Agricultural And Pastoral Rivers

This chapter details ethnographic descriptions of human–river interactions in the eastern Asian Highlands. It focuses on two contemporary communities in the Dri Chu and upper Brahmaputra catchments: Khampa pastoralists living in the Dri Chu headwaters and Bhutanese agriculturalists living along the Mangde Chu in the upper Brahmaputra catchment. As it describes the similarities and differences between the two communities’ river relations, particularly their symbolic interactions with water and rivers, it highlights the underlying role that the Vajrayana Buddhist concept tendrel (interdependent origination) plays in these communities. As the chapter explains, the communities’ continued commitment to tendrel manifests in everyday life as connections between and among people, animals, lha-lu, and water. For these communities, the rivers are, therefore, connected to larger webs of meaning rather than resources. At the end of the chapter, a boxed sidebar explains the “four rivers” schema, which is used across the Highlands.