Asu Lazzi
Yi · mortal · Yi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Asu Lazzi, in Nuosu form Ashy Lazzi, is one of the great ancestral bimo of the Yi of Liangshan, the hereditary priests who chant the Book of Origins and the ritual scriptures at rites of passage, exorcisms, and funerals. He is remembered as a master of the highest and most complicated classics, able to suppress demons and banish ghosts, and his descent is among the bimo genealogies preserved in Nuosu tradition. Bimo learning passes patrilineally from father to son through long apprenticeship, and Asu Lazzi stands as an emblem of that ideal. He is best known through his daughter Lazzi Shysi, who learned his arts and became the one woman remembered to have practiced as a bimo.
Children
Domains
- priesthood and ritual
- exorcism and demon quelling
- sacred knowledge and scripture
Powers
- to master and transmit the highest and most powerful ritual scriptures
- to suppress demons and banish malevolent ghosts
Epithets
- Asu LazeBamo Ayi, Stevan Harrell, and Ma Lunzy. Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. (secondary)
Relations
- father of: Lazzi ShysiHis daughter Lazzi Shysi learns the highest bimo arts from him, the sole woman remembered to have practiced as a bimo.Bamo Ayi, Stevan Harrell, and Ma Lunzy. Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. (secondary)
Sources
- Asu Lazzi (Ashy Lazzi) is an eminent ancestral bimo of the Nuosu of Liangshan, master of the most powerful ritual scriptures, remembered at the head of bimo lineages and as the father of the exceptional female bimo Lazzi Shysi.: Bamo Ayi. "On the Nature and Transmission of Bimo Knowledge in Liangshan." In Perspectives on the Yi of Southwest China, edited by Stevan Harrell, 118-131. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. (secondary); Bamo Ayi, Stevan Harrell, and Ma Lunzy. Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. (secondary)