81
THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF
NEW AR BUDDHISM
John K. Locke, S.J.
Source: Tadeusz Skorupski (ed.) (1986) The Buddhist Heritage. Papers delivered at the Symposium
of the same name convened at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
November 1985, Buddhica Britannica Series Continua I, Tring: The Institute of Buddhist Studies,
pp. 71-116.
The political unit known as modem Nepal has existed since the latter part of the
18th century when the first king of the present dynasty, Prithivinarayan Shah,
starting from the small kingdom of Gorkha in central Nepal, began the process
of uniting the numerous petty kingdoms in the hills into one nation. Over the
centuries the hill area has provided a haven for people from north and south, so
that the present racial make-up of the country is a mixture of various Asian ele-
ments, and Nepal has been called the 'ethnic turntable of Asia'. Prithivinarayan
Shah himself likened his kingdom to a flower garden in which flourished the
four traditional castes and thirty-six tribes (or sub-castes).
Nepal, however, has existed as a country since at least the beginning of the
Christian era, and for most of that period consisted of the Valley ofNepal (or the
Kathmandu Valley) plus some of the surrounding hill territory as far east as
Dolakha, as far west as Gorkha, north to the Tibetan border and south almost to
the plains of India, the amount of territory depending on the fortunes of the
various dynasties. The original inhabitants of the Valley are Newars, who still
comprise about half its population. Here also there has been a meeting of races
and cultures. The Newars have been active traders with the plains and with Tibet
from the beginning of their history right down to the present, and the Valley has
provided a new home for refugees from India from the time of the Buddha and
the rise of the Mauryan dynasty to the time of the Indian Mutiny in 1857. There
is a difference though. Throughout the hills, refugees and new settlers tended to
settle on isolated hillsides and in the shelter of inaccessible valleys where, until
the push for development and modernization in Nepal which began after 1951
and brought improved communications and new opportunities, they remained as
closed units, cut off from their neighbours of a different race and culture on the
nearby ridges and in the valleys beyond. In the Valley, the newcomers from the
north and south were integrated into Newar society, becoming Newars in the