THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

Certainly Yakha identity, their sense of difference from others with
whom they came into contact, was fluid and shifting, The introduction
of Hindu elements into their society had, as we shall see, provided a
plethora of new social and cultural traits with which to negotiate and
define Yakha identity. Yakha in Tamaphok tended to stress the
commonalities between their own and other cultures in particular
contexts, and emphasise the differences in others. It could be said
that the essence of Yakha culture lay less in the rigid maintenance of
particular cultural traits than in a wi 11 ingness to incorporate
influences, linguistic, social or religious from the world around into
Yakha culture.
However, while there was a tendency to incorporate new cultural
elements into the Yakha's own, the absorption of Hindu practices and
values did not necessarily meen old forms were done away with. There
were limits to the borrowing which did occur, since only those elements
that 'fit' the pre-existing matrices of Yakha culture were likely to be
successful. Furthermore, even when cultural borrowing had taken place,
in the process of trans i t ion cul t ural elements were of ten changed
subtly, either knowingly or unconsciously, as they became part of the
loosely bounded field we could label Yakha culture, Nor were the
culture and traditions of the incoming caste Hindus necessarily static,
In some cases it was quite possible that their own traditions had
changed while the borrowed Hindu traditions of the Yakha had stayed the
same. Whatever the cause, this chapter will attempt to show how the
performance of even ostensibly Sanskritized rituals, such as the
festivals of Dasai- and TihBr, described in detail towards the end of