Delomization, or the esoteric Nechung kang so , the Dalai Lama, and exilic imaginings of a Tibetan community

Abstract I propose the concept of delomization , the process whereby a sign comes to be understood as a symbol. I term such signs delomes . With rhematization and dicentization, delomization completes the triplet that linguistic anthropologists derive from Charles Sanders Peirce's third trichotomy. The triplet serves in analyzing how social actors' reflexive understandings of signs may shape social orders and cultural worlds . Delomization serves to explain the Nechung monks' practice of the kang so (bskang gso) ritual in exile at Dharamsala, a practice integral to the ritual infrastructure underlying the institution of the Dalai Lamas. The monks routinely declare their inability to perform the ritual's requisite meditations. Yet their practice continues unimpeded. Given that the monks deem such meditation opaque to observers, I argue that the perceptible ritual performance is simply accepted as a symbol—a delome —of the requisite, imperceptible meditations. Delomization in the Nechung kang so then helps perpetuate the social role of the Nechung monk, independent of ritual adeptness. Ultimately, this delomization is imbricated in processes that yield an exilic imagining of a Tibetan community, as unified by a collective karma that is protected by the god Nechung and rhematized, dicentized, and delomized in the Dalai Lama's person.