3.0 Introduction
The Kashmir Himalayas are home to a few pastoral groups who migrate from the plains of Jammu to the higher elevations of the Kashmir and Ladakh valleys on a seasonal basis. Pastoralism in India has long piqued ethnographers' interest, but a dearth of field-based studies among pastoralists (Leshnik & Gunther 1975), particularly in the Himalayan regions, has been a major academic barrier.
Similarly, there has been little significant work on the taboos associated with the region's pastoralist tribes. As a result of living with a nomadic pastoral tribe in the area for an extended period of time as part of doctoral fieldwork of the first author, he became aware of the numerous belief systems and taboos observed impulsively by the people known as Bakarwals. Thus, in this chapter, we discuss these rites, rituals, taboos, etc. which form an integral part of their daily lives and are more consistent with religion than with any other social institution. The chapter begins by summarising the research area and the tribe under study, and then discusses the rites and rituals associated with their yearly and life cycles, and then to the taboos associated with everyday life among them. Fieldwork for this account took place in three distinct topographical zones: the Greater or Inner Himalayas, the Kashmir basin, and the Middle or Lesser Himalayan Pir Panjal mountains. For convenience, these three zones are referred to collectively as 'the Kashmir Himalaya' throughout this chapter.3.1
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