Culture and religion

Sunuwar's Relegion and Culture

Most of the Kirant practice animism and shamanism. The male shaman in their Mother Tongue is Põibo. The term Põibo has a historical connection with ‘Bonpo’ in Tibetan and the female-shaman is known as Gyami. But Põibo and Gyami’s meaning is not limited to healing art and trance in the Kiranti-Kõits mulkem [culture] as generally understood by western scholars or researchers. Apart from Põibo and Gyami, Na?so (‘tribal priest’ and Nakso, Nochung etc. in other Kiranti-Rai languages) is another important figure for conducting Kirant Mundum (‘knowledge transferred in spoken form’) particularly known as Salaaku ‘divine unwritten mantra’( also cf Rapacha 2003). Today, it is in practice where Põibo, Gyami and Na?so are not available easily due to effect of dual culture.

Like the Kachin tribes (e.g. Jinghpaw, or Jingpo (Chingpaw, Ching-po, or Singhpo), Atsi, Maru (Naingvaw), Lashi, Nung (Rawang), and Lisu (Yawyin)), Kiranti-Kõits tribes/ethnic groups perform ancestor-cult entailing animal sacrifice. And Shyãdar Shyil (Indo-Aryan Nepali etymon ‘Chandi Nach’) is part of this cult. The term Shyãdar connotatively signifies Surom or ‘Guardian Angel’ and Shyil literally means dance. Other connotative meanings of the terms are: land, earth, nature, plantation, harvest and imitation of nature. Therefore, the Kiranti-Kõits tribes worship nature and their ancestors as a part of human existence. The Shyil is, thus practiced to pay homage to nature and ancestors who they believe to be everlasting source of human civilization.

What is their clan-nomenclature?

Binich, Katich, Kormoch, Mulich, Rapach, Rupach etc. Their phonemic and phonetic representations respectively are: /binicaa/ [binits], /kaatic/ [katits], /kormoc/ [kormot], /mulic/ [mulits], /raapac/ [rapats], /rupac/ [rupats].

All these clan-names in Kiranti-Kõits are autonyms (not of Indo-Aryan origin), which are important semantically to be identified as one of the Mongoloid-Tibeto-Burman tribes/ethnic groups of Nepal. These clan names are pregnant with meanings associated to toponyms, hydronyms, culture, individual skills, attitude of an individual and so on. Besides these aspects of semantics, these clan-names are important morphologically in the Mother Tongue, which is the only identity of the tribe/ethnic group as Mongoloid or Tibeto-Burman speakers.

Let us see some morphological breaks of the clan-names such as:
raapacha>raapach= ra+pacha>ra+pa+cha (ra= verb root/stem of ra:cha, pa= do, cha= to), ra(p)pacha ‘make someone stand up’, ‘make something rot’> raapach ‘catalyst’.

There are nowadays some corrupted forms of these clan names, because of historical change of the language itself, e.g.
‘kyaba’, ‘ya:ta’, ‘bigya>bije’ etc. which should actually be spelt as ‘Kyabacha, Ya:tacha and Bigyacha’ respectively. Bista (1967), Chemjong (1967) and others have written such corrupted versions of their clan names (also cf. Morris 1927 & Rapacha1996). Most of the scholars, researchers and authors who do not have some even basic knowledge of their Mother Tongue make such silly mistakes or blunder.

What are their cult-pantheons?

Suroms, Nimloes, Yaabres, Meselmi, Sidaa etc. While performing pidar-namdar, Nhaasho>Na?so>Naaso and Poibo/Gyami start by reciting “Shang, Shang, Shang, Shang, Shang shooo…” The term ‘Shang’(Yin) resembles to one of the ancient/pre-historic Chinese dynasties dated c.1523 B.C.-c.1028. This is historically important because the Kiranti-Kõits tribe practise ancestor-cult as an inevitable part of their culture