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

pointing down. The next stage was closer to the bed, standing up,
stirring over some rice pieces in his left hand and scattering them with
his right. Then he took Tamara's shawl which was covering her and which
we were going to take with us to the hospital and blessed that. Then he
went back to his initial hand stirring again, sitting on his chair, Our
other visitors all kept on talking during this performance. We were
told his actions were designed to protect those going to hospital, since
going to hospital was seen as a terrible, alien thing to have to do.
Of course there were other factors explaining attitudes to
hospitals. For many people going to hospital involved a major
expenditure of time, money and energy and hence there was a tendency to
adopt a 'sit i t out' mentality in the face of diseases which in the U.K.
would involve routine hospitalisation, such as dystentery or the later
stages of pneumonia. Some people found the medical techniques of
hospitals not to their liking. We heard of one old man who had
discharged himself early from the hospital in Dhankuta (the nearest
hospital to Tamaphok) because he did not like having a drip in his arm.
From the patients' perspective, then, ft was not so much a clear cut
choice between 'indigenous' and 'western' techniques as a desperate
necessity to choose any treatment which they and their families thought
might work, which was available and which they could afford. There was
some ambivalence in people's attitudes to both local and western
practitioners. While some were critical of alternatives, many dhgmis
too recognised the limits of their powers. Chamba said that dhgrnis were
generally ineffective in cases of TB or cancer, Their forte was in
dealing with particular spirits, the ontology of which I shall outline