Bat hunting and illnesses: A case of Mahanta community in Bangladesh

Abstract

This dissertation explores the different aspects of bat hunting practices in Bangladesh. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in a hunting community in the west-central part of Bangladesh, I explore the community’s beliefs about where the bat is a beneficial bird, their religious and cultural beliefs in different phases of bat hunting, and their relevance. They perform three types of rituals- curative, preventive, and initiation, and the meaning of these rituals is symbolized to them as sanctified, sacred hunting apparatuses and good luck in initiation that brings success in hunting.

The hunting community people have their own etiological explanations of illnesses and illnesses categorization: ‘daktari osuk’ and ‘kobiraji osuk’, where there is no relationship between illnesses and bat hunting in their etiological explanations. On the other hand, they use bat meat and their limbs to treat several illnesses, such as asthma, heart disease, deficiency of calcium, and night fever, and also to get sexual vigor.

The community people hunt bats as an economic endeavor born out of the seasonal dearth of conventional sources of income, as well as the socio-cultural fabric of the community; it shows the interplay within the community people. This dissertation contributes to the area of anthropology of hunting that highlights the different aspects of bat hunting practices in Bangladesh, in terms of beliefs on the bat, and beliefs and rituals practices in the different phases of bat hunting and symbolic meaning associated with these, functional views of the hunting including division of labor, gender roles and social solidarity, and etiological explanations of bat-borne illnesses and health-seeking.