When is a Hat a Mountain? The Material Religion of Gesar Bards’ Hats

Abstract

Based on interviews performed in Qinghai, this article examines the ritual for creating the “mountain hat” used by bards of Tibet’s Gesar epic in the Yushu and Golok provinces to argue for its importance in constructing local ideas of identity and authority. After introducing a typology of bardic hats, this paper relates the two-week ritual to make a “mountain hat” and analyses how it unites epic narrative, local ideas of place, and the authority of Buddhist institutions into a single, distinctive object used in the performance arena. Utilizing David Morgan’s work on embodiment and identity through the act of seeing, this article argues for the “mountain hat” as a microcosm of a religious imaginary that influences and shapes the viewer’s and the bard’s self-understanding. Additionally, this article considers the interpretation of the “mountain hat” and the religious imaginary it represents in the larger context of contemporary Tibet, where competing forms of economic and cultural authority challenge Tibetans’ experience. Ultimately, this article draws attention to the central role of ritual in constructing the “mountain hat” and imbuing it with the necessary symbolic complexes to become a potent visual object of identity.