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

millet would be enough to satisfy all the spirits they had, In
addition, her son had to honour the dh6mi who taught him (Chamba) with
glf ts.
Patients too sometimes cursed not only the spirits afflicting them
but also the expenses incurred in appeasing them and paying the dhamis.
One woman estimated she had spent about 50,000 NRs in total on an
i 1 lness (marked by d izz iness, vomit ing, headache and stabbing pains a1 1
over her body) which she said had lasted nearly 20 years. She went to
Itahari in the Tarai and spent 5,000 NRs but did not get better. Then
she went to Lasune, a village in Terhathum district, where she saw first
a Rai and then a Limbu dhami for treatment costing 2,000 NRs, Then by
chance a Tamang friend mentioned there was a good Tamang dn6mi in Umling
(further up the Maya Khola valley on the Madi Mulkharka side) , At that
stage, she said, she would have done obeisance to a dog if she had
thought it could cure her! She became paralyzed for a while and very
weak, The Tamang dhSmi came to stay for 3 or 4 days and bui 1 t a
symbolic wall to stop Satihangma (mentioned below) from coming and
persecuting her. She became a dhdmini herself, and had to perform a
binti (m) every Tuesday to her tutelary deity, Many of the dh6mis to
whom we spoke regarded their calling as something of a curse.
It is important to place the Yakha shamans in the context of the
system of health beliefs and practices of which their work was a part.
Not all illnesses were attributed to spirits. Mild coughs and colds,
for example, were seen as bodily afflictions which frequently had a
physical cause. A cough of my own which I developed in the village one
time was attributed by Apa to drinking sour raksi at a wedding. There
was much willingness on the part of patients to experiment with