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The Rai are an ethnolinguistic group belonging to the Kirat family and primarily Tibeto-Burman linguistic ethnicity. They mainly reside in the eastern parts of Nepal, the Indian states of Sikkim, West Bengal (predominantly Darjeeling and Kalimpong Hills) and in south western Bhutan. The Rais are a set of groups one of the oldest tribes of Nepal . They inhabited the area between the Dudh Koshi and Tamur River in Nepal. They claim that their country alone called (Kiratdesh) in modern times, they have spread over Nepal, Sikkim and West Bengal. Rai are also known as khambu and in some places they are known as "Jimi or Jimdar"."Jim" means "land" which meant they owned the lands and other tribes had to pay their taxes to the jimdar, later they started animal farming and agricultural vegetation as their traditional occupation. They are known for worshipping nature and ancestral spirits. H. H Risley treats the Rais and Jimdar the as synonymous with the Khambus, but most of the Rais nowadays do admit Khambu and Jimdar to be synonymous terms connoting the same ethnic group. Rais are one of the dominant tribes of the Kirati group; they are a fighting tribe of Nepal. They are popularly believed to have offered a stiff resistance to the invasion of the Gorkhas. Kiranti Rais are hill tribes who once possessed considerable power and territory, but were reduced to submission by Prithvi Narayan Shah after his conquest of Nepal. Kirati rule in eastern hills of Nepal ended after the conquest of Gorkha Kingdom in 1772–1773. Numbering about 750,000, the Rai people mainly inhabit eastern part of Nepal. Linguists have identified up to 28 different Rai languages, most of them mutually unintelligible. The 2011 Nepal census classifies the Rai people within the broader social group of Mountain/Hill Janajati. At the time of the Nepal census of 2011, 620,004 people (2.3% of the population of Nepal) were Rai. The frequency of Rai people by province was as follows: Koshi Province (11.3%) Bagmati Province (1.5%) Gandaki Province (0.

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Related concepts (47)

Rai people

Dhankuta

Dhankuta (धनकुटा ) is a hill town and the headquarters of Dhankuta District in Koshi Province in Eastern Nepal. According to 2011 Nepal census, it has population of 26,440 inhabitants. Province No. 1 Until about 1963 Dhankuta Bazaar (the town) was the administrative headquarters for the whole of north-eastern Nepal. Located a half-mile above the town were the buildings of the Bada Hakim, the feudal district governor of the whole north-eastern region, a man with enormous power. The town also had the regional jail and army post.

Kirati people

The Kirati people, also spelled as Kirant or Kiranti, are a Sino-Tibetan ethnic group. They are Indigenous peoples of the Himalayas, mostly the Eastern Himalaya extending eastward from Nepal to North East India (predominantly in the Indian state of Sikkim and the northern hilly regions of West Bengal, that is, Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts). Kirat means lion-hearted people or people of a lion nature. It also means mountain people. The word Kirata is a derivation from Kirati or Kiranti to name the group of people in Eastern Nepal and Northeast India.