The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0041/00414.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 16KB | 266 lines

$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