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

part. We shall then go on to look at how this social environment
appeared to be shaping Yakha identity during our fieldwork.
Sanskri t Iza t ion
Prithvi Narayan Shah and his successors encouraged the settlement of
land in the east by non-Kiranti wherever possible, through the issue of
land grants to incoming settlers. Regmi suggests this may have begun as
a result of large-scale migration of Kiranti to Sikkim following the
conquest by Prithvi Narayan Shah, when abandoned kipat land was
confiscated by the government and issued to non-Kiranti under different
tenure arrangements (1978:540), While the encroachment on kipat land
was prohibited, there was nothing to stop the government making
arrangements for the reclamation of wasteland by members of other groups
(ibid:537). However, the main source of land grants to other groups
were probably, as Caplan (19701 suggests in the case of the Limbu, the
Kiranti themselves. This was to their advantage because the settlers
were expected to provide both labour and a following for the landlords,
as well as a monetary pittance for the transaction. However, the status
of kipat land was never secure. For example, in 1886 the government
introduced legislation allowing for all kipat land settled by Indo-
Nepalese to be converted into 'raikar' (i. e, virtually freehold) tenure
(Regmi 1978:549-5501. Caplan sees the alienation of kipat land as the
result of a longer-term, double-edged policy on the part of the
government in Kathmandu to keep the strategically but distantly located
eastern tribal peoples placated while at the same time converting their
land from kipat to other forms of tenure at every opportunity (19701,
The new settlers brought the Nepali language and Hindu culture with