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

people concerned, and how the outside world was becoming increasingly
known part of an expanded Yakha environment. Rather than a dichotomy,
it is probably better to think in terms of a continuum outwards from the
(most familiar) enviroment of Tamaphok to neighbouring communities in
other parts of the Maya Khola valley and beyond, to the bazaars, the
towns of the Tarai, Kathmandu and the world beyond the confines of the
nation state, This latter 'wider world' has undoubtedly expanded for
the Yakha in the past fifty years or so, or rather, more of it has been
comprehended and incorporated into Yakha perceptions of the wider
environment. Service in foreign armies, and more recently work in the
Arabian Gulf states, has offered opportunities which many Yakha men have
taken up, vistas of experience which they have shared with their
families and friends.
The outward, migratory focus of Yakha society had some considerable
t ime-depth. Gurung (1987: 96) states that "the hi1 1 economy since the
mid-19th century has been partly sustained by seasonal, circular and
permanent migration". Judging from the reports of Kiranti migration to
India and Sikkim after the invasion of Prithvi Narayan Shah (Regmi,
1978:540) and the recruitment of Limbu warriors into both Gorkhali and
Sikkimese armies before the battle of Chainpur in 1776 (Stiller, 1973:
150,281) i t seems that both migration and mercenary service were part of
the cultural repertoire of at least some of the Kiranti nearly a century
earlier than Gurung's date for the economic impact of migration. The
Yakha had a word for migrants, kekuba.ci (I those that wander' ). There
did not seem to be such a simple, verbal noun in Nepali.
Yakha propensity for migrat ion was also, as we saw in Chapter Four,
reflected in parts of the muntum recited by maqarlba and other shamans in