Prem
Bahadur Shahi
Date of birth: 1990
B.S.
Birth
place: Hapur, Rolpa
Father: Puna Ram
Kusunda
Mother: Seti Malla
Now: Ambapur,
Ghorai, Dang
Prem Bahadur Shahi is
the oldest person among the Kusunda community and also known as Moti Lal Shahi.
He has been living at Ambapur near Ghorai Municipality Dang. He has one son and
five daughters. He lives on land owned by the teacher named Narayan Adhikari but
later he bought it. He married with Magar women. He was born in the jungle
near Hapur in Pyuthan and only came out of the jungle to live in a village at
the age of fifteen. He knows most of the Kusunda culture as well as language.
In 2004, three
Kusundas, Gyani Maiya Sen, Prem Bahadur Shahi and Kamala Khatri (Singh), were
brought to Kathmandu for the detailed study of Kusunda language by Tribhuvan
University-Central Department of Linguistics. Although he is not a fluent
speaker of the Kusunda language, he has a lot of knowledge about the
traditional rituals, words of Kusunda language and other aspects of the
Kusundas. Kamala Khatri and Gyani Maiya Sen are his relatives who are fluent speakers of Kusunda language. There are now known to be at least eight
fluent speakers of the language, the youngest is Kamala Khatri who is in the thirties. However, the language is moribund, with no children learning it, as
all Kusunda speakers have married outside their ethnicity. Among the Kusunda,
Prem Bahadur Shahi is the leading figure on his community who can speak his mother
tongue as well as knowledge of the traditional Kusunda culture. But due to old age, he forgot most of
the Kusunda words and his relatives.
Prem Bahadur Shahi, Kusunda with his family members
He has the knowledge of hunting with bow and arrow. He worshipped his ancestors with their traditional rituals as well as shamanism. He is also a good shaman and knows the mantras of shamanism. He has a lot of experiences and bad feelings to be a Kusunda tribe.
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