A grammar of Yakkha, 2015

2.2 Cultural and historical background
Figure 2.3: Tumok at the end of the rainy season, Sept. 2012
north. This geographical classification has to be understood in an idealized sense.
Most of the villages in Nepal are ethnically and linguistically diverse, so that one
may also find Sherpa, Gurung, Tamang, Newari and Parbatiya (Nepali speaking)
households in the Yakkha region.
2.2 Cultural and historical background
2.2.1 Kiranti
Kiranti (also Kirāt, Kirāta, Kirā̃ti) nowadays refers to a set of roughly 30 communities
speaking related languages, who inhabit the Himalayan foothills in Eastern
Nepal and share key cultural practices, including nature worship and a body of
oral knowledge, myth and ritual in which the veneration of ancestors plays a
major role (known as Munthum in Yakkha). Within these parameters, however,
there is considerable heterogeneity of cultural practices, beliefs and origin myths,
and shifting ethnic and linguistic affinities do not seem to be uncommon (Yakkha
itself being a prime example, as will be explained further below). 6
6 Although this is commonly overlooked in current politics in Nepal, present-day ethnic distinctions
are the product of several waves of migrations and millenia of mutual influence in
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