February 22, 2011
Yesterday, a remote Nepali court postponed its verdict on 36 men charged with murdering seven men over the right to harvest yarchagumba, a rare mushroom believed to possess aphrodisiac properties and which can sell for more than $10,000 per kilo in China.
The police initially arrest the entire Manang village of Nar, but later released the women and children.
The court, which is a two-day’s trek from the nearest road, has already delayed the verdict several times due to absenteeism by both judge and lawyers. The new date set for the verdict is set for March 30.
THE MURDERS – JUNE 10, 2009
The incident began at night when villagers of Nar spied yarchagumba pickers from the neighboring district of Gorkha in the act of harvesting the local Manang yield of the precious mushroom.
At dawn, the male population of Nar reportedly stormed en masse the Gorkha camp armed with shovels, knives, sticks and rocks. Seven harvesters were beaten to death. Two corpses were tossed into a nearby crevasse. The other five victims were cut into small pieces, bundled in plastic and disposed of in a nearby river.
The communal law in the Manangi region – obeyed since time immemorial – dictates that justice is meted out by the entire village; in that way, responsibility for the act becomes collective. Known as Mukhya, the code requires that all males, including boys who have reached puberty, participate in the village’s efforts to protect its assets. After the murders, the Manangi men took an oath of secrecy.
One month later, however, the secret was blown when family members of the Gurkha victims – who had failed to return home – descended on Nar in search of their loved ones. A non-Manangi living in Nar told the Gurkhas where they could find the two bodies thrown into the crevasse. Police from Chame, the district headquarters, were informed. They descended on Nar, located the corpses, and – aware of the Mukhya code – marched the male population of Nar back to the Chame, where they were imprisoned.
The maximum sentence for murder in Nepal is twenty years in jail.
THE APHRODISIAC
Yarchagumba is a caterpillar fungus botanically known as Cordyceps sinensis (“club from China”). It is a result of a parasitic relationship between the fungus and the larva of the ghost moth (genus Thitarodes), several species of which live on the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan regions of India, Nepal and Bhutan.
The caterpillars live underground in alpine grass on the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas at an altitude between 3,000 and 5,000 m (9,800 and 16,000 ft). Spending up to five years underground before pupating, the caterpillar is attacked while feeding on roots. The fungus invades the body of the Thitarodes caterpillars, filling its entire body cavity with mycelium and eventually killing and mummifying it. The caterpillars die near the tops of their burrows. The dark brown to black fruiting body (or mushroom) emerges from the ground in spring or early summer, always growing out of the forehead of the caterpillar. The long, usually columnar fruiting body reaches 5–15 cm above the surface and releases spores.
Once harvested, the fragile caterpillar carcasses are carefully kept attached to the fungal outgrowth until they reach the consumer’s table, where they are traditionally crumbled over food, added to soup or washed down with tea. In China, yarchagumba is also cooked with gin and soy sauce inside the head of a duck.
Although yarchagumba’s ability to spike sexual potency is still in question, assays have found that it produces many pharmacologically active substances. Some scientific work has been published in which Cordyceps sinensis has been used to protect the bone marrow and digestive systems of mice from whole body irradiation. An experiment noted Cordyceps sinensis might protect the liver from damage. An experiment with mice noted the mushroom might have an anti-depressant effect. Researchers have also noted that yarchagumba has a hypoglycemic effect and may be beneficial for people with insulin resistance.
Medicinal use of yarchagumba apparently originated in Tibet. To date, the oldest known text documenting its use was written in the late fourteen hundreds by the Tibetan doctor Zurkhar Namnyi Dorje.
The first mention of Cordyceps sinensis in traditional Chinese Medicine was in Wang Ang’s 1694 compendium of material medica, Ben Cao Bei Yao.
In both the Tibetan and Chinese cultures, yarchagumba is valued as an aphrodisiac and –to a lesser extent – as a treatment for a variety of ailments from fatigue to cancer. Unlike Viagra, however, it is not administered prior to sexual activity. The effects of the drug are thought to be accumulative. It is consumed daily and, in China, a one-month supply (approximately one ounce) can cost up to $1300 – making yarchagumba worth more than an ounce of gold bullion.
RECENT SURGE IN POPULARITY
The Western consumer was by and large ignorant of yarchagumba until the advent of the Stuttgart World Championships in 1993. Hitherto unknown Chinese women athletes startled the sports world by taking gold and silver medals in track and field events. The international community immediately suspected banned performance-enhancing drugs, but the Chinese coach insisted that the women only partook of a traditional concoction of turtle’s blood and caterpillar fungus. (Later, at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, 27 Chinese athletes with the same coach were disqualified after they failed regular doping tests.)
But the controversy over the exotic caterpillar cocktail only whetted the West’s appetite for Eastern drugs and the price of yarchagumba quickly escalated to today’s phenomenal prices.
And it was Nepali and Tibetan peasants – scraping out an existence along the Himalaya slopes – whose lives dramatically changed. They experienced the sort of sudden prosperity their forefathers could never have dreamed of. With such a precious annual harvest, it was inevitable that poachers would enter the picture.
According to a 2010 USAID report, the harvest and sale of yarchagumba is now “rapidly overtaking hashish as a source of local cash income.” The report also noted that the mushroom helped finance the 1996-2006 Maoist insurgency in Nepal. Particularly in the Rukum, Rolpa and Doplo districts – the heart of the insurgents’ stronghold – Maoists became intermediary dealers and the profits derived were handed over to the Maoist central treasury.
CONSEQUENCES
The fatal consequence of the conflict between the Manangi peasants and the Gurkha poachers is indicative of a larger problem arising in Nepal.
In the past, clashes between rural communities were resolved among themselves, without the benefit of a national judicial system because of 1) extreme remoteness and 2) iron-clad cultural traditions. With the advent of the 21st century, the old ways of managing natural resources has come under contemporary scrutiny. When so much of rural Nepal is open to public access, who or what is now expected to regulate pool resources?
Taking yarchagumba won’t help. Even if it could help, the Nepalis who harvest the love mushroom wouldn’t treat themselves to a dose. It’s worth too much at the Chinese market.
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