Les jeux du double pouvoir. Puissances locales et chefs venus du dehors

Abstract

Territorial gods have been often conceived as a primordial entity, a remnant of a far off past, by essentialising their nature as well as the “tribal” groups who worship them. All the rituals described in this volume display ambiguous and evanescent forces, often split in two forms. They highlight the tension between the forces attached to the earth and the power “coming from outside”, a paradigmatic “double-power” in the specific context of peripheral societies in Himalayan and South and South East Asian “galactic polities”. Using Marshall Sahlins concept of the Stranger King as the “elementary form of the politic of life” this postface stresses the common elements of these rituals: Worships of territorial gods exemplify the conflictual but vital relation between “us” and the “Other”—the necessary exchange with the outside world provides fertility and incorporating the “potenty of alterity”, secures the group continuity and legitimates the local chieftain authority.

Keywords

• territorial gods
• double-power
• foreign king
• periphery
• galactic polity
• Himalaya