ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses flashpoints that arise amid the significance attributed to certain types of odor in the context of a collaborative research project in India, the goal of which was to examine the postmortem bodies of Tibetan Buddhist meditators. In this project, doctors of Tibetan medicine worked closely with neuroscientists from the United States to study cases of a hypothesized postmortem meditative state in which physical decomposition is purportedly delayed. While the US-based team used various physiological methods in their assessment, they had no field-deployable technology capable of assessing peri- and postmortem odors that the Tibetan collaborators deem indicative of this postmortem meditative state, even when signs of physical decomposition are present. Drawing on examples from the field, I show how flashpoints emerge between the different “sensory models” used by the two collaborative groups in discussions of expertise, authority and the ontological status of the postmortem body.
