D HAMAAL

Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113
brill.nl/jss
Dhaml and the Performing Body: Trance Dance in the Devotional Su Practice of Pakistan*
Jrgen Wasim Frembgen
Munich State Museum of Ethnology Germany
Abstract Guided by the hypnotic repetitive sound of drums, the ritual trance dance known as dhaml belongs to the multiple worlds of Pakistani Sufi shrines and is characteristic of the concrete devotional practices of rural people and the urban poor, especially in Sindh and the Punjab. Drawing on Ronald L. Grimess concept of distinguishing various modes of embodied ritual attitudes, the study explores the performance and aesthetics of this public, predominantly collective dance at two selected ethnographic settings, diffferentiating three groups of actors in terms of ritual structure, techniques of the body, gestural grammar and gender-related kinaesthetic styles. Apart from marked diffferences between performers, these modes of ritual sensibilities co-exist and interpenetrate each other whereby the celebrative form of interaction with the beloved saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar remains the central theme. Dhaml is a full-bodied, active experience of mystical devotion which belongs to the social habitus of the dancers and can be considered a pattern of appropriate ritual action embedded in the local cultures of both Sindhis and Punjabis which is shared among Muslims as well as Hindus. Rsum Guid par le son hypnotique et rptitif des tambours, la danse rituelle en transe connue sous le nom de dhaml appartient aux arnes multiples des sanctuaires pakistanais soufis. Cette danse est caractristique des pratiques de dvotion concrte des populations rurales et des pauvres urbains, en particulier au Sindh et au Pendjab. Faisant appel au concept de Ronald L. Grimes qui distingue entre les difffrentes modes de embodied ritual attitudes (attitudes rituelles incarnes), cette tude examine la performance et lesthtique de cette danse publique et collective sur deux sites ethnographiques. Nous distinguons trois groupes dacteurs en termes de structure
*Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the Collaborative Research Center Ritual Dynamics of the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg (19 June 2006), at the Institute of Ethnology of the Free University in Berlin (17 July 2007) and at the 20th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (811 July 2008) at the University of Manchester. Discussions generated at those presentations have enriched my analysis. Furthermore I am particularly grateful to several dear friends in Pakistan for their most valuable contributions and conversations, in particular to Dr Ashfaq Ahmed Khan, Dr Mehdi Reza Shah Sabzwari, Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi, Atiya Khan and Shahana Bhurghi. Finally, I would especially like to thank my colleagues Richard K. Wulf and Michel Boivin for their careful reading of the text and important comments and suggestions.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/221059512X626126
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J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113
rituelle: les techniques du corps, la grammaire gestuelle, et les styles kinesthsiques qui sont spcifiques au genre. Outre certaines difffrences frappantes entre les excutants, ces modes de sensibilit rituelle coxistent et sinterpntrent de telle manire que le thme central reste la clbration de linteraction avec le saint aim Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. D haml est une exprience active de dvotion mystique de tout le corps qui appartient au habitus social des danseurs et peut tre considr comme un modle daction rituelle approprie qui sintgre dans les cultures locales des Sindhis et des Pendjabis et qui est partage par les musulmans ainsi que les hindous. Keywords aesthetics, body, dance, Pakistan, performance, Qalandariyya, ritual, trance, shrines, Sufism
Introduction At a number of shrines in the lowlands of Pakistan, devotees of Sufi saints regularly perform a trance dance and ritual practice known as dhaml.1 This sacred ritual is a characteristic feature of the devotional and ecstatic religiosity embedded in the local societies of Sindh and the Punjab. Considering its popularity, especially among the masses of the poor and dispossessed, it can be described as embodied religion or even as a form of danced religion in the sense of I.M. Lewis.2 In fact, Islamic mysticism is a very complex phenomenon with many diffferent faces. It reflects a broad spectrum between more moderate, ethically-oriented movements or schools of thought which are organized in the majority of formal, well-established Sufi orders, and othersa not so small minoritywith a more ascetic, world-renouncing profile, consisting of nonconformist groups of dervishes and devotees who emphasize ecstatic experiences such as dance. Listening to sam (vocal spiritual music) and moving the body in rapture and abandonment nevertheless plays a role in both currents. It marks an experiential state of merging with the saint, the Prophet and God whichalthough debated controversially among Sufis themselves3functions
1 On which see Shamim Burney Abbas, The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 335; Michel Boivin, Le plerinage de Sehwan Sharif, Sindh (Pakistan): territories, protagonists et rituels, in Les plerinages au Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient, ed. S. Chifffoleau and A. Madoeuf (Damascus: Institut Franais du Proche-Orient, 2005), 3347 (notes on dhaml in Sehwan Sharif, Sindh); and Richard K. Wolf, The Poetics of Sufi Practice: Drumming, Dancing, and Complex Agency at Madho Ll Husain (and Beyond), American Ethnologist 33.2 (2006): 24668 (study of dhaml with an anthropological and musicological focus on Punjabi dhl playing). 2 I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). 3 There has been a long, controversial debate reflected in Sufi literature either arguing for the legitimacy of sam and defending it, but nevertheless setting strict rules for the decorum of listening sessions, or rejecting it outright as un-Islamic accretions. Austere theologians and many
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as an integrating modus operandi, particularly within the Chishti Sufi order in Pakistan and India.4 The genre of instrumental dhaml, however, is a diffferent kind of Sufi activity mostly practiced outside institutionalized Sufi orders. Thus it is specifically associated with the dervishes and devotees of the Qalandar movement in Muslim South Asiaa radical, provocative, but also ascetic way of life which rejects the social values and the formalism of the external world and instead strives for states of religious rapture, abandonment and ecstasy. As such, the rapturous dance is embedded in mast-o-qalandar which could be translated as Qalandarism.5 Thus far, dervish dance and dhaml within the context of spirit possession at the main Qalandar shrine in Sindh have been dealt with by Michel Boivin from a historical perspective, emphasizing its ancient local roots in ascetic Shivaism and other regional cults with shamanistic elements.6 Focusing on the interpretation of drumming and dancing at the shrine of Madho Lal Husain in Lahore, Richard K. Wolf formulated an argument regarding the poetics of Sufi practice from an anthropological perspective. In his M.A. thesis, Rune Selsing explored the effficacy of ritual action in the dhaml taking place at the shrine of Shah Kamal and of other Sufi saints in Lahore.7 He specifically examined the distinct discipline of habitual dancers to attain a state of rapture and the oral and musical transmission of the related practical knowledge within a form of ecstatic Sufism which is not institutionalized. The present study also urges empirical observations to investigate dhaml as a concrete
sharia-bound Sufi masters objected to sam and ecstatic whirling, being afraid that the performance of love songs would distract the listener from concentrating upon the majesty of God only. For an overview about the permissibility of music in the Sufi tradition, see Kenneth S. Avery, A Psychology of Early Sufi sam (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 1052. For more detail, see Jean During, Musique et extase: Laudition mystique dans la tradition soufie (Paris: Albin Michel, 1988), 21747. 4 Carl W. Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 36. In a masterful study of qawwl Sufi music, Regula Burckhardt Qureshi has described and analysed this sam of the Chishti tradition (Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986]). 5 Therefore also the genre of songs related to this dance and to the veneration of the famous Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is known as qalandr dhamlia. 6 Michel Boivin, Reflections on Lal Shahbz Qalandar and the Management of his Spiritual Authority in Sehwan Sharif, Quarterly Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 51.4 (2003): 4172 (489, 623); idem, Note sur la danse dans les cultes musulman du domaine Sindh, Journal of the History of Sufism 4 (2004): 15967 (1604); idem, Le plerinage; and idem, Le sama dans la rgion du Sindh, in Des voies et des voix: Soufisme, culture, musique, ed. Zam Khenchelaoui (Algier: CNPRAH, 2006), 293333 (30811). 7 Rune Selsing, Without Experience no Knowledge: A Ritual Study of the Ecstatic Sufi Practice dhaml in Pakistan (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Copenhagen University, 2010).
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devotional, multi-faceted practice situated in the public space; the focus here is on its complex socio-religious contexts throughout the lowland regions of Pakistan. In particular, I diffferentiate between three types of dhaml performers, thereby emphasizing the diversity of embodied ritual attitudes and related aesthetic styles. To highlight this plurality, I use original quotations from a variety of performers, as well as referring to a number of side arguments which need to be studied in more detail in the future. My initial interest in this trance dance arose from participating several times in pilgrimages to Sufi shrines where I observed strikingly diffferent embodied attitudes amongst performers (a problem also addressed by Wolf).8 To understand this complexity of ritual actions and to interpret its various levels, which I grappled with during field research, here I draw mainly on Ronald L. Grimess useful distinction of modes of ritual sensibilities.9 That is, how can these diffferences be explained in the context of dhaml and to which frames of reference are they related? How should distinctions in performance styles and aesthetics be interpreted? These research questions serve as a guideline and central focus throughout the present study. First, I give a short introduction to the historical context of this dance, highlighting the genesis of dhaml and its relation to the Qalandar movement and its pivotal figure Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Secondly, ritual space and ritual time are outlined as defining the socio-religious context of dhaml. In the main part of the study, I describe and examine the performance and aesthetics of the dance at two selected ethnographic settings, diffferentiating three groups of actors (namely dervishes, dhamls and devotees) in terms of ritual structure, techniques of the body, gestural grammar and gender-related kinaesthetic styles of the dance.10 The next section focuses on embodied ritual attitudes and leads to a final discussion of dimensions of experience and agency.
8 Thus I participated at the annual urs in October 2003 (13th to 18th), October 2004 (2nd to 5th), September 2005 (22nd to 25th), August 2009 (7th to 14th), July 2010 (28th to 31st) and again July 2011 (18th to 21st). Further visits took place in November 2007 (2nd to 9th), November 2008 (7th to 11th), November 2009 (15th to 21st), November 2010 (23rd to 25th), JanuaryFebruary 2011 (30th to 1st), and December 2011 (15th to 16th). I reflect about these pilgrimages and related fieldwork in my ethnographic narratives At the Shrine of the Red Sufi: Five Days and Nights on Pilgrimage in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011) and Nocturnal Music in the Land of the Sufis: Unheard Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012). 9 Ronald L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). 10 Thus, my main focus is on the dancing performers, not so much on ritual functionaries such as the drummers. For the important role of the latter, see Wolf, The poetics of Sufi practice, and Selsing, Without Experience.
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The Historical Context of dhaml In vernacular Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi and Gujarati dhaml (lit. noisy) means wild, boisterous and over-excited. According to common folk etymology, this term is derived from the Persian word dam (breath); hence one of the most common devotional formulas is dam dam mast qalandarthrough your breath, O Qalandar intoxicated (by the divine).11 Therefore people at shrines often say that in ecstasy the rhythm of breath as well as of the heart beat should have the same rhythm as the drum beat. John T. Platts, however, claims that dhaml comes from dham, meaning the sound of stamping or jumping on the ground, and explains this term as jumping into, or running through fire.12 But, according to recent scholarship, dhaml is most probably derived from Sanskrit dharm.13 It needs to be pointed out that the original name of Sehwan, the centre of contemporary dhaml situated in the southern province of Sindh in Pakistan, had been Siwistan, that is to say the place of Shiva, the Hindu god who is worshipped as the king of dance (ntarj). Thus dhaml appears to have been originally a ritual of mystical union with Shiva performed by the Pashupatas, a Shivaite school of ascetics, which has been later associated with the qalandar dervishes.14 As mentioned above, the latter belong to an antinomian movement which stands in opposition to scriptural Islam as well as the established Sufi orders and apparently spread from West and Central Asia during and after the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, in other words at a time of destruction and chaos of war.15 It is renunciatory in character and allows anarchist
11 Boivin, Note sur la danse, 162; and Jrgen Wasim Frembgen, The Friends of GodSufi Saints in Islam: Popular Poster Art from Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 68. 12 John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urd, Classical Hind and English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884; rpt. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1997), 546; see also Wolf, Poetics, 254; and Boivin, Reflections, 48. 13 Personal communication by Richard K. Wolf (27 July 2009). 14 Boivin, Note sur la danse, 160; Michel Boivin, ed., Sindh through History and Representation: French Contributions to Sindhi Studies (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 38. 15 On the Qalandar tradition, see for instance: Simon Digby, Qalandars and Related Groups: Elements of Social Deviance in the Religious Life of the Delhi Sultanate of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, in Islam in Asia, ed. Yohanan Friedmann (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1984), 60108; Ahmet Yaar Ocak, Osmanl imparatorluunda marjinal sflik: Kalenderler, XIVXVII. yzyllar (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu Basmevi, 1992); Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period 12001550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994); Jrgen Wasim Frembgen, Journey to God: Sufis and Dervishes in Islam (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 712, 8390, 96101; idem, Ich wei nichts auer Liebe, Rausch und Ekstase. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (gest. 1274) und die Bewegung
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individualism which also becomes apparent in peculiar costume and insignia. Qalandarism (qalandar) in fact denotes a free-wheeling way of life open to a variety of dervishes, some of them formally initiated into the Qalandariyya, others like the South Asian malangs only loosely associated with certain Qalandar saints. Both aspire for direct divine inspiration through ardent love of God. Their hearts enraptured by the love of God, they seem to be seeking to be drowned in him, not considering themselves responsible for what they do. Mendicant and peripatetic qalandars are known for their provocative, socially deviant behaviour directed against prevailing moral and religious conventions, thereby adopting the principle of malmat, which means seeking blame, holding themselves in contempt in order to conceal their spiritual achievements and to fight hypocrisy. Extraordinary states of rapture and ecstasy characterize their religiosity. According to the local South Asian Qalandar tradition, dhaml dln (literally to put on dhaml) or dhaml karn (literally doing dhaml) which both mean dancing is attributed to Sayyid Uthman Marwandi (d. 1274), better known by his laqab (descriptive epithet) Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, the famous ascetic and leading master of the antinomian Qalandariyya who is the most popular Sufi saint of Pakistan.16 In 1178 he was born in the town of Marwand or Marand near Tabriz in Azerbaijan into a family who traced its descent to the sixth Shiite Imam Jafar al-Sadiq through his son Ismail. Historical sources depict Uthman Marwandi as a young man with a strong religious inclination who made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was then initiated into the Qalandariyya in Karbala. From Baghdad he wandered eastwards via the Makran coast to Sindh where he briefly stayed in Laki, a village close to Sehwan, in those days an important trading city and junction of caravan routes situated near the Indus River. After travelling to Multan in southern Punjab and to other parts of northwest India where he met a number of famous Sufi saints of the Sohravardi and Chishti orders, on 8 December, 1251 he returned to Sehwan with a large following of qalandar dervishes. He finally settled in this town where people venerate him to this day as a charismatic protector, healer and miracle-worker. Thus he became known by the afffectionate title Lal Shahbaz
der Qalandar-Derwische, in Mystik. Die Sehnsucht nach dem Absoluten, ed. Albert Lutz (Zuerich: Museum Rietberg and Scheidegger & Spiess, 2011), 1579. 16 Boivin, Reflections, 425; and Frembgen, The Friends of God, 6270. According to Kaleem Lashari (personal communication, 17 September 2005), in Sindh dhaml is only found at Sufi shrines which are influenced by the Punjab; see Uzma Rehman, Sacred Spaces, Rituals and Practices: The mazars of Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, in Sufism Today: Heritage and Tradition in the Global Community, ed. Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenberg (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 141 (dhaml at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif).
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Figure 1.Lal Shahbaz Qalandar dancing in abandonment with his shrine and tomb in the background; the figure of the saint had been borrowed from a Christian devotional painting showing Jesus and his apostles (Sufi poster, 1970s or 1980s, Pakistan; Munich State Museum of Ethnology, Inv.-No. 88310 817) which means red royal falcon, red like a ruby (ll) which is the colour of mystic ardour and passionate love of God. As far as the saints religious afffiliation is concerned, the Ismailis in Sindh and elsewhere claim him to be one of them because of his descent from Ismail, but this is disputed by most local authors as well as devotees who consider
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him either as belonging to the Twelver Shia or as a Sunni because of his name.17 Other sources point out that Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was related to the b-shar branch of the Sohravardi Sufi orderb-shar (without the religious law) being a simplistic label often used as a reproach of heresy and non-belief by orthodox representatives of Islamic mysticism, and especially ascribed to the Qalandar movement.18 Louis Massignon, however, emphasized that a qalandar dervish was not b-shar, but a staunch ascetic practicing celibacy and living like a hermit.19 With regard to the local perception of the saint, Boivin argues that ...evidence indicates that the Sayyid lineages of Sehwan have cleansed the figure of Lal Shahbz Qalandar of unorthodox features. Mostly attached to the Qdiriyyah, and moreover to their very respectable status in the Sindhi Muslim society, they could have imposed a purified tradition of Lal Shahbz, although one part was impossible to remove, the dhaml.20 References to this dance and to ecstasy in general are found in the saints Sufi poetry. Thus, in his Persian ghazals Lal Shahbaz Qalandar calls himself insightfully the friend of the famous martyr-mystic Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) sharing his emphasis on ecstasy as a means to draw oneself closer to God.21 Therefore the last verse of one of his ghazals is quoted most often: I know nothing except love, intoxication and ecstasy.22 Another ghazal starts with the verses:
I am burning with the Beloveds love, every moment. At one moment I am writhing on dust and in the other I am dancing on thorns. Come, O Beloved! Give me passion for music, I dance in the open market, in the ecstasy of union. In His love, I became infamous, but O pious one, I do not mind this infamy for thy sake and I dance openly. Although the world calls me a beggar because I dance, I have a secret in my heart that impels me to dance.23
See Boivin, Reflections, 42. Inam Mohamad, Hazrat Lal Shahbaz Qalandar of Sehwan-Sharif (Karachi: Royal Book Company, 1978), 70; and Frembgen, Journey to God, 44, 66127 (in this study the term b-shar is used descriptively to structure diverse religious types). 19 Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulmane (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1922), 147. 20 Boivin, Reflections, 467. 21 Hallaj, an extreme lover of God and a saint of intoxication (saw), is especially known for his ecstatic prayers (munjt) and being gifted by divine speech (sha); see Herbert W. Mason, Al-Hallaj (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995), 27, 16. 22 Anonymous, Qalandar Lal Shahbaz (Karachi: Ferozsons [published by the Department of Public Relations, Government of Sind], n.d.), 20; and Boivin, Reflections, 45. 23 Anonymous, Qalandar Lal Shahbaz, 1920; and Mohamad, Hazrat Lal Shahbaz, 911.
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17
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This God-given secret appears to refer to existential, esoteric knowledge which cannot be expressed in words. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is said to have danced for the sake of love of Ali without restraint to the beat of the drums.24 He appears to have redefined the Sindhi sam (mystical audition) by transforming an important indigenous musical ritual with shamanistic elements into a specific corporeal form of dhikr (recollection), using it also as a method of attracting people in the process of conversion to Islam.25 In line with Hallaj, he considered music and dance as a form of dhikr.26 With regard to its local origin dhaml thus represents a link between the Sufi tradition of Islam and Indian asceticism.27
The Socio-Religious Context of dhaml There is a considerable range of variation in the ritual performance of dhaml at Sufi shrines. In order to analyse its complexity, variance and interdependence, I have selected two settings which are both related to the veneration of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar marking an important facet of popular or informal Sufism. Thus my empirical observations first draw on the spectacular largescale performance of dhaml at the shrine of the great Qalandar in the pilgrimage centre of Sehwan Sharif, and second on trance dance at the medium-sized shrine of Shah Jamal in Lahore. Their contextual frames are public-oriented performative events in which devotees of the Qalandar play prominent roles. However, their variations and diffferences in terms of access, scale, space, choreography and style of the dance are striking, and call for a comparison of the respective ritual modes enacted at these places.
24 In addition, the dance of the Qalandar is explained by diffferent mythic tales, see Selsing, Without Experience, 22. 25 Boivin, Note sur la danse, 161; idem, Reflections, 65; and idem, Le sama. 26 The problem whether dhaml can still be considered within the framework of sam is discussed in more detail in Boivin, Le sama. 27 Lack of space does not allow delving deeper into questions of the origin of dhaml here. There might be influences or borrowings from the local African diasporic community (known as Shidi), studied by Helene Basu (Theatre of Memory: Ritual Kinship Performances of the African Diaspora in Pakistan, in Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Perspective, ed. Monika Bck and Aparna Rao [New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2000], 24370), or from the Balochi qwat exorcism ritual, studied by Jean During (Musique et mystique dans les traditions de lIran [Paris and Tehran: Institut Franais de Recherche en Iran, 1989]), but in my view evidence is not yet suffficient to support such hypotheses. On the other hand, musicologists such as Denis Erin Mete do also support the hypothesis that the Qalandar saint might have imported the gyrating dance along with shamanistic drum rhythms from his Northwest Iranian place of origin (personal communication, 17 March 2010).
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Ritual Spaces The main locus ritualis for dhaml in Pakistan is the town of Sehwan Sharif, the final abode of the enraptured Qalandar who is said to have expressed his intense love for God and his union with the divine through whirling and spinning dance movements. The saint is first of all commemorated, praised, evoked and honoured through dance at his proper shrine, which has two courts used for devotional dance; the larger one, which leads from the main eastern gate to the mausoleum, is specifically intended for dhaml and has a female-gendered space cordoned offf from the space allotted to male devotees.28 In addition to these ritual arenas of the central shrine, trance dance is also performed at other localities in the town such as the various dervish lodges, smaller shrines and the sacred places commemorating Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and Ali, cousin and sonin-law of the Prophet Muhammad, fourth Sunni caliph and first Shiite Imam. At these places, which constitute, so to speak, secondary sources of charisma,29 and in the makeshift tents of the pilgrims, men and women related through family and kinship ties usually belong to the same association of devotees and share the same ritual space, but they must keep to themselves and avoid body contact. Thus, women and men (including dervishes and habitual dancers) maintain a general separation of genders while dancing. Among female and male devotees the girls join their mother and female relatives and likewise boys dance close to their father or older friends. Nevertheless, in the context of the dance, boundaries of gendered spaces are not always clearly demarcated and instead at times blurred and permeable. This also holds true for dhaml performed in the streets as part of processions in which tomb-covers are ceremonially carried. According to hagiographic traditions in the Punjab, the saint Shah Jamal (d. 1639), a Sufi of the Sohravardi and Qadiriyya orders who was apparently not afffiliated to the Qalandar movement, once became furious because of the complaint of a Mughal princess. As the legend goes, he started to dance ecstatically to the rhythm of the drum, so much so that when he reached an altered state of rapture a multi-storeyed fortress collapsed.30 This is the reason why the saint is particularly associated with trance dance and venerated by local malangs (dervishes) who are also keen devotees of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Shah Jamals
28 While until November 2008 there had been only a long aisle between the women and family space on the one hand and the space for male dancers on the other (whereby male dancers and male spectators were separated by a rope), a year later the aisle had been marked by two long ropes separating both spaces more clearly. 29 Boivin, Le plerinage, 320. 30 Frembgen, The Friends of God, 946.
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shrine is situated in the quarter of Ichhra in Lahore. Dhaml takes place in a courtyard situated right below the terrace of the shrine where hundreds of devotees and spectators can be accommodated around a circle of about 1020 dancers. The dhaml at this shrine, which originated as a devotional practice of dervishes dancing in a circle, is in principle an exclusively male-gendered ritual.31 The presence of hordes of young men in the dim light of the shrine and the common consummation of drugs generally prevent women from attending this nocturnal event. Ritual Time As far as the tempus ritualis of both dhaml events under discussion is concerned, it is important to note that the ritual at the shrine of Shah Jamal in Lahore is a weekly gathering on Thursday evening after maghrib prayers (as is common at so many other Sufi shrines) which is not embedded in the framework of a pilgrimage. Here the performance of drummers and dancers follows a customary sequence of the ritual. The shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, on the contrary, is the focus and destination of the largest pilgrimage in Pakistan on the occasion of the saints annual urs festival (lit. marriage; a ritual marking the saints death and his mystic union with God).32 This is the liminal ritual period when the power of the respective saint is thought to flow in particular abundance. The spectrum of pilgrims covers diverse ethnic and social groups with the majority coming from the masses of the poor, including many Hindus from Sindh who venerate Lal Shahbaz as Raja Bhartrhari, a Shivaite ascetic of the fifth century. In terms of age, young male devotees constitute the largest group. Pilgrims stay at least three days, but usually between 710 days at Sehwan (sometimes even longer) including the essential period from the 19th to the 21st of the month of Shaban in which the most important ceremonies take place. In the context of this ziyrat (ritual visit to a shrine) pilgrims feel a permanent flow of barakat (blessings and power to healing) within a celebrative event marked by an emotional intensity of Dionysian character where the divine is experienced day and night with all the senses. This is what Roger Caillois has aptly called
31 Due to the popularity of this dhaml event, in the course of the 1990s not only people from the elite of Lahore (including college girls), but also female expatriates started to attend the ritual. First these outsiders were seated in a separate corner close to the musicians, but recently a metal cage was constructed to protect the few female spectators from the frenzy of the otherwise allmale audience. 32 For a general impression of the multi-sensory world of this pilgrimage, see Frembgen, At the Shrine.
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the intermediate rule of intoxication, exuberance and flow in festivals where all conventional rules are temporarily dissolved.33 The liminal ritual of trance dance is embedded in the communitas experiences of the pilgrims with their heightened forms of communication sharing the attachment to the Qalandar saint. It should be noted that, in addition to the visual spectacle of dhaml during the urs, the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is visited by pilgrims throughout the year whereby trance dance is performed daily as a fundamental ritual after maghrib prayers (with the exception of the 1st to the 10th of Muharram) in the eastern court of the shrine.34
Performance and Aesthetics of dhaml Basically dhaml can be described as a ritual dance which expresses a communal, spiritual state of trance (l; or presence) or ecstasy (wajd), in which the subject dissolves his or her self.35 In vernacular language the term mast or the formula to be mast is much more frequently used to describe this emotion of ecstatic rapture connecting the participants of the performance. Dancers in Lahore and Sehwan, who I spontaneously addressed on the roadside, described this devotional dance as an expression of deep love of the Qalandar, a close link between the heart and God, an opening of the gates of paradise, and a gift from God. Some dervishes, with whom I discussed dhaml, pointed out that this dance of abandonment leads to clearance of the soul, breaking up the self and thus to self-annihilation making room for God. The common Sufi interpretation is that in l the moment of divine presence is realized which opens the door to a spiritual space, where dancers, listeners and musicians are united with their murshid (spiritual guide). This state is considered to be bestowed by God, descending from him into a mans heart, thus agency is attributed to God only.36 The dance movements in the state of trance are essentially linked to rhythm and ecstatic exclamations. Thus, dhaml is also the term for the typical rhythmic sequence mostly played on a barrel drum (dhl)37 orlike in Sehwan
33 Roger Caillois, Die Spiele und die Menschen. Maske und Rausch (Munich and Vienna: Albert Langen Georg Mller Verlag, 1965), 97. 34 Boivin, Le plerinage, 3345. 35 See Gilbert Rouget, Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 26, 284. On the concepts of l and wajd in the Sufi tradition see Avery, Psychology, 6974, 268. 36 See Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Living Sufism (Lahore: Suhail Academy, 2005), 604. 37 The dhl is made from shsham (rosewood) or mango wood and both skins of this twoheaded drum from goatskin.
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on large copper kettledrums (naghar, naqqarah, nawbat).38 Thus dhaml is essentially linked to drumming.39 Master drummers, such as the pairs Pappu Sain and Jhura Sain at Shah Jamal and Gunga Sain and Mithu Sain at Shah Kamal (also a shrine in Ichhra, Lahore), use repetitive rhythmic patterns gradually increasing in rapidity to create a trance-inducing state. In this way, drum beats (with which specific formulas are identified) are transformed into dhikr.40 Experienced dancers point out that they hear dhikr formulas (also called bl) in the diffferent sequences of beats and also recite them silently or audibly during their performance, such as:
Al, Al, Al, aqq dam mast Qalandar, dam mast Qalandar l ilha ill llh y pk, y pk Ali, Ali, Ali, truth Through your breath, O Qalandar intoxicated There is no god but God O pure one, O pure one
These hymnic formulas are essential sonic elements of the dance, uttered and cried by dancers as well as the audience which mainly invoke God, Ali and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.41 In his thesis, Selsing focused on these dhikrs or bls as a central aspect of dhaml in more detail, emphasizing that they are bestowed by the saint himself in order to purify the devotees heart.42 In terms of the structure of dance, changes between diffferent zikrs correspond to changes in the rhythm.43 On 9 March 2006 I attended a dhaml performance at Shah
38 In the Punjab dhl-wls usually belong to the caste-like group of Mirasis; in Sindh they belong to the group of hereditary musicians called Manganhar (who perform, for instance, in Sehwan at the shrine of Bodla Bahar, but not at the main Qalandar shrine). The nawbat drummers in Sehwan, who are also called dhamls, are Sindhis of the Channa and Unar caste. The rhythm they play is: 12, 12-3, 12-34-56 (see Boivin, Le plerinage, 335). 39 Thus it is unusual and more of an exception when dhaml is performed to the sound of mystical qawwl singing (e.g., at the shrine of Mian Mir in Lahore). 40 Arif, a dhaml, who is attached to a minor shrine in Lahore where he runs the free kitchen, complained that the other day during an urs the drummers played so badly that dancers could not get into l. Therefore it would be essential to enlist the services of master drummers (ustd ). 41 In addition to invocations of the saints honorary names ( y Al; mast Qalandar), the following bls are common: ar mast, dast b dast; panjtn pk aydar. For an analysis of the drumming text in dhaml, see Wolf, Poetics, 2556, 260; and Selsing, Without Experience, 357, 537. 42 Selsing, Without experience, 567 (for additional dhikr-formulas used in Lahore, see 545). 43 Ibid., 54.
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Jamal where Pappu Sain shouted the following dhikrs to which the dancers as well as the crowd of spectators responded in chorus:
Allh-h, aqq wujd Allh-i mast, Mawl-i mast Mawl Al, mast-i Mawl Allh-i mast, Al zabardast mast Qalandar, Jhl Ll dam dam mast Qalandar, Jhl Ll Qalandar mast, zabardast God is One, [his] truth is eternal Enraptured God, enraptured Ali Master Ali, rapture of Ali Enraptured God, Ali the powerful Qalandar intoxicated, the ruby who rocks himself in a cradle Through your breath, O Qalandar intoxicatedthe ruby who rocks himself in a cradle Qalandar intoxicated, powerful
Besides this invocation of God and the saints, the initial rhythmic cycle of four beats was later doubled to eight and sixteen in the course of the performance. Sometimes the drum is accompanied by the metallic sound of fire tongs (chimta, dast-panh)44 or a metal rattle and accentuated by the sound of the local oboe (shahn), dervish horn, trumpet, or conch shell. Music connoisseurs such as Dr Ashfaq Khan from Lahore, who is widely respected within circles of musicians, emphasizes that this instrumental trance music must be round (gl), without beginning and end, like whirling the head in ecstasy.45 Prerequisites for dancing to the rhythm of the dhl are to move barefoot on the earth which God has spread like a carpet for man as Sufis used to say, as well as a certain length of hair which supports the whirling movements of the head. Often the adept also eats some ash from the sacred fire, rubs himself with sacred oil and reverently touches the drums. Following proper etiquette, the dancer first turns towards the saints tomb, crossing his arms before his chest, thereby gently bowing and asking respectfully for permission to perform dhaml. Often he also touches the ground with his right hand, a gesture of demarcating his or her dance from the complex ritual processes taking place. In Sehwan the devotee should first, in commemoration of the red Sufi Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, tie a red thread around his right wrist before participat44 Jrgen Wasim Frembgen, Kleidung und Ausrstung islamischer Gottsucher. Ein Beitrag zur materiellen Kultur des Derwischwesens (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 1745, 1867. 45 Personal communication (October 2002).
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Figure 2.Enraptured dhaml dancing to the sound of the dhl in front of the Qalandar shrine in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (J.W. Frembgen, November 2010) ing in dhaml. The actual beginning of the ritual is marked by single, heavy beats of the drum. At the end of their performance dancers in the courtyard of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar prostrate themselves and pray in the direction of the saints tomb. Against the background of our two case-studies, in the remainder of this section I will examine the performance and ritual structure of trance dance. Special emphasis will be laid on the aspect of dhaml as a multi-sensory
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performing art, as a field of aesthetics, on the borderline between religion and drama which contains distinctive patterns of bodily techniques observable among the protagonists of this poetics of movement.46 In this context it is important to diffferentiate between three groups of actors which are characterized by overlapping categories and styles of this music-dance form: (1) The dance of dervishes (malang/malangn, faqr/faqrn), that is to say of mystic and ascetic seekers of Godboth male and femalewho are permanently or temporarily individuals-outside-the-world; they are classified by others as b-shar (without the religious law) and jall (incorporating an awe-inspiring emotional state).47 (2) The dance of dhamls, that is to say of dedicated and experienced dancersboth male and femalewho are part of the shrine culture and sometimes earn a living from performing in public. Apart from parttime performers (shawqn dhamls), full-time dancers over the years often turn into malangs or faqrs, and are respectfully called s. (3) The dance of devotees, that is to say of male and female laymen who are only temporarilyduring pilgrimages and ritual gatherings (ziyrat)in that liminal, outwordly state of an intense relation to God and the saints. I want to emphasize that these distinctions between dervishes, dhamls and devotees, which are aimed to focus on their performing activities, are not clearcut, but in fact fluctuating, and should therefore not be understood as a form of classification. It should be mentioned that the devotees dhaml is nowadays often influenced by the popular film dhaml of folk singers and dancing girls which is likewise influenced by mundane Punjabi bhangra dance.48
46 In principle, what I prefer to call a field of aesthetics (including the aesthetic features of a saints shrine and the dress of dervishes) corresponds to Richard K. Wolfs concept of poetics of music and movement in South Asian Sufi practice (Wolf, Poetics). 47 Boivin, Le sama, 308. 48 I wish to add that attention should also be paid to the distinctive performance style of the local Shidi population (descendants of former African slaves and soldiers) in Sindh and the Makran coast with its spacious body movements, high jumps and hurling arms (observations in July 2010 in Sehwan). Shidi generally use the term dhaml or their indigenous term goma for their ritual dances in the context of the veneration of saints (see Helene Basu, Habshi-Sklaven, SidiFakire. Muslimische Heiligenverehrung im westlichen Indien [Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1994], 49). Also, see Boivin, Note sur la danse, 165.
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Dancing Dervishes The peculiar whirling dance regularly performed in Sehwan Sharif is characteristic for the red-robed dervishes (faqrs) attached to Bodla Bahar, the most beloved disciple of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.49 Their form of spinning devotion, which is specifically known as ll phr (lit. whirling of the red, red rotation) or chakr (lit. gyrating) and thought to be practiced for centuries, has the character of a sacred mimesis and spiritual exercise venerating the movements of the great Qalandar so as to attain a vision of the spiritual master.50 Moreover according to local oral dervish lore, the latter inherited this dance tradition from Ali, who, after being proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad as his rightful successor, in a gesture of confirmation and out of joy is said to have whirled three times around his own axis. Ll phr is performed daily in the evening in the courtyard of Bodla Bahars shrine to the sound of the kettledrums in which about 1025 male dancers stand in three or four rows in the courtyard facing the tomb of the saint. A few simple dance steps (first the right foot is placed to the front, then the left one, wherefrom the dancers raise both arms) alternate with spinning around to the right. As a form of dhikr characterised by circular movements, it is reminiscent of the well-known Persian mystical motif of moths fluttering around the flame, an analogy frequently activated by word or deed as mentioned by Wolf.51 Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi from Lahore, who occasionally does dhaml, claimed that it has a liberating efffect, getting rid of all the dirt and compared its efffect to a soul which like a bird wants to be set free from its cage.52 After the spinning, all dancers prostrate themselves and then form two long rows, standing shoulder-to-shoulder while praying litany-like invocations to Ali and other saints. The dervish ritual ends with a ceremonial form of greeting. Participation in this form of ritual action at Bodla Bahar is in principle exclusivist in the sense that only faqrs initiated into the Qalandar tradition (through ritually shaving their hair, eyebrows, etc.) and wearing the proper bell-shaped red frock belong to the group of performers.53 Nevertheless, a few common devotees at times also participate by dancing in the last row. Even female devotees are free to dance towards the side of this otherwise
49 On the specific groups of world-renouncers in Sehwan Sharif, see Boivin, Le plerinage, 32831. 50 On the spinning of dervishes and other movements in Sufi dance, see During, Musique et extase, 12534. 51 Wolf, Poetics, 259. 52 Conversation in Sehwan on 30 July 2010. 53 On the ritual initiation among Qalandar dervishes see Frembgen, Journey to God, 8990.
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male-dominated space The dervish robe in red, the symbolic colour of the Qalandar, marks the ritual identity of the performers. Their flowing, gyrating movements in abandonment are often gradually increased and raised to the level of divine attraction (jadhb), finally achieving the trance state of l, but always convey the impression that the dancer masterfully controls his or her dhaml. Nevertheless, the visual Gestalt of their structured dance appears Dionysian and wild in comparison, for instance, with the perfect harmony of the well-regulated Mevlevi ritual. On every new moon and on the 27th of each lunar month the dervishes of Bodla Bahar also perform at the shrine of the Qalandar where they dance in front of all the other dancers cordoned offf from them by a rope. Then there are individual dervishes of the malang-type who do not perform collectively within a group, but celebrative their own distinct style. For instance, at Sehwan I observed the spinning dance of a rather portly elderly malangn who is known as Lal Pari Mastani.54 During one of the daily ritual performances (on 7 November 2008) in the eastern dhaml court of the main
Figure 3.Devotional dhaml dance at the shrine of Bodla Bahar in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (J.W. Frembgen, November 2007)
54 William Dalrymple portrayed her recently in a literary essay about Sehwan (Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India [London: Bloomsbury, 2009], 11922, 12532, 1405).
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Qalandar shrine, she rotated with full vigour, her red robe swinging like a bell around her, whereby her mace-like stafff and her patched bag (both worn on her back) acted as a counter-weight intensifying the whirling movement. She performed with complete control of her body movements. In addition to ll phr, Qalandar dervishes also dance in a more individual way with an emphasis on stamping the feet on the ground. The latter intensifies the sound of the large bells, occasionally worn around the waist, and of the rattling ankle-bells (ghungrs). I have been told that in ecstasy, dervishes may even, in rare cases, tear their garments to pieces. Such a frenzied dance was, for instance, masterfully performed by Saqi Baba on the beginning of a musical gathering organised in honour of Sayyid Mehdi Raza Shah Sabzwari, the guardian of the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, during the latters urs on 11 August 2009 in Sehwan Sharif. The red-robed dervish combined spinning with stamping the ground as well as other dramatic actions mimetically re-enacting the sufffering of the Shiite Imam Zain ul-Abidin in Karbala who is considered to be one of the ancestors of the Qalandar saint. Saqi Baba, an impressive dervish with matted hair in his fifties, was born in Gujar Khan (Punjab) and spent his initial seven-year period as a candidate to become a malang of the Qalandar in Pakpattan. During other nightly performances, I observed that dervishes occasionally raised their burning hashish pipe in a celebrative mood. Dervishes like Amir Husain, the well-known ng-wl faqr from Sehwan, perform entranced, presenting the construction of ten wood-carved snakes (ng) impressively draped around his body, stamping on the ground, raising one of the snakes and occasionally blowing his horn. There are also dervishes who perform ll phr carrying bells attached to their whole body. Dancing dhamls At both settings, in Sehwan as well as at Shah Jamal in Lahore, experienced dancers called dhamls perform under a ritual leader (for instance a malang) and in close coordination with the drummers. At Shah Jamal, the weekly event of trance music and dance in the lower courtyard is dominated by the main dhl player Pappu Sain, who directs and controls the dancers movements through the hypnotic strokes of his drum. The dancers follow his rhythmic pattern (thekah), so to speak the heartbeat of the drum consisting of four, eight or sixteen beats. Wolf further explains: ...drummers create interest for the dancers by inserting breaks (tor) and tripartite cadences (tiys) as well as other patterned gaps in the otherwise thick texture of strokes.55 Together with
55
Wolf, Poetics, 255.
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his co-drummer Jhura Sain, Pappu thus creates a pulsing space in which the dancers move ecstatically: whirling, jumping, and stamping their feet on the ground, anticipating and responding to the drummers rhythmic articulations. Wild movements, caprioles and abrupt leaps are said to reflect the jall nature of the saints of the Qalandar tradition, that is to say their majesty and frightening power, reflecting an attribute of God, whereas the body language is gentler in the case of saints who are said to embody the beauty of God (jaml). Wolf aptly emphasizes that these forms of musical and kinaesthetic synchronicity, coming together, are critically valued from the artistic perspective of some participants.56 Swirling their long hair creates a further aesthetic dimension in addition to the rhythmic patterns of body movements. The dancers visually dominate the performance and attract the attention of the audience. In addition to the musicians, they are the key actors in this nocturnal ritual at Shah Jamal. The choreography is dramatic not only when the lead drummer starts spinning and rotating in the middle of the dance floor, ceaselessly beating his drum, but especially when a dhaml instinctively reacts to the sound of the dhl, sensually nestles against it, as if in intimate embrace, and then both dancer and drummer accelerate to an ecstatic run.57 In comparison to the enraptured dance of the dervishes, dhamls specifically indulge in the frenzy of ecstasy (jadhb), seeking its utmost peak. As I observed at Sehwan and at Shah Jamal, their l is often induced through drugs (hashish, opium). Accomplished dhamls are brilliant in their individual kinaesthetic style dancing with instinctive assurance. At Sehwan, for instance, I observed a sturdy younger woman, with a shawl draped around her upper body, her eyes almost closed, who gyrated for a full hour, at times swirling her long hair and rotating her head at such a speed that I could hardly distinguish between head and hairvirtually like a spinning top. She alternated this gyration with a particular figurative choreography, namely spreading her arms like a cross, then bending her body forwards and moving her arms like a flying birdobviously mimetically enacting the image of her beloved Qalandar saint miraculously flying like a royal falcon (shhbz). A particular ecstatic circling movement which I only observed among dhamls is rotating the head in frenzy, virtually like the head of a drill in motion.58 This is commonly known as sar k dhaml. At Sehwan, one of the
Ibid., 248. Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 78. 58 During comments on this whirling with the head: Il est possible que le mouvement rotatoire de la tte, accompagn dune respiration rythmique crant par sa cadence rapide une hyperventilation, produise des drglements de loreille interne, qui, se combinant aux efffets de la respiration forte, engendrent un tat de stupeur ou dobnubilation (During, Musique et extase, 159).
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most accomplished trance dancers in this respect is the young, about twenty to twenty-five-year-old Abdul Qayyum who has been dancing since the age of six. Born into a Pashtun family in a small town in Baluchistan, he lives now permanently in a dervish lodge in Sehwan while his parents live in Karachi. While whirling his head, he occasionally performed diffferent habitual gestures, such as raising his arms, pointing his right index-finger into the air and beating his chest with his right hand in the Shiite gesture of mtam.59 When I observed him a year later, he had added a new movement to his repertoire of bodily actions, namely explosively shooting his arms in the air to the rapidly whipping rhythm of the drums.60 Another year later he had further enhanced his performance style through an occasional half turn as well as explosively shooting his arms forward. Both movements served as a break to control the trance and to complete an ecstatic part of it. In December 2011 he added several spins of utmost rapidity at the climax of his spectacular performance. Another example of outstanding individual agency as well as performance art in dhaml is the respected dancer Muhabbat Sain at Shah Jamal in Lahore: dressed in a loincloth and a long black shirt, he remained in a standing position almost like a statue, only his head spinning in frenzy and at times swinging his arms and hands.61 He stood in the middle of the circle representing the axis, the rest of the dancers rapidly moving around him. This magnificent dhaml, whose real name is Haq Nawaz, is around seventy years old, had been married with five children and is long since the care-taker of a small shrine in Kainchi, Lahore. In his youth he acted for some time in Punjabi films. He told me that he learned sar k dhaml at a young age from his elder brother. The dhaml at Shah Jamal is only partly inclusive in the sense that untrained neophytes in the circle of experienced dancers, who try to mingle with them, quickly realize that they are hardly able to dance within the congested space. They might even fall and disturb others, therefore most of them drop out soon, if they dare to step into the arena at all. Staggering dancers, who are unable to
Observations on 7 and 8 November 2008. Observations on 15, 16, 17, 19 and 20 October 2009. Older Sehwanis tend to denounce such kind of dance movements as disco-style. 61 Observation on 9 March 2006 (Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 801). On 5 November 2009, I met Muhabbat Sain again at the shrine of Shah Kamal (the younger brother of Shah Jamal) in Lahore where he did sar k dhaml, but due to his advanced age he was no longer able of mastering the whirling movements. The weekly Thursday night event at Shah Kamal, which had been started in Spring 2009, turns out to be a pastiche of drumming, singing qadas and dhaml. Trance ritual has thus been transformed into religious entertainment and merriment. Rune Selsing, who selected this ritual space as the basis for his research on dhaml, critically questions the business of dhaml and the self-branding of dhamls in the context of a discussion of ritual ossification and the decline of ritual as well as the growing New Age appeal (Selsing, Without Experience, 747, 8992).
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control their trance and to align themselves with others, are rudely removed from the circle either by an older malang or by the leading drummer. The same treatment awaits frauds who just try to show offf or otherwise behave improperly.62 Thus, responsible ritual experts take care that the pattern of performance remains structured and its quality ensured. That means there should be a somatic mode of attention among dancers in relation to other bodies while they form a collective body.63 In fact, as I frequently observed at Shah Jamal, experienced dhamls and malangs (such as Baba Firuz Sain) dance with closed or almost closed eyes, instinctively responding to each others movements. Firuz is a charismatic, saint-like Pathan with long hair, now about sixty-five years old, who had long been respected as the most accomplished dancer at Shah Jamal, and who always used to dance with ghungrs. When I visited him on 19 March 2010, he told me that he had been working for years as an oilman at Lahore airport, but that he would now earn his living by transporting vegetables on a donkey cart. Dancing dhaml since his youth, he is also a gifted singer of qalandr songs. Many years ago he became the care-taker of a shrine in Kot Lakhpat, a lower class area on the periphery of Lahore. Although married with one son and one daughter, he lives alone in his dervish lodge at a graveyard in the same locality. A couple of years ago he stopped dancing because of his age. Arif Sain is one of those respected malangs who has the authority to supervise the dhaml; he also mingles with the dancers and contributes to the aesthetics of the performance not only by blowing his horn at times, but also through his sheer presence as a dervish in traditional robe with patchwork cap.64 Similarly, the long-haired drummer Pappu Sain wears an ankle-length garment and several necklaces.65 While mostly playing with his co-drummer at the edge of the circle facing the shrine, at an advanced state of the trance session he himself moves into the centre of the arena and circles around with small toddling steps, followed by the dhamls, thereby shouting bls invoking God, Ali and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. Audience and dancers alternately respond to these formulas. Pappu himself gradually works himself into the state of l.66 His final spinning while steadily and competently playing the heavy dhl, which flies horizontally in front of him through the power of rotation, marks
Wolf, Poetics, 2567. Thomas J. Csordas, Body, Meaning, Healing (New York: Palgrave, 1993), 2445; see also Christoph Wulf, Anthropologische Dimensionen des Tanzes, in Tanz als Anthropologie, ed. Gabriele Brandsteller and Christoph Wulf (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2007), 123. 64 See Frembgen, The Friends of God, 3; and idem, At the Shrine, 379, 8991. 65 For biographic data on Pappu Sain, see Wolf, Poetics, 249. 66 See ibid., 254.
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the sonic-visual climax of the event. The dramatic efffect can even be increased when a second person puts his arms around the drummers neck from behind, thus flying and gyrating on the back of the musician like a counter-weight to the drum. Such an acrobatic and spectacular performance, which I had the chance to observe at the urs of Baba Bullhe Shah on 26 August 2004 in Kasur (performed there by the rather frail Bijli Sain, a drummer from Lahore), is part of the drummers training by his master. Another spectacular efffect is when the drummer holds his heavy instrument only with his teeth while continuing to play and whirl. Among the dhamls, who perform with drummers at Sehwan and during mels at other shrines, are mostly young, single males as well as young and middle-aged females. The latter are usually members of small groups under the leadership of a malang. For their performance these male or female dhaml entertainers receive a share of the donations given by onlookers to the main drummer, or cash is showered on them in the traditional gesture of vel; at times they are also paid in kind (for example hashish). Similarly, professional nchwls (dancing girls and prostitutes from the Kanjar-caste) and gharv-wls (women, often speaking Marwari, who belong to peripatetic groups and play on a small metal pot) also perform for money. Offfering cash to dancers is considered auspicious for the donor. Drawing on Grimess modes of ritual sensibilities, the dance of these dhamls might have a pragmatic component, yet this does not exclude deep feelings of devotion.67 Those dancers, who are labelled by devotees as true, full-time dhamls, however, rarely dance for money, but in abandonment for the saints and for God. They frequently identify with and become malangs/malangns or are identified as enraptured mastnas/ mastns. Male dhamls emphasize that long hair (called jg) is indispensable for real dhaml and that dedicated dancers should in any case also wear ankle bells. Dancing Devotees Contrary to the gatherings at Shah Jamal, Sehwan vibrates with dhaml performances which are open for everybody. Particularly during the urs day and night a unique soundscape is created with the rhythm of drums continuously overlapping. Here dhaml is a collective ritual taking place within various
67 Grimes, Beginnings, 41. Selsing also considers the issues of sincerity and authenticity concluding that ...to the practitioners of dhaml belief cannot be seen as some separate pure realm of the sacred in opposition to something profane; belief rather constitutes an activity in the world. To dhaml practitioners it is not a matter of belief or unbelief but rather of doing it right (Without Experience, 97).
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circles of drummers and dancers. Apart from performances in the two courts of the central shrine, dances are arranged spontaneously at any place within the precincts of the holy town. At times men and women dance side by side within a group of devotees. While visiting the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar several times,68 I was able to study this context of dhaml in detail whereby I could diffferentiate distinctive kinaesthetic styles and techniques of the body among male and female devotees. As to the first, dhaml is predominantly performed by men, whose dance, in comparison to women, appears more conventional, patterned/ choreographed and routinized. Often, they dance collectively in a group (sometimes of 2040 persons), their faces and bodies all turned towards the saints tomb. Men move with restrained unrestrained to quote an expression coined by the German anthropologist W.E. Mhlmann. Usually they dance with their arms raised and elbow-angleda central gesture attributed to Ali, who is venerated as the pivotal and founding figure of the Sufi tradition.69 Occasionally both index fingers are pointed towards the sky, hands are placed together in the prayer gesture of supplication (du) or both thumbs are placed at the earlobes in the traditional gesture of repentance (tawba). Further characteristic body movements include swinging the head rapidly from right to left, which can be intensified to whirling and is a method to induce trance, as well as balancing from right to left and toddling backwards and forwards with short steps in tune with the rhythm of the dhl. There is also room for devotees to difffer from this rather structured repetitious pattern of dhaml and to dance individually in a wild, frenzied and feverish way with abrupt leaps. As to the second, there are very few shrines in Pakistan where women are traditionally allowed to join in dhaml.70 During the urs in Sehwan their style of dhaml appears not only more varied and idiosyncratic, but also more impulsive and eccentric in comparison to men. Their dance typically starts with one arm akimbo and with the other hand opening their long, tied hair. The latter can be interpreted as part of the embodied self which is now presented in public. Overpowered by the presence of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, women literally sweep the floor of the shrine with their hair swinging in a circle while sitting on the ground, kneeling or standing with their upper body bowed forwards. While many women whirl with their hair, covering themselves after their trance, others are conscious never to let their shawl slip down; thus, there is a dialogue going on between covering (or concealment) and uncovering. In
See note 8 above. During, Musique et extase, 126. 70 Women also join, for instance, in the dhaml at the shrine of Shah Abdul Latif in Sindh (Rehman, Sacred Spaces, 141).
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addition to the movements mentioned above for male devotees, women go into l or play l (l khln) by gracefully waving their arms wide and sweepingly, making circling gestures with their hands and fingers, swinging their hips, gradually going into spinning with their whole body (either to the right or to the left). Having thus gone into l they may increase their trance through rotating their head, pirouetting with their body, jumping and other frenetic and spontaneous movements. The intense sensual expression of their body moving in abandonment has a strong erotic appeal to men who magnetically flock around them. Thus dhaml can at times turn into a sexually explicit performance and overt expression of female sexuality.71 During a long performance which I observed in the early morning on 5 October 2004 in the southern court of the shrine, female spectators sitting on the
Figure 4.Female devotees dancing dhaml in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (Salman Zaidi, August 2009)
71
Frembgen, At the Shrine, 517, 11724.
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ground formed an inner half circle around the dancing women (about 812), protecting and shielding them from the standing male audience. The dancers moved within an oval, later in a circle. Policemen frequently pushed back male onlookers threatening them with batons, thus ensuring ordered spatiality. Ecstatic behaviour is always conducted and controlled in the sense that nondancing women (often relatives) or dervishes act as custodians preventing improper behaviour by men, and possible indecent exposure by the dancers. In contrast to malangns and female dhamls, women observing seclusion in their daily lives and staying at home are called ghar-wls. The latter usually start their dance with soft and stately movements, getting into l at a slower pace than experienced dhamls. Obviously, there is individual variation in trance dance according to each dancers temperament and state of rapture. Female devotees sometimes try to remain covered, and if the veil slips from their head and upper body, a relative will throw it over her if possible. But, as whirling and gyrating are essential for real l, a shawl for covering is not practical and therefore sooner or later shed to the ground. After their dhaml, however, women immediately cover themselves with a veil when they leave the circle of dancers. Thus, morality seems as much contextual as normative. The fact that the performance of all dancers is spatially oriented towards the tomb of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar creates a particular magical and aesthetic power.72
Embodied Ritual Attitudes In accordance with the variety of its protagonists, that is to say dervishes, dhamls and devotees, dhaml is multi-functional, referring to diffferent levels and horizons of motivation, activity and meaning. Insofar as trance dance is a medium of communication with the divine, its dominant theme is individual devotion (aqdat) expressed by a particular gestural performance. But before investigating this notion of devotionalism in relation to dhaml, I will first apply Grimess analytical framework of diffferentiating modes of ritual sensibilities in the light of my ethnographic data. For dervishes, who are not only the most devoted followers of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and his disciple Bodla Bahar, but also those who carry on the antinomian tradition of these saints, ll phr and dhaml are ultimate forms of veneration, expressing praise of their beloved saint and longing to spiritually unite
72 See David Parkin, Ritual as Spatial Direction and Bodily Division, in Understanding Rituals, ed. Daniel de Coppet (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 17.
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with Godthe central theme of the Sufi tradition time and again expressed in poetry. As travellers on the spiritual path to God seeking unio mystica, trance dance is for them crossing a threshold between this world and the next, and thus a ritual of transcendence. For Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, this whirling dance had been a way to unite with God, that is to say a communal trance.73 By imitating the Qalandars exemplary gyration, the dervish dance bears the character of a mythical movement, thus re-enacting the saints union with God. In this way, through mimesis in ritual practice, liturgical power is conveyed to the dervish dancers. Habitual dancers, such as those performing at Shah Jamal, are in a sort of intermediate position between mystics and devotees, some living a dervish life, for instance as custodians of small shrines or as peripatetic malangs and faqrs; others do menial jobs and dedicate their life to dhaml, thereby becoming experienced dancers. It seems that many of them seek ecstasy and intoxication for its own sake, that they focus on the rapidity of movements, on frenzy and the virtuosity of mastering their ecstatic state acquired through constant practice. Addressing similar contexts, the Islamicist and historian of religion Rudolf Gelpke mentioned diffferences in the extent of rapture (Gradunterschiede der Entrckung), diffferentiating between a lower preliminary stage and a higher level,74 whereby the former would be identified with devotees and in part with dhamls and the later with dervishes and advanced dhamls. It should be added that many of the dhamls habitually drink bhang, the green spiritual liquid made of cannabis, or smoke hashish. When I talked in Sehwan to dancing girls, prostitutes and khusrs (people of the third gender), who also receive monetary remuneration for performing dhaml, they explained that through trance dance they would purify themselves and seek solace from the burden of their sins.75 Also, several male dhamls in Sehwan, who wish to remain anonymous, confided to me that they would dance out of penance for grave sins they had committed earlier in their lives (such as criminal deeds and even murder). The modes of embodied attitudes expressed by dhamls are predominantly aesthetic, theatrical, spectacular, playful and erotic, but at the same time often also achievement-oriented. For these dancers in particular, dhaml forms and constitutes their identity. For common pilgrims, dhaml is a customary, stereotyped and ritualized, but also intensely celebrative form of annually expressing their veneration of
Boivin, Note sur la danse, 161; see also Rouget, Music and Trance, 26, 284. Rudolf Gelpke, Drogen und Seelenerweiterung (Munich: Kindler, 1975), 21314. 75 Without going into further detail, it should be noted that the main features of the dhaml style as performed by khusrs are exalted whirling with their long hair and swaying with their hips.
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the saint, receiving a vision of the great Qalandar, communicating with him and seeking to be close to him. In addition, many devotees and also a number of dhamls explain that they perform the devotional dance as an offfering in connection with a wish and vow (mannat) uttered in prayers of supplication. Ghar-wls, for instance, expect fertility as a practical outcome of dhaml performed during the urs. They also dance when their husband or son had been imprisoned, as dhaml is considered magically efffective to free them. Further desires and motivations for vows are healing, economic prosperity and seeking solutions for other diffficulties in life. If a petition has been granted with the help of the saint, if the devotee receives dreams and visions of the saint, he or she again expresses his or her gratitude through dancing. One might say a devotee has struck a deal with the respective saint whereby dance becomes an offfering. Thus, the modes of ritual sensibilities enacted in the dhaml of devotees are magic in tandem with ritualization, but deeply impregnated by the overall festive mood of the pilgrimage. The nodal point of these embodied attitudes expressed in dhaml is a loving kind of devotion to the friend of God whose blessedness (barakat) is transferred to those who venerate him through their trance dance.76 In the words of a male pilgrim from Lahore: Nobody would dare to enter the sacred city of Sehwan and do dhaml without being overwhelmed by love for the Qalandar! This shows that devotion is a basic attitude, a kind of prerequisite before expressing individual desires at the saints abode. Habitual dancers, such as dervishes and dhamls, mimetically perform the dance in reference to the martyr-mystic Hallaj who danced in abandonment in his chains when he was led to the gallows (this tradition is also reflected in Persian verses attributed to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar). According to Shiite tradition, dhaml is said to symbolise the sufffering of Imam Zain ul-Abidin77 and Bibi Zainab, Shiite saints who survived the tragedy of Karbala after the martyrdom of Imam Husain. The explanations for the movements of the dhaml in Sehwan given by devout Shiites is that the Imam had to walk with heavy iron chains in small steps tripping with his bare feet on the glowing hot sand of the desert, his head bowed down by the weight of a heavy heart-shaped stone put around
76 It should be emphasized that dhaml also functions as a therapeutic ritual particularly for women (apparently many of them are Baloch). The ritual takes place within a regulated, gendersegregated performance in the eastern dhaml court of the shrine. This configuration as religious trance and therapy cult in the field of spirit possession needs detailed field-research in Sehwan Sharif as well as at other specialised healing shrines in Sindh. See Boivin, Reflections, 62; and idem, Note sur la danse, 1634. Unfortunately, limitation of space in this article does not permit examination of this particular type of trance dance in the context of spirit possession. 77 Boivin, Le sama, 318.
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his neck.78 He raised both his arms to God in a gesture of supplication. His movements are not only imitated by habitual dancers, but in particular by the Sayyids of the diffferent dervish lodges of Sehwan during the three main days of the urs when they dance in a very formalised and disciplined way following the scripted expression of ritual visitation of the saints tomb. Bibi Zainab, whose arms were bound to her back, is said to have let her hair down in order to avoid the gaze of her male tormentors when they snatched her veil from her head. This distinct style of the Zaynab dhaml is therefore a form of ritual mourning. Both saints, Zain ul-Abidin and Bibi Zainab, are important figures of Shiite collective memory and serve as role models for male and female devotees. Their movements are mimetically enacted by tripping from right to left like the Imam (or through carrying chains in the case of Shiite dervishes) and whirling with open hair like Bibi Zainab. For Shia followers of the Qalandar, these dance movements are therefore sanctified representing authentic, true dhaml. The evocation of Shiite saints shows how images of the past are conveyed and sustained by (more or less) ritual performances.79 Thus, for those Shia who are aware of these specific traditions, dhaml constantly evokes what Paul Connerton has aptly called a bodily social memory whereby the body is transformed into a site of memory.80 Drawing both on Pierre Bourdieus notion of habitus and Marcel Mausss concept of techniques of the body, Connerton further explains that body memory is habit-memory. This analytical category helps to explain the importance of learning and successfully performing a spiritual discipline and technique such as dhaml. For habitual dancers invoking Imam Zain ul-Abidin and Bibi Zainab is in line with their attachment to Ali and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (who is considered a descendant of the Shiite Imams). Both, Ali and the great Qalandar, are essential mediators whose presence is felt through whirling the body in a state of rapture.81 Within the Qalandar tradition, this ecstatic rapture is commonly known as mast which is the central emotion of dhaml ritual. Mast means the mystic
78 This stone in the shape of a heart had later been inherited by Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and is preserved to this day as his most precious relic at his tomb. 79 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 38. 80 Ibid., 71. From the numerous Shiite practitioners of dhaml whom I asked this question about the mythological-mimetic background of the dance, I learned that only a minority had a consistent and coherent knowledge of this ritual tradition. 81 See Abbas, The Female Voice, 26 (also famous folk melodies, such as mast Qalandar, are addressed both to Ali and the Qalandar). Concerning the concept of mast, see Jrgen Wasim Frembgen, Charisma and the Holy Fool: Gul Mastn Bb, the Enraptured, saint of Udaipur, in Sufi Traditions and New Departures: Recent Scholarship on Continuity and Change in South Asian Sufism, ed. Soeren Christian Lassen and Hugh van Skyhawk (Islamabad: Taxila Institute of Asian Civilization, 2008), 1568.
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ardour of love to God, where analytical thinking is switched offf as formulated by a young, well-educated performer from Lahore.82 It is a devotional, blissfully experienced divine love (ishq) and absorption in spirituality which is expressed by all Punjabi and Sindhi Sufi saints in their poetry. To cultivate this ishq is the veritable core of the whirling dance. Thus a female dancer, interviewed by the anthropologist Omar F. Kasmani in Sehwan, explained that she performed dhaml not only following the order of her spiritual guide Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, but even for the Prophet Muhammad. When asked how she would do this, she responded: That too happens in his ishq, all of this is about ishq. It all depends on ishq. One who has more ishq will do more dhaml.83 Concerning the rapture of mast, the same female dhaml described: Im moving in my mast. From one end there is mast, from the other Im doing dhaml, so I dont know how I appear then, good, bad or whatever. I do not know. But it is fact that everybody tells me that your dhaml is very pretty. My husband himself tells me your dhaml is very beautiful.84 Part of the formal aesthetic elements of dhaml are specific gestures of devotion, such as touching the ground with the right hand, turning towards the saints tomb with both hands raised, touching and kissing the drum, raising ones hands above in an imploring way, folding them and spreading them as if praying du. Ecstatically spinning the head turns into an embodied prayer offfered by the lover (shiq) to his beloved (mashq). A striking example of this is Baba Ilm ud-Dins dhaml performance at the small shrine of his forefather Ditta Sain (d. 1991) in Lahore (Miani graveyard) when he stands whirling first at the foot of the tomb, then continues supporting himself with both hands on the cenotaph and finally sweeps it with his long hair, thereby almost lying on the tomb. Baba Firuz Sain from Lahore, the renowned dervish-cumdhaml, referred in one of our conversations (19 March 2010) to this kind of ritual performances when he aptly called dhaml the prayer of the dervish (darwsh k namz). Of course, this also holds true for dhamls as well as for common devotees. Personal ardent devotion is articulated by similar gestures at tombs in the main courtyard in Sehwan. Devotees emphasize that the heart should have a relation to God; only then dhaml could be considered a form of ibdat (worship of God) and only then could they be emotionally absorbed in Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
Conversation with Usman Raja in Sehwan on 13 August 2009. Omar F. Kasmani, De-centering Devotion: The Complex Subject of Sehwan Sharif (M.A. thesis, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, Aga Khan University, London, 2009), 114, 116. 84 Ibid., 138.
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The latters shrine in Sehwan in particular is an example of the diversity of religious denominations, ethnicities, gender and social statuses. There dhaml belongs to the shared devotional practices typical for shrines in Sindh where Hindus and even Christians join Muslim pilgrims. As far as their performance style is concerned, the only ritual gesture typical for Hindus is the gesture of worship with folded hands (ajali-mudr) at the beginning of the dance; Christians, on the other hand, spread their arms in mimesis of Jesus at the cross.85
Dimensions of Experience and Agency Trance dance creates a space to express emotions through the idiom of rapture and devotion to a Sufi saint. In the discourse on rituals the question has been formulated if this is a spontaneous, individual emotion, an articulation of feelings in a raw state, or something that Stanley Tambiah has called an attitude of feelings.86 He thinks of the expression of an emotional-cultural pattern, of the performance of conventional gestures of behaviour which refer to feelings. Scholars investigating theatrical performances have critically questioned whether ritual performers are not simply fulfilling the expectations of participants and spectators through a playful doing-as-if.87 Part of this perspective is the important aspect of mimesis, in our context the re-enactment of the body movements of saints through dhaml, referred to in the previous section. Nevertheless, at the sacred places discussed here devotional dance appears not as something pretended, deceptive or inauthentic; it is rather that aesthetic theatrical performativity with mythic connotations marks the scripted expressions88 of the dervishes (as well as of the Sayyids of Sehwan), spectacular performativity with ludic elements marks the trance of the dhamls and ritualized performativity with celebrative and sensuous elements marks the dance of common devotees. Thus, as a lived experience, dhaml is both idiosyncratic in the sense
85 Especially during the Easter-dhaml at the urs of the Muslim saint Waris Shah in Jandiala Sher Khan, close to Shaikhupura in the Punjab. 86 In Ulrike Krasberg, Die Ekstasetnzerinnen von Sidi Mustafa (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 2002), 24, 101, 153. 87 Klaus Peter Kpping, Inszenierung und Transgression in Ritual und Theater. Grenzprobleme der performativen Ethnologie, in Ethnologie und Inszenierung. Anstze zur Theaterethnologie, ed. Bettina E. Schmidt and Mark Mnzel (Marburg: Curupira, 1998), 478; see also Erika Fischer-Lichte, Diskurse des Theatralen, in Diskurse des Theatralen, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Christian Horn, Sandra Umathum and Matthias Warstat (Tbingen and Basel: A. Francke, 2005), 1132. 88 Grimes used the term liturgy for such a symbolic action containing motifs that are ceremonious, magical and decorous (Beginnings, 513).
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of the German Erlebnis, which has the connotation of something particular and exceptional, as well as typical, customary, habitual and pattern-like.89 The experience of the divine through the body as Leib constitutes a cultural pattern especially in Sindh and the Punjab. Considering how essential metaphors of love are within the mystically-inspired folk religiosity of these regions, this seems in particular true for the poetics of movement typical of female dhaml dancers, which displays not only passion and frenzy, but also sensuousness and eroticism. Basically Sufism can be characterized as a religion of love where the mystic in ecstasy seeks true love of God which requires breaking up and dissolving his or her own ego. Mast is not only a state of spiritual excellence, but also of rapture, joy and intoxication, a consciousness of paradoxically being outside oneself, but being with the body;90 therefore it has erotic connotations which might also explain the sexual undertones in the movements of dancers. The latter explain that the form of love (ishq) which manifests in dhaml is energetic and hot (garm), its seat is supposed to be the heart. This power of love leads to an intoxicating perception and experience of the Qalandars presence through the flow of mast. The element of divine love and experience of God turns ecstatic dance into a veritable spiritual discipline.91 In my conversations with dervishes, dhamls and devotees it was unanimously emphasized that both ishq and mast are the veritable cornerstones of their dance irrespective of the performance styles characterizing their respective ritual modes. These semiotic terms mark an experience shared by the individual dancers belonging to diffferent groups of performers. In the course of my field research in Sehwan Sharif and Lahore I requested dhaml dancers to describe their concrete bodily experience. A middle-aged male devotee from Lahore, who frequently goes into trance, spontaneously referred to his state of l as sinking (ubn); another trance-experienced music lover, who spent lengthy periods in Europe, corroborated this view in drawing a comparison to a swimmer who gently rocks himself on the waves lying on a surf board, thereby seeing paradisiacal things in the water. Furthermore Abdul Ghafar, a devotee in his thirties who daily performed dhaml during his pilgrimage to Sehwan, described his feelings during the dance as if
89 See Michael Jackson, Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 13. 90 Gran Ogn, Religious Ecstasy in Classical Sufism, in Religious Ecstasy; Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Religious Ecstasy Held at bo, Finland, on the 16th28th of August 1981, ed. Nils G. Holm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1982), 22640 (2279, 232, 236); and Scott Kugle, Sufis and Saints Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and Sacred Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 24. 91 Selsing, Without Experience, 10.
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drowning in the ocean of love. He specified: When I do dhaml, I feel that my murshid Bodla Bahar places his right hand on my shoulder, sometimes he then even embraces me. And the great Lal Shahbaz Qalandar is all the time standing right behind Bodla Bahar.92 Finally, Sayyid Asif Ali Zaidi, who I mentioned above, related his personal experiences: When I do dhaml, I feel the presence of the Qalandar as a fragrance, as warmth. You know, it is as if you feel the breath of a person in a pitch-dark room very close to you. And then while dancing you are charged by the saints energy, he takes over your body.93 Within all three embodied ritual attitudes, be they mythic-liturgical, theatrical-spectacular or customary-ritualized in Grimess terminology, boundaries of the individual body are transcended, dancers experience a flow of sensations and veils between man and the divine temporarily removed. A symbolic gesture associated with this experience in the domain of the unspeakable and subjective is dancing on one leg and raising the index finger pointed upwards like the letter alif towards God, the One, thus indicating unity (tawd), the ultimate goal of the mystic. Often dancers make this finger gesture as a habitual attitude using their right hand or both hands. In Muslim societies where the body (especially the female one) is controlled, regimented and disciplined, a particular expressive, eccentric and frenetic dance such as dhaml represents an alternative emphasizing joie de vivre and exuberance. Following the approach of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock,94 dhaml allows the protagonists to experience the individual body, the material body in its subjectivity, and its presentation in a public arena. In the dhaml courts at the Qalandar shrine in Sehwan female dancers have an entrance as imposing figures, like a work of art visible by men in the public.95 Moreover, genders are frequently not strictly segregated during the performance. This questioning and challenging of social norms which were imposed not only by scriptural Islam (particularly reinforced in Pakistan since 1977 by the policies of Zia ul-Haq), but also by rigid local codes of moral behaviour, could be read as casting a critical look at social conflicts, as flirting with an alternative, as evading male control. Female devotees, and in smaller numbers also men, find catharsis in a ritual which allows them to express their emotional needs. Having observed dhaml in Sehwan on many occasions for many hours, it seems to me that the dance could also in many cases be interpreted
Interview, 28 March 2010. Interview, 30 July 2010 in Sehwan. 94 Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock, The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1.1 (1986): 641. 95 See Boivin, Le plerinage, 337.
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as a vehicle to express suppressed sexuality. Moreover, I think that the social sufffering experienced by the majority of poor and underprivileged devotees in their daily lives is reflected in the style of embodiment typical for dhaml. However, such questions need to be addressed in more detail in the future. To understand the experiences of Pakistani dervishes, dhamls and devotees during dhaml, it is enlightening to take a look at comparative phenomena in North Africa. Thus, Ulrike Krasberg has convincingly argued in her study on Moroccan trance dance and possession that within a collective ritual through deep devotion and unconditional love the individual is able to fully concentrate on his or her own selfsimilarly to a dedicated actor who performs on stage.96 Experiences are structured and framed through performance: dhaml has extraordinary dynamics and dramatic sequences which unfold through the action of aesthetic agents in the presence of spectators.97 Particularly the steady sound of ornamental rhythmic drum patterns creates a solid structure for this performing art. In addition, there are companions who supervise and assist the dancers if need be. This ritual framework for trance dance can be very open, for instance, during the urs in Sehwan, or less openmore in the sense of an orchestrated improvisation where performers follow a kind of unwritten script98for instance, at Shah Jamal and during the daily trance ritual in the dhaml court of the central shrine in Sehwan. In any case dhaml is not regimented in the sense of a musical score, but has various modes of expression as exemplified in the descriptions of the ritual, including moments of playfulness. Trance dance is transformative for dervishes, dhamls and devotees not only in the sense of communitas uniting the dancers and the captivated audience, but also through taking in barakat and, for those affflicted by demons and ghosts, through purifying, healing and thus empowering them.99 Barakat is also received by the spectators who share the presence of the divine with performers and are emotionally pulled into dhaml. The wild intensity and power of the dance and of the sound of drums is experienced as a mysterium fascinosum and simultaneously as an entertaining spectacle. In the frenzy of dhaml the body is all-powerful, breaking its limitations through movements of extraordinary form and rapidity which allow enor-
See Krasberg, Die Ekstasetnzerinnen, 78, 95. See Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 66; and Krasberg, Die Ekstasetnzerinnen, 22, 133. 98 Kpping, Inszenierung und Transgression, 47. 99 See Klaus Peter Kpping and Ursula Rao, Im Rausch des Rituals. Gestaltung und Transformationen der Wirklichkeit in krperlicher Performanz (Mnster: Lit, 2000), 78.
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Figure 5.A dhaml dancing in ecstasy at a private gathering in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan (J.W. Frembgen, July 2010) mous individual spontaneity.100 According to indigenous interpretation this individual empowerment is God-given. The body is active and the medium to experience ecstatic rapture, to delve into the divine light and to be touched by God. This sacred experience is in fact embodied, that is to say there is no duality between mind and body. The embodied devotion to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar
100
See ibid., 212.
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is of an intensity said to transcend mundane love because it is much purer and subtle. More than that, devotional practice becomes mimesis when dervishes and dhamls imitate the dancing Qalandar saint within their respective ritual modes of expression. For poor and downtrodden followers of the saint, dhaml also functions as an outlet for the insults and humiliations they sufffer in daily life. Trance dance is thus a transformative practice for them, strengthening their self-esteem and helping to gain prestige when re-integrated in their respective social environment after the liminal phase of the ritual.
Conclusion The devotion to Sufi saints in Pakistan belongs to a pluralistic indigenous system of values shared by the common people as well as the elite. Its concrete embodiment in the spectacular and vibrant ritual action of dhaml, however, is contested by Muslim theologians and followers of scriptural, legalistic Islam who frown upon and reject dance (raq) condemning it as an un-Islamic practice.101 Nevertheless, as an expression of local ecstatic danced religion in the public sphere it belongs to the multiple worlds of the shrines of Sufi saints and is thus characteristic of the concrete devotional practice of rural people and the urban poor, especially in Sindh and the Punjab. In these lowland provinces ecstatic dance guided by the hypnotic repetitive sound of drums is theatrically and aesthetically performed with extraordinary emotion and intensity at several shrines in audience-oriented situations creating spontaneous communitas. Drawing on Grimess concept of distinguishing various modes of embodied ritual attitudes, we find that scripted expressions and choreographed performance dominates among dervishes, celebration with its aesthetic, dramatic and ludic dimensions among dhamls (not excluding means-end oriented aspects) and ritualization, magic and enjoyment among common devotees (also in the special case of possession trance) which at times opens up space for the erotic and playful. These modes of ritual sensibilities co-exist and interpenetrate each other, whereby celebration tending towards pure expressivity remains the overall impulse of the ritual. Thus, for all performers, dhaml is a celebrative form of interaction with the beloved saint expressing a temporal coexistence between this world and the divine. For Shias in particular, it is
101 This important question could not be taken up here, but is addressed in an ethnographic narrative on Sufi music and classical music in Pakistan, see Frembgen, Nocturnal Music, 405.
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in addition mythologized as a mnemo-technique connecting them with other Shiite saints. This notion of mystical unity expressed through ecstatic rapture (mast) and love (ishq) is the central theme of Sufi poetry and Sufi Islam constituting an essential religious value among Punjabi and Sindhi participants in dhaml events. The performing body is the medium of this transformation which happens in dialogue with the bodies of other dancers and the audience. The effficacy of dhaml becomes especially apparent in its function as a needfulfilment-ritual (fulfilment of vows) and healing rite in the context of spirit possession. This passionate devotional dance is experienced and performed by most practitioners since youth. As such it is a ritual practice learned through creative processes of direct observation and mimesis. This full-bodied, active experience of mystical devotion thus belongs to the body hexis and social habitus of the dancers, to their permanent disposition as coined by Bourdieu, which integrates former experiences like a matrix of action and perception in the body as subject.102 Drawing on Bourdieus concept that the body serves as a store for the most important values of a culture, that the Leib as a symbolic form is, in fact, one of the basic dimensions of cultural practice, dhaml also has an intrinsic social value in the Dumontian sense which is inscribed into the body.103 As with rituals in general, it fulfils basic emotional needs, but specifically for the poor and downtrodden it also represents an outlet for frustrations of any kind. Furthermore, this trance dance is an expression and reafffirmation of practically lived religious and cultural identity which hence allows the experience of alterity. This holds not only true for malangs and dhamls, whose life as outwordly individuals and liminal figures centres on the ecstatic veneration of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and who have become the very experts of the dance, but for any devotee. Nevertheless, as exemplified by the analysis of two contextualised shrine-events, the key performers patterns of body use show distinctive aesthetic qualities, individual originality, artistic creativity and level of mastery in contrast to those of common pilgrims.
Pierre Bourdieu, Entwurf einer Theorie der Praxis (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976), 165, 169. Louis Dumont, On Value, Modern and Nonmodern, in Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 23468 (p. 240). See also Kugle, Sufis and Saints Bodies, 13.
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Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

Wolf, Poetics, 255.

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

Frembgen, At the Shrine, 517, 11724.

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

See ibid., 212.

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

J. W. Frembgen / Journal of Sufi Studies 1 (2012) 77113

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