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

P6-c Khap~ar (1 it, 'Five Skulls' ) Yakha whom we were told 1 ived further
northwest towards the Arun, and other ' Yakha' groups elsewhere in the
country and abroad, the situation would doubtless have appeared even
more complex, While arbitrary boundaries could be drawn around a group
labelled 'Yakha', there was in reality no neatly bounded unit which
could be unequivocally thus defined, especially in view of the range and
contradictions of emic categories illustrated above.
The relatively small numbers of Yakha (however defined) parallel the
demographics of the various Rai tribes in east Nepal, and may help to
explaln why the Yakha are often subsumed in this group by outsiders
rather than being regarded as an autonomous group separate from both
Limbu and Rai, It also perhaps partly helps to explain a different
attitude to the social environment which could be seen amongst the Yakha
compared to the numerically more dominant Limbu (estimated by Subba on
linguistic grounds to number 180,000 Limbu within Nepal alone
(1976:142)>. Regmi considers that the Limbu resisted the conversion of
their kipat lands,
probably because they were aware that this would be the first
step towards a fusion of the Limbu way of life into the
mainstream of Nepali national llfe. In the same way, they
have resisted the gradual Hinduization that has become the
common lot of most other minorities in the kingdom, All this
has given them an ethnic and cultural unity which has
resisted, with a considerable degree of success, the withering
away of their traditional customs and institutions (1978:547).
This has not been the case with the Yakha, as the following sections
will attempt to show.