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

elaborate all-night rituals, paid for by the sick person's family, at
which several dhI3mis might officiate. Such events could take place at
any time of year except between the 1st and 15th of SFtun (approximately
15th - 30th July), when the gods were said to hide in a cave. Other
members of the community came along to these dhFtmi displays, often with
their own health problems to which the practitioners were asked to
minister. At the all-night session I attended, ostensibly for an old
man who had pains like fire in his stomach, a woman brought along a Topi
(cap) left by her son, who had gone to Assam and whom she had heard was
sick. The cap was used as dasi (see Chapter Seven), something for a
dhami to work on to help the patient recover. Another childless couple
came looking for fertility, and a boy was treated who was said to have
been touched by sog~k (see below?,
There was a sense that the Yakha were particularly beset by spirits
and the suffering they caused, both practitioners and patients alike.
One woman told us a saying as follows:
"BhoTe bixrinchI3 hewa ale, jimindar bi~rinchB dewale"
('The Tibetans are destroyed by phewas [Tibetan funeral rites],
the Yakha are destroyed by the gods').
The Tibetan phew6 were renowned for being expensive, and by
implication the Yakha gods were a similar financial burden. This
particular woman spoke from the perspective of having a son who had
become a dhBmi, and having a barama~sir (see below) spirit in her house.
Apart from grumbling at the consequent prohibition on their eating goat
or pig intestines, she said that neither the contents of three full
chicken baskets (probably 12 to 15 birds! nor 12 pI3thi (about 96 Ibs) of