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

clan. Yet one five-year old girl sitting outside the pradhgn p13-C'S
house one day told me "we are all Linkha; Chal la are down below", Thus
Yakha clans were linked to particular geographical areas, within
Tamaphok or beyond it, even in the eyes of their youngest members,
This spatial orientation extended to sub-divisions of the chor). The
Iknap Linkha, for example, were noteworthy in Tamaphok for being
concentrated around the unusually nucleated settlement of Otemmatol
(mentioned in the story of LinkhBsam given in Chapter Four) and did
appear to be separate from other groups, spatially and consequently, to
some extent, social lya
The chor] subdivisions seemed to be of greater significance than the
chor) in the context of death rituals. If a member of an undivided clan
such as Koyorla or Challa died, one member of each family was said to
need to abstain from meals with salt (amongst other dietary
restrictions) for four days (three in the case of a woman's death),
However, if one's clan was divided, and a member of one's sub-division
died, only then was the family member in question expected to observe
the three/four days rule. If a member of another subdivision died, then
the abstention was supposed to be for only one meal, It seemed that
traditions were changing in this sphere too and were becoming more
relaxed. One person told us it depended on how strict the father of the
household was as to how diligently the rules were observed. In
Dandagaon we were told that a fellow (undivided) clan member's death
only necessitated one meal's abstention from salt. Sometimes even the
one-meal rule was starting to be being overlooked, if the father did not
enforce i t sufficiently.
There did not seem to be any sort of hierarchy between or within