The Origin of Gurungs - A Nepalese Ethno-History

The Gurungs are a Tibeto-Burman people who have for centuries inhabited the southern slopes of the Himalaya in Central Nepal. Outside Nepal they have gained recognition-along with Magar, Limbu and Rai peoples-as tough soldiers in Gurkha regiments of the Indian and British armies. Their homeland is a contact zone between Indian Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, and both these have overlaid an ancient shamanistjc religion, to become part of Gurung culture. The Gurung economy is diverse. Military service and sedentary agriculture (including wet rice cultivation and various dry crops such as maize and millet) have become the main pillars of their economy, replacing once exclusive reliance on highland herding, hunting and swidden agriculture. Long distance trade has always played a major part in the Gurung economy. Though their role as middle men in Nepal's Tibet trade is no longer prominent, new avenues have opened through military service outside Nepal. Gurungs are found in fcaski, Parbat, Syangja, Lamjung, Tanahu, Manang, and Gorkha districts. Secondary centers of Gurung concentration are in Kathmandu Valley and the Nepal's far east. The map on page — indicates Gurung distribution nationally by district. Within their historic homeland, the Gurung community may J)e sub-divided into Western, Central and Eastern sections, or they may be classified as highlander Lekhalis and lowlanders. (Messerschmidt 1974:2) TJiough in the "low lands", the latter are found

2 GNAS Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 1990) principally along the top of 4-5,000'ridges.

The Nepali term for Tibetan, Bhole, has long had pejorative connotations, and some Tibetan populations adjoining the Gurung area have neighboring Bholes appears to be not so much language or custom but a clan system that embraces the whole community, more particularly that of so called Char Jat Gurungs, which is universally found. Tibetans claiming to be Gurungs have been disbelieved on account of their ignorance of the Gurung clan system (Furer-Haimendorf 1977:156). Nevertheless, the Gurung language is one of the most closely related to Tibetan of all himalayan languages and some Gurung populations exist north of the Himalayan range whose dress and customs differ little from Tibetans. (Grierson 1909:182).

The distinctive structural feature of Gurung society is its dual organization into two heirachical and endogamous strata or sub-tribes called the Char Jat (Nep: four clans) and the Sora Jat (Nep: sixteen clans). Each strata incorporates a number of named exogamous patrilineal clans which in turn are segmented into local lineages.2 Sora Jat is an inclusive term for all Gurung clans not included among the higher ranked Char Jat. The actual number of clans included under the term Sora Jat is unknown. Citations exist listing them from twenty-eight to as many as ninety-seven (Pignede 1966:178; Vansittart 1915:79-80). As many Sora Jat clan names are the same as Magar ones, it is possible that the Sora Jat includes originally non-Gurung lineages who for one reason or another became subordinate to the Gurung Char Jat. The Char Jat is an accurate term reflecting the existence of four pan- tribal categories called "Jat" or, in English, "Caste". The Char Jat as a whole is endogamous, while each of the four categories is exogamous. Within each category are several patrillineal clans sometimes indentifying a common ancestor but not necessarily doing so. The Char Jat categories are named as though they were governmental positions in a Tibetan polity, viz, their Nepali names: 1) Ghale, "King; 2) Ghodane, "Minister"; 3) Lama, "Priest"; and 4) lamichane, "Councillor".  In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, previous to the consolidation of Khas principalities, Gurung states existed in which locally powerful lineages assumed Tibetan titles. Or, possibly, later Tibetan immigrants imposed political organization upon already established tribes, in the same way as Rajput did over Khas later on in the consolidation of Indo-Nepalese political units.

The Origin of Gurungs

Lamnasa's Gurungs:

Pressed on the question of their origins, Gurung elders in the village panchayat where I did research, could not go further back to origins beyond the arrival of their own eighteenth century ancestors to the at that time forested lowland region nearby Pokhara Valley. This village panchayat, I call Lamnasa elsewhere, in 1974 had 1,286 Gurungs - 1076 Char Jat and 210 Sorah Jat (Ragsdale, 1989). Among the Char Jat Gurungs were Lama, Ghotane, Lamichane, in that order numerically. Ghale Gurungs were represented only by an old couple running a small tea shop well below the main settlements- It was possible to distinguish some twenty-two separate lineages within these categories. Each lineage could trace a migration to Lamnasa Village Panchayat from some other part of Kaski or from Lamjung district to the East. Most came from highland villages of greater antiquity sometime during the late eighteenth century or after. Gurungs would say that they brought low-caste Hindu artisan families along with them to provide services in the new settlements* and upon questioning the artisans agreed with this account.

The late eighteenth century was a time of political instability at the local level, and forests were protected by sovereign edict, on account of the cover they provided for the strategic hill forts established by the ruling lineages. Two such fortresses were established on two of the highest ridges, some distance above present settlements, and their ruins can still be seen. Villages lower down were established by different lineages as small forest settlements. Gurungs say that before they arrived in the area, only a few Indo- Nepali families who, it is said, had no fixed settlements, were in the forests. Two brothers from the presently most influential lineage (Pange- Lamas) came from neighboring Lamjung to Kaski District, where Lamnasa is located, and established a fort about 1790. At the time Pokhara, Kaski's premier town, was the military centre for Nepal's westward expansion. Two kinsmen of the Pange-Lama Lineage gained special prominence in this campaign-Natu and prahlad of Riban village, north of Pokhara5 ~ and it was through their influence as military officers that others of their lineage were strategically placed throughout Kaski and western Lamjung. Their influence gave officers such as Natu and Prahlad the right to assign unclaimed forest land to military personnel for conversion to paddy lands. Their close kinsmen, in turn, were charged with attracting settlers and further allotting lands and homesteads to fellow Gurungs lower in military rank (Regmi 1965:20-25).

Official Explanation of Gurung Origins:

To explain their origins earlier that their arrival in Lamnasa, Gurungs would tend to rely on dynastic chronologies called Gurung Vamsavali.6 Different versions of these vamsavali exist, and parallel stories are absorbed into the folklore of Lamjung. (Messerschmidt 1974:21-23), but the authorship appears to originate with a seventeenth century Brahmin advisor to the Shah king of Kaski (Messerschmidt 1974:17). These documents are in the Sanskritic tradition of Nepal's Hindu ruling classes, and they explain that the ancestors of Char Jat Gurungs included a Chetri prince and a Brahmin priest, both of whom lost their caste standing through an unfortunate incidence, involving the ingestion of alcohol, that led to their ritual pollution. Sorah Jat Gurungs, according to these sources, descended from a servant accompanying their overlords on the journey in which the incident occurred. The Vamsavali chronicals explained that the title "Gurung" evolved from one ancestor's ability to meditate. Because of this ability, and his status as a teacher, he was called "Guru", or "Gurung", and this became a title for all Char Jat. Gurungs when the first Shah king a Lamjung deposed the Gurung dynasty of that principality about 1500 and rewarded those Gurung families who has sided with him with powers of local administration (Messerchmidt 1974:13-20). This Brahmanical construction rationalized Gurung history and social structure to fit caste-hierarchical norms, and it was used in the nineteenth century by Rana Prime ministers to adjudicate social conflict between the Char Jat and The Sorah Jat Gurungs (Misserschmidt 1974:19; Vansittart 1915:77).

Gurung clans who benefited most from the shah kings' assumption of power, and later from appointments made by the Rana primeministers, seem to have found it convenient to take the Gurung Vamsavali at face value. Those who did adopt these explanations of the Gurung origins adopted dress and commensal rules more in keeping with the new Hindu ruling classes. Records of former Gurung states in the Lamjung and Kaski areas were suppressed and finally eradicated over a period of several hundred years. These measures are documented in eastern Nepal, where during the nineteenth century Limbus were forbidden to keep the dynastic chronologies of their Limbu kings, and these chronicles were destroyed whenever found by officials (Grierson, 1909:283).

 - Tod A. Ragsdale,

CONTRIBUTIONS TO NEPALESE STUDIES
CNAS,TRIBHUVANUNIVERSITY , January 1990   Vol. 17, No. 1