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

interest and enthusiasm for seeing healing rituals, I only attended one
all-night session during my time in Tamaphok, and this because some
people attending it happened to come via our house on their way to the
rituals. I did see some other shamanic activity: for example, when
Tamara and various friends were sick, and when I stumbled on a ceremony
being performed at our landlord's house during the second year for his
daughter who was a dh8mini (female shaman) in Madi Mulkharka (Plate 14).
It is tempting to draw a dichotomy between the indigenous religion
of the Yakha to be described and the Hindu rituals discussed in the last
chapter. Ultimately, I would argue, Yakha religious beliefs and rituals
need to be considered in terms other than a dichotomy between 'tribal'
and 'Hindu'. However, this will be difficult for an outsider to do.
Curiously enough, though, despite the methodological difficulties often
encountered in studying indigenous religion, it is Hindu religious
practices in the hills which have tended to be negiected in
anthropological accounts. While historically they are somehow
peripheral to the cultural core of tribal groups such as the Yakha, to
peripheralize them too much in contemporary analyses, I would argue, is
to deny oneself the chance of comparing the cultural specifics of their
manifestat ion. It also perpetuates the notion of an Indo-
Nepalese/Tibeto-Burman divide, which as argued in the previous chapter
is perhaps unhelpful when dealing with a 'heavily Hinduized' group such
as the Yakha.
The non-Hindu pantheon of the Yakha also denied such a rigid
division. Many of the spirits to be described were recognized as
traversing ethnic boundaries, both in their origins and effects. Non-