Misāyā Tisā Bareyā Nasā, or A Woman’s Jewels are the Monk’s Food: Materiality, Gender, and Buddhism in Newar Life and Poetry

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Dr Christoph Emmrich (Toronto)

Abstract

Jewellery is how Buddhist Newars spell gender and beauty, how they celebrate and take care of themselves, how they fit in and create the extraordinary. It is what makes them both modern and old-fashioned, both broadly South Asian and very Kathmandu Valley. By confronting the sociology with the poetics of jewellery, this talk will try to ask how practices involving studs, anklets, and bangles, not to speak of hair chains, head combs, and forehead pendants, articulate the ways in which Newars precariously situate themselves and attempt to find their balance on the passing historiographical cusp and travel with the flows of gold, stone, and style that traverse skin, homes, shops, markets, and state borders. How do Newars manage desire, fulfillment, religion, and the content of their purses, not to mention the words to express all this, without turning themselves into museum pieces or selling out to the highest bidding pawnbroker? This talk suggests that medieval bodhisattva tales, 19th century songs of love, and 20th century epic poetry may bear the answer.

Bio

Christoph Emmrich is a Newarologist, Burmologist, Indologist, and Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been teaching Newar, Burmese, Pali, Buddhist, and Jain Studies since 2006. When he does not teach, he divides his time between Lalitpur, Mawlamyine, Mandalay, and Pondicherry conducting research on rites and ritual literature, shop keeping, and list-making, as well as poetry, textual practice, and temple management. His latest monograph Writing Rites for Newar Girls. Marriage, Mimesis, and Memory in the Kathmandu Valley is forthcoming with Brill.