The Kirat descendants include all Indo-Mongolian people speaking various Tibeto-Burmese.KIRAT CIVILIZATION

KIRAT CIVILIZATION

  

”The Kirat descendants include all Indo-Mongolian people speaking various Tibeto-Burmese dialects as their mother tongue,

The principal of which are the #Rai, #Limbu, #Yakha, #Sunuwar, #Jirel, #Hayu, #Gurung, #Magar, #Tamang, #Thakali, #Thami, #Surel and #Chepang in the hills, and the #Tharu, #Danuwar, #Bhote, #Majhi, #Dhimal, #Meche, #Koche, Rajbanshi etc.

The earliest #Newar of #Kathmandu are also thought to belong to this general group. Beside the #Kirat and #Khas groups, there are others, such as the Dhangads, who speak a #Dravidian language and appear to have Dravidian characteristics. Also, some of the groups speaking Tibeto-Burmese dialects have predominantly Dravidian physical characteristics, such as the Raute.

As previously mentioned, there has been much migration within Nepal, resulting in intermingling of the various racial groups.” Despite the migration of groups from the Gangetic plains into the Nepali region, the Kirat have been able to maintain a distinct cultural identity, especially in the Kathmandu Valley region, and the Newar people continue to evolve their own culture, language, and literature.

This perpetuation of Kirat culture would have been possible if the rate of migration of latecomers in to the Kathmandu region, particularly from the south, was slight, since the valley is very small and its population was never very dense at any time in the past. If a sizeable migrant group had arrived from the plains, Nepali society would have easily been overwhelmed and Sanskritized, and this was never done.

The descendants of the last kirat dyanasty that ruled Nepal from Kathmandu Valley later maintained their states as pallo-kirat,majh-kirat and wallo-kirat in East Nepal after they were defeated from the valley. Although today the Kirats are associated particularly with the hilly regions east of the Kathmandu Valley, in the ancient period the Kirat regions extended into the western hills as well. They are Mongoloids and spoke a Tibeto-Burmese language, though their descendants have now mixed with other racial groups.

The Kirats are thought to have moved from the east, with’ their domesticated pigs and buffaloes, along the lower hills through warm, humid, and forested areas, where they practised a shifting cultivation. 

The Khas were pastoralists, associated particularly with the western hills of Nepal, and had connections with west Central Asia. They speak an Indo-Aryan language and appear to have arrived with their cattle, goats and sheep in the western reaches of Nepal . 

Source: Fatalism and Development Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization. Book by Dor Bahadur Bista( Dor Bahadur Bista)