Septuagenarian S S Pangtey smiles as he “looks down” from his abode located at an altitude of 2,290 metres in Munsyari, the eastern most part of Pithoragarh district, which lay on the trade route to Tibet.
A retired school teacher, Pangtey’s mission in life is to preserve the dying culture of his ancestors, the Kumaoni Bhotiyas, traditional traders who carried out trade with nomadic Tibetan Khampas and Dokpas until China invaded Tibet and the subsequent Sino-India war in 1962 brought the flourishing trade to a halt.
This picturesque town surrounded by Panchachuli peaks also houses the tribal heritage museum, his personal initiative, which displays artifacts of a once vibrant Bhotiya culture.
The nomadic community, the Bhotiyas or Shaukas would spend winters in Tejam and Kwiti with their flocks and herds, then travel to Jalth, a village near Munsiyari in spring and then to the high reaches of Milam on the Indo-Tibetan border in summer. In July most of the men would proceed to the trade marts of Tibet to barter or sell jaggery, grain, cotton cloth, metal implements, pearls and coral, for salt, wool, borax and gold, he reveals.
Bhotiya women too would sometimes accompany their men to Tibet to undertake the pilgrimage to the sacred Mount Kailash, abode of Lord Shiva and to Mansarover. They would befriend the Khampa women there who wove beautiful carpets, shawls, fabric, saddle rugs and blankets and bring back with them the art of weaving.
This later became a flourishing cottage industry. Original Tibetan patterns and motifs were altered to create a typical Bhotiya style of weaving, he says.
This went on for centuries till the Sino-India War changed their lives in 1962. Their migratory lifestyle altered to a sedentary one, he says.
With trade cut off, the community struggles to survive and to find a place in the new order. The government has notified the Bhotiyas under the Scheduled Tribes Act which has enabled the new generation to avail of education and subsequent job reservations. Some families have migrated to cities for greener pastures.
“In many cultural and religious aspects, the Bhotiyas were influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. It is said that when in the 13th and 14th century after the Muslims invaded India, Hindu Brahmins escaped to the hills to avoid conversion. Some came and settled here and later intermingled with the Tibetan community following trade between the two,” he says.
The Bhotiyas also have a language of their own which is of Tibetan origin but the influence of Sanskrit on their language is remarkable, he points out.
Pangtey’s museum is a veritable treasure trove of information about the history and customs of the Bhotiyas. An unusual wood carving hangs at the entrance, a sun shape below, a fish flanked by two peacocks. Two large intricately carved doorways, all part of his collection of the intricate Bhotiya art, notes Pangtya.
The finely crafted doors and windows were thrown out in the fields where Dr. Pangtey found them and managed to retrieve some.
He has also collected articles of daily use such as cups and measures, utensils, a ‘matchbox’ which was actually a flint stone and a dry piece of moss carried in a small leather and silver case, traditional jewellery, and a deerskin ‘trunk’ among other things. Bags of leather to carry coins and horse shoes combs and purses used by traders are almost 100 years old, he says.
He says that Ginseng or a root with medicinal properties also grows in the area and is available in the market for 80,000 Rs per kg.
Pangtey also has tales to tell of the famous mountaineers from the area such as H C S Rawat and Hukum Singh Pangti.
Munsyari is also home to one of the greatest women mountaineer Malika Virdi who lead the all women trans-Himalayan trekking expedition across India, Bhutan and Nepal in 1997.
This is not all. A Bhotiya from Munsyari, Nain Singh, a 33-year-old Tibetan-speaking headmaster of a school in Milan, was recruited by the East India Company in 1863 to lead the team for the greatest projects of nineteenth century-the great trigonometric survey of India.
