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

family we interviewed could remember gathering the shoots of pigweed
(latve sGq) when food was short, Another crop which was abundant in the
forests during June was wi ld strawberries, but nobody (except us! )
seemed to bother with collecting these delicious small fruits. Horse
chestnuts (masuri kaTus, hipsuwa) with edible fruits larger than those
of diilne kaTus were avilable in the autumn, Gathering them for sale
appeared to be the labour of the poor and indigent. Medicinal plants
(jaribuTI) from the forest were also important, Just about everyone
knew about the healing properties of ciraito (ekhen, Swertia
angustifolia), for example, the bitter leaves of which were used to
treat fever.
Rivers also seemed to be regarded as dangerous places, as we1 1 as a
source of food for the poor (as Sagant suggests was also the case in
Limbuwan), There were five types of fish identifled to us, all known by
Nepali names. The four of these which I could further identify from
Shrestha (1981) were (Amphipnous cuchia), asala (Schizothorax spp.),
tlte (probably Psilorhynchus pseudecheneis) and katle (Tor tor), A
fishing basket (tha'wa! woven out of bamboo was often used to catch
them. This co~~ld be opened at the bottom to release the fisho One man
remembered as a boy having used small charges in the water to stun the
fish and bring them to the surface. Only a few people appeared to go
fishing today, however, and living with our relatively wealthy family we
only once had fish (caught by an uncle) for a meal. Like the forest,
the river was seen as an abode of dangerol~s spi r i ts. One man near the
end of our stay asked a dhBmi about a spirit called tamburarj which he
said he had heard lived down below, by the river. The dhgmi sald it
did, but then the conversation moved on to other things and I was unable