Limbu

The Limbu, who call themselves Yakthung, are a Kirati Tibeto-Burman people indigenous to the eastern Nepalese hills. They were among the earliest inhabitants of this region and heirs of the ancient Kirat civilization once also dominant in the Kathmandu valley.

Before the Gorkha conquest their country, Limbuwan, was a confederation of ten kingdoms whose chiefs bore the title of Subba or Hang, each with its own laws and communal kipat land tenure. In the 1770s Prithvi Narayan Shah annexed Limbuwan, and the treaty of about 1774 promised the Limbu autonomy over their lands and customs, though centralization later eroded those guarantees.

They speak Limbu, written in the Sirijanga script first created in the ninth century and revived centuries later, and their traditional religion, Yuma Samyo, rests on the oral Mundhum lore of their phedangma priests.