Mundhum-The Scripture of Kirat People
Mundhum
(also Kirati Mundhum) is the religion of the Kirat people. The practice
is also known as Kirat-Veda, Kirat-Ko Veda or Kirat Koved. According to
some scholars, such as Tom Woodhatch, it is a blend of animism (e.g.,
ancestor worship (Sumnima/Paruhang)Saivite Hinduism,and Buddhism. The
scripture is older than the hindu veda.
The word Mundhum means the power of great strength and the Kirat people take it to be a true, holy and a powerful scripture.
The Mundhum is divided into two parts:
The first is called the
Thungsap Mundhum and the second is called the
Peysap Mundhum.
The Thungsap Mundhum is the original one and came from the very words
of mouth till the art of writing was introduced and was referred to as
the oral Mundhum in books. It was an epic recited in songs by the
learned Sambas or poets. The Kirat priests in the beginning were called
the Sambas where, 'Sam' means song and, 'Ba' means the one who (male)
knows the Song or Sam.
The Peysap Mundhum is a written book
about religion. It is divided into four parts. They are the Soksok
Mundhum, Yehang Mundhum, Sapji Mundhum and Sap Mundhum.
The Soksok
Mundhum contains the stories of creation of the universe, the beginning
of mankind, the cause and effect of the sins, the creation of evil
spirits, such as the evil spirits of Envy, Jealousy and Anger and the
cause and effect of death in childhood. The Yehang Mundhum contains the
story of the first leader of mankind who made laws for the sake of
improvement of human beings from the stage of animal life to the
enlightened life and ways to control them by giving philosophy on
spiritualism. In this book, the leader has made rules for marriage,
arbitration, purification and religion.
The story of destruction of human beings by
deluge and the
cause of existence of many languages among the Kirat people, the social customs of
seasonal worship to the worship of God, the rules of
purification on child birth and
death are mentioned in the Lepmuhang Mundhum.
As
the Kirat people in the beginning were rationalistic idolaters, they
neither had temples, altars nor images, conceiving that none of these
was necessary, but that the God resided in light and fire. Hence, they
worshipped spirits whom they believe to be the residents of fire and
the sun. So according to Sapji Mundhum, the 19 spirits are of two
classes: the Good Spirit and the Bad Spirit.
The Good Spirit
Both
the classes of spirit are powerful and invisible, yet they believe that
the first class or Good spirit is the creator of the second class or
Bad spirit.
The first class spirit is the Good spirit, which is
believed to be the Supreme and the most powerful spirit of knowledge
and wisdom and whom the Mundhum addresses by the name of Nyingmaphuma.
It means the mine of knowledge and wisdom. When the spirit comes down
to earth the help mankind, people regard him as their grand mother and
call her Yuma Sammang. Now the God Nyingmaphuma loved human beings so
much that he sent other good spirits to help them in their daily work.
He sent Heem Sammang, a good spirit to look after the prosperity of the
house of mankind; Thoklung Sammang to look after the health of mankind;
Nehangma Sammang to give good energy and ambition
to mankind; Theba
Sammang to guide mankind at the time of war; Pung Sammang to look after
the good production of the field; Khambhuling Sammang to guide the
first class priest who does not kill and offer blood at the time
worship and Okwanama Sammang to guide the second class priest who
sacrifices birds and animals for the recovery of the sick person.
Every time the priest or priestess recites Mundhum, the word, 'Sammang' means the spirit of God.
The Bad Spirit
The
second class spirit is the evil spirit which is less powerful than the
good spirit of God. The head of the evil spirits is called the Tamphung
Sammang which means the spirit or God of the forest. It has the freedom
to move and work as it likes; but when he does injustice to mankind,
the Good spirit God Nyingmaphuma controls him. Because, the latter
spirit is the Queen and creator of all the other spirits. Nyingmaphuma
or Yuma Sammang is the only spirit God, who is omnipresent, supreme and
eternal. It was he, who created the rest of the spirits and other
powers of fire, wind and water. But Tambhung Sammang being the head of
evil spirits causes a lot of trouble to mankind through the other
subordinate evil spirits. All sorts of diseases are the results of the
mischief of the evil spirits. They always dwell in bad and dirty places
and trouble mankind. The spirits both good and bad are actually
invisible, yet the Kirat people personify them and treat them as if
they are living beings and try their best to pacify them by prayers and
sacrificial offerings. The Kirat priests never use medicine for the
treatment of sick people unless they are directed by the Good spirit
God in their dreams for its use. If the evil spirit does not get
satisfaction from the humble prayers and sacrifices, the priests burn
chillies rags and other dirty things in order to drive them away from
their presence. When a priest prepares an altar with a view to destroy
such evil spirits, then no member of the house where such performance
takes place, should work in the field for eight days. Neither should
any member of the family go on journey within that period. The priest
prepares a place of such function in a secular place and never allows
anybody to go there. If anybody happens to go there by mistake, he is
punished with double the amount
spent in the performance of the
function. If they do not do so, they believe that a worst type of
epidemic will occur in the village.
As the priest recites the
Mundhum,he attracts such evil spirits in the place prepared for their
welcome as gods and when they assemble, the priests uses such power
over them that all of them are destroyed then and there only. According
to the Mundhum, the Kirat people believe that a sinful person never
goes to heaven after death where their forefathers have already gone
and where they enjoy happiness. The Mundhum describes that the place
where the human soul has to go after death is very bright with
thousands of sun's rays and the place is very blissful and it is the
place where only the Gods o can stay. So, if a pious man dies, his soul
is considered to be worthy of the life of heaven and worthy of enjoying
a supernatural life as the other gods there. But a sinful soul is not
allowed in heaven. The sinful work of a man causes him to meet his
unnatural death through various ways of suicide such as falling
from
the tree trunk or into a lake to meeting death by flood or landslide or
by being stabbed or at child birth if she be a woman or by accident or
murder. When they meet their such accidental
deaths, their ghosts
also live in the same spot and become mischievous evil ghosts and
trouble the living person. Yet, the Kirat priests who know the
spiritualism can control them.
The evil ghost of a man is called,
'Sogha' and that of a woman is called, 'Sugut' in Kirat language. The
evil spirit which entangles mankind to evil work is called, 'Epley' and
the other evil spirit
which makes fails a man from fulfilling his
promise is called, 'Songdo'. The evil spirit of envy, jealousy and
anger is called, 'Nahen.'
The Inspiring Spirit
Besides the Mundhum of Good and Evil spirits, the Kirat people believe
in oracles. They believe in the inspiration of God's spirit in human
body. When a person is inspired by the good spirit of God,
he or she
will be senseless for a while and when the sense returns, he or she
will begin to speak oracles. He or she prophecies the good or bad
results of a sickness or of projects of any man or woman who consults
him/her. He or she recites all the Mundhums of the past days in his/her
oracles. These oracles encourage people to do good work for the benefit
of the others.
They give good advice to people who believe it and
direct them how to proceed to good path. They instruct people to use
medicine for the recovery of sicknesses. They do not advise blood
sacrifice; on the contrary, they instruct them to be pure in spirit,
body and in their work. When the God's spirit goes away from his or her
body, he or she will fall asleep for a while, but cannot
remember
what they had said before. This culture can be compared with the Delphi
oracles of the Greeks or Yavans in ancient Greece, where the priestess
after chewing the sacred bay and
drinking water from the sacred spring took her seat on the tripod and uttered oracles.
The Tantric Feat in Kirat Mundhum
There
is also another kind of Mundhum called the Phungwa Changma and Phungwa
Lemma. In such Mundhum, an expert priestess sings or recites the whole
story of the creation of flower, its uses and compares such inanimate
objects to human life in such a way that she particularizes the
mentality of a certain man to that of the stage of that particular
flower. She then divert the stage of that flower from freshness to a
withered condition. While she is doing this act of diverting, the
particular man who is compared to that particular flower becomes slack
and loses consciousness. Then finally when the priestess refreshes the
flower, the man comes back to his senses and becomes fresh again.
The priestess, who knows such occultism, can also practice such magic
to command a tree to drop down its leaves on the ground and again to
put them back on the tree. This culture of animism of the Kirat people
seems to have started a very long time back.
Jack Finegan of Princeton University mentions in his book of the Archeology of World Religion
that during the pre-Aryan period, the Indus Valley Civilization appeared to have much animism in the religion.
All these points prove that the Kirat people had enjoyed the Indus Valley Civilization to some extent.
The Spirit of Envy and Jealousy
The
Mundhum mentions that when the mankind was in the stage of animal life
and there was no sense of family relation, at that time, a brother and
a sister became consorts. When her husband died, she became the wife of
her own son. The son also died. So, the ghosts of both the husbands
became the evil spirits of Envy, Anger and Jealousy
and is called, 'Nahen'.
EXISTENCE OF GOD ( Kirateswor=Lord of Kiratas)
Their supreme deity
Tagera Nyingmaphuma is personified as Lord Siva who is also known as
Kirateswor Mahadev.
In the beginning the earth was without form and void and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. In the middle of such darkness a forceful
power existed. He was the omnipresent God Almighty about whom nothing
can be said.
The Creation of the Small Burning Fire:
From the
nothingness of the darkness, the earth came out. It came out in the
shape of a wooden bowl and fixed up its position. The eternal God then
created a small burning light like the face of a small baby. He then
created the rays of that burning light. Now, the scenery of the blue
colour of the hollow space looked very beautiful. There was solitary
and solitary everywhere.
The Creation of the Great Light:
In
order to maintain light everywhere, He made the small burning fire move
eastwards and westwards. So, from both the sides, the rays rose up in
the shape of horns and grew greater till they mixed up to become a
great light.
This creation of the Great Light gave the creator immense pleasure. This great light spread in all the directions.
The Creation of Water:
By the powerful mixture of the rays of the burning light, the heat
increased and vapor came out and started accumulating. Thus, by the
accumulation of such condensed water, the eastern and western seas were
formed. They were called Mukkum-Semi-Warok and Mukkum-Lingphi-Warok,
which means, 'The Blue Seas of the Powerful Lamp.'
Gradually, the
accumulation of the water of both seas increased so much that they
mixed up into one great ocean and filled up the depth of the wooden
bowl like earth. In this way, in the beginning there was water here,
there and everywhere
The Creation of Wind:
By the power of
the great heat of the burning light, the eastern and western seas shook
tremendously and there arose a strong wind in the shape of two trees
and covered the whole space.
The name of this wind is Sodhung
Illammasing, which means, the powerful wind of trees which blows
everywhere. And here starts the spiritual knowledge of the Mundhum of
Kirat people and thus it began thus for the use of mankind. The First
Bright God then created the universe and called it, 'Choit Lungma'
which means the heart of nature. He bound the universe by creating two
powers called, 'Pakuru' and 'Makuru'. By the mixture of these two
powers, nature could bring its new energy into use. The state of
sleeping and awakening was formed by the active power of which one
could also
see and find the innermost element of knowledge, one
could see and do anything and could appear everywhere. The name of this
supreme power of knowledge is,'Tagera Ningwaphuma'. It means the
omnipresent God Almighty, who is the mine of knowledge. He is also
called by the name of, 'Sikkum Nyingmaphuma' which means the God of
Knowledge and Wisdom. He abides in great light.
KIRAT CULTURE:
THE FIRST LAW OF MARRIAGE
Yehang, the first religious leader of mankind made the following rules for marriage, birth and death ceremonies.
1.
(a) The matrimonial connection between father - daughter, mother - son,
brother - sister should be prohibited. (b) There should not be any
marriage between a step-brother and a step-sister.
(c) The system
of marrying cousins should also be stopped. (d) No one should break the
blood relation from the father�s side. (e) The blood relation from
mother�s side should be opened after
the fourth generation only. He who violates the above rules will be killed by thunderbolt.
2.
(a) Young girls of a different blood should be bought for wives and
their marriage should be solemnized through their priest and his
witness would legalize the girl�s status as a legal wife of
a legal
husband. (b) The children born of an illegal wife or illegal husband
will be illegal and they cannot have any rights to parental property.
They will be under the disposal of their maternal uncle.
3. (a) When
a woman delivers a male child, she should be purified on the fourth day
and the child should be named on the same day. (b) She should be
purified on the third day if she bears a
female child and the naming ceremony of the female child should be done on the same day.
DEATH RITE
4. (a) When a male member of a family dies, his corpse should be washed
and wrapped with a white shroud and put into a wooden coffin, 'Khong'
and should be covered with, 'Khuk' in
such a way that the face of
the corpse can be seen from outside. The head of the corpse should be
exposed and be sheltered with a kind of cap or hat or umbrella, 'Saklip'
(b) The coffin should then be buried within a stone box under a four
feet deep pit. All the mourning members who attend the burial ceremony
should offer a last handful of earth to show their last respect to the
dead person and the following should be chanted, 'God had made your
body out of the earth and ashes and today your body is mixing with the
earth again.' After covering the
pit with earth and stones, the
grave should be piled up with four steps of stones for the man and
three steps for the woman. A stone pillar should be erected in the
middle of the grave.
If the man is of high regard, his stone monument should be raised to eight or nine steps high in his honour.
5. (a) The mourning should be observed for four days for men and three
days for women. (b) The living members of the house of deceased person
should not take salt, oil, ginger and chilli within the mourning
period. (c) On the fourth day or third day, all the relatives and
friends of the deceased person should assemble in his house and purify
the living members of the house of the deceased person who remained
impure because of the death of one of the members of their house. (d)
The priest should explain the assembly, the name and the address of the
deceased person and the cause or disease and the treatment of the
sickness and the failure of recovering from it. He should request the
people that it was due to the will of God Nyingmaphuma that such and
such person had died. He was no more among them. His death has made
every member of his family very sad and impure. They had been forbidden
from talking, working, mixing with other people and taking salt, oil,
ginger and chili or any kind of spices. They were in great trouble and
request the gentlemen present to kindly purify them from that day
onwards so that they would be free to move or talk or work or eat or
drink as usual.
The Priest should address and ask the assembly:
'Listen yea gentlemen! I hear that such and such person of your village
is dead and gone from among you. Is this true or not ?'
The Assembly should answer:
'Yes, yes! He is dead and gone from among us. We know about his illness
and we tried our best to cure him. But, it was by the will of God
Nyingmaphuma, his period of life is completed and therefore,
he is dead and gone from among us. He has been separated from us forever.�
The Priest:
'Has he been put into the lap of his forefathers in heaven or not?'
The Assembly:
'Yes, yes! He has been accepted into the lap of his forefathers in heaven.'
The Priest:
'Has he not faced any kind of obstacles on his way to heaven by the evil spirits of hogs and fowls?'
The Assembly:
'No, no! He has not faced any obstacles of the evil spirits of hogs and
fowls on his way to heaven. He was the son of God, the son of the Sun,
and the son of Moon. So he directly went to heaven where God and his
forefathers live.'
The Priest:
'Then he is dead and gone and is
no more among us. When he has been accepted by his forefathers in
heaven; then will you purify his living relatives and set them free
from the bondage of impurity?'
The Assembly:
'Yes,
yes! We will purify them! We will make them free from the bondage of
impurity! From today onwards, his living relatives are all pure. They
are no more in the bondage of impurity. From today, they are free to
talk, work, to eat everything as usual. They are free to mix around
with all. Their friends and relatives give them best wishes. Let God
Nyingmaphuma save them from any sort of distress and calamities in
future!'
The Priest:
(Turning towards the impure members) 'From
today onwards, you are free from all kinds of impurities. All the
gentlemen who have assembled here today made you free and pure as they
are. You can now take salt, oil, ginger, chilli as usual. You are free
to talk, move and work as usual. The practice of greeting which had
been closed for many days and will be resumed from today.'
(He will
then ask them to bow down before all the gentlemen present for the
function.) The purified persons will bow down before the priest and all
the people of the assembly. They will then serve meals to all the
people present and thus the living relatives of the deceased person
will be purified. They however, are prohibited from attending
celebrations like singing or dancing or rejoicing in any function for
one full year.
The Kirat nationality has made the phrase,
'Majority votes should be granted,' so popular that they even unto this
day believe and practice such catechism in their religious functions.
Thus, the Kirat people observe the marriage rules very strictly. They
fear the suffering of double punishment of temporal as well as
spiritual life. Thus, when the Aryans first saw the Kirat-Ashur people
in India, they found them as enlightened like themselves and called
them Devas or Gods or civilized people. In the religion of Veda, it is
mentioned that the deities are in the main conceived as humans. The
names for the gods appear in Sanskrit as Deva, meaning enlightened one.
Another designation used for deity in the Rig Veda is Ashur or Assura.
But, in the Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda and subsequent Vedic literature,
the Ashur-Kirat people fought against the Aryans and therefore, they
were thought of as evil, as demons.
The Yele sambat is Kiranti
new year. The Yele sambat as of 2009, (Nepal 2066) is 5069 years for
the Kirat people. Sakela is the main festival of Kirat which is
celebrated twice a year distinguished by two names Ubhauli and Udhauli.
Sakela
Ubhauli is celebrated during Baisakh Purnima
(fifteenth day of the fifth month of Nepali calendar) coinciding with
the sowing season hence it is also known as Bhumi Puja or land
worshiping ceremony. Sakela
Udhauli is celebrated during the full moon day in the month of
Mangshir. Sakela celebration is the prayer to Goddess of Nature for
good crops and protection from natural calamities.
The
celebration of Sakela is also known as Chandi Nach. On Chandi Nach,
they worship Durga, who is known to them as Chandi or Chandika.
Worship of Durga among the Himalayan Kiratas is written in the Harivamsha Purnana.
According to the work
Nepali Rajniti ma Adhekhai Sachai (Hidden facts in Nepalese Politics) this festival was completely banned after conquest of gorkha darwar but
still remain in the time of rana government illegally but after rana
government this festival was completely banned and all sort of Kiranti
documents were burned and destroy which the office used to call Jatiya
nasta bivag {Gopal Gurung} but still old wallo kiranti sunuwar used to
practice and celebrate this new year in time of 'maghe siri panchami'.
In addition the limbu kirat managed to retain some of the Mundhum
scriptures therefore the culture and the practices still exist today
and is becoming popular among the new generations in Assam, Nepal and
Sikkim.
