In the faith world of the Mosuo (摩梭) at Lugu Lake there are two kinds of spiritual practitioners: one is the native priest, the Daba (达巴); the other is the lama (喇嘛) of Tibetan Buddhism. One has no temple, no scriptures, relying entirely on oral memorisation; the other has solemn monasteries and a systematic canon. Together they underpin the Mosuo passage through birth, old age, sickness and death, through marriage and burial.
The Daba: A Priest Without Temple or Scriptures
The word "Daba": in the Mosuo language, "da" means to cut, and "ba" means a mark — the Daba chanting scriptures and driving away ghosts is as clear and effective as the mark left by knife and axe on wood. Daba religion is the native faith of the Mosuo; before Lamaism arrived, it was the dominant local religion.
There are three kinds of Daba: bu Daba, who chant scriptures; pan Daba, who divine; and ha Daba, who both divine and chant and are possessed by a deity. The Daba revere nature, revere the ancestors, and revere totems, and are to a large extent influenced by the Tibetan Bön religion.
The Daba have no temple, no scriptures, no religious festivals, and no fixed income — the Daba are working people themselves, farming and herding in ordinary times, and earn a little meagre income only when invited to perform rituals. Their canon consists of oral texts, passed down by recitation from generation to generation; by folk account there are as many as 100, though some say 33. Each one is handed down father to son or uncle to nephew, a single line, never to another clan — because each clan's "road of the soul" is different.
The Daba are irreplaceable in Mosuo life: after a person dies, a lama can only offer merit-transference, while the Daba must at least escort the soul back to the ancestors. If no one shows the way, the soul will wander about, becoming a homeless ghost that cannot find its way home. Besides this, worshipping mountain gods, divining auspicious days, and driving away ghosts all require a Daba.
This craft is being lost. The books record an old Daba in Yongning — the hereditary Daba of the Faleruuo family, in its 19th generation; at 25 years a generation, that is 475 years of transmission. His eldest son is 36, and his greatest wish is to buy a diesel Dongfeng truck; his younger son, after studying for a year at 19, still cannot recite the texts. The old Daba sighs: "Even during the Cultural Revolution I kept practising in secret, so that this flame would not go out; but now…" The books record that at that time, across the whole Mosuo region, only two Daba who could chant and expound the entire canon remained, and both were advanced in years.
The Lamas: From Bön to the Yellow Hat Order
Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) entered the Mosuo region in several waves. The first to arrive was Bön (the Black religion), which holds that everything has a soul and divides the world into three parts: heaven, earth, and the underworld. Today Bön survives at Lugu Lake only in the Bön temple at Zuosuo in Yanyuan County.
In the Yuan dynasty, the Sakya school (the Flower religion) came into Yongning with Kublai Khan's southern campaign; the Dagarlin temple below Mount Gemu was built in the 13th year of the Zhiyuan reign (1276), more than two centuries before Zhami Monastery (扎美戈寺). By the Qing dynasty, the Yellow Hat Gelug school, supported by the Qing court, forced other schools to submit and was in its heyday.
The largest monastery in Yongning is the Zhami Lama Temple, built around the end of the Ming dynasty. Folk legend says that in the Ming a Living Buddha named Kajuebi came from Tibet to Yongning to preach, took part in choosing the site and building the temple, and left three treasures: a bronze Sakyamuni that could regulate drought and flood, a pair of alms bowls that could fly out to fetch the sea god to fight fire, and a white-copper censer with "golden-sand feet". Zhami Monastery was once said to have 3,000 lamas, though in reality no more than five or six hundred; its most famous Living Buddha, Luosang Yishi, was recognised as a reincarnated tulku at 3, went to Drepung Monastery in Tibet to study scriptures at 11, attained the status of a Coqen Living Buddha at 23, and later returned to Yongning to preside over Buddhist affairs.
Lamaism in the Mosuo region has its own character: in Tibetan areas monks eat and live in the monastery, cut off from the secular world; but in the Mosuo region, only a few people stay in the monastery at ordinary times, and most monks chant in their own small family prayer halls, gathering at the monastery only for religious festivals — this has much to do with the matrilineal family structure. The third of the five precepts of Tibetan Buddhism, "not to commit lust", is hard to uphold in the Mosuo region, because Walking Marriage (走婚) is practised locally; the monks have imperceptibly become supporters and protectors of the walking-marriage system — a fusion born of the clash of two cultures.
Two Faiths, Each in Its Own Sphere
In a Mosuo home, the Daba and the lamas have a clear division: for choosing a house foundation, calculating auspicious days for felling timber, and escorting the soul back to the ancestral land, call the Daba; for merit-transference for the dead, chanting prayers for blessings, and religious festivals, call the lamas. The two faiths have coexisted for centuries, neither replacing the other — as that book puts it: the doctrines are many, but their principle is one; ten thousand streams run into the great river, and is it not all for peace in the human world?
If you go to Lugu Lake, in Yongning you can see the prayer hall of Zhami Monastery and the mani piles, and in Mosuo homes you can see the traces the Daba leave beside the hearth. These two kinds of spiritual practitioners: one guards the road of the ancestors, the other guards the lamp of the afterlife.
Related reading: Where did the Mosuo come from? A 1,600-year migration story · Where to stay around Lugu Lake? Choosing between Daluoshui, Lige and Langfang