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

clans, lineages and familial roles. It also looks at how wider social
roles played their part in creating distinctive household environments
and individual identities. There was tremendous variation between
houses, depending on the nature of the social relations they contained,
the personalities of the individuals concerned, and the stage in the
household cycle the family represented.
Clans
As well as their influence on the orientation of the main entrance
of the house in the case of the Linkha clan, mentioned above, clan
(char)) identity mediated who could come to live in the household
environment through marriage, and who had to be involved in the process
of ensuring dead spirits passed on successfully to the next world on
death. The clan (char)) was the largest sub-tribal unit and (unlike the
sammetlir) discussed in the previous chapter), was a very public part of
Yakha identity, Chor) membership was inherited from the male line, and
were exogamous un i ts, Some choa had in terna 1 subdivisions (an unmarked
category in Yakha). The Linkha clan, for example, was divided into c*
bhEii ('four brothers') and pa-c bhai ('five brothers'). Marriage
between such sub-divisions of a choo was not allowed.'"'
We met or heard of twenty-one chor) in East Nepal which were said to
be Yakha, and these groups are listed in Fig. 5,3.:" Fig. 5.3 also
shows how certain clans were associated with particular places (and
consequently, as we saw in Chapter Three, probably with particular
dialects too). Even within Tamaphok, clans were thought of in spatial
terms even though in the area we mapped (Map 7) it seemed rare to find
clustering of more than four or five houses belonging to members of one