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

land amongst kinsmen and adjudicating criminal and legal disputes, were
a1 lowed to grow.
Prithvi Narayan Shah had refrained from imposing taxes on Pallo
KirB-t, wishing to maintain goodwill (or perhaps more accurately, not
wishing to develop enmity) with the more distant and less malleable
subjects in the strategically important parts of his over-stretched
empire. Not until Gorkha power was more secure, in the reign of Ran
Bahadur Shah (1778-99), was a tax system of sorts introduced. In 1820
and 1827 a tax collection system known as ThekkB Thiti was instigated.
This gave the headmen the authority and responsibility to collect taxes
not only from kipat homesteads but also from raikar (the more usual form
of 'state landlordism') holdings, as well as to collect and pass on to
the state occupational taxes (from low caste groups) and the proceeds of
fines imposed by the headman in his judicial rule. Regmi argues
strongly that such duties were not part of the 'traditional' privilege
of kipat (1978:563),
Both 'Limbu' and 'Rail are Nepali ethnonyms dating from the conquest
period.", According to Pokhrel et a1 (2040 V, S. : 1130) the word is
an old Nepali word for an excise and tax collector, Its use as a labei
for the various tribes predominating in MB.ih KirB-t probably derives
from the fiscal authority and title given by Prithvi Narayan Shah to the
local headmen after his military campaigns. Later the honorific title
became the collective name and developed an ontological status of its
own, just as the term 'Subba', with equivalent meaning to 'Rai', was
given to the Limbu headmen and became an alternative designation for
members of that tribe. The Yakha headman was called the majhiy8, but
this seems never to have come into common parlance as an ethnic marker.