Systèmes traditionnels des échanges de services spécialisés contre rémunérations dans une localité du Nepal central
Authors: Gaborieau Marc 
Published: June 2023

This article is based on data which were collected in a locality of Central Nepal and are interpreted against the wider background of the Central Himalaya and, more generally, Northern India. It aims to bring to light new facts and to offer new interpretations in the field of service relationships which are loosely termed jajmānī in the literature.Each such relationship has two poles: at one pole stands the patron who usually acts as the head of his own household but may at times represent a larger group of people: lineage, village, etc.; at the other pole is the specialist, drawn from one or another of the castes whose traditional occupation is to render one or several services to patrons. The various relationships are here enumerated, described and analysed; the author investigates not only the nature of the services and the mode of payment, but also the terms under which the relationships are established, renewed or ended, as well as the relative status of the patron and the specialist.These relationships fall into three distinct classes:1 – Those which have a religious content, either positive or negative, on which the relative status of the patron and of the specialist is founded; the former acts here as a sacrificer, jajmān; he is served, on a personal basis, by .the Brahman priest, on the one hand, who is for him a source of purity and who introduces him in the realm of the sacred; and, on the other hand, by members of the lower castes, in the present case all intouchable, such as the cobblers and the musicians, who help him get rid of impurity; in these relationships, which alone are properly called jajmānī, status is always relevant.2 – Relationships which involve purely artisanal services, without any religious implications, and in which status is not relevant; they are either personal, on the basis of an annual contract with a fixed payment in grains and food, as in the case of the blacksmith or of the tailor whose services are often needed; or impersonal, as in the case of the goldsmith, carpenter, potter, etc. whose services are less frequently required.3 – Finally, relationships founded on beggary, in which compulsion is always present, should be considered as making up a distinct class; they involve, on the one hand, a householder and, on the other hand, respectable ascetics or untouchable begging and wandering musicians. One of the lessons drawn from this analysis is put forward as a contribution to the general debate on the so-called, jajmānī system. It is here argued that only the relationships of the first class, which involve purity and impurity and which imply a hierarchical complementarity between the patrons and the service castes, should properly be termed jajmānī. The two other criteria which have been proposed in the literature: fixed payment in kind, and heredity, are not essential.Certain other conclusions refer specifically to the region under study. In the Central Himalaya (Nepal, Kumaon, Garhwal), the range of services available to patrons, particularly with respect to the first class, is much narrower than in the Plains of Northern India; and specialized castes usually cumulate several roles which fall into the first and the second class. We find thus, among the Indo-Nepalese of the Central Himalaya, a very limited number of specialized castes; but in Central and Eastern Nepal, additional services are provided by Tribals and Newars.Finally three, or rather four, distinct religions are represented in the area under study: Hinduism; Buddhism associated with tribal religion and Islam. The presence of these four competing traditions enables us to define more precisely the many integrated roles of the Hindu priest, the Brahmin, as opposed to those of the Buddhist Lāmā, of the Tribal shaman and of the Muslim Qāẓī and Fakir. Moreover – and this general conclusion has a bearing on the sociology of India the three classes of relationships function harmoniously only when the patron is a Hindu. When he is a Buddhist, an adept of a tribal religion or a Muslim, he does not deal with the Brahmin as a priest and his own priests are by no means comparable to Brahmins; but he behaves with the other specialists of lower status in the same way as his Hindu counterpart. The hierarchy is thus truncated: the highest, the Brahmin disappears, but the unclean and the untouchables remain such in the eyes of the non-Hindus.