Tears of Rejoicing Spirits

Happiness and the Mediation of Human-Spirit Relations in a Mongolian Mountain Sacrifice

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3184670
AutoresJoseph Bristley (0000-0003-3307-608X, Affiliated Researcher, Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge Cambridge UK), Erdene-Ochir Tumen-Ochir (0000-0002-5838-2131, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mongolian Language and Linguistics, Division of Humanities, School of Arts and Sciences, National University of Mongolia Ulaanbaatar Mongolia)
Ano2021
Volume23
Fascículo1
Páginas131-149
Data de publicação2021-05-26
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInner Asia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1464-8172 • E-ISSN: 2210-5018
EditoraBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/22105018-12340165
OpenAlexW3170508598
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas19

Accounts of Mongol mountain sacrifices (ovoo takhilga) variously focus on transactional offerings that elicit benefits from local spirits and on the patron-like position held by spirits towards those who supplicate them. In contrast this article explores how, in such ceremonies, human-spirit relations are shaped through the enactment of emotions: in this context, happiness. Bringing classic literature on sacrifice into dialogue with recent studies of happiness as a social phenomenon, we argue that the generation of happiness (bayarluulakh; bayasgakh) in local spirits is of great importance in mediating the distance between spirits and their human neighbours. This mediation allows for the shaping of optimal post-sacrificial relations between these two categories of being. Our argument is made through an analysis of ethnographic and linguistic data relating to an ovoo takhilga in a Khalkha area of central Mongolia

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Happiness · Mediation · Phenomenon · Sacrifice · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · History · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Social Psychology

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