FIELDWORK (printer-friendly version)

The month of our arrival in Bishnupur, Agrahayan, (November-December) the town celebrates Itu, the sun god, and later of Tusu, the husk of the newly harvested rice. People discuss these rituals spontaneously as public or private activities, observed in different ways by different people. The celebration of the sun leads straight to the festival of the new rice at the end of the following month (a solar festival), with more varied and marked public activity. Since people talk about these festivals in the context of social divisions and localities as well as myths and ideologies (what ought to be done and what is meant), I began to question everyone I met. They all know about these events and can offer some personal account. The whole town is involved in these two months of festivities. It became clear that included are feasts of gods, harvests, and social groups as well as celebrations of birth and death anniversaries of great men, saints, leaders, and incarnations of the gods. Thus the birthday festivities of Gandhi, Netaji, Tagore, Vivekananda, Ramakrsna and Buddha are observed. These too are part of a field that at first seem to belong to the gods alone. Yet to me all of them are unknown qualities to begin with. Similar actions can also be observed at life-cycle celebrations: birth, puberty, marriage, death, and the remembrance of ancestors.

On many of these different occasions I meet the same people: ritualists, leading townsmen, and general participants. In time local ties begin to be differentiate, and the smaller and larger segments of the town separate. Social divisions begin to take shape through recurring celebrations involving some of the same people and conspicuously excluding others.

At the beginning, the study is defined for me by people and words. Words describe events that everyone knows about and everyone participates in. It seemed to me that these actions change from season to season: each part of the year has its set of festivals. People often designate major public rituals by the season in which these take place. This, however, is just one of many possible classificatory schemes, and I began to explore others, for example, the social group performing the actions. The same group celebrates many different occasions and may form part of a larger whole in other festivals. But if all social divisions observe the same type of occasion (in larger or smaller segments) time after time, and if they exhibit a bewildering array of variations in the performance, then in addition to social ties something else must be involved. If not, why so many celebrations and so many variations?

I soon realize that seasons, social divisions, and individual beings are classified, in an overlapping rather than exclusive way, by the pujas appropriate to them. People coalesce around pujas, in kinship, caste, corporate, and voluntary groups. Taking the rituals themselves, it seemed that puja actions and the deities, symbols, and objects involved define other aspects of society as well: But this did not lead to any understanding of the system, since the same people serve different deities on different occasions. Sectarian ideologies do not define society except for the sects themselves. Yet there are so many parallels and correspondences that there is :some sense in the above correlations. Objects also tend to recur from occasion to occasion, thus giving the first glimpse of a classification of things, activities, and time. The outlines of a holistic system begin to emerge. In themselves parts and features mean nothing, but in relation to other elements they begin to show some regularity and predictability.

Having made some acquaintance with what is going on during the year, I could embark on the observation of pujas-their contexts, paraphernalia, and participation-as well as concentrating on classification and meaning. In witnessing festivals, I find that not everyone offers extensive descriptions of all events and actions. Thus I would test what I see and start a dialectic between what I note and think and what people say and do. I could verify my understanding of recurrent concepts with chance acquaintances as well as with people I sought out for specific purposes. These initial sets of statements are invariably couched in terms of what one ought to do, now one should act, and who ought to do what.

In visiting the different areas of the town and observing different kinds of action, I find that many pujas and related events center on certain temples. Temples are linked to residential localities. But caste groups, temples, pujas, and locality groups are not in a one-to-one correspondence. Caste groups clustere in certain areas, around certain rituals, in relation to certain temples and markets. I decided to concentrate on these clusters and to study all ritual activity in the chosen localities defined by these variables. This way I could study the town as a whole (in townwide public performances) and also limit the study in terms of locality, ritual action, and social segment. I soon find that caste alone is not definitive or derivative of ritual and belief; what people of different jatis can say about pujas does not vary significantly. Later, differences and variations emerged in many ways, caste being only one of several.

Observation of pujas creates complexity, the event being more varied than its description. The social and spatial boundaries did not become. clear for several months, nor did I realize till later that many different cycles (family, line, caste, locality, season, sect) of rituals were linked. Gods, ritual action, belief, objects, and offerings participate in this system together with people, locality, and ideology. Often the same puja is performed in different parts of the town, in different social contexts. This makes the work more difficult but at the same time more rewarding, since after a while variations lead to greater consistency as well as diversity. Times of performance tend to vary, thus allowing wider range of observations, and this in turn leasd to a typology of pujas in terms of several factors.

At the performances themselves there is ample opportunity to discuss the rites with the participants and to question onlookers in detail. The connection between rite, locality, and social group can be recognized in this way. Townsmen often spend time watching festivals, discussing rituals while the action is going on; hence I could raise problems without strain and, interference.

Later on I followed up initial contacts systematically and made use of photographs, slides, and tapes in making a full record of ritual action. Taking these materials back to the performers after some time, I could enter into long, detailed discussions of specific items, ideas, and actions. Again, I encounter many people in each locality and find all types of commentary useful, in groups or individually, each context having advantages that can be used to test the results. Such encounters lead to lasting ties with people, and to insights into what people were about, what

makes them volunteer interpretations and stress certain things. Some of these ties became warm friendships, and then collecting data was no longer of primary significance, since the experience of living brings more immediate obligations. Such experience is fraught with sadness as well as joy. Paradoxically, such open relationships deepened my understanding even without the motivation of wanting it to happen that way. Too much preoccupation with research methods and objectification rather than living experience may destroy a cultural understanding of existential situations.

Specific discussions lead to more specific explanations and to a greater reliance on ideology than is normally the case in fieldwork. But beyond these regular, more structured settings, I continued random discussions with new acquaintances in all kinds of situations. These are helpful in verifying the meaning of categories, collecting a range of meanings, and finding variations of meaning and use in different contexts.

In time I was able to discriminate between statements and to evaluate information. This does not mean discarding data; it means classifying them, since most statements and events are important and relevant, even when redundant, regardless of source. I took into account all I heard and all I saw: within a large enough universe of discourse, it is possible to classify data according to source, situation, knowledge, speaker, receiver, and other contexts. There is no "correct" exegesis and explanation, only variations on themes. Collecting a full range of variations leaves room for verification and testing: the idiosyncratic is soon distinguishable from the systemic. But even individualistic interpretations must be taken into account, because "mistakes," "contradictions," and "idiosyncrasies" may also occur in terms of a larger system, at least through the use of the same categories. Meanings in a culturally defined system do not just emerge: a relational assumption and willingness to pursue connections and an unwillingness to put a stop to the limit of exegetical meaning contribute to the possibility of analysis. Paradox and contradiction may be resolved in a wider set of variations: a symbol may have many meanings with different people stressing different aspects in different contexts.

The literacy rate in the town is high, so another kind of information comes from printed sources. Several local newspapers carried reports on festivals, dissertations on the meaning of rituals, and poems addressed to deities. Legends of major temples are given in printed booklets extolling the power and influence of local deities. Townsmen have written histories of the Malla kingdom, descriptions of the puja system of the district, and accounts of local customs. I discussed many of these matters with the authors themselves. Thus it was possible to compare the structural features of ideal models of the past with the relationships among categories in the present.

The town has geographical, social, temporal, and ideal structures, and these have their image in the ideologies of the people. Divisions are established by links among people, rites, ideologies, and localities. Social structure therefore has room for many kinds of groups, not only corporate but shifting and nonconcrete ones: a system hierarchical and segmentary in relation to particular activities, purposes, and meanings. I could test the various classificatory schemes by taking them to different people and thus see how associations as well as firm links work out in action, ideology, and discussion. In the later stages of my stay I asked leading questions to highlight contradiction, paradox, and inconsistency: in this way I learned more and gave proof of my commitment to those who would teach me. There are different systems of knowledge in action: categories remain the same, but their contents become more abstract as the number of knowers becomes smaller. Indigenous models also have powers of abstraction with widening distance from actual performance and event.

Finally, initial oppositions and relationships are either confirmed or rejected in the research process: public and private spheres of ritual, community, and life-cycle festivals, social, sectarian, and ideological dimensions take a firmer shape. There is a whole field of belief and action to be explored in terms of indigenous categories.