Well i am going to throw more insights about Kirant. The Kiranti came about after the Sensitization process in Nepal.
That is Kirat>> Kirant and Kirati>>Kiranti
Kirantis are the same non-Vedic tribes called Kiratas in Veda and many other ancient works such as Purano, Ramayana and Mahabharata epic.
Here's some of the work i have come across through my studies on these group. Only after studying the aboriginal tribes you would understand the roots of Hinduism
better.
I have define Hinduism as below.
Hinduism =pre-vedic religion(aboriginal) + Vedic religion
Please note that the term Hinduism itself is a new word coined by scholars in about 19th century to differentiate all the religious practices in India that was different from Islam. Veda never said it was going to be call Hinduism.
Some definition of Hinduism are
Hinduism is the oldest world religion and began in North India. It was founded by a blend of conquered people of Indus and Aryan beliefs. It is a polytheistic religion.
Here's some short excerpt from scholars, Western as well as Indian about Shaivism.
The religion of most of the ancient communities of the Central Himalaya was primarily based on the superstitious beliefs and was connected with the practice of sorcery,exorcism, and magic. The tree worship, the worship of Mother-Goddess and Chandika Devi, snake worship, stone worship in the form of linga or the cult of phallus, held very important place among the ethnic communities in ancient India. The aborigines of the mountain tribes of the country, who had not come into contacts with
Brahmin's revered an invisible supreme spirit, various other evil spirits, minor deities.., etc the practice which still survives.
Shaivism:
Shiva, generally considered a non-aryan deity, secured a prominent place among the Kiratas.
It can be roughly asserted that Shiva-worship might have begun among the Kiratas in the mountainous regions of the Himalaya in pre-Vedic times, before the advent of aryans. Shaivism, in some form, was the prevailing religion of the aboriginal Kiratas.
On the basics of an episode described in the Mahabharata, as well as in the Kiratarjuniyam(Shiva in a form of Kirat fight against Arjun), of Bharavi, the Kirata may be identified with Shiva, and it may be suggested that Shiva was their popular deity.
Romila Thapar, while supporting this literary evidence, also has admitted that in all likelihood the Kiratas were the worshippers of Shiva. The assertion that Shiva, the god of the Himalayan mountain, was worshiped by the non-Vedic kiratas, can be proved in many ways. Some of the foreign scholars have also consolidated the concept that Shiva was a patron god of the aboriginals. Megasthenes has also referred to the two Indian deities-- Dionysus(identified with Shiva) and Herakles (identified with Krishna). The former was worshiped as the highest gods on the mountains and the latter was adored in the plains.Thus it is clear that the practice of worshiping Shiva might have begun much earlier to the Christian era, even though the Kiratas did not call themselves Shaivas.
Chandrapida, the prince of Ujjian, in course of his expedition against the Kiratas and the kindred tribes, inhabiting the vast tract of forest extending beyond Suvarnapura, as far as the mountain Kailash(the abode of Shiva) in Tibet, saw both the Shiva temple and a cave in its southern direction, as recorded by Banabhatta in his Kadambari.
That is a definite indication of Shiva worship in the Kirata region of the northern Himalaya. The concept of Shiva worship originally flourished among primitive tribes, living in the hills and forests --the Vratyas, the Nisadas, and other non-aryan. ~ Ancient communities of the Himalaya by Dinesh Prasad Saklani
"The clear conception of Siva arose in the Upanisadic age. Siva as been, for the first time, explicitly mentioned as the Aryan god in the Svetasvatara Upanisad in the background of Yoni-Linga relationship. There was never mention of Siva as Aryan god in Rig Veda, the oldest text of Aryan". From here it can be ascertain that Siva was worshiped by the aboriginal Kirata before the advent of Aryan. ~Tribal roots of Hinduism By Shiv Kumar Tiwari
The Aryan incorporated Sivaism which was the religion of the aboriginal Kirat people into Vedic religion and also other religion sects as given by scholars below;
According to "The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia" By George Erdosy, the primitive Saivisim, Vaishnavism, Sankhya and Yoga which are the four corner stone of modern Hinduism was recognized as non-vedic by the orthodox exponent of the Vedism in the early periods.
Kiratas along with other tribes non-conforming to Vedic teachings was classified as Mleccha(babarians) in many early texts, in a sense that they were destroyers of Aryan. Hence the Siva was name as destroyer in the Hindu Trinity. ~ G.P Singh (The Kiratas in Ancient India, 1990)
"When the Aryan found that their gods like Agni, Indra, Varun etc. were loosing popularity and people did not worshiped the gods which they brought, rather they were worshiping Subra(Siva)and following Saivisim, then they placed Sibarai worshiping under banned. At first the Aryanised conquerers held this religion (Saivism) in disdain and placed in under a ban. But it did not helped; ultimately peoples over come such banned and Saivism continued to strive among the aborigines. At the same time to secure easy recognition by the aboriginal people, they placed Siva into Hindu pantheon".
~ Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization By John Marshall, John Hubert Marshall Sir
Until you study the Kirat people, you won't understand the root of Hinduism or the early civilizations in India. Many books written about India and Indian civilizations are biased because many do not cover the aspects of the aboriginal tribes. Though many scholars have studied about Kiratas, these group are still unknown to the world because
lack of much publications and largely because the Kirat people live in Nepal where the Brahmin's government have all sort of censorship and control for the past 250 years after coming to the power.
What is Kirat and who are these people?
I will let you know on my next post.