Indigenous Shamanism and Worldview: Reconsidering Khambu Mundhum beyond Classical Shamanism Paradigms

Abstract

Shamanism generally refers to indigenous ritual systems involving relationships between humans and spiritual or non-human realms, often associated with healing, spirit mediation, trance, and altered states of consciousness. In the Khambu worldview of eastern Nepal, Dowang refers to an indigenous ritual institution associated with ancestral calling, sacred knowledge, and the transmission of Mundhum, the orally transmitted cosmological and cultural knowledge system of the Khambu people. This study examines whether dominant theories of shamanism adequately explain the Khambu understanding of Dowang and Mundhum. Using a qualitative interpretive approach, the study combines a review of major shamanism theories with primary oral narratives obtained through semi-structured interviews with three Khambu knowledge holders in Khotang and Bhojpur. The findings indicate that Dowang is understood not simply as a trance practitioner or spirit medium but as a bearer of ancestral knowledge and Mundhum-based cultural continuity. The study therefore proposes Local Indigenous Shamanism Theory (LIST) as an indigenous-centered framework emphasizing ancestral ontology, dream epistemology, oral transmission, and relational cosmology. The study contributes to decolonial and indigenous scholarship by foregrounding Khambu categories of knowledge in theorizing shamanism.