A marriage is a ceremony in which two people become husband and wife with a legal relationship. As per the customary law of Limbu, the parents of a married woman can retain rights to safeguard their daughter for many years, even after marriage. That is, however, until the couple provides a certain level of guarantee that the marriage will not end in divorce. There is a unique tradition in the Limbu community called the Saimundri ceremony, which is a ritual organized to transfer the funeral activity and mourning rituals of a married woman from the parents’ responsibility to the family of the in-laws so that her children are entitled to receive the father's clan name. Until that ceremony is completed, the husband cannot have full control over his wife or her property. Thus, such a final course of the post-marriage ritual is left unperformed for a long duration of time so that the parents can be eligible to defend their married daughter and prevent the husband, including in-laws, from misbehaving against her. The formal processes of the Saimundri ceremony were a concern of pride among Limbu communities in the past, and there was a lot of prestige attached to it. However, such traditional customs are consigned to oblivion gradually in Limbu societies, largely due to modernization, as well as the guidelines of the state's laws. Nowadays, the formal performance of the Saimundri ceremony is hardly even noticed as a faint footprint left behind from past Limbu traditions. This study, then, concerns to document the old Saimundri tradition as it deserves to be preserved as an intangible heritage of the Limbu community.

Author Name: Damber Tembe

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Keywords: Mundhum, exogamous, monogamous, Ingmiba, Saimundri

ISSN: 2168-1333

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