Editorial»
Horns and pouches
JAN 02 - Recently, I had an opportunity to meet Dilbar Nath Yogi, a professional performer of the ritual of pheri at Taudaha, a village around the south-western edge of the valley. Dilbar Nath has been arriving from the Morang district in Eastern Nepal to this village every year to perform pheri for the last 28 years. He is about 55 years of age, wears a red clothe cap and walks with a long iron trident wrapped in red cotton resting upon his shoulders. When I first saw him last week he was blowing a wind instrument made of the horn of Krishnasar deer and chanting the mantras to set up a mystical circle of divine protection around the houses of Taudaha.
It is believed that such a circuit of protection will prevent evil spirits, ghosts, illness, and famine from entering the houses. “When the four suras or the tones of the house become disjointed its psychic defence is breached,” Dilbarnath explained to me, “It is through such a breach that misfortunes, evil spirits, and ghosts enter houses and cause mischief.” Dilbar Nath’s task was to tie the four suras; a word that signified for him both the overall tonality of inaudible cosmic sounds as well as the four directions to which they were linked.
Dilbar Nath was in a foul mood when I met him. His five-holed pouch containing salt, turmeric powder and various herbs was seized by the security officers during his bus trip from Morang to Kathmandu. Maoists had killed about a dozen policemen in an electric ambush the night before and the police were understandably extra cautious while checking the luggage of those entering the valley. “But I need my pouch while chanting mantras,” lamented Dilbar Nath, “They took away my pouch even after I explained to them that I was not a terrorist but a pheri yogi and showed them my iron trident and my Krihsnasar horn. The spies and the security men of the government are inefficient. No wonder that there are so many untamed violent energies and spirits in Nepal.”
While Dilbar Nath, with the help of a local tailor, had created a makeshift pouch, he was far from happy with the state of his five-holed professional appliance. “Some of the openings of this pouch are stitched at a wrong angle,” he complained, “Turmeric powder and salt keep on falling to the ground through the holes and so disturb my concentration. I am afraid that I might have failed in securing the four directions
properly this time around.”
Dilbarnath yogi belongs to the Nath community. He told me that the topmost master or guru of all the Naths is Gorakhnath who is also considered to be an emanation of Lord Shiva. It is popularly believed that Gorakhnath’s blessing enabled King Prithvi Narayan Shah to win over numerous kingdoms and unify Nepal in the eighteenth century. Dilbar Nath explained to me further that Prithvi Narayan Shah not only initiated the practice of the wandering Naths, but that he also used such pheri performing yogis as spies of the state. Since the pheri yogis visited the houses during the night, and again re-visited them in the early morning to collect ritual offerings, they were obviously in an excellent position to collect information and keep an eye upon the criminals.
It was interesting to know that the concepts of secular and religious protection were fused together during the eighteenth century Nepal. The pheri yogis not only protected the villagers from the evil spirits and ghosts of the spiritual realm, but, by performing their second role as spies working for the government, they played their part in protecting the people from thieves, swindlers and other criminals of the material, secular realm. In the modern times, however, the spiritual and the secular realms have been uncoupled as both the government and the Maoists have composed their earthly networks of spies or surakhees; systems of surveillance within which the original spies of the nation - the pheri yogis - have no place.
After the last pheri had been performed Dilbar Nath and myself retired to the house of a friend to enjoy a late chat in front of a fire. Still worried that the leaking pouch might have messed up his pheri performances, Dilbar Nath’s bitterness was now directed towards the contemporary political leaders of Nepal. “Prime Minister Thapa, like Girija or Nepal or Deuba before him, is unable to tie the suras of the nation,” spoke Dilbar Nath, “The line of protection is broken. Evil spirits and ghosts are wandering around the army camps and Maoist strongholds. Violence is spreading in all four directions.”
The next morning, as Dilbar Nath went to collect offerings from the houses where he had performed pheri the night before, I drove back to the city. The security men stopped my bike at Balkhu near Ring Road, a paved street that forms a border around the cities of Kathmandu and Lalitpur. As they were trying to decide whether I was a rebel or not, I glanced at one of the newspapers hanging from a nearby stall. Twenty more people had died all over the nation. The security officers seemed unable to prevent misfortunes, sicknesses and the unruly elements - some of them in bikes carrying bombs - from entering the borders of the villages and cities. The political leaders were similarly incapable of blowing the long horn of the nation to tie its four directions and protect its borders. Perhaps their attempt was doomed from the beginning because all of them - like Dilbar Nath Yogi at Taudaha struggling with his defective pouches - were forced to work with flawed administrative and bureaucratic structures having large leaking holes.
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