$Unique_ID{bob00407} $Pretitle{} $Title{Nepal Chapter 4B. Ethnic Groups} $Subtitle{} $Author{George L. Harris} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{castes caste groups group status newar pahari hindu nepal buddhist see tables } $Date{1973} $Log{See Table 4.*0040701.tab } Title: Nepal Book: Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, An Area Study: Nepal Author: George L. Harris Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1973 Chapter 4B. Ethnic Groups A number of small Pahari kingdoms, or principalities, appear to have been established in the valleys of western Nepal before the third century. Much earlier, however, a Tibeto-Burman-speaking people, the Kirata, had settled in the Katmandu Valley. Their origin and history are unclear. According to one hypothesis, they were displaced in the Katmandu Valley in the sixth century by another Tibeto-Burman-speaking group, the Newar. Some authorities place the arrival of the Newar-whose origins are no less problematical than those of the Kirata-centuries later. In any event the early inhabitants of the Valley came to be called Newar. By the beginning of the Christian era the Newar, who had adopted Buddhism, had developed an advanced civilization. Thereafter, political power passed to a succession of Indian rulers who progressively Hinduized the Valley. The Newar adopted the caste system of their conquerors, but they retained their language and preserved their cultural identity in a synthesis of Hinduism and their earlier Buddhist belief. In the course of this development the Katmandu Valley was more or less continuously in contact with the centers of Indian civilization to the south, but a period of vassalage to Tibet exposed it to cultural influences from that quarter as well (see ch. 2, Historical Setting). Outside the Katmandu Valley the complex Nepalese terrain was contributing to the ethnic complexity of a slowly growing population of varied origins. The Tarai, as a part of the Gangetic Plain, presented no obstacles to the entry of Indians seeking new land, and it became virtually a cultural extension of India. To the west, the advancing Pahari gradually established themselves in the lower and more fertile valleys, leaving the high, northern fringe to scattered groups of Tibeto-Burman-speaking Bhote peoples. Finally penetrating central Nepal, some of the Pahari were drawn into the comparatively urban complex of Katmandu. In the central region they also met and mingled or fought with groups whose Tibeto-Burman speech and Mongoloid physical type suggest ancient connections with the peoples of the Asian mountain lands to the north and east. These peoples predominated in the east and north and, in contrast to the Hindu-Indian affiliations of the Pahari, their closest connections were with the cultures of Tibet and the sub-Himalayan areas to the east. The basic pattern of ethnic distribution which emerged from this history of migration, conquest and settlement-an Indo-Nepalese west and south and a Tibeto-Nepalese north and east-still persists, although it is increasingly being complicated by continued movement and mingling of the population (see table 4). Indo-Nepalese The larger Indo-Nepalese groups-the Pahari, the Newar and the Indians of the Tarai-are organized into hereditary castes. Associated with particular occupations and ordered in a hierarchy of ritual purity and social prestige, they range from the priestly Brahmans and the warrior Kshatriyas at the top to the untouchables at the bottom. Caste obligations and privileges and the regulations designed to protect high caste individuals from ritual defilement by contact with members of the lower castes are based on the Vedic dharmashastras and other Hindu religious texts. Until 1963 this body of customary rules was sanctioned by the legal code (Mulki Ain) of the kingdom. In that year, however, a new code came into effect which prohibited all legal discrimination on the basis of caste, abolished the laws sanctioning untouchability, and permitted intercaste marriages. These provisions, which were drafted at the behest of the King, were aimed, not at the abolition of the caste system by fiat, but at the promotion of social harmony by making all Nepalese subjects equal before the law. [See Table 4.: Regional Distribution of Principal Ethnic and Linguistic Groups of Nepal, 1952-54] Caste in Nepal has been neither as universal in its extension nor as comprehensive in its sanction as in India, where it originated. Undoubtedly, many of the attitudes, values and patterned relationships implicit in the caste system will persist in large segments of the population. Caste, however, can be expected in the course of time to lose its traditional mandatory force in the regulation of group and personal behavior. Caste membership is acquired by birth and in theory cannot be changed. People ideally marry only within their caste, but men may marry women of lower caste, provided the difference is not great. These marriages usually are not conducted with full religious ceremonies, and the offspring of such unions generally have lower status than the father. In the Hindu system in India, castes (jati in Hindi; jatiya in Nepali) are grouped into five broad categories. Four of these categories in descending order of rank are the ritually clean varna (in Sanskrit, literally color or sort) of Brahmans, or priests; Kshatriya, or nobles, Vaishya, or merchants and farmers; and Shudra, or artisans and laborers. The fifth category comprises the ritually unclean achut, or untouchables. The four varna and the untouchable group are divided into thousands of castes and subcastes. In contrast to these five categories, however, which are represented throughout the subcontinent, the castes are essentially regional groups of persons whose shared indentity is based not only on ritual status, occupational specialization and caste name, but often on a claim of descent from a remote common ancestor. Castes tend to fragment into local subcastes in which marriage within the group adds the uniting force of actual kin ties. The castes within each of the four varna tend to be ranked among themselves on a scale of ritual purity. Such ranking appears to vary locally, and a given caste may have higher or lower status in different places relative to others in its varna. Such refinements of grading develop in the interaction of the castes in a particular area, and they reflect social, economic and political differences in the circumstances of the castes of the same varna in different localities. The untouchables have traditionally engaged in occupations associated with filth, blood and death. Ranked below all the other castes, they are considered to be outside the varna system and are sometimes called "outcastes." They are organized into ranked castes, but from the viewpoint of the members of the four clean varna, they are all unclean. In Nepal the traditional Hindu scheme of four varna and an untouchable category is fully realized only among the Newar and the Indians of the Tarai. By contrast, only the two highest varna-Brahman and Kshatriya-and the untouchables are present among the Pahari. Moreover, the social practices surrounding untouchability are generally milder than has been traditional in India-especially in South India, where in some localities untouchables have been forbidden to come within a certain distance of high-caste persons. Since castes do not function independently but only in relation to other castes in a scheme of ritual and occupational interdependence, the castes in each local area constitute a more or less autonomous system. A rural Pahari community, for example, may include various castes of Brahmans, Kshatriya and untouchables. Depending upon their caste, the Brahmans appear both as priests and landlords and as peasant farmers. The Kshatriya castes include landlords, landowning farmers and tenant cultivators. Blacksmithing, carpentry, barbering, farm labor, scavenging and other tasks traditionally regarded as menial or defiling are performed by the various untouchable castes. Pahari The Pahari, or Parbate (literally, "people of the mountains"), are predominantly North Indian in physical type with some increment or Mongoloid traits derived from mixture with such groups as the Magar and Gurung. They are divided into the high "clean" or "twice-born" castes (Khasiya) and the low "unclean" or "polluting" castes (Dom). The Khasiya castes comprise the Brahman or Kshatriya varna. The term "Khasiya" or "Kha," however, often refers restrictively to the high castes of the hills, most of whom are of the Kshatriya varna. The Brahmans have three castes: Upadhyaya, Kumai and Jaisi; the Kshatriya have four: Thakur, Chetri, Khatri and Hamal. The Jaisi are peasant farmers and, unlike the Upadhyaya and Kumai Brahmans, perform only limited priestly functions; some engage in astrology and fortunetelling. The untouchable Dom group includes such occupational castes as Sarkhi (leatherworkers), Kami (metalworkers), Damai (tailors and musicians), Hurkiya (drummers), Kusule (sweepers and musicians) and Sunar (goldsmiths). The Nepalese Pahari received influxes of high-caste refugees from India during the Moslem invasions of North India (eleventh through sixteenth centuries), and following the conquest of the Newar kingdoms of the Katmandu Valley were in close contact with the important urban centers of North India. It is highly probable, therefore, that the traditions of the Pahari living in and around Katmandu Valley are more comparable to the customs of Indians living on the Gangetic Plain than are those of their rural counterparts in western Nepal. The majority of the Pahari belong to the Khasiya category. High-caste status in itself does not bring wealth, and most of the Khasiya are small landowning farmers, growing rice, barley, wheat and corn, and raising a few animals. The members of the smaller but still sizable, Dom group support themselves by handicraft skills, menial services and farm labor on the holdings of high-caste farmers. All the castes needed to carry out the work of the rural community are not usually present in a single village but are apt to be distributed in a number of adjacent villages, which become linked by ties of economic, ritual and social interdependence. Such ties tend to be reinforced by the fact that men must normally seek brides from outside their village, since their own local caste group is apt to consist of no more than a few closely related families. Brahmans may take Kshatriya wives and there is some intermarriage across ethnic lines, but the normal pattern is to marry within one's caste and ethnic group. The Pahari household ideally consists of a man, his wife, their unmarried children and married sons with their wives and children. The adult males of this group own property in common, although the father exercises authority and control over it and over the earnings of all members of the family. This extended family household usually breaks up upon the death of the father, since the eldest brother cannot compel younger brothers to remain if they wish to claim their share of the estate and set up on their own. Brothers sometimes continue to reside together under the leadership and authority of the eldest. In the next generation, however, the family household is dissolved and the joint estate is usually divided among the grandsons of the original head of the family, who then establish their own households. Women of all castes make an important economic contribution to their families through their activities in agriculture and animal husbandry as well as through their duties in the home, and, in general, their status is somewhat higher than that traditionally accorded women in Hindu India. At marriage the family of the bridegroom bears the expenses of the wedding and formerly gave, and in some areas still gives, an agreed-upon sum in cash to the family of the bride. The bride's family, however, is expected to use the money it receives to pay for entertaining the wedding guests. In contrast, the Hindu Indian custom is for the bride's family to provide a dowry for the daughter and pay the wedding expenses, and many wealthy Indian Pahari families have adopted this practice. In and around Katmandu the practice of giving a bride-price appears to have been abandoned. A dowry, on the other hand, is usually not demanded from the bride's family, although it generally pays for the expenses of the wedding. In western Nepal the traditional Pahari custom of paying a bride-price probably persists, as it does among the Pahari in the neighboring mountain areas of India. Divorce, authorized by the new Mulki Ain, formerly had no legal sanction. Separated women, as well as widows, however, did form new unions. Among the rural Pahari, the widow who remarried ideally married her dead husband's younger brother. The "untouchable" Dom castes engage in a range of handicraft and service activities which in most of India would be occupations of the Shudra as well as of the untouchable castes. Among the Pahari the term "achut" (untouchable), which the high castes use to refer to the Dom, means that the high-caste person may not accept food or water from the untouchable and that members of the Dom group must not touch utensils and dishes of the high castes or cross the threshold of their houses. There are a number of other restrictions on the Dom which serve to continually remind them of their ritual impurity and low status, but some status distinctions existing among the Dom are recognized by the high castes. A Kamai or a Damai, for example, is considered to be less defiling than a Sarki or a Pore. On the whole, there is a great deal of friendly, informal social intercourse in the villages between high-caste persons and the artisans of the Dom group. The demand for the services of the artisan generally extends beyond his own village, and he is likely to practice skills which theoretically belong to different castes. Each artisan or service caste member usually has a series of high-caste farming families for whom he works, receiving in payment a fixed proportion of the harvest, the exact amount varying with the size of the household or landholding of the farmer and the type of service performed, such as mending plows, butchering animals, playing drums at festivals, tailoring or cleaning. The arrangement is supposed to be a permanent one, but in practice there is a good deal of shifting from one high-caste patron to another. Dom families seldom own farmland, although they usually have the use of some land as tenants to supplement their small earnings from their traditional occupations. Newar The Newar, who make up about half the population of the Katmandu Valley, have lived there for perhaps more than 15 centuries. Whatever their ultimate antecedents, which remain problematical, many of them are markedly Mongoloid in physical type, and they retain a language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family. Although many Newar are farmers, their villages, with masonry dwellings of several stories, have a distinctively urban flavor. Their concentration in the Valley, their relatively high educational level and, since the fall of the Ranas, their economic prosperity are enabling them to play an important role in the civil and political life of the country. For example, the members of the Palace Secretariat since 1951 have been Newar. Long and intimate contact with Indian civilization, both directly in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and as mediated through the now dominant Pahari, has assimilated them to the Indo-Nepalese category without, however, destroying their cultural distinctiveness. At an early date they accepted Indian Buddhism and, somewhat later, Hinduism, the caste system and Hindu political ideas and organization. Fusing these Indian-derived features with elements of their own, they developed a high civilization with a distinctive literature, style of architecture, religion and decorative art. The Newar castes, Buddhist as well as Hindu, are no less pollution-conscious than the Pahari and the Indians. Caste endogamy, however, which has been one of the main methods of maintaining status in India, is not strictly observed in Nepal by either the Newar or the Pahari. The strictest rules governing the relations between members of different castes are those pertaining to commensality. Boiled rice and dal (a sauce made of lentils), in particular, must not be accepted from a person of lower caste. Other rules further restrict social intercourse between the castes, but they tend to be treated more casually. Newar caste structure resembles more closely that of north India than that of the Pahari, in that all four varna (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and untouchables are represented. There are about 70 Newar, Hindu and Buddhist castes. About 30 of these are reported to be untouchables. Most castes have specific religious duties and functions in the festivals as well as traditional occupational specializations. The division into Hindu and Buddhist castes has not been regarded by the Newar as a serious cleavage, since both groups share the same basic values and social practices and are in close accord in their underlying religious philosophy. Many Newar, in fact, participate in many of the observances of both religions. The two highest Buddhist castes, the Gubhaju and Bare, which correspond to the Brahman castes of the Hindu section, are composed of the lineages and families descended from Buddhist monks who some centuries ago, under Hindu influence and pressure, dropped the rule of celibacy. The married monastics continued living in religious communities and their descendants are now divided into a number of partly fictive descent groups, each living in a cluster of buildings grouped around a central courtyard, from which they continue to carry out their traditional religious functions for the Buddhist section of the community. A subgroup of the Bare, the Sakya, traditionally engaged in the production of sacred objects and the building and repair of temples, are enjoying prosperity by producing art objects for the tourist trade. Apparently there are no Kshatriya castes in the Buddhist section, although the Shresta, or Sheshyo, may have held this status at the time when Newar kings ruled the Katmandu Valley. Since the Gurkha conquest, however, the Shresta have been generally considered to belong to the Vaishya varna. Although most Shresta think of themselves as Hindus and employ Brahman family priests, there is a sizable group of Buddhist Shresta living in Katmandu as well as smaller groups in other parts of the Valley. Buddhist Shresta who have become wealthy have tended to turn from Buddhist to Brahman priests, although this tendency is perhaps being affected by the recent resurgence of Newar interest in Buddhism reported by some observers. Also in the Vaishya varna is the Uda, or Urha, caste-which has traditionally engaged in trade with Tibet, maintaining a small colony in Lhasa and adopting Tibetan religion and customs-and a number of artisan castes-carpenters, bakers, coppersmiths, stonemasons and tilemakers. At the bottom of the ritually clean category is the Shudra varna. It comprises the rural caste of agriculturalists (Jyapu) and a number of artisan groups, such as lime quarriers, cloth dyers, oil pressers, blacksmiths, painters and barbers. Of these artisan castes the barbers have the highest rank and enjoy certain ritual privileges which the others do not have. Below all these are the untouchable occupational castes of butchers, leatherworkers, fishermen, sweepers, charcoalers, drum makers, musicians, and washermen. The highest caste of the Hindu section, the Deo Brahmans, were the family priests of the Malla kings, who reigned in the Valley before the Gurkha conquest. Below them are the Jha Brahmans, who have less important religious functions and do not act as family priests. Traditionally, at least, neither caste married Nepali-speaking Pahari Brahmans. Below the Brahman varna is a large caste of heterogeneous origins, the Shresta, which is divided not only into Hindu and Buddhist sections but also into subgroups of different status. These subgroups do not appear to constitute actual subcastes since they intermarry and accept food from each other. Although most Shresta, both Hindu and Buddhist, are commonly held to be Vaishya, some Hindu Shresta clan groups-Malla, Pradhan and Rajbandari-are universally recognized as Kshatriya. These three clans are often considered to constitute a distinct caste, although they continue to eat with and marry other Shresta of somewhat lower status. Conversely, the lowest Shresta subgroups will sometimes accept husbands, as well as wives, from the Jyapu and other castes of the Shudra varna. The only untouchable caste that might be considered Hindu rather than Buddhist is that of the tailor-musicians (Jogi). A considerable number of Newar have settled outside the Katmandu Valley. Some of these enclaves have abandoned Newari for Nepali, given up the caste system, ceased to observe many Newar customs and, retaining their Newar identity, have intermarried with other ethnic groups. On the other hand, where the Newar outside the Valley form compact communities in administrative and trading centers, they retain their traditional culture and social organizations, and they marry only within their own group. Tharu The largest of a number of little-known ethnic groups in the Nepalese Tarai is the Tharu, who are also found in the Tarai region of Uttar Pradesh, west of Nepal. Those in Nepal were enumerated at more than 300,000 in the census of 1952-54. Two groups, the Bhoksa in the west and the Mechi in the east, appear to belong to this ethnic group. Their cultural patterns in the last century were said to resemble those of tribal groups in the Bihar State of India. The little information available on the Tharu in Nepal today suggests that, like those in Uttar-Pradesh, they have been increasingly subject to Hindu influences. The Tharu apparently have largely abandoned their earlier pattern of shifting cultivation for wet-rice agriculture with the result that most of their scattered villages have become permanent settlements. Each house in a village is usually set apart from the others by its surrounding fields. Villagers are united by close ties of kinship and each settlement is a tightly knit social unit of cooperation and mutual obligation. The village has a council which arbitrates disputes and a headman who collects taxes and rents, paying them either directly to a government tax office or to a tax concessionaire who may have a government contract to collect taxes in more than one village. The headman usually has a messenger to assist him, who also acts as a sort of town crier. Most villages also have a shaman who propitiates and exorcises evil spirits, sacrifices to the gods (who include Hindu deities and Moslem saints as well as indigenous gods) and prescribes herbal and magical remedies for the sick (see ch. 9, Religion). Originally, the Tharu were organized into endogamous units (kuri), which were divided into two groups of unequal status. In recent years, however, in India and presumably in Nepal the higher status group has begun claiming royal descent from Rajput, or Thakur, ancestors, who allegedly intermarried with the Tharu after their flight from the Moslem conquerors of northern India. The group of lower status has not attempted to claim royal descent and its members call themselves simply "Thakur" rather than "Rana (royal) Thakur." Neither group should be confused with the Pahari Thakuri caste. While the superior group, the Rana Thakur, has become a single endogamous unit, the lower group has retained its separate endogamous kuri. Indians of the Tarai Little detailed information on the Indian-derived majority of the inhabitants of the Nepalese Tarai is available. Although most of this group are Nepalese nationals, they are culturally and linguistically part of the larger population of the adjacent north Indian plain of which the region is a geographic extension. Indeed, many villages straddle the international boundary, and, with the difficulty of communications with the interior of Nepal, the Tarai continues to be socially and economically oriented to the neighboring areas of the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Most of the country's small Moslem population is concentrated in the Eastern and Midwestern Tarai. The few Buddhists in the area are found mainly in the east. The castes of the Nepalese Tarai are those familiar in adjacent parts of India, and significantly few of them are present elsewhere in Nepal. Others Along the northern edges of the Tarai, the Gangetic Plain gives way to the foothills of the Himalayas, the Siwalik Range and the Mahabharat Lekh. Various small ethnic groups inhabit the dense, malaria-infested monsoon jungles of the area. They include such groups as the Darai, Rajbansi, Chepang, Ksunda, Kumba, Majhi, Raji, Satar, Jirel and Byansi. These peoples who formerly lived as small bands of hunters and gatherers have not been studied in this century, and it is not known how many remain. Some, such as the Rajbansi, who are also found in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal and in Sikkim, are said to be related to peoples in Assam. Probably many of these groups in the Tarai practice slash-and-burn agriculture, shifting their settlements periodically when the fertility of the land is exhausted. Presumably, many of them speak Austro-Asiatic languages, particularly those belonging to the Munda branch of that family. Some, however, such as the Byansi, speak Tibeto-Burman languages. They have long been subject to the influence of the predominantly Hindu culture of the Tarai, and this process can be expected to continue. Tibeto-Nepalese The Tibeto-Nepalese category includes both indigenous and recently arrived peoples. The Tamang, Magar, Rai, Gurung, Sunwar and Limbu have occupied the valleys of eastern and central Nepal for centuries; some of the Bhote, or Bhotiya (from the Tibetan name for Tibet), in the high Himalayas on the country's northern border have come from Tibet in modern times. In the traditional social order the Buddhist clergy no doubt offered the best path to higher status and prestige and, in time of internecine warfare, the armies of the penlops may have provided similar opportunities. Individual slaves were probably freed occasionally by their owners, and certain cmay have numbered about 2 million-roughly 20 percent of the total population. The Tibeto-Nepalese groups range in size from the Tamang, with an estimated 500,000 persons, to the Sunwar, with perhaps no more than 20,000. Although the various groups are concentrated in particular areas, individuals and small communities of most of them are found in many parts of the country. They are predominantly subsistence farmers and stock-raisers, and those in the high altitudes of the north live a semi-nomadic existence, seasonally pasturing their herds at higher and lower elevations. There has been some ethnically based political sentiment among them, as in the case of the long semiautonomous Kiranti (Rai and Limbu) in the east. The linguistic and cultural similarities among the various Tibeto-Nepalese groups are too general, however, to give the whole category any real sense of common ethnic identity. They speak a number of related but mutually unintelligible languages, many of which are complicated by dialect divisions. The majority adhere to a Tibetan-derived Buddhism but many have been Hinduized by contact with the Indo-Nepalese, and a locally varied shamanism, which persists alongside their more formal religious beliefs, further reduces the force of religion as a unifying bond. All of these groups, even in their areas of greatest concentration, are scattered in numerous self-sufficient rural communities in which the strongest ties are those of kinship and locality. Many of the Tibeto-Nepalese groups, such as the Gurung, Tamang, Sunwar, Rai and Limbu, retain vestiges of a social division of the Tibetan type into aristocrats and commoners. Formerly, the aristocracy did not intermarry with commoners and constituted a landowning elite of officials and priests. The aristocrats generally retained their local preeminence for some time after the Gurkha conquest in the eighteenth century, frequently becoming unofficial agents of the new dynasty as tax collectors and custodians of public order. The Tibeto-Nepalese aristocracies still enjoy a favored economic position, but their hereditary privileges have increasingly been challenged by commoners returning from service in Gurkha regiments with pensions and savings which have enabled them to acquire land and influence in their communities. Tamang The Tamang are divided into named patrilineal exogamous clans, some of which consider themselves to be related by descent from a remote common ancestor. Intermarriage between these brother-clans is not permitted on the ground that it would be incestuous. There is also a status division between clans which have married only into other Tamang and Sherpa clans and those which have intermarried with Newar, Gurung and Magar. The two divisions of the Tamang normally do not intermarry. The Tamang live in villages composed of several hamlets, the inhabitants of each of which apparently belong to a separate lineage. In areas where the Tamang are the predominant ethnic group, each clan has rights over certain areas of untaxed land which is owned in common (kipat) by clan members. Depending upon the size of the village, there may be more than one mulmi (headman, or tax collector) whose office rotates among the householders of the clan owning the kipat in the village. The mulmi is responsible not only for collecting land taxes but for controlling the village forest and for arbitrating disputes. In addition to the mulmi, each village has a dhami, or priest, who normally belongs to the clan of the village founder and who conducts the seasonal agricultural rites and offers sacrifices to the deities and spirits. In a village containing several clans, each clan may have a dhami to conduct rites in honor of its ancestors and often to act as shaman to contact the gods and spirits. The larger villages in predominantly Tamang areas also have Buddhist temples (ghyang), which are similar to the Sherpa and Tibetan gompa. Occasionally, there are small monasteries of celibate monks and perhaps a few nuns. In areas where they are in the minority and particularly in the hills surrounding the Katmandu Valley, the Tamang have become tenant farmers, day laborers and porters, carrying trade goods. In these areas of mixed population, where the Tamang live among Pahari and Newar castes, they are gradually assuming the character of a caste of low economic and ritual status, although they appear to retain their Buddhist religion. Magar The Magar are most numerous in the mountains of central Nepal but they are also found in other parts of the country, particularly the east. Some of the more northern Magar, though retaining their Magar identity and regarding themselves as superior to their Tibetan neighbors, have adopted Tibetan speech and dress. In this, and in their adherence to Lamaist Buddhism, they contrast with the Magar farther south who have been subject to strong Hindu influences. These Magar communities, long in contact with the Indo-Nepalese, have accepted Hindu religious beliefs and practices in varying degree and been drawn into the caste system. Nepali has become the first language of many. Ties of kinship and marriage connect neighboring Magar villages, and clan membership acts to extend the sense of group identity beyond the village community. As in earlier times, the patrilineal Magar clans are apparently divided into high and low status groups. Some Magar, however, claim that the clans are all of equivalent status. Marriage between members of the same clan does not seem to be prohibited so long as the couple is not of the same lineage. The landowning unit appears to be the nuclear or the extended family. There are some landless families, however, who support themselves by sharecropping and day labor. Others engage in craft skills, mining and, in the north, the salt trade and pastoralism. Rai The largest Tibeto-Nepalese group in eastern Nepal is the Rai, and Rai are also found farther east in India, Sikkim and Bhutan. In Nepal the group contains two major divisions, the Khambu and Yakha, both of which are organized into patrilineal clans and lineages. Linguistically, the Rai are commonly grouped with the Limbu, Thami and Dhimal as speakers of Kiranti dialects. Much of the little known about the Rai relates to those who have emigrated from Nepal to work in the tea gardens around Darjeeling in India. These people have adopted various Hindu social and religious elements as superior to their own. These borrowings, however, seem to have augmented rather than to have replaced their native customs. Among the Rai generally, whether Buddhist or Hindu, shamanism and the cult of lineage ancestors persist as an important form of religious activity. Gurung The Gurung are organized into patrilineal, exogamous clans, divided into two groups of differing status-Charjat and Solahjat. Each of these two divisions, in theory, although no longer in fact, is endogamous and the group of lower status, the Solahjat, frequently intermarries with other ethnic groups as well as with the Charjat. The Charjat clans apparently are descended from a privileged class in early Gurung society, which comprised the royal lineage, high officials and hereditary priests. Until recently the largest landowners and the most important village officials were members of Charjat clans. Service in the Gurkha regiments as commissioned and noncommissioned officers has given many men of lower status Solahjat clans the means to acquire large landholdings and membership in the village councils. However, most village headmen still come from the Charjat clans, and Charjat continue to own most of the valuable irrigated riceland. Many of the Gurung depend more on animal husbandry than on agriculture for their subsistence, grazing their cattle on the communally owned mountain meadows in the summer and feeding them in winter fields at lower elevations. Although a considerable portion of the Gurung are Lamaist Buddhists, many have adopted Hinduism. Probably shamanism persists among all of them. Gurung villages, especially in the north, are reported to have women's clubs or dance houses, in which on suitable occasions the young people hold all-night parties, singing, dancing, smoking, eating, drinking and courting. It is probable that these clubs have been abandoned in the more Hinduized Gurung villages. The dance house institution is present among the Bhote, from whom it may have been borrowed, since the northernmost Gurung speak Bhote dialects as well as Gurung and closely resemble the Bhote in their pastoral way of life and religious observances. Sunwar The Sunwar patrilineal exogamous clans reportedly are divided into two groups of unequal status. The group of lower status, as among the Tamang, is said to be descended from marriages of Sunwar men with women of other ethnic groups. The higher status group presumably has married only into the other Sunwar clans. Further information is lacking, but the Sunwar apparently maintain close relations with the Gurung and Magar and share many of their social patterns. Limbu Relatively little has been reported about the Limbu. They speak a Kiranti language, as do the Rai, whom they also resemble in their organization into exogamous patrilineal clans. Their villages lie to the east of the Rai toward the boundary with Sikkim and India, and reportedly there is some intermarriage between them and the Lepcha who have come into the area from Sikkim. Intermarriage with the more Hinduized Rai is also common. The Limbu village is said generally to comprise several lineages. Land seems to be held in common by extended kin groups under the kipat system, with individual families having use rights. In theory such holdings cannot be alienated, but they can be mortgaged, and it appears that among the Limbu this has led to the effective concentration of much of the land in the hands of a few headmen. The Limbu are said to maintain Buddhist lamaseries. Shamanism is also practiced, and the role of shaman is hereditary in certain lineages. Bhote Information about the Bhote groups, except for the Sherpa and the Thakali, is scanty. All apparently show the common Tibeto-Nepalese hereditary social dichotomy into high and low status divisions. Among the Sherpa, at least, the higher division is more numerous. The inferior division in all groups seems to be associated with tasks regarded as ritually dangerous or morally reprehensible, such as slaughtering animals or disposing of the dead. In marriages between Bhote of different groups, the partners are expected to be of equivalent status. The patrilineal and exogamous clans of the Sherpa are not localized but are widely distributed over the Sherpa area. Neither a residential nor an economic unit, the clan is important as a device for regulating marriage, and it has some ceremonial functions, as when fellow clansmen in the same village pool their resources for a feast when they have brought their animals down to the main villages from the high pastures at the end of summer. The socially and ritually integrated community among the Sherpa is the main village with its Buddhist temple (gompa). Each family has its principal house here, but most also own smaller dwellings at higher and lower altitudes. During much of the year various members of any particular household are likely to be away from the main village, cultivating valley fields during the short growing period and tending their herds at higher or lower pastures depending on the season. Households vary in composition from those consisting simply of the nuclear family to polygamous units based on marriages between a man and several women or a woman and several men (usually brothers). As sons marry, they usually receive a share of the family's property in land and animals and set up new households. The youngest son or, in the absence of a son, the youngest daughter inherits the residual estate and supports the aged parents. Differences in wealth among Sherpa villagers are considerable but, more than among the agricultural populations at lower altitudes, prestige depends not merely on wealth but on its conspicuous and socially meritorious expenditure. A rich man is expected to make donations to the gompa, give alms to lamas or nuns, hire lamas to recite religious texts at funeral services, purification ceremonies and memorial rites for ancestors, build temples, stupas, prayer walls and provide feasts for fellow villagers and lamas. All this tends to redistribute the wealth acquired through trade and animal husbandry and prevent any permanent monopolization of resources and concentration of wealth. The small Thakali population, situated on the upper reaches of the Kali Gandaki River-south of Mustang, on one of the major trade routes between India and Tibet-has long been deeply involved in wholesale trade between the two countries and has thus been exposed to considerable Indian influence. The shrine Muktinath in their area is a sacred place for both major religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, although it seems originally to have been a Buddhist shrine. The Thakali are reported to have four named patrilineal exogamous clans. Four lineages of one of these clans living in the main town of Tukucha are said to monopolize the long-distance wholesale trade; the remainder of the group engages mainly in farming and to a lesser degree in animal husbandry. A tendency among the Thakali in the younger generation to turn away from the traditional Bhote culture and lamaist religion has been accentuated by the Indian education of a few and by influences from the Katmandu Valley. For many who have adopted it, Hinduism seems to mean little more than acceptance of the caste system, and, although Buddhist temples are allowed to fall into decay, Hindu temples are seldom built to replace them. The older people, who largely remain lamaist Buddhists, are said to lack the knowledge and training to defend their faith against either the indifference or the criticism of the young. Foreigners The foreign community in 1963 consisted of perhaps a few thousand persons in the diplomatic and aid missions of various countries and specialized agencies of the United Nations and the small staffs of a few mission-supported schools and hospitals. The group included an unknown but sizable number of Indian advisers and technicians. Likewise unknown, but reportedly between 60 and 70 Chinese Communist engineers are directing the construction of the road running southwest from Kodari on the Tibetan border toward the Katmandu Valley. There has also been a growing number of tourists, mountaineers and scientific investigators from other countries. Until 1951, Nepal was closed to foreigners, except for the few who came by official invitation. There was, however, little possibility of controlling the entry of Indians and Tibetans into areas outside the Katmandu Valley. No data are available on the total number of alien Indians and Tibetans permanently residing in Nepal. Of the Indians, several thousand are said to be members of the Marwari caste engaged in trade and moneylending in the larger towns. About 7,000 refugees from Communist-controlled Tibet were living in small, scattered settlements, mainly along the northern border east of the Jumla area (see ch. 21, Public Order and Internal Security).