1. The Kirati: Our Oldest Roots
The Kirati are among the oldest Indigenous peoples of the Himalaya. Our ancestors made their home in the eastern hills of Nepal. They honoured the earth that fed them, the rivers that sustained them and the forests that sheltered them, and they took only what the land could give.
Sumnima and Paruhang. Our story begins with them. Sumnima is the ancestral mother. She is the earth itself, who gives life and holds it. Paruhang is her husband, the ancestral father. Together they shaped the world and taught their children to live from the land. It is said that when Paruhang returned to her, Sumnima danced for joy, and that dance became the Sakela. When we dance it today, we honour them, and through them, every ancestor who came after.
Yalambar, the first Kirati king. The old chronicles of Nepal remember Yalambar as the first Kirati king. He was a warrior of great strength and courage who brought the Kathmandu Valley under Kirati rule. A long line of Kirati kings followed him. Our traditional calendar, the Yele Sambat, carries his name to this day, a reminder that our people were among the first to shape the history of this land.
The Kirati family includes several peoples, among them the Rai, the Limbu (Yakthung), the Yakkha and the Sunuwar. Each has its own languages and customs. All of us share a common heritage of reverence for our ancestors and respect for nature.
2. The Rai
We are Rai, one of the Kirati peoples. We are many groups speaking many languages, with one shared heritage. We were born in the eastern hills, and we carry them in our hearts to every country our families now call home.
Among the Rai, we are Bantawa. Ours is the Bantawa tongue, still spoken in the villages where our grandparents grew up. Ours are the rites, the hearth, and the songs sung when the harvest is done.
The Rai share their great festivals. At Ubhauli the land turns green and the herds climb to the high pastures. At Udhauli the birds and the herds come back down the hills. Both times we gather to dance around the fire, to the beat of the dhol and the ring of the jhyamta. Most people know the festival as Sakela, but in our Bantawa tongue we call it Sakewa or Sakenwa.
Yet no two clans dance it quite alike. Each Rai clan, and sometimes each village, has its own sili: its own steps, its own hand movements, its own tunes for the seasons, the birds and the work of the fields. The heartbeat is one, but the voices are many. When we dance our own sili, we dance as our grandparents danced.
3. The Pachha: A River Flowing From Our Ancestors
Among the Rai, a pachha is an ancestral line, a family clan that flows from its root ancestors. The word itself explains it: pa for father, cha for child. Like a river, a pachha flows from father to child, generation after generation, all the way from its source.
A pachha is more than a name. It is where we come from and who we belong to. It holds the memory of those who came before us and joins us to everyone who shares our line. In a single word, it tells the world whose we are.
Why the pachha matters. Everyone who shares a pachha is brother and sister, however many generations lie between them. So we never marry within our own pachha.
When a marriage is considered, the elders look beyond the father’s line. They weigh the pachha the mother was born into, and the grandmothers’ too. If any of the lines cross, the match cannot be made. This careful keeping of the lines is a kind of love, and it only works while each family still remembers its own.
4. How a Pachha Is Carried
From father to child. A child is born into the father’s pachha. When a son grows up and has children of his own, he passes the pachha on to them, and the river flows on.
A woman joins her husband’s line. When a woman marries, she joins her husband’s pachha, and their children carry it after them. Her birth line is still remembered, because it matters whenever the next generation marries. So every family is fed by more than one stream: the father’s line, which the children inherit, and the mother’s, which they remember and honour.
Through the hearth and the rites. The pachha is carried in ceremony as well as in name. In Rai homes, the ancestors are honoured at the suptulung, the sacred hearth of three stones at the heart of the house. At births, weddings and deaths, the elders and priests call on the ancestors of the line by name. Each time the names are spoken, the river flows on.
Through memory. Above all, the pachha lives in what families remember. Grandparents tell children the names of those who came before. Elders know which lines are related and which are not. When that memory fades, the river can run dry.
5. Yangmali: Welcome Home
Our pachha is Yangmali.
Everything we know of our line was passed down to me by my elders: the names of our ancestors, the stories of where we came from, and the memory of whose we are. I have carried it with care, and now I share it here.
Then my parents met another Bantawa Rai family, and they were Yangmali too. Our branches had parted long ago, in a time before telephones and letters could hold families together across distance. But the pachha had carried the same ancestors quietly down both lines, waiting for the day we would meet again. They were strangers in the morning and family by evening.
So much of who we are has lived only in memory: in our elders’ voices, in names spoken at weddings, in stories told beside the fire. Here we are gathering it while we still can: our family lines, our ancestors, our photographs, and the stories handed down through the generations.
If you are of Yangmali Pachha, this is your home too. Look for your grandparents here. Add your own family, and tell us what you remember. Every name you share is one more that will not be forgotten, so that our children and grandchildren will always know where they come from and whose they are.