The Newsletter 64 Summer 2013

Monograph of a Nepalese town

Sjoerd Zanen

This monograph of a Nepalese town or ‘ritual kingdom’ in the Valley of Kathmandu, covers sixteen centuries – from the 6th century when the Mahayana Gum-vihara in the forest above Sankhu was first mentioned in an inscription, till present-day Sankhu as it appears from a socio-economic survey executed by the author himself. Shrestha has spared neither time nor effort to relate his own meticulously collected fieldwork data to all which is known from archeological, historical, anthropological and religious studies on the religion and culture of the Newar. The end result is a welcome enrichment of all the disciplines mentioned.

Reviewed publication:
Bal Gopal Shrestha. 2012. The Sacred Town of Sankhu. The Anthropology of Newar Ritual, Religion and Society in Nepal. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, ISBN: 9781443837705

Download PDF from menu on right to read full review »