been abolished and discrimination before the law on the basis of caste banned. As family and caste traditions are challenged, the existing forms of status become less satisfying. Recognition of the material abundance of other countries can be expected to give a new significance to wealth and to stimulate the desire for economic advancement and for the knowledge and the social and political institutions with which to achieve it.