Book cover of "Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas". On the image are pots with paint in different colours.

Comment citer

Surbhi, Mridul et van der Valk, Jan M. A.: Ritualized meshworks in landscape and pharmacy: Harvest and production alongside amchi from Spiti and Kinnaur, in Martin, Emma, Brox, Trine et Lange, Diana (éd.): Among Tibetan Materialities: Materials and Material Cultures of Tibet and the Himalayas, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, p. 41–64. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522.c23979

Licence (Chapitre)

Creative Commons License

Ce travail est disponible sous licence Creative Commons Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International.

Identifiants (Livre)

https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1522
ISBN 978-3-98887-015-5 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-016-2 (Hardcover)

Publié

10/28/2025

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Auteurs

Mridul Surbhi , Jan M. A. van der Valk

Ritualized meshworks in landscape and pharmacy

Harvest and production alongside amchi from Spiti and Kinnaur

Inspired by Tim Ingold’s phenomenological approach towards materials, skill and dwelling, this chapter shares and discusses fine-grained and first-person sensorial descriptions of herbal harvest and manual medicine making processes alongside Spitipa and Kinnauri family lineage practitioners (amchi) of the Tibeto-Himalayan science of healing (Sowa Rigpa). Responding to Ingold’s critique of Actor-Network Theory as a framework that ignores the dynamism of organisms as well as land-based and meteorological phenomena, we show how the work of amchi is embedded in living meshworks of beings-in-environments. In particular, Surbhi’s extensive apprenticeship alongside amchi and her close engagements with weathered mountains, healing mantras, land protectors, medicinal plants and grinding tools illustrate crucial linkages between taskscapes and the temporality of landscape. This chapter is therefore a call for closer attention to be paid to the embeddedness of practices, and a proof of principle for the utility of an Ingoldian dwelling perspective for Tibetan (medical) and Buddhist Studies more broadly—a perspective that pushes us to read the world and not only text by thinking with as well as about materials. In recognition of ritual as skilled practice and in light of the pervasiveness of Buddhist religious praxis in Sowa Rigpa pharmacy, we also introduce the term ‘ritualized meshwork’.

Keywords Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine), taskscape, more-than-human landscape, Tim Ingold, medicinal plant collection, Western Himalaya

Mridul Surbhi is a PhD Research Scholar and Teaching Assistant at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Her work explores Sowa Rigpa knowledge transmission and practice in the Western Himalayas.

Jan M.A. van der Valk is an independent scholar-practitioner working at the interface of Sowa Rigpa and western herbalism. Drawing on a multidisciplinary background in biology (MSc, KU Leuven), ethnobotany and anthropology (MSc and PhD, University of Kent), his interests revolve around Eurasian materia medica, traditional pharmacy and more-than-human ecologies.