Rain as a Singular Object with Multiple Ontologies among the Gurung in the Nhāson Valley

Abstract

Rain, a droplet of water that comes from the sky, appears as a singular object with multiple ontologies among Gurung, an indigenous people of Nepal dwelling in the mountain region. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the relationships between society and the environment through the names of rains among the Gurung based on the nine months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2018. In the article, Gurung’s nomenclature for rains strongly raises the question of universal and quantitative scaling to nature and natural phenomena, particularly a water droplet from the sky. For the Gurung, names for rain, which are grounded on land and expressed autochthonously, have cultural meanings that play an important role in comprehending the indigenous notion of the environment. However, global climate change is not only affecting the precipitation pattern in the Himalayan region but also uprooting the nomenclature of rain that is rooted in ancestral thick and insightful observation of the environment.