ABSTRACT
In Nepal, the term Kirant (or Kirat, Kirata, Kiranti) designates an ensemble of Tibeto-Burmese-speaking populations which inhabit the mountains in the east of the country. The list of the populations included in this appellation has varied, however, depending on the authors, and this has been the case since the first Western observers. If for Kirkpartick (1811) the Kirant were a distinct group from the Limbu, for Hamilton (1986 [1819]) the Limbu formed a branch of the Kirant, whilst for Campbell (1840) it was the opposite; Hamilton included the Hayu in this ensemble and Campbell the Yakkha; for Vansittart (1896), the Kirant designated only the Rai populations, which included among others the Khambu and the Yakkha, etc. According to Campbell, these were not confusions only made by the outside observers; they were also the reflection of indigenous discourse (1840: 595). Things are just as confused with regard to the subgroups forming each of the Kirant groups. Thus, in the ethnographic literature, the Rai are presented as being divided into different groups, each being defined by a specific shared name, a common ancestor, a tendency towards endogamous unions, a specific language (twenty-two Rai languages, according to the official census), a particular social and ritual organization and a territory. Attempts at classifying these groups have, nevertheless, yielded very variable results. Campbell (1840), the first to try to classify the Rai groups, proposed a list of twenty-eight names; later, Hodgson (1858) compiled a list of seventeen, Risley (1981 [1891]) fiftyseven, Vansittart (1896) forty-five and Morris (1993 [1933]) seventy-three. The diversity of groups and appellations grew even further when linguists conducted their first attempt at systematically recording the languages spoken by these groups: their list contains more than 300 entries (Hansson 1991). The number of groups listed varies so much because the criteria selected to define their borders prove, in fact, to be fluctuating, and none of them appear utterly pertinent. The different languages ‘slip over into another language rather than undergoing an abrupt transition’ (Gaenszle 2000: 107), the specificity of socio-ritual organizations is very relative (there are sometimes as many differences between villages of the same group as between villages of two different groups), the groups’
endogamy is partial and different Rai groups occupy territories which are not necessarily adjacent . . . All these points illustrate the complexity of the denominations confronting the first Western observers.1
