This soft phonetic word “Mundhum”, is a word from god, an episteme of knowledge, also a warhead without which there’s no heaven and hell. It is a Mun (Motion or Movement)+Thum (Power). So, nothing in universe is a stable, everything is in motion and it is inseparable from anything that existential or non-existential. Mundhum continues even if this universe dissolves. Every human virtues, moral ethics, law are all directed from this Mundhum. It is said that for the sun to rise and fall, moon, solar systems, galaxies, stars all are abide by the rules of the Mundhum. Without Mundhum nothing exists. It is the base of Kirat religion.
It is an absolute pure when even just to listen still holds the purity in the realization of the entire sphere of the understanding of beyond the life from metaphysical, ethics, and cosmos origin, which is the root of the Limbu people and Kirat ethnic community. Kirat Ethnic groups are said to possess the great storehouses of knowledge. A timeless Knowledge and Religion that once hold the communal society in a perfect harmony for many dynasties in this pure Himalayan region of Nepal where the Kanchanjunga Mountain resides. The Kanchanjunga means the purity at its highest measure, where the melted water from glacier purifies the soul of every living and non-living things.
Two major sources of knowledge in Limbu literature: Thungsap (Verbal) and Pesap (Written). Thungsap is a traditional system to pass the knowledge from mouth to mouth for long which has become a culture, universally accepted due to its effectiveness and stood firmly as this system as institution. Pesap arised and died several times with history for centuries as a source of knowledge from relics written in copper, gold, leaf and other matters. Its destruction by current monarchy generations by culprit has enforced us to put from Thungsap now with current technological tools in webspace for wider and broader world that this unit is the long forgotten, but not lost.
The analysis of the mundhum has highlighted that the knowledge comes from two sources: a) NISAM b) ITPSAM
NISAM defined the knowledge is achieved from the usage of the sense organs that passes the information through the touch processes that enters into you from a distant body or objects.
ITPSAM defined the intuition knowledge is achieved without any direct use of any senses, but by special faculty of consciousness. Therefore, Limbu people have Shamans called Fedangma, who uses his soul or goes into the highest possible state of mind that will deliver the knowledge, ideas, prophecies. I believe they delve into the next dimension, they defies the time and penetrate anywhere they would like to travel. It makes me to assumes that they go to the biospace of the higher brain than just a computer cyberspace. In that biggest Biospace, maybe one day, our scientific minds will hack it, after which we can recount our roots and circles of life, time travel, may be the soul can be searched.
Mundhum is so scientific that it explains about Dualism and non-dualism nature to run the world. A bit more and farther from Mind and Matter, there is a ultimate source of all, which is very universal, dimensionless, most powerful of all existence in universe, the almighty goddess OR source of everything, knowledge named “Tagera Ningwafu Mang”, the only one, this unity or monism derived from Yuma Samang Mundhum. And, the noticeable matter is that almighty goddess of Limbu, she is a female, not male. I think, She is the creator of the everything. It implies that trueness in Singularity nature of universe as explained well in physics. This Limbu religion is so true that its philosophies and scientists have even calculated and understood the motion in space when universe was created. After which a consciousness was borne. The existence of universe (NAWA CHAIT MUNDHUM) has started from the greatest Noble silence (MUHONGLING KHEHONGLING) OR motion in space, from where energy and light or consciousness have existed ever since then. Sometimes, I wonder, the knowledge in Limbu people who have calculated and understood such a deep sense of the cosmology and cosmogony, that can be correlated to the today’s scientific minds of today and tomorrow. Therefore, KIRAT’s spiritual symbol in timeless sprouted from Animism to polethism to Monothesism.
Even after death of a limbu people, the Ritual continues for the died person’s soul to help them to the souls of ancestors with continuous interaction on what’s happening to the soul. It reminds me of when my father’s ritual was performed. Our shamans said that he has already built a house for himself. It led me to ponder upon the transfer of soul to the next dimension or it’s an amazing travel of soul. After death, the destiny is called the distant world. First you will come across the cross roads with 8 different directions or routes, each routes will take you to the distant world that invariably depends on your current characters, behaviors or calculations of you actions in this living life world. It is very symbolic in nature, however, it has multitude of implications and this Mundhum is popular as Samsama Mundhum.
In every living and non-living thing, the Kirati Religion sees the existence of a soul from tree, rivers, mountains, air, water, hurricanes etc..there lives a soul or unimaginable things for its existence. It is that it gives a sense of existence.
Asthetic or Beauty: Limbu, Kirati people, Mundhum explains that it is the Beauty that has tremendous power to attraction quality, which excites the experiences, feelings, love, affection etc..of human emotions.
Reference
- Brief note on Limbu cosmology mentioning the origin of god, sky, earth, sun and moon, stars, trees, birds and animals including fish. For cross references, see unpublished manuscript translated by Iman Sing Chemjong for the India Office Library in 1961 (British Library MSS. Eur. D537).
Ashok Kumar Limbu 