In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapter 1 Hmong Cosmology: A Balance of Opposites V ery little has been written on Hmong perceptions of birth, even though the Hmong view of life is cyclical and encompasses both birth and death, and a considerable amount of literature is available on death and reincarnation.1 In his preface to a translation of a Hmong death ritual chant from northern Laos, Jacques Lemoine states that “the transition from life to death is often expressed by the Hmong as a journey . . . to the sources of life” (1983b:3, emphasis mine). Birth and death are not opposed; they are diªerent stages on a continuous journey, and their diªerence is what makes the journey possible. The connection among birth, death, and reincarnation is implicit, and, Lemoine suggests, is a “way of dealing with death in order to ensure the survival of the group as a whole” (1983b:3). Howard M. Radley follows up Lemoine’s theme with a quote from Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry on the meaning of mortuary rites: Individuality and unrepeatable time are problems [that] must be overcome if the social order is to be represented as eternal. Both are characteristically denied by the mortuary rituals which, by representing death as part of a 3 cyclical process of renewal, become one of the most important occasions for asserting this eternal order. (Bloch and Parry 1982:15, quoted in Radley 1986:387) The Showing the Way (Qhuab Kev) chant recited during funerals not only refutes the finality of an individual’s death but suggests that life is not merely a fleeting period of meaningless contingency but part of an ongoing eternal process. This conceptualization renders the reality of death and the tearing of the social fabric comprehensible and manageable. Life and the social order are not simply a finite aspect of the known and visible world but extend into an invisible realm of spirits, deities, and ancestors. In pointing out these aspects of the cycle of life in Hmong cosmological thought, Radley shows how Hmong ideas of life, death, and continuity are interwoven with their history, politics, and economics (1986:388). But Radley also states that “the cycle of life, for the Mong, is completed when a person is instructed to find their afterbirth to wear on their journey to the spirit world” (1986:388). What he seems to have missed about Hmong cosmology, as well as the nature of a cycle, is that its distinguishing feature is not completion but movement from one stage to the next in a continuous flow. Investigations of birth, the journey from the sources of life,andintotheconnectionsbetweenthetwojourneys,canenrichourunderstanding of how Hmong perceive the cycle of life. 4 chapter 1 fig. 1.1. The cycle of life Sound and Silence Childbirth is the domain of women, and it is fraught with tension, unpredictability , and danger. Yet in contrast to every other important transition in the Hmong life cycle there is no “sound” to accompany childbirth. A Hmong woman does not groan or cry out as she bears her child; she labors in silence. The wrangling and noisy revelry of weddings are absent, as are the gongs and bells of shamanic rituals, and the drums and reed pipes that accompany death. Men, so visible in all other areas of women’s lives, usually do not attend the birth, although the husband arrives on the scene soon after the child is born, often in time to cut the umbilical cord with a sliver of bamboo. Onthethirddayafterthebirth,amanof thehousehold(usuallythepaternal grandfather) calls in the soul and names the child, formally introducingthenewbornasasocialbeing .Significantly,thatthiseventisaccompanied by loud noise—chanting and banging the divination horns on the door— the first loud noise since the onset of labor, provides support for Rodney Needham’s proposition that “there is a connection between percussion and transition” (1967:613) and that there is a prevalence of percussive sound in rites of passage. I would like to expand Needham’s concept of ritual percussivesoundtoincludeanyfocused ,humanlycreatedsound.RichardHuntington and Peter Metcalf, in their discussion of percussion and other sounds in mortuary rituals, point out that both “great noise or extreme silence, provide, like black and white . . . opportunities for symbolic representation and heightened drama” (1979:49). The contrast in Hmong birth customs between the silence of women and the sounds of men can be viewed in these terms. Women produce the physical body of the child; men call in its soul. In this sense, women and men hold complementary roles in the biological, social, and cosmological...

Share