"In fact, she argues, shamanism cannot be described as "it" at all; i.e., there is no single Shaman, but shamans. Moreover, "among practitioners there was no name for the various activities that outsiders have called ‘shamanism’ and these practices were not thought of as all one thing" (p. 4). In calling shamanism a "dispersed religion," the authors mean that the ideas and practices of the various parts were associated with different kinds of knowledge and specialists (bagchi, bariyachi, barishi, kiyanchi) having particular abilities (chidal) in these spheres (p. 320).."