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

water, but this was not the Yakha custom, While a man who had been away
might have brought back a tun.~ba pot with him for his personal use,
most Yakha tun.~ba pots were of bamboo capped by a piece of banana leaf
held in place with bamboo twine and speared by a bamboo straw, In
Tamaphok, tun,aba tended to be a drink for the kitchen and the immediate
family members, At Dasai-, for example, everyone had their pot which
was kept for them and brought out at suitable moments. I saw it used
when visitors were served cuha, without any apparent awkwardness about
it not being a shared drink. At weddings it was served to the bride's
attendants, the bridegroom's immediate family and no-one else. it was
interesting that untouchables such as Kami living in the area also made
jEiJ and raksi on occasion, but they distinguished themselves from Yakha
by saying they never drank tun.nba,
There were other foods which were produced as a result of
deliberately induced fermentation. One such was kinam&, a dish made of
boiled soyabeans which were mashed up end put into a jar to ferment.
Kinam6 could be stored for many months before being fried as an
accompaniment to rice. Some people ciaimed this was a typically
Yakha/Limbu food.=. "Brahmins and Chetris shouldn' t eat this" we were
told, "but some are starting to eat it now". It is curious why kingma
should have acquired this impure status, while other foods such as
fermented and dried radish (pundruk) and pickled bamboo (m) had not.
Perhaps it was because of the susceptibility of boiled food to impurity.
One epithet we heard applied to Brahmins and Chetris by Yakha on several
occasions was 'pundruk eaters'. The Yakha rarely ate radish prepared in
this way.
It was not just that the Yakha produced pigs and aicoho!. What was