This paper locates the study of indigenous or Indian knowledge sys-
tems in the guru–shishya parampara (master–disciple institution) within
and beyond the borders of the South Asian diaspora in North Amer-
ican and Indian Hindustani (classical Northern) tabla (percussion)
communities. I draw on fieldwork carried out within tabla commu-
nities ( 1994 to present) in Mumbai, New Delhi, Vancouver, Seattle,
and San Francisco, to focus on an anthropological and musical jour-
ney into the world of tabla. Apprenticing as a student first under Us-
tad Allah Rakha Khan and later under his eldest son, Ustad Zakir
Hussain, has led me to question anthropological beliefs, traditions,
and models concerning how we do anthropology in “the field” and
subsequently how we produce our ethnographic texts upon return-
ing from “the field.”^1
Deriving from my dissertation, “Embodying Culture: Gurus, Dis-
ciples and Tabla Players” (Nuttall 1998 ), this paper both adopts and
builds upon anthropological models of lived experience that see ev-
eryday experience and the acquisition of performative knowledge as
central to how people reproduce or transform their cultural lives and
traditions.^2 Because we live our lives in and through our bodies, any
theory of lived experience must take into account the primacy of our
relation to others as bodily. Similarly, ethnographic texts must some-
how correspond with and communicate the embodiedness not only of
self and other but of anthropological, personal, cultural, political, and
possibly spiritual knowledge. The guru–disciple relationship is com-
plex, ever changing, intimate, and intense. In the beginning I did not
Embodiment, Dreaming, and Experience
as a Basis for Understanding the Other
- A Pathway to Knowledge
denise nuttall