A Kiranti-Kõits Ethnography

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The Tribal Fascination of Sikkim

Lal-Shyãkarelu RapachaHumboldt (GF) Fellow University of Leipzig&Founder/DirectorResearch Institute for Kirãtology www.kiratology.org Auspices

Sikkim Sunuwar (Mukhia) Kõitsbu Association

&

Cultural Affairs and Heritage DepartmentGovernment of Sikkim2009

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About this ethnography

This short preliminary ethnographic description organized in 15 sections on the Kiranti-Kõits people of Sikkim is based on Kumar Mukhia's some basic questionnaires prepared by theCultural Affairs and Heritage Department, Government of Sikkim directly linked to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Union/Central Government of India. On 24 July of this year, I received an e-mail from Kumar Mukhia of Sikkim requesting me to pen ethnographic portrayal on our people.He had briefly stated me that the activity was officially desired by the Cultural Affairs andHeritage Department for preserving the Kiranti-Kõits people's rich cultural heritage in the formof documentation either in print or in film versions.My role here for describing the Kiranti-Kõits people's basic ways of life e.g., customs, birth-death ritual, matrimonial, festivals, music and dance, costume, ornaments, profession,food habits and so on with my additional information is dual as an insider and outsider at thesame time though not narcissistic as the insider as a cultural-linguistic being. We have includedthe descriptions of some fundamental ways of life, as we witnessed or observed and took part asa community member in those days. This implies that to some extent my personal experiencesas an insider have slightly been added. Nonetheless, we have tried to describe and compare the ways of life from an outsider's perspective as well, which suggests that this description to acertain extent relies on some available literature too. While describing my personal experiences and observations, I have done it so only as anobserver and participant but not like an expert of ethnography (German

Völker-Beschreibung

)and ethnology (German

Völkerkunde

) or anthropology by collecting data from fieldworks.Therefore, this preliminary description on the Kiranti-Kõits people evidently lacks many anthropological traits or insights

–

not portrayed here. Furthermore, my description here isneither exhaustive as an anthropologist would have done, e.g., Johan Reinhard's investigationon 'The Raute: Notes on the Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribe of Nepal' during the early 1970s nor it is based on Franz Boas's tradition of comprehensivescientific methodto the study of human cultures and societies. Theories of anecdotal knowledge also have not been appliedeither. I have here merely tried to depict but not analyze the contemporary cultural practices if not like that of primitive nomadic hunter-gatherer systems of human society yet very typicalsocio-cultural system of the Kiranti-Kõits people.However, as a matter of fact, Sikkim was my fieldwork destination from 2001-2005 when the present author was a PhD student (2002-2005) at the Centre of English andLinguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. I had visited Sikkim several times for collecting linguistic data and relatedinformation even after my final submission of the thesis besides my own life experiences in therugged hills of eastern Nepal till my early 20s. I worked there closely with the Sikkim Sunuwar(Mukhia) Kõitsbu Association (SSMKA)

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a local organization working for cultural andindigenous identity maintenance, preservation and promotions and had participated in theScheduled Tribal recognition demand delegation team from Sikkim on behalf of SSMKA at theNational Commission for Scheduled Tribes, Lok Nayak Bhawan, New Delhi while being at JNU.Readers interested in exhaustive description on the people can access

Beer für die Ahnen

:

Erbrecht, Tausch und Ritual bei den Sunuwar Ostnepals

[1999; in Swiss German] by asocial anthropologist Prof Dr Wener M Egli. This is the first work ever written before focusingon the overall anthropological description of the

Khĩtsi

(Indo-Aryan Nepali

Khiji

) Kiranti-Kõits

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people. His paper

‘

The life and gender of bamboo objects in Sunuwar culture, east Nepal

’

published in

The Medieval History Journal

(2005: 227-245) is another comprehensive researchclearly analyzing how the Kiranti-Kõits people use bamboo as omnipresent both as wild andcultivated plant as well as in material culture. Dr Dörte Borchers

’ (

2003) paper

‘Sacred spaces inSunwar houses’

particularly focuses on the Kiranti-Kõits shrines of

Kũbukā

stel

(Indo-AryanNepali

Kubhuk

ā

sthali

) analyzing whether the Durkheimian concepts of sacredness andprofanity are valid for shrines inside a Sunuwar house. On the Sunuwar shamanism, A.Fournier's two papers 'The role of the priest in Sunuwar society' (1974: 153-164) and 'A preliminary report on the Puimbo (sic?) and the Ngiami (sic?): The Sunwar shamans of Sabra'(1976 [1971]: 100-123) are meticulous works on the socio-cultural role of a Kiranti-Kõits shaman(both male and female) in the Kiranti-Kõits society for which we have in this depiction hereprovided some photographs barely. Actually, what we have individually demonstrated purposefully in this preliminary ethnographic account is

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providing some interesting or typical glimpses and concepts (so to say world views) of their past and of contemporary practices if not relics (however reflections of it)in order to stimulate readers, researchers and particularly anthropologists for furthercomparative studies. We have left out details of most of the indigenous terminologies orexpressions unexplained in § 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and § 13 of this introductory description forfurther detailed comparative institutional study and additionally the types and details of

Nh

ā:so

,

Põibo-

Gyāmi

,

Shyā

̃

dar

worships and know-how techniques or materials are beyond thescope of my narrative here. We hope these characteristic but tiniest exotic ways of life described here can be a smallstep to preserve, promote, maintain and after all respect local, global as well as universaldiversity.Lal-Shyãkarelu RapachaNovember 2009Beethovenstr. 1504107 Leipzig