Hetchhakuppa, Founder of the Agricultural Age
Kirati · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
In the Rai (Khambu) branch of Kirati tradition Hetchhakuppa, also called Khakchhilip or Raichhakule, is the youngest child of the sky-father Paruhang and the earth-mother Sumnima and younger brother of the primeval sisters Tayama and Khiyama. He is honoured as the culture-hero who began the age of cultivation and who first performed the founding dance from which the Sakela dance-cycle is traced, making him a key ancestral progenitor of Kirat-Rai civilization.
Parentage
Names and tradition associations
- Hetchkupka Martin Gaenszle, Redefining Kiranti Religion in Contemporary Nepal (2016), author preprint pp.7–8, section 2 (secondary)
- Khakculukpa Martin Gaenszle, Redefining Kiranti Religion in Contemporary Nepal (2016), author preprint pp.7–8, section 2 (secondary)
Variant accounts
- Regional hero namesGaenszle gives Hetchkupka and Khakculukpa as culture-hero names; local narratives remain diverse.Martin Gaenszle, Redefining Kiranti Religion in Contemporary Nepal (2016), author preprint pp.7–8, section 2 (secondary)
Domains
- agriculture and cultivation
- founding dance
Powers
- to inaugurate the age of cultivation
- to originate the ancestral founding dance
Relations
- sibling: TayamaRegional culture-hero account; parental names are not supplied here.Martin Gaenszle, Redefining Kiranti Religion in Contemporary Nepal (2016), author preprint pp.7–8, section 2 (secondary)
- sibling: KhiyamaRegional culture-hero account; parental names are not supplied here.Martin Gaenszle, Redefining Kiranti Religion in Contemporary Nepal (2016), author preprint pp.7–8, section 2 (secondary)
Sources
- Hetchhakuppa is the youngest child of the Rai primordial pair Paruhang and Sumnima, remembered in Mundhum as the founder of the agricultural age and originator of the ancestral founding dance of the Kirat-Rai.: Martin Gaenszle, Ancestral Voices: Oral Ritual Texts and their Social Contexts among the Mewahang Rai of East Nepal (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2002) (secondary); Iman Singh Chemjong, History and Culture of the Kirat People, Parts I–II (Kathmandu: Kirat Yakthung Chumlung, 4th ed. 2003 [1967]) (secondary)