Interspecies Mapping and Timing

A View from Mithun Country

Abstract

This article argues for an interspecies methodology to challenge the human-derived spatial and temporal constructs that underpin most historical narratives. It also seeks to qualify the entrenched dichotomy between wildness and domestication.

To this end, I focus on the interaction between humans and “mithuns” (Bos frontalis), bulky bovines endemic in the mountain forests of the eastern Himalayas. In this large region—covering parts of India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China—numerous societies attuned their cultural sensibilities and cosmological assumptions to the same animal. This remarkable feat of cultural convergence attests to the unwitting power that a semi-wild bovine exerted over generations of humans—a fact that environmental historians can incorporate into their analyses of interspecies agency.

The significance of mithuns to humans had nothing to do with their livestock potential. They were sacred animals that humans needed to communicate with supernatural forces. The form that this communication took was ceremonial sacrifice. During the twentieth century, however, mithun–human relationships morphed into a new sacrality of place, ethnic identity, regional belonging, and political resistance. This transformation suggests the need for an “interspecies periodization” that takes human-nonhuman temporalities seriously.

As most of these societies historically did not use script, written evidence is not plentiful. Therefore, Indigenous forms of knowledge production about the environmental past—embedded in songs, stories, dances, rituals, material remains, dress, and sculptural art—are of paramount importance. These shaped human behaviour towards mithuns in the past, and they continue to do so today.