By Pradyumna P. Karan. University of Kentucky Press, 1960. My thoughts… This book is a treasure. Particularly intriguing is where it sits in history. As the author points out, the year before this volume was published, King Mahendra proclaimed a new constitution for Nepal and the country had its first election. It was also around this time that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet. Only a decade earlier, Nepal’s border were largely closed […]
Read moreMonth: June 2007
Kundunb (Movie)
Martin Scorsese’s film about the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, from his discovery by Buddhist leaders in 1939 to his escape from Tibet twenty years later. The real story is fascinating but I thought the movie was mediocre. The cast of local, untrained actors was impressive.
Read moreSouth Asian Folklore (Book)
Book description… “This book is a brief but thorough introduction to folklore from South Asia, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The volume begins with an overview of the cultural background of South Asia, and examines different types of folklore and the difficulties of defining and classifying folklore genres. It then provides a substantial selection of legends, tales, myths, riddles, jokes, and other pieces of folklore from South Asia. This is […]
Read moreSelves in Time and Place: Identities, Experience, and History in Nepal (Book)
Book description: “Recently anthropology has turned to accounts of persons-in-history/ history-in-persons, focusing on how individuals and groups as agents both fashion and are fashioned by social, political, and cultural discourses and practices… The diversity of peoples, recent political transformations, and nation-building efforts make Nepal an especially rich locale to examine people’s struggles to define and position themselves… [T]his collection offers a richly textured and complex accounting of the mutual constitution of selves and society” My […]
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