27.10.2026 – ARSi kõnekoosolek

Olete oodatud Akadeemilise Rahvaluule Seltsi kõnekoosolekule 27. oktoobril 2026 kell 16.15 Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi IV korruse seminariruumis.

Kavas: Kikee Doma Bhutia and Santosh Limboo “Guiding the Dead, Sustaining the Living: Funerary Ritual and the Shamans of Sikkim”

This presentation examines funerary practice among the Limboo of Upper Thambong, Soreng District, Sikkim, through the work of their shamans, the Peli Phangsam. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and interviews with practicing shamans, it analyzes how the Phedangba, Samba, Yeba, and Yema, as differentiated ritual specialists, manage the passage of the dead from the community of the living to the ancestral realm. Drawing on van Gennep and Turner, it treats death rites as a liminal process in which the deceased, the bereaved, and the wider kin group are reordered. The paper argues that funerary ritual is the arena in which shamanic authority is most fully demonstrated and most visibly contested amid socio-economic and religious change, and that the Peli Phangsam thereby remain custodians of Limboo collective identity and continuity.

Bio:

Dr. Kikee Doma Bhutia is an FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Buddhist Studies, Ghent University, Belgium. She earned her Ph.D. in Folkloristics from the University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2022. Her research explores vernacular Buddhism, indigenous beliefs, oral traditions, and sacred landscapes in the Himalayas.

Dr. Santosh Subba (Tamling) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Namchi Government College, South Sikkim. He earned his Ph.D. from the Central University of Sikkim in 2024, researching psychosocial factors influencing Scheduled Tribe students’ attitudes towards studies. His teaching and research interests include educational psychology, Indian philosophy, pedagogy, research methodology, and traditional and indigenous knowledge systems.