Introduction

The Kathmandu Valley is a roughly circular bowl about twenty-five kilometres in diameter set high in the Himalayan foothills. The rich black soil of the valley, and its strategic position on ancient trade routes between Tibet and India, meant that it became an outpost of South Asian civilisation from the fourth century ce onwards.

Subsequently the Kathmandu Valley experienced a period of weak and decentralised government, lasting about 500 years. We know very little about the first 300 years or so, but after that there is much more evidence. Then in 1382 King Jaya Sthiti Malla ascended the throne and united the Valley under one ruler for the first time in many centuries. Although he reigned for only thirteen years his influence seems to have been profound: many of the religious and cultural practices still alive today can be traced back to his reign or to the time of his immediate successors. His descendants ruled over the Valley, which was subsequently divided into three separate kingdoms, until 1768-9, when it was conquered by Prithvi Narayan Shah, the ancestor of the present king. This was the crucial step in the establishment of the modem kingdom of Nepal, which stretches far beyond the narrow confines of the Kathmandu Valley.

From an ethno-political point of view the backbone of Prithvi Narayan Shah’s dynasty was provided by the Brahmin and Ksatriya castes (pronounced locally as ‘Bahun’ and ‘Chetri’ respectively).

The Parbatiyas migrated also to the Kathmandu Valley, but they are not its traditional inhabitants. These are the Newars, an ethnic group defined primarily by its language, Newari. This is a Tibeto- Burman tongue but through almost two millennia of influences from the south it has absorbed a very large number of Indo-European words, espe­cially in those contexts (e.g. religion) in which the written word is important. The Newars have their own caste system which, thanks to the fact that they are traditionally city dwellers, is more complex and elaborated than that of the Parbatiyas. Figure 40.1 gives a very simplified representation of it.

Figure 40.1: Newar Caste System

Untouchables

Since the establishment of modern Nepal by Prithvi Narayan Shah many Newars have emigrated from the Kathmandu Valley, their ‘homeland’, and become traders and shopkeepers throughout the hills of Nepal. The Newars also provide most of Nepal’s artisans—carpenters, masons, sculptors, potters, coppersmiths and goldsmiths.

In spite of the political changes which have occurred, the Shah dynasty has maintained most of the traditions associated with that ancient civilisation. From 1846 to 1951 the Rana family of hereditary prime ministers held absolute power. They pursued a deliberate policy of isolation from British India so that Nepal knew little of the complex changes set in motion by the colonial power with its laws, factories and new ways of thinking. Modernisation has only come to Nepal in the years since 1951. So far change has been more eye-catching than thoroughgoing and the old ways still vastly outnumber the new.

Thus it is that one can see in the Kathmandu Valley a unique and ancient urban culture still functioning today. Three- and four- storey houses of brick and wood, with intricately carved windows; three- and five-storeyed ‘pagoda’ temples, their roofs covered with beaten copper and held up by beautifully carved wooden struts; numerous sunken water fountains in which a continuous stream of water—often brought long dis­tances underground—flows from several carved stone ducts; public meeting-houses, wayside shelters, temples, monasteries and shrines of all sorts at every comer; the meticulous farming which gets three crops a year from irrigated fields and skilful artisan work of all kinds—all this is visible to any casual observer. Moreover, he or she cannot fail to notice a devotion to religion which overflows into festivals, fasts and rituals on almost every day of the year.

The rituals and festivals of the Newars are, Eke most of their culture, extremely ancient. Some new cults may have risen to prominence, some new observances have been initiated, some new castes have emerged, but the basic structure of their religion and society seems to have remained much the same since the fourteenth century. Thanks to a combination of geographical isolation and political circumstance, the Valley avoided both MusEm rule and also (with the exception of some iU-fated visits by Jesuits in the seventeenth century and Capuchins in the eighteenth) the attentions of missionaries. Many traditions even go back beyond Jaya Sthiti MaUa. The rites of the Buddhists can be traced back to the great monasteries of Bihar and Bengal in the late first millennium ce. Only here, in this little corner of South Asia, has this type of Indian Buddhism survived. Here too are forms of Tantric Hinduism which are equally ancient. The cultural conservatism of the Valley, and its temperate climate, have also meant that many ancient Buddhist and Hindu Sanskrit manuscripts, lost in the rest of South Asia, have survived here.