Note on Transliteration Most Yolmo wa, or “Yolmo people” (Yolmo wa is nowadays usually pro- nounced as “yhol-mo wa,” with an aspirated y leading into “ol-mo”), speak their national language, Nepali, as well as a distinct Tibetan- derived language known to them today as Yolmo. Linguists have identified this unwritten language as Kagate, a Tibetan dialect that ac- quired its name because it was first recorded as spoken among a group of kbgate, or “paper-makers,” in eastern Nepal.1 It is now clear that ear- lier generations of this group of kbgate originated from the Yolmo re- gion of Nepal. The grammar, syntax, and lexicons of the Yolmo lan- guage are quite similar to those of many Tibetan dialects, especially classical Tibetan. A majority of Yolmo wa rely on both Yolmo and Nepali in everyday conversations, and talk in one language is often in- terspersed with phrases from the other. Yolmo wa have no standard method of writing Yolmo. When people write out Yolmo words, they usually use Tibetan or Nepali (Devanagari) scripts, each of which poses obstacles to perfect transliteration. English letters are less accommodat- ing still. Yolmo words cited in this book are spelled phonetically, as they might sound to the English ear; I determined these spellings in consul- tation with Yolmo colleagues. Since many Yolmo words, especially reli- gious terms, have direct correlates in the Tibetan language, the corre- lates are often noted, spelled as they are in written Tibetan. They are transcribed according to Wylie’s system of Tibetan orthography.2 The spelling of Nepali words follows the method of R.L. Turner.3 Foreign ix x NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION words that are set in parentheses and are prefaced by N. are words in Nepali. Foreign terms that are not designated as being either Tibetan or Nepali are most often Yolmo words. Key Yolmo, Nepali, and Sanskrit words are listed in the glossary, along with their approximate meanings in translation and, where relevant, their Tibetan counterparts..