The Great Sons of Thang stong rgyal po: the Bu chen of the Pin valley, Spiti

Cette version n'est pas la version définitive, ne pas hésiter à se référer à la version papier du Tibet Journal notamment pour les photographies.International audienceStanding to the south-west, Pin is one of four units constituting Spiti, presently a sub-division of Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh that lies across the main Himalayan Range and shares its eastern frontiers with Tibet. It includes the whole valley of the Pin river, a mountainous and tree-less tract, and numbers a dozen settlements that are anything from 3 to 10 kilometres apart. Shut off from the rest of Spiti by high mountains, except where the stream forces its way through a rocky gorge, several kilometres in length, to join the main river, Pin has well defined boundaries in the waste and forms a secluded world. Apart from the two extremes of the nobility referred to as "high bones" (tib. rus pa mthon po) and the depreciated groups comprising blacksmiths and professional musicians who are qualified as "low bones" (rus dma' mo), the inhabitants intermarry within the valley. They have almost no relationships--even economical or religious--with the inhabitants of the villages lying on both sides of the Spiti River and belonging to Töd (stod, "higher region"), Bar (bar, "middle region") and Sham (gsham, "lower region"). In contrast, they maintain the closest ties with people of upper Kinnaur