Roots and Routes: Funeral Practices and Land-based Identities in the Yunnan-Tibetan Borderlands

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This article analyses Pumi (Premi) funeral practices and naming customs of social groupings to interpret their idiom of ru, an indigenous notion of ‘bone’ common among Tibeto-Burman groups. I argue that the Pumi ru name marks a land-based identity constituted by the deposition of bones collected from cremation remains and the soul-guiding ritual along the ancestral migration route at funerals. On the one hand, the notion of ru refers to a conception of kinship relations that emphasises a continual connection to the same places fulfilled from birth to death, in addition to the shared bodily substance of bone. On the other hand, this connection to the land articulates both experiences of settlement and movement. Although the local translation of ru is ‘root’ in Mandarin, this form of identity is not ‘rooted’ at the current settlement but embedded in a sense of landscape constituted by past migrations and repetitive ritual journeys of souls.