[*Research assistance for this article by Sonam Rinchen Lepcha, and previous translation work by Imansing Chemjong and Bairagi Kainla.]
Historians today are convinced that a widespread cultural conflict took place in the eastern Himalayan region between the indigenous inhabitants – called the Kirant – and the Tibetan migrant population, reaching a climax during the 18th and 19th centuries. Another wave of political and cultural conflict, between Gorkhali and Kirant ideals, surfaced in the Kirant region of present-day Nepal during the last quarter of the 18th century. A collection of manuscripts from the 18th and 19th centuries, till now unpublished and unstudied by historians, have made possible a new understanding of this conflict. These historical sources are among those collected by Brian Houghton Hodgson – a British diplomat and self-trained Orientalist appointed to the Kathmandu court during the second quarter of the 19th century – and his principal research aide, the Newar scholar Khardar Jitmohan.
For over two millennia, a large portion of the eastern Himalaya has been identified as the home of the Kirant people, of which the majority are known today as Rai, Limbu, Yakha and Lepcha. In ancient times, the entire Himalayan region was known as the kimpurusha desha, a phrase derived from a Sanskrit term used to identify people of Kirant origin. These peoples were also known as nep, to which the name nepala is believed to have an etymological link. The earliest references to the Kirant as principal inhabitants of the Himalayan region are found in the texts of Atharvashirsha and Mahabharata, believed to date to before the 9th century BC. For over a millennium, the Kirant had also inhabited the Kathmandu Valley, where they installed their own ruling dynasty. As time passed, however, those Kirant now known as the Limbu settled mostly in the Kosi region of present-day eastern Nepal and Sikkim.
From around the 8th century, areas on the northern frontier of the Kirant region began to fall under the domination of migrant peoples of Tibetan origin. This flux of migration brought about the domination by Tibetan religious and cultural practices over ancient Kirant traditions. This influence first imposed shamanistic Bon practices, which in turn were later replaced by the oldest form of Tibetan Buddhism. The early influx of Bon culture to the peripheral Himalayan regions occurred only after the advent of the Nyingma, the oldest Buddhist order in Lhasa and central Tibet, which led followers of the older religion to flee to the Kirant areas for survival.