Hung, Hung, Hung in the Hungri Cave: Hajo Tsewang Gyentsen Recalls an Origin Story of Lachung Rinpoche

TENZIN NYIMA BHUTIA Assistant Professor, Department of English Sikkim Manipal University, Centre f

The Role of Community Elders in Preserving Culture through Storytelling

Hajo Tsewang Gyentsen was seated beside the fireplace when we arrived. As we settled into the warmth of the kitchen, he continued chopping chicken with the ease of someone performing a task repeated countless times over a lifetime. One of his twin sons welcomed my father and me with cups of buttermilk and a bamboo basket filled with intricately braided khapsays that looked as though they had been prepared especially set aside solely for guests. The smell of wood smoke lingered in the room while conversations moved between everyday matters and memories of a much older Lachung.

At first, Hajo-la spoke about the village as he remembered it from his childhood. He recalled hearing from elders that there had once been only seven households in the area. Life was different then, he said. The roads had not yet arrived, travel was difficult, and stories travelled more easily than people. Much of what he knew about the past had come not from books or written records but from the elders who sat where he now sat, recounting stories that connected families to mountains, caves, deities, and sacred places. Listening to him speak, it became clear that the narrative was not simply a story about a miraculous child or a sacred cave. It was also a story about how memory survives.

"Hung... hung... hung..." he said softly.

According to local tradition, that was the sound people once heard emerging from Hungri Cave.

The story, as Hajo-la remembered it, begins in the uplands above Yuksom, near a place known as Pawo Khandri. Long ago, he said, a mother and daughter lived there. One day, while the daughter was grazing cattle in the high pastures, a stranger dressed entirely in white appeared before her. He carried with him something that resembled a lump of snow. The girl was thirsty, and without suspicion she accepted the offering and ate it.

The stranger disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.

Afterward, she felt strangely refreshed. Her thirst vanished, her body felt light, and a sense of calm settled over her. Yet as the days passed, something unusual began to happen. Her stomach gradually grew larger. Although she had never been with any man, she appeared to be carrying a child.

In a small community, such things could not remain unnoticed. People began to talk. Questions travelled from house to house. Her mother questioned her repeatedly, but the daughter insisted that she knew nothing of how this had happened. She could only describe the mysterious encounter in the pasture and the strange gift she had consumed.

As he spoke, I was reminded that many Himalayan origin stories begin not in royal courts or monasteries but in ordinary places—while grazing cattle, collecting firewood, crossing mountain passes, or tending fields. The sacred often enters the narrative through the everyday.

According to the story, the young woman later returned to the mountains with her cattle. While resting inside a rocky hollow near Pawo Khandri, she suddenly experienced labour pains. What emerged, however, was not what she expected. Frightened by what she saw, she believed it to be neither fully child nor fully human. Terrified and confused, she placed it within a crevice in the rock, covered it with earth, and hurried home.

When her mother saw her, she immediately noticed the change.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The sickness has left my body," the daughter replied. "I left it in the mountains."

The matter might have ended there had rumours not spread throughout the settlement. Villagers feared something terrible had occurred and organised a search. Yet when they arrived at the place described by the young woman, they found nothing. The only sign remaining was a set of large footprints that appeared to belong to an eagle.

The villagers could make little sense of what they found. With only the eagle's footprints remaining, many concluded that the bird had carried away whatever had been hidden in the mountainside.

But the story was only beginning.

Soon afterwards, villagers started hearing strange sounds emerging from a cave known as Hungri. At first the sounds were faint. Then they grew louder.

"Hung... hung... hung..."

Day after day, the sound echoed through the landscape.

No one could explain its source.

"Hung... hung... hung..."

The villagers grew concerned and consulted religious authorities and respected Rinpoches. What did the sound mean? Why was it coming from the cave? Was it a sign, a warning, or a blessing?

Then, according to the narrative, an extraordinary event took place.

An eagle appeared carrying a letter- a message.

The bird descended near the villagers and dropped a letter before flying away. The message instructed them to search again. Somewhere within the cliff, near a rock that appeared ready to split apart, they would find what they had missed.

The people followed the instructions.

Searching carefully among the rocks and crevices, they eventually discovered a child alive within the mountainside.

The villagers, Hajo-la said, were astonished.

The child was brought back to Yuksom, but he would not settle. Again and again, he cried and pointed towards the mountains and the cave from which he had come. No matter where he was taken, his attention returned to the heights. It was as though something in the mountains continued to call him home.

Concerned by these signs, the villagers once again sought the advice of respected Rinpoches and religious authorities. Among them, one Rinpoche is remembered as having declared that the child's true nature would soon be revealed.

"A gter is about to emerge from the cave," Hajo-la dramatically continues, "The child will reveal it."

The villagers waited.

Then, on a full-moon night, the prophecy came to pass.

People gathered near the cave. The mountains stood silent beneath the moonlight. As the story is told, a hidden treasure suddenly burst forth from beneath the earth. Emerging from the rock itself, the sacred object revealed its presence before those who had assembled there.

Without hesitation, the child reached forward and grasped it.

For the people who witnessed the event, there was no longer any doubt. What had begun as a mystery in the high pastures had become a revelation. The child was understood to possess extraordinary spiritual significance.

At that very moment, Hajo-la narrated, the cave echoed with a sacred sound:

"Om Benza Kili Kilaya Sarva Bighanen Hung Phe."

The words reverberated through the cave and across the mountainside. For those present, it was confirmation that the child's birth and discovery were not ordinary events but manifestations of a sacred destiny.

According to local belief, this miraculous child later became associated with the lineage of Lachung Rinpoche, linking Hungri Cave, Pawo Khandri, and the surrounding landscape to a story that continues to be remembered today.

Whether one accepts the narrative as history, legend, or sacred tradition is perhaps beside the point. What struck me most while listening to Hajo-la was not the miraculous child, the eagle, or even the treasure hidden within the cave. It was the fact that the story had survived at all.

There is no signboard at Hungri Cave explaining this narrative. No textbook records it in detail. It survives because people continue to tell it.

For generations, stretching back to the time of Jhojo Apa Aku and the elders remembered in local narratives, community storytellers have functioned as living archives, carrying stories inherited from those who came before them. Through their memories, sacred landscapes acquire meaning. Mountains become more than mountains. Caves become more than geological formations. They become places inhabited by stories, beliefs, and collective memory.

As the conversation drew to a close, Hajo-la returned to preparing the evening meal. The chicken still needed cutting. The fire still needed tending. Yet for a few hours, between cups of buttermilk and baskets of khapsay, the past had briefly entered the room.

And perhaps that is how culture survives.

Not only in monasteries, archives, and museums, but in kitchens warmed by wood fires, in cups of buttermilk shared with strangers, in baskets of khapsay offered to guests, and in the voices of elders who continue to remember stories that might otherwise be forgotten. Through them, caves continue to speak, mountains continue to remember, and the echoes of "Hung, Hung, Hung" continue to travel across the Himalayan landscape.

Email: tenzin.bhutia@smudoe.edu.in