Tana Mana

This is a custom designed to stop the spread of epidemics in a village and is prevalent in the villages along the Indo-Tibetan border. When anyone in these areas contracts a contagious disease and is critically ill, a locally available boulder of white stone is put at his door steps at a spot where any one may see it and know that some one within the house is lying ill with a contagious disease.

Due to the taboos this custom enforces, in order to isolate the patient, even the doctors are not allowed into the patients rooms. The entrance to each village in the area is guarded to check the entry of some one suffering from the disease. Between the villages of Raja and Kibbar, each person that enters the area has to be checked by the Lama against contagious diseases.