Astrological and Divinatory Practices in Burma: Mapping the beidin Category

Abstract

Astrological and Divinatory Practices in Burma:Mapping the beidin Category Aurore Candier and Jane M. Ferguson This special issue of The Journal of Burma Studies is part of a collective and multidisciplinary project which explores astrological and divinatory knowledge and practices in Burma. These practices include fortune telling, divinatory, and therapeutic techniques, and they serve a broader system for the interpretation of past, present, and future events. In Burma, as elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia, astrology, and divination rationales are part of social thinking and are also embedded in religious fields (Vernant 1974:10; Guenzi 2021:9). The collective aim of these four articles is to investigate the articulation between astrology, divination, religion, power, and discourse in Burma. The articles draw on research from multicultural contacts and consider the coproduction of knowledge through circulations of people, ideas, and systems of meaning across the longue durée (Raj 2007; Pollock 2011; Bala 2012; Fourcade 2013). In doing so, the articles endeavor to find connections and analogies with distant or closer past practices and knowledge in Burma as well as in neighboring countries. [End Page 147] Beidin 1 is the current Burmese designation for practices and knowledge related to astrology and divination. Mapping beidin as a category requires combining anthropological and historical methods. The first approach is to identify what knowledge and practices beidin encompasses today, and this is carried out through case studies of specialists and their practices, communities of knowledge, and conceptions. The second article in this set, "Min Theinhka: An Astrologer's Career through the Lens of Biography," by Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière opens with an ethnographic visit to Min Theinhka's compound, then segues to the complex profile of the remarkable astrologer, tracking his life story through the biography authored by one of his disciples. Moving from the story of an astrologer, Coderey's article, "We Are Made of Time: Astrology and Healing in Rakhine State, Myanmar" turns to an ethnographic exploration of healing practices among Buddhist communities. Through this evidence, Coderey's article demonstrates how the mastery of time (and the relation of timing with key events) relates the individual to the cosmic order. Thus, astrologers provide this key expertise for peoples' well-being. The second methodology is one of long-term historical perspective. It makes use of a variety of written sources (stone inscriptions, court manuscripts, royal chronicles, astrological literature), to apprehend when beidin emerged as a category of knowledge and how it changed throughout history to become what it is today. Its ontological history is the subject of Aurore Candier's [End Page 148] article, "The Emergence and Evolution of the Beidin Category in Burma: The Transition of the Long Nineteenth Century." Moving from Burmese categories and navigating the spatiotemporal waters of the waterclock itself, Caterina Guenzi's article, "The Burmese Hour" offers a compelling comparison of how horometrical systems which operated in Brahmanical India were also adopted in the Burmese courts; Brahmin astrologers at the Burmese courts were engaged differently than those remaining in India under the British. This article also offers a timely intervention and call for Southeast Asianists to engage with more research from South Asia. At the crossroads of the history of science and knowledge, the four articles understand science(s) and knowledge(s) as related "nomad concepts" loosely separated by "moving borders;" and focus on practices and practitioners to unveil the "scientific culture and knowledge" pertaining to specific moments and places in history (Van Damme 2015). In terms of time and space boundaries, the emphasis is on local changes, although the articles do constantly keep in mind the process of global integration.2 Some of the articles in this issue, such as those by Brac de la Perrière and Candier explore moments of important local changes, tracking the evolution of beidin conceptions and practices within them. These specific moments are either long periods in history, or a sequence of decades, or a few years following a traumatic event (political crisis, conflicts). Moments unfold in a particular time and space—a place filled with actors from different horizons with their own "regimes of [End Page 149] historicity" or conceptions of the world.3 While some...