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

the lives of the Yakha, We saw in Chapter Three how the history of
Yakha agriculture points to the relatively recent introduction of staple
crops such as rice, maize and wheat. These crops, and the technology
used to grow them, were from the outside world, and, except when they
were being processed into food, they remained outside the m/phar-b6ri
complex, spat ial 1 y speaking. Ghar-bar i could therefore be seen as
echoing a past time when the Yakha were cihifting cultivators, clearing
small areas of forest and planting 'multi-layered' crops within them, in
a manner akin to the 'gardeners' described by anthropologists working in
Amazonia or New Guinea."
The location of ghar-bgri at the present time., hugging the house and
an integral part of the domestic sphere, could thus be compared with
other aspects of so-called 'traditional' Yakha culture such as language
and religion, Of course, to prove this, more comparative material would
be required on the phar-bSri cultivation practices of other groups: are
others' ghar-bari so lush, are they used to produce such a variety of
crops, and are they so intensively cultivated? Regardless of the
answers to these quest ions, ghar-b8ri amply demonstrate the
embellishment of nature which in its merging of subsistence with
aesthetics arguably delights horticulturalists worldwide.
Rice Paddies (KheT)
Houses and their phar-bEiri were like nodules of culture dispersed
across the rest of the cropped environment, linked by webs of paths
(m> of beaten earth or bare rock, which also led to water sources
(dhdrEi) and other features of local life. Main paths going from one
iommuni ty to another were known as (mu1 baTo>. These were the routes