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

killed the elephant, cleared the jungle and made a field.
They drained the pond COtemma = flat area from where water has
been drained],
They bui 1 t houses there. After that Nabuk SGm and Thebuk
SBm died while hunting. From the two of them came the cyar)
Linkhasam. Because of them, when the Iknaps ki 11 an animal
hunting they must kill a cock as ~ZI-@- to Linkhdsam and offer
the blood,
LinkhBsam was widely recognized as troublesome. Kamala attributed
colicky stomach pains to Linkhdsam. If your stomach hurt in this way,
she said, you should not touch it but should suck on your fingers saying
" L inkhBsam, L inkhgsam, L inkhBsadl to get bet ter . L inkhd S6kmBbu was
said by others to be responsible for a particular type of boil on the
shoulder, One day in the tea shop we met a Chetri man who had travelled
from Tehrathum district to seek treatment from a Yakha m8gar)ba for just
such a boil. He showed his deeply infected red shoulder to the
assembled company and told me he had come because he had been told only
a Yakha healer could cure i t, It was interesting to see how recognition
of the power of this spirit and the ability of a Yakha shaman to cure it
had gone much further than the confines of the local community or ethnic
group
Wild Spiri ts
There were many troublesome spirits said to live outside the normal
confines of social life, in the forests and other wild places. One was
minume cybr) ('cat spirit'), an intriguingly named spirit about which I
could unfortunately secure no other information. Tamburer)"" . and
Jan.~ali were other spirits associated with the forest. Then there were
the spirits associated with 'bad' or 'untimely' deaths (aka1 mr, tvu)