INDEX

Note: Sherpa personal names are alphabetized by the first name, not by the surname Sherpa.

A

Abandoned fields. See Abandoned terraces

Abandoned terraces, 228 -232, 228 (map 14), 229 (table 21), 386 ;

and intensification, 231 -232;

at Leve, 230 ;

at Tarnga, 215 -216

Accessibility: and mountain land use, 451 n. 11

Acharya, 488 n. 2

Adams, 442 n. 52

Adaptation, 1 , 5 , 60 , 65 , 70 , 268 , 290 , 412 -413, 415 -425, 433 n. 4;

and agriculture, 96 , 417 ;

and local knowledge, 416 -417;

and local resource management, 251 , 292 -294;

and oral history, 10 ;

and maximization of yields, 416 -418;

and pastoralism, 145 , 163 , 283 -284;

and risk minimalization, 416 -417;

and trade, 335 . See also Subsistence strategies

Adekshe: and Thamicho forest management, 329

Adventure travel, 356 , 361

Affluence: and diet, 77 -78;

and houses, 196 ;

and shift to cattle keeping, 258 , 391 ;

and tourism, 371 , 376

Agricultural change, 96 ;

adoption of draft plowing, 234 -236;

decline of buckwheat cultivation, 241 -244;

decline of Tarnga barley, 216 -217;

early agriculture, 214 -217;

early views of lack of, 213 ;

fodder production, 244 -245;

historical dynamism, 213 -214;

increased use of wage labor, 385 ;

introduction of potatoes, 217 -221, 221 (table 20);

lack of commercialization of, 383 -384. See also Agricultural expansion; Agricultural intensification; Diffusion; Potato: introduction and adoption of

Agricultural cycle, 127 -142, 130 (fig. 10);

field preparation, 128 -131, 142 -143;

harvest, 139 -141;

irrigation, 135 ;

planting, 132 -136;

threshing, 141 -142;

weeding, 136 -137. See also Planting calendars

Agricultural day labor, 127 , 236

Agricultural development, 124

Agricultural expansion, 124 , 386 , 481 n. 22

Agricultural extension programs, 124

Agricultural history: and tubers, 110

Agricultural intensification, 63 , 383 -384, 386 , 418 ;

and decline of buckwheat cultivation, 242 ;

and potatoes, 111 , 227 , 230 , 242 , 418

Agriculture: arable land, 96 ;

crop diseases, 101 -103;

crop pests, 101 ;

and economic differentiation, 89 ;

field sites, 96 -97;

labor requirements, 142 -144;

linkages to pastoralism and forest use, 85 -87, 86 (fig. 9);

soils and soil classifi-

Agriculture (continued )

cation, 97 -98;

and weather, 98 -101. See also Agricultural cycle;

Barley; Buckwheat; Climatic hazards; Potato

Agroecosystem: and production systems, 62

Agropastoralism, high-altitude, 64 , 70 -73;

crops, 70 ;

livestock, 70 ;

multialtitudinal agriculture, 71 ;

and Sherpa groups, 72 -73;

trade, 70 -71;

transhumance, 70 -72, 71 (fig. 4), 72 (fig. 5)

Agropastoralism, middle-altitude, 64 -70;

crops, 66 ;

forest use, 66 ;

livestock, 66 ;

and multialtitudinal agriculture, 66 ;

production systems, 69 ;

Sherpa groups 69 ;

and trade, 66 ;

and transhumance, 66 -68, 67 (fig. 2), 68 (fig. 3)

Allan, Nigel, 451 n. 11

Alpine shrubs, 191 . See also Juniper

Altitude: and Khumbu crop production, 80 -85, 81 (fig. 7), 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8), 96 -97. See also Agropastoralism entries

Altitudinal production zones, 73 -74, 74 (fig. 6, table 2)

Altitudinal zonation, 449 n. 1

Ang Puli: and diffusion of yellow potatoes, 238

Annapurna Conservation Area, 395

Apa Tanis, 452 n. 14

Apples, 245

Architecture, 33 , 34 ;

herding huts, 45 -46;

houses, 43 -44, 195 -196, 309 , 396 , 492 nn. 20, 23;

lodges, 366 ;

Sherpa and Tibetan, 29 , 34

Arun river, 26 , 31 ;

and Sherpa settlement, 37

Ash, 131

Astrology: and agricultural decisions, 126 , 133 -134, 139 , 178 ;

and pastoral decisions, 176

Avalanche protection, 206

Aziz, Barbara, 441 n. 43

B

Bai, 452 n. 14

Bakrwal, 451 n. 10

Balephi Khola: and Sherpa settlement, 35

Bantsa, 167 , 172

Barley, 70 , 107 -109;

and bans on other crops, 108 ;

and blight, 101 ;

cultivation in Khumbu, 74 (fig. 6, table 2), 77 , 78 , 84 ;

and cultural value, 108 ;

early cultivation at Tarnga, 215 -217;

harvest, 140 -141;

irrigation, 135 ;

planting, 134 -135;

preparation of, 109 ;

in Rolwaling, 73 ;

Sherpa preference for, 34 , 35 , 77 ;

threshing, 142 ;

timing of harvest, 179 ;

varieties of, 107 ;

yields, 109 . See also Tsampa

Beall, Cynthia, 469 n. 16

Berreman, 437 n. 23, 441 n. 46

Beyul, 445 n. 70

Bhote. See Bhotias

Bhote Kosi: early Sherpa history, 50 ;

origins of name, 436 n. 8;

settlement pattern, 43

Bhotias, 31 , 38 ;

and trade, 71 , 78

Bhumi Sudar. See Land registration

Bigu: and Sherpa settlement, 37

Biological diversity, 320 , 322

Birch: distribution of, 189 -190;

preference as fuel wood, 193

Birds: and crop damage, 101 ;

and timing of planting, 133

Bjønness, Inger Marie, 2 , 8 , 223 , 401

Blacksmiths, 39 , 88 , 456 n. 13

Blaikie, 434 nn. 5, 6

Blight, 101 -102, 116 ;

abandonment of community defenses against, 236 -237;

beliefs about causes, 138 -139;

and community action, 102 , 138 -139

Blower, John, 310

Bogle, George: and potato diffusion, 217

Bos grunniens. See Yak

Bos indicus , 150 . See also Cattle

Bos taurus , 149 . See also Cattle

Bridge forests, 198 (map 13), 205 , 206

Brookfield, Harold, 5 , 434 nn. 5, 6

Brower, Barbara, 434 n. 7;

and reevaluation of overgrazing, 401 -402;

and sheep, 152 , 259 ;

and zopkio, 167

Brush, Stephen, 59

Buckwheat: areas in cultivation, 241 ;

and blight, 101 ;

decline of Thamicho production, 241 -244;

early cultivation of, 215 , 480 n. 12, 483 n. 37;

frost damage, 99 ;

harvest, 140 -141;

inauspiciousness, 108 -109;

Khumbu emphasis on, 35 , 77 , 84 ;

planting, 134 -135, 136 ;

preparation, 109 ;

rain and snow risks, 99 , 101 ;

threshing, 141 -142;

varieties, 107 ;

yields, 109 . See also Altitude

Buffalo hides: trade in, 352 -353 passim

Bum Tso, 424

Bupsa, 49

Bure, 349 . See also Silk

Butter, 149 ;

trade in, 338 , 345 , 349 , 351

Byers, Alton, 50 , 486 n. 6;

and erosion studies, 402 ;

and pollen evidence of early settlement, 50 , 273 ;

and studies of vegetation cover and change, 272 -273, 401 , 404 , 490 nn. 11, 12, 13

C

Calcutta: and Sherpa trade, 344 , 349 -350, 351 . See also Trade: luxury goods

Camp staff (sherpas), 371

Carpets, 344 , 349

Carrying capacity: and pastoralism, 283 , 333

Cattle, 146 , 147 (table 10), 149 -150, 151 (fig. 11), 153 -154;

and crossbreeding, 150 ;

increased ownership of cows, 390 -391;

and stabling, 150 ;

and subsistence contributions, 150 ;

and transhumance, 173

Cha, 128 . See also Manure

Chang: and nak trade, 342 -343

Chapati, 109 Charcoal, 192

Chayanov, A. V., 90 -91, 93

Cheese, 149

Chetris: intermarriage with Sherpas, 39 ;

residence in Khumbu, 39

Children, economic utility of. See Demographic cycle

Chin Dikki: and riki ngamaringbu, 241

Cho Polu, 108

Chojen, 137

Chokor, 136 . See also Religion: and protective crop rites

Chomolungma. See Everest, Mount

Chorkem, 44 , 448 n. 86

Chorten (shrine), 448 n. 85

Chusa (herding settlement), 46

Chyangma: and Sherpa settlement, 37 , 87 , 122

Cincotta, Richard, 469 n. 16

Clans, 33 , 34 , 39 ;

historical development of, 48 ;

and settlement patterns, 48 , 53

Clarke, G., 440 n. 42

Climate, 23 , 25 , 38 ;

climatic change, 248 ;

microclimates, 98 -99. See also Climatic hazards

Climatic hazards, 95 , 99 -101;

early snow, 99 , 133 , 141 ;

frost, 99 -100, 136 ;

rain, 100 -101, 102 ;

and Sherpa responses, 136 , 141 . See also Agricultural cycle; Planting calendars

Cloud forest: and altitude, 437 n. 14

Common property resources: forests, 210 ;

and non-Sherpa land use, 250 , 260 -262;

rangelands, 80 , 156 , 248 -249;

village lands, 249 -250;

village territorial disputes, 251 . See also Forest management; Local resource management; Pastoral management

Conkiln, Harold, 451 n. 9

Conservation ethics and practices, 269 -270, 419

Conservation planning, 409 -411

Construction timber, 195 -196;

and forest management, 204 ;

and house building, 195 ;

and Sagarmatha National Park pollicies, 196 , 312 ;

supply and demand, 195 -196

Cooks, 371 ;

income, 372 , 375

Coracles, 349

Corvée labor, 55 , 122 -123

Cotoneaster microphyllus , 193

Crop introductions. See Experimentation; Fodder; Potato; introduction and adoption of

Crop rotations, 77 , 78 , 107

Crop surpluses, 79 ;

and exchange, 79

Crops. See Barley; Buckwheat; Gardens; Potato; Radish; Tubers; Turnip, Vegetables

Crossbreeds (yak-cattle), 70 , 146 ;

breeding in Tibet, 150 ;

and household economy, 90 ;

raising and sale of calves, 80 , 149 ;

and religious attitudes, 35 , 150 ;

trade with Tibet, 254 -255, 265 ;

transhumance, 80 ;

types of, 150 -151, 151 (fig. 11). See also Dimzo; Urang zopkio; Zhum

Cultural change: and continuity, 11 , 370 , 388 , 413 , 423 -425;

Sherpa perceptions of, 11

Cultural ecology, 2 , 4 -8, 268 -269, 413 -414;

history of the field, 4 -5, 268 -269;

of mountain peoples, 7 -8, 59 -63;

research perspectives, 5 -8, 268 -269. See also Adaptation; Decision-making; Household economy; Local knowledge; Local resource management; Subsistence strategies

Cultural values: and cultural ecology, 6 , 7 , 60 . See also Local knowledge and beliefs; Religion

D

Dalai Lama, 350

Dambak Seru (yellow clay soil), 98 , 98 (table 3)

Danur, 86

Darjeeling: and abandoned terraces, 230 ;

emigration to, 219 , 230 , 345 -346, 367 , 441 n. 43;

and mountaineering, 35 , 219 , 357 -358, 439 nn. 28, 29;

and potato introductions to Khumbu, 217 -219, 220 ;

Sherpas, 35 , 345 -346, 438 n. 27;

and trade, 345 , 351

Dash, A. J., 345 , 441 n. 44

Decision-making: and agriculture, 95 , 99 , 128 , 139 , 243 -244;

and cultural ecology, 5 -6, 65 ;

and pastoralism, 145 -146, 168 , 180 -185;

and resource use, 270

Deforestation: concern over, 2 ;

historical, 278 -283, 281 (table 25), 282 (map 19);

re-evaluation of, 323 -324, 404 -407;

reports of post-1957, 302 -303, 310 ;

and

Deforestation (continued )

Sagarmatha National Park policy, 303 ;

and Sherpa perspectives, 303 ;

tourism and, 403 -407. See also Forest change

Demographic cycle, 90 -94;

and children's labor, 93 -94

Development potato: and altitude, 119 ;

introduction and adoption of, 113 , 114 , 124 , 240 -241;

taste, 112 , 241 ;

yield, 114

Development projects: Hillary, Sir Edmund, and the Himalayan Trust, 32 , 44 , 55 ;

hydroelectricity, 44 , 55 , 407 , 410 , 503 n. 33;

Kunde hospital, 44 , 55 ;

schools, 44 , 55 . See also Lukla

Diet, 77 -78

Diffusion: land use practices, 65 , 69 , 218 ;

potatoes, 222 , 225 , 226 , 237 -240, 459 n. 33. See also Potato: introduction and adoption of

Dim zhum (crossbreed cattle). See Zhum

Dim zopkio (crossbreed cattle). See Dimzo

Dimzo (crossbreed cattle), 150 , 151 (fig. 11), 390 ;

and Tibet trade, 254 , 265 , 342 , 346 , 349 , 351 -352, 354 -355

Dingboche, 46 , 96 , 103 ;

and agriculture, 84 , 103 , 107 -108, 117 ;

and early Rai settlement, 49 ;

and early Sherpa settlement, 446 n. 77. See also Barley Diversification, 103 -105. See also Multialtitudinal agriculture; Subsistence strategies; Transhumance

Domestic mode of production, 90

Dongbu, 33 , 49

Dorje Tingda: and introduction of yellow potato, 238 -239

Dress and ornamentation, 29 , 33 , 34 . See also Zi stones

Drokba (Tibetan nomad), 450 n. 6, 451 n. 10, 487 n. 16;

and trade, 337

Dudh Kosi, 22 -23;

and agricultural and pastoral management, 102 , 138 , 172 , 174 -176 passim, 184 -185;

Dumje, 33 , 34 , 137 , 172 ;

history, 52 ;

land-use patterns, 74 -75;

origins of name, 436 n. 8;

regional trade patterns, 75 -76

Dung: as fuel, 149 , 193 , 474 -475 n. 6

Dzong (fort), 34 ;

Khumbu dzong, 442 -443 n. 55

Dzongnangpa, 50 -51, 445 n. 75

Dzum. See Zhum

E

Ecological complementarity, 450 n. 3

Economic change: agriculture, 105 ;

and assumptions of "traditional," 10 -11, 13 ;

and demographic cycle, 91 ;

magnitude of recent, 422 -433;

pastoralism, 80 , 146 , 150 , 151 ;

and subsistence strategies, 65 , 71 . See also Agricultural change; Agricultural intensification; Diffusion; Forest use; Market economy; Pastoral change; Tourism; Trade

Economic continuity, 85 , 96 , 214 , 387 -388, 413 , 423

Economic differentiation, 87 -89;

and field work, 17 ;

and forest use, 193 ;

and pastoralism, 152 -155, 258 ;

land use, 85 , 87 , 89 -90, 129 , 131 , 143 , 236 , 242 ;

subsistence strategies, 11 -12, 88 ;

and tourism, 88 -89, 361 -363, 362 (table 29), 382 -383. See also Socioeconomic differentiation

Entrepreneurs. See Lodges; Shops; Tourism; Trade

Environmental change, 3 , 5 , 13 , 271 ;

assumptions about Khumbu environmental change, 11 ;

and economic differentiation, 87 , 90 ;

and Sherpa role in, 414 , 421 -422. See also Deforestation; Forest change; Overgrazing

Environmental perception. See Local knowledge and beliefs

Erosion: lack of major, 294

Ethnohistory, 32 . See also Oral history; Oral traditions

Everest, Mount, 22 ;

early expeditions to, 357 -358;

first ascent of, 32 , 358 ;

geology, 435 n. 4;

local names for, 435 n. 6;

recent mountaineering on, 360

Experimentation, 112 , 114 , 132 , 165 , 239 -241, 245 -246, 416

F

FAO, 310 , 401

Fertilizer, 85 , 86 -87;

chemical, 470 n. 33;

and economic differentiation, 89 ;

and forests, 82 ;

types, 129 ;

and yields, 97 -98. See also Forest use; Manure; Soluk

Festivals, 33 , 39 , 424 . See also Dumje; Losar;

mani Rimdu; Pangyi; Yerchang

Field walls, 455 n. 3

Fields: size and morphology, 97

Fines, 162 -163

Fir: distribution, 189

Fire: and vegetation change, 272 -274;

Sherpa use of, 274

Fisher, James, 433 n. 1;

and forest change, 404 ;

and household servants, 463 n. 57;

and Khumbu change, 10 ;

and Lukla airstrip, 437 n. 21;

and origin of Khumjung's name, 443 n. 61;

and Sherpa population, 40 , 438 n. 27;

and Sherpas in Kathmandu, 505 n. 5

Fisher, Robert, 297

Fodder, 80 , 85 -86, 120 , 137 , 152 , 154 ,

163 , 467 n. 85, 471 nn. 39, 40;

cultivation of wheat and barley for, 244 -245;

decline of availability of wild grass for hay, 331 -333;

Khumbu resources of, 164 ;

Pharak hay importation, 333 ;

recent production increases, 244 ;

shortages of, 289 ;

winter and spring use, 171 -172. See also Hay

Foreign sponsors, 373 -374, 379 , 380

Forest change, 87 , 191 , 275 -276, 455 n. 4;

and beams, 196 , 279 ;

changes in forest composition, 289 ;

grazing and forest regeneration, 289 ;

historical deforestation, 278 -283, 281 (table 25), 282 (map 19), 302 -303, 310 ;

at Khumjung, 297 , 306 ;

and local forest management, 275 -277, 281 ;

at Nauje, 279 , 296 -297 passim, 303 -305;

at Pangboche, 280 ;

at Phurtse, 279 -280 passim;

post-1960, 303 -307, 304 (map 20), 305 (table 26), 405 , 407 (table 33), 408 (map 23), at Shyangboche, 276 ;

at Thamicho, 279 . See also Deforestation; Vegetation change

Forest department, 298 -299

Forest management, 187 , 196 -206, 198 (map 13), 201 (table 16), 203 (table 17);

administration, 197 , 198 (map 13), 205 -208, 208 (table 18), 209 (table 19);

compared to other regions, 209 -210;

and conservation, 419 ;

decline of some local management, 300 -301;

effectiveness of, 208 -210, 274 -276, 278 (map 18), 281 -283;

historical development of, 196 -197, 210 ;

goals, 197 , 204 , 206 , 210 , 280 -281;

limitations of, 276 -277, 326 ;

national government initiatives, 298 ;

persistence of local management, 323 -324;

post-nationalization local management, 299 -300;

recent changes at Phurtse, 330 ;

Sagarmatha National Park and changes in, 314 -315, 317 -323;

and Tengboche monastery, 195 , 201 -202, 206 , 320 ;

tourism impacts on, 397 -398;

types of, 197 ;

and village boundary disputes, 280 . See also Forest nationalization; Local resource management; Sagarmatha National Park

Forest nationalization, 187 ;

and abandonment of local resource management, 296 -297, 300 -301;

conflict over control of forests, 299 ;

and decline of Khumjung-Kunde forest management, 300 -301;

and decline of Nauje forest management, 300 , 305 ;

and decline of rani ban, 205 ;

implementation in Khumbu, 298 -299;

and local response, 203 -205, 237 ;

and resiliancy of local management, 297 -300. See also Deforestation; Forest change

Forest Nationalization Act of 1957, 298

Forest use, 82 , 85 -87, 86 (fig. 9), 192 ;

and blight regulations, 138 -139;

in middlealtitude agropastoralism, 66 ;

new use by outsiders, 307 ;

and Sagarmatha National Park, 312 , 315 -316, 394 -395;

and tourism, 392 -395, 405 , 406 (map 22). See also Agropastoralism entries ; Charcoal; Construction timber; Fuel wood; Soluk; Tourism

Forests: altitudinal zonation of, 188 -191, 189 (fig. 14);

forest extent 82, 187 -188, 190 (map 12), 191 ;

forest line, 23 , 188 ;

types, 189 -191, 190 (map 12), 191 (table 15). See also Birch; Fir; Forest management; Juniper; Pine; Rhododendron; Vegetation

Fricke, Alan, 454 n. 29

Fricke, Thomas, 41

Frost, 99 -100

Fruit, 106 , 245

Fuel depot. See Kerosene

Fuel wood, 192 -194;

areas obtained from, 194 ;

conservation efforts, 308 -309;

and high alpine juniper shrub, 395 , 405 ;

historical changes in sources of, 194 ;

increased use of, 307 -308;

and labor requirements, 194 ;

and national park regulations, 194 , 312 ;

sources of, 194 ;

species used, 193 ;

tourism and demand for, 308 , 363 , 392 -395, 405 , 406 (map 22), 410 ;

and use by lodges, 393 -395;

and wood stove use, 309

Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, 10 -11, 39 , 152 , 433 n. 1, 439 n. 30;

and abandonment of local forest management, 295 -297, 299 ;

early research in Khumbu, 32 ;

and early trade documents, 344 -345;

and forest management, 187 , 197 , 204 , 206 -207, 270 -271, 486 n. 6;

and introduction of potatoes, 217 -220, 223 -224, 226 ;

and recent agricultural change, 386 ;

and recent Khumbu deforestation, 302 -303 passim;

and transition from trade to tourism, 367

G

Gaddis, 451 n. 10

Ganggar, 27 ;

trade in, 336 -337, 340 -341, 352

Garbage, 398 -400;

recent measures to alleviate, 400

Gardens, 458 n. 24

Ge riki. See Jerusalem artichoke

Gembu, 53 , 160 , 443 n. 61, 447 n. 79;

and Dingboche potatoes, 225 ;

and Khumbu pastoral management, 249 ;

and taxes, 462 n. 50

Generational gap: lack of in farming, 386 -388;

in pastoralism, 392

Geomancy, 43

Gilmour, Donald, 292 , 297

Goats, 151 , 152 ;

and agropastoralism, high-altitude, 70 ;

and agropastoralism, middle-altitude, 66 -69 passim;

ban on, 258

Gokyo, 157

Goldstein, Melvyn, 449 n. 1, 469 n. 16

Golila-Gepchua: and Sherpa settlement, 37

Gormuch, 52

Goths, 67

Government, local. See Gembu; Panchayat; Pembu; Pradhan Pancha; Sagarmatha National Park

Government, Nepal: administration in Khumbu, 54 ;

and establishment of regional market system, 353 ;

and Khumbu economy, 54 , 149 , 193 -194;

and local resource management, 200 -201, 202 -205;

panchayat system, 54 -55;

political incorporation of Dudh Kosi region, 50 , 53 ;

political incorporation of Khumbu, 53 , 54 , 440 n. 41;

village development committees, 55 , 318 -319. See also Forest nationalization; Land registration; Political economy; Sagarmatha National Park

Grain, 107 -109;

and Khumbu subsistence, 77 ;

and trade, 337 -339. See also Barley; Buckwheat; Maize; Millet; Rice

Grasslands: area in, 272 ;

Sherpas and creation and maintenance of, 272 -274

Grazing fees, 75 , 76

Grazing pressure, 402 -403. See also Overgrazing

Grazing impacts. See Overgrazing; Pastoral management; Pastoralism; Terracettes; Vegetation change

Great Himalaya, 21 -22. See also Khumbu Himal; Mahalangur Himal

Green manure, 131 , 137

Grenard, F., 217

Grossman, Lawrence, 433 n. 3

Group leaders, 372 -373

Gujars, 451 n. 10

Gunsa (winter place), 42 (map 5), 45 , 82 -85, 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8)

Gunsa region: and Sherpa settlement, 35 , 37 , 45 , 438 n. 26

Guru Rinpoche, 445 n. 70

Gurungs, 26 , 33 , 36 ;

intermarriage with Sherpas, 39 ;

and Khumbu place names, 49 , 260 ;

origins, 438 n. 24;

population, 438 n. 24;

sheep herding in eastern Nepal, 259 , 263 (map 17);

sheep herding in Khumbu, 49 , 151 , 163 , 259 -262, 261 (map 16), 418 -419, 468 n. 15;

subsistence practices, 69 , 75 , 76 ;

and swidden agriculture, 65 . See also Dongbu

Gyajo, 157 , 172

Gyantse: trade in, 344

H

Halashe, 445 n. 70

Handicrafts: and tourism, 374

Hardie, Norman, 223

Hari Ram, 443 n. 61

Hastings, Warren, 217

Hat bazar. See Weekly market

Hawley, Elizabeth, 360

Hay, 86 , 164 ;

haymaking, 165 -166;

importation from Pharak, 167 , 333 ;

purchase of, 167 -168;

storage in huts, 168 ;

and tourism, 382 -383;

and transhumance patterns, 168 ;

winter and spring use of, 171 -172

Hayfields, 46 , 80 , 82 ;

area in, 96 , 164 -165, 165 (map 10);

early Khumbu development of, 247 -248;

establishment and care, 165 ;

increased emphasis on, 244 , 267 ;

and nak herding, 152 -153

Hazards, 57

Helambu, 31 , 35 , 37

Herbs: trade in, 343

Herd structure: household variations, 152 -154

Herding huts: development of, 247 . See also Architecture

Herding patterns. See Transhumance; Village herding patterns

High-altitude herding settlement, 42 (map 5), 46 , 82 -85, 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8)

High-altitude porters, 371 , 375 ;

declining Khumbu Sherpa work as, 375 ;

wages, 372

High-yield varieties: and regional production, 385 , 418 . See also Development potato; Potato, yellow

Hillary, Sir Edmund, 1 , 32 , 358 , 360 . See also Development projects

Himal, 22 , 435 n. 5

Himalaya: extent, 434 n. 1;

origin of name, 435 n. 1;

physiography and main ranges, 21 -22. See also Great Himalaya; Khumbu Himal; Mahalangur Himal

Hindu hill castes: in Dudh Kosi valley, 37 ;

in Khumbu, 39 . See also Blacksmiths; Paharis

Hinrichsen, Don, 2

History: and cultural ecology, 8 , 60 ;

ethnohistory, 10 ;

and Khumbu studies, 10 ;

migration to Khumbu, 47 . See also Agricultural change; Forest change; Migration; Oral history; Oral traditions; Pastoral change

Homeostasis, 5 , 268 -269

Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton: and potatoes in Darjeeling, 217 ;

and potatoes in eastern Nepal, 217 -218

Horses: trade via Kalimpong, 350 ;

trade via Rongshar, 343

Household economy: and fieldwork, 17 ;

Khumbu, 85 ;

and trade, 354 . See also Demographic cycle; Economic differentiation; Household labor; Household subsistence; Income; Subsistence strategies; Women

Household labor, 125 , 143 -144;

and age, 125 ;

and gender, 125 . See also Demographic cycle; Labor scheduling; Women

Household structure, 91

Household subsistence: grain requirements, 109 ;

historical change in food requirements, 223 ;

labor requirements, 144 ;

land requirements, 231 ;

role of potatoes, 110 , 242

Houses, 25 ;

construction timber requirements, 195 . See also Architecture

Houston, Charles, 358 , 404 , 490 n. 11

Hugling, 343

Humbolt, Alexander von, 449 n. 1

Hydroelectricity, 44 , 55 , 322 , 407 , 410 , 503 n. 33

I

Imja Khola, 22 , 436 n. 11

Immigration: from Tibet, 34 , 38 . See also Khambas

Income, 91 . See also Tourism; Trade; Wage labor

Independent trekking, 364 -365. See also Trekking

India: salt from, 351 ;

Sherpa trade in, 341 . See also Trade

Indigenous peoples, 268 Inflation: tourism and, 380 -383

Inheritance, 91 -92, 94 , 121 ;

and transhumance, 156

Inner Himalaya: and precipitation, 25 ;

and subsistence strategies, 64

Inns. See Lodges

Insects: and crop damage, 101

Intercropping, 104 , 132 , 239 , 458 n. 13

Iron trade, 338 , 345 -346

Irrigation, 78 -79, 107 , 165 ;

early irrigation network at Tarnga, 215 -216;

use of polyvinylchloride pipe, 245 -246

Ives, J., 2

J

Jaynagar, 341

Jerusalem artichoke, 110

Jiri road, 28 , 43 , 354

Jou. See Barley

Jung, 45

Juniper: and alpine shrub protection, 206 ;

and beams, 196 , 204 ;

distribution, 189 ;

and sacred trees, 199 ;

and tourism, 405 . See also Lu; Sacred trees

K

Kala Patar, 358

Kalimpong: and Sherpa trade, 344 -345, 346 , 349 -351

Kami. See Blacksmiths

Kaprak, 337 , 340

Karan, P., 437 n. 23

Katanga: and Sherpa settlement, 36 -37

Katari, 354

Kathmandu: and Sherpa residents, 38 , 40

Kazaks, 451 n. 10

Kerosene, 392 , 394 -395

Kham, 47 . See also Khambas; Migration

Khambas, 38 , 39 -40, 88 , 127 , 224 ;

and subsistence practices, 39 , 461 n. 46

Khimti Khola: and Sherpa settlement, 37

Khumbila, 29 . See also Khumbu Yul Lha

Khumbu, 22 , 26 ;

anthropological research in, 1 , 32 , 359 ;

cultural variation in, 44 ;

exploration, 32 ;

geographical research in, 1 , 32 ;

local Sherpa geography, 28 -29, 436 nn. 8, 11;

origins of name, 49 ;

physiography, 22 -23;

political links with Tibet, 34

Khumbu Himal, 22 ;

geology of, 435 n. 4

Khumbu Yul Lha, 29 , 48 , 133 , 177 , 246 -247

Khumbuwa, 38

Khumjung, 43 -44;

early history, 52 -53;

origins of name, 44 ;

population, 39 -40, 44

Khunde. See

Kunde Khyampas, 451 n. 10

King Mahendra, 355

Kipat, 298

Kira Gombu Dorje: and Sherpa discovery of Khumbu, 48

Kirghiz, 146

Kirkhong (a Tibetan cattle variety), 149 -150. See also Cattle

Kirkpatrick, William, 217

Koma (weeding tool), 132

Konar, 157

Konchok Chombi: and diffusion of yellow potato, 238 ;

and early Khumbu history, 446 n. 75;

and early pastoralism, 484 nn. 40, 43;

and forest management, 275 , 319 -321 passim, 478 n. 26;

and migration to Khumbu, 47 -48;

and origins of nawa system, 248 -249;

and research, 16

Koru. See Riki Koru

Kunde, 43 -44;

early history, 52 -53;

hospital, 44 ;

origin of name, 444 n. 62;

population, 40

Kunga Hishi: and origins of Khumbu pastoral management institutions, 249

Kuti, 338

Kyak shing, 194 . See also Forest management; Rani ban

Kyrgyz, 146

Kyuma. See Riki kyuma

L

La (pass), 26

Labor migration, 39

Labor scheduling: and multialtitudinal sites, 82 , 85 , 105 , 139 ;

and trade and tourism, 85

Lama. See Lama Sanga Dorje; Lama Serwa Tungel

Lama Gulu: and forest management, 202 , 206

Lama nating. See Lama's forest

Lama Sanga Dorje, 45 , 51 ;

conflict with Dzongnangpa, 51 ;

establishment of Pangboche temple, 51 -52;

and sacred forests, 199 , 200

Lama Serwa Tungel, 48

Lama's forest, 197 , 198 (map 13), 200 -201, 201 (table 16);

at Mong, 200 ;

at Phurtse, 200 -201, 275 , 330 ;

at Yarin, 200 , 275 , 314 , 493

Lamay (wage labor), 123

Lambert, Raymond, 358

Lambogar: and Sherpa settlement in, 37

Land, rented: and Tengboche monastery, 121

Land managers, 6 , 434 n. 5

Land reclamation, 124

Land registration, 55 , 123

Land tenure, 79 , 121 ;

household holdings, 79 , 82 -84, 87 ;

inheritance, 91 -92;

recent Nauje purchases, 483 n. 38

Land use: and altitude, 80 -85;

planning, 409 -411. See also Agropastoralism entries ; Forest use; Multialtitudinal agriculture; Transhumance

Land use pressure: from early grasscutting, 166

Lang (bull), 147 (table 10), 150 , 151 (fig. 11), 468 n. 11. See also Cattle

Langmoche: and avalanche defense, 206

Language, 29 , 33

Lawa (servant), 126

Lazhen: and potato introductions, 232 -233

Leve: and abandoned terraces, 230

Lhakpa Norbu, 317 -318, 329

Lhasa: trade in, 344 , 349 , 351 . See also Trade: luxury goods

Lhonang, 52

Likhu Khola: and Sherpa settlement, 37

Litter, 398 -400

Lo. See Radish

Local geography. See Khumbu

Local knowledge and beliefs, 5 , 268 ;

and adaptation, 412 -414, 416 -417, 419 ;

agriculture, 95 -96, 120 -121, 129 , 131 , 142 , 236 , 416 ;

blight, 101 -102, 138 -139, 236 -237;

climatic hazards, 99 -101, 141 ;

crop combinations, 108 ;

crop protection, 135 -136, 456 n. 13;

crop pests, 101 -102;

declining yields, 115 , 233 ;

forests, 191 -192;

frost, 100 ;

microclimates, 98 -99;

pastoralism, 163 -164, 167 , 173 , 182 , 416 -417;

planting calendars, 132 -134;

potato warts, 102 -103;

potatoes, 111 -112;

and risk minimalization, 412 ;

soils, 97 -98, 236 ;

and women, 17 , 111 -112

Local resource management: and adaptation, 290 , 292 -294, 416 , 420 ;

and blight, 102 , 138 -139;

evaluation of, 292 -294;

and forests, 188 ;

and government, 449 nn. 91, 92, 494 -495 n. 38;

and irrigation, 135 ;

limitations of, 290 -291, 421 ;

and production systems, 60 , 63 ;

and risk minimalization, 417 -418. See also Common property resources; Forest management; Lama's forests; Nawa; pastoral management; Rani ban; Sacred forests; Shinggi nawa

Lodges: and agricultural production, 383 -384;

and construction timer, 393 -394;

distribution of, 364 , 365 (map 21, table 30);

first lodges, 363 -364;

and foreign assistance, 366 ;

and fuel-wood use, 393 -395;

income from, 375 -376;

increase in numbers of, 364 , 365 (table 30);

lack of lodge-keeping tradition, 363 ;

in Nauje, 44 ;

new designs, 366 ;

operation of, 374 ;

village differences in ownership, 377 -379, 378 (table 32)

Losar (New Year's), 33

Lu (spirits), 34 , 197 , 199 ;

in other Sherpa regions, 199 ;

and Pangboche forest, 199 -200. See also Sacred forests; Sacred trees

Luck: and decision-making, 134 , 176 . See also Astrology

Lukla, 43 ;

airstrip, 28 , 55 , 151 , 360 -361;

and zopkio use, 366

Lumber. See Construction timber

Lungtang, 352

M

Ma Pe, 49

MacDonald, A. 440 n. 41, 444 n. 65

MacFarlane, Alan, 454 n. 29

Magars, 26 , 33 , 36 ;

subsistence practices, 69 ;

wage labor in Khumbu, 39

Mahalangur Himal, 22 ;

origins of name, 435 n. 5

Mail runners, 371

Maini, 343

Maize, 76 , 77 , 105

Maksu (adopted son-in-law), 91

Manang, 342 , 351

Mandur, 131 . See Fertilizer

Mani Rimdu, 466 n. 79

Manure, 85 , 129 , 149 , 155 , 165 ;

and sales, 129 ;

and yields, 97 -98

Mara Tika. See Halashe

Market economy: and economic change, 63 , 65 ;

and Khumbu land use, 79 , 80 , 354 , 384 , 388 ;

and lack of commercialization of dairy production, 390 -391;

and potatoes, 242 -243, 354 ;

regional market system, 353 -354

Marriage practices, 33 -34, 91 -94 passim;

and household wealth, 94 . See also Inheritance

Mather, Cotton, 437 n. 23

Matils (woolen aprons), 341 . See also Wool trade

Mayer, Enrique, 59 -60

Messerli, Bruno, 2

Messerschmidt, Donald, 449 n. 1

Metz, John, 449 n. 1, 453 n. 18

Migrant labor, 127 , 475 n. 9;

and tourism work, 376

Migration: arrival in Khumbu, 48 -49, 273 ;

conflicts with Rais, 50 , 246 ;

journey from Kham to Khumbu, 31 , 33 , 47 -49;

and Kathmandu, 367 , 387 , 505 -506 n. 5;

within Nepal, 35 . See also Darjeeling

Mijen Thakpa, 48

Miktung (potato storage pit), 120

Milingo, 43 , 437 n. 17

Miller, B., 441 n. 44

Millet, 76 , 77

Mingbo: and Gurung herding, 260

Mingma Norbu, 317 , 400

Mishra, Hemanta, 310

Mixed agriculture, 63 . See also Agropastoralism entries

Miyolangsangma, 435 n. 6

Monasteries, 45 . See also Rumbu monastery; Tengboche monastery; Thami monastery

Monetarization, 380 . See also Inflation

Mong, 200 , 251 . See also Lama's forest; Local resource management; Forest management

Monkeys: and crop losses, 230

Mountain conditions: constraints, 57 ;

diversity and variability, 58 ;

opportunities, 58 . See also Subsistence strategies

Mountain travel, 360 . See also Adventure travel; Trekking agencies

Mountaineering: early Khumbu expeditions, 32 , 358 -359;

early Sherpa involvement in, 357 -358;

employment, 358 -359, 371 -374;

and fuel-wood use, 392 -393;

and garbage at base camps, 399 ;

Nepal 1965-1969 ban on, 359 ;

recent, 359 -360;

role in household economy, 359 , 360 ;

role in regional economy, 358 , 359 , 361 ;

and Sherpa deaths, 360 ;

and Sherpa fame, 31 -32;

wages, 359 . See also High-altitude porters; Sirdar

Mules, 349 , 410

Multialtitudinal agriculture: and highaltitude agropastoralism, 76 , 77 ;

and middle-altitude agropastoralism, 66 ;

in Khumbu, 42 (map 5), 76 -77, 82 -85, 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8), 103 -105, 132 , 139

Multialtitudinal settlement, 41 ;

in Khumbu, 82 -85. See also Gunsa; High-altitude herding settlement; Villages

Muri, 77 , 109

Murra, John, 59

Mustang: Sherpa trade to, 342 , 351

Mustard, 78 , 105

N

Na, 46 . See also Barley

Naga, 477 n. 18

Nak, 79 , 146 -149;

emphasis on, 146 , 147 (table 10);

and hay, 152 -153, 171 -172;

herd composition, 152 ;

herding adjustments to tourism economy, 391 -392;

importation from Tibet, 255 , 342 -343, 354 -355;

transhumance, 80 , 152 -153, 180 -186, 181 (table 13), 355

Nam Chumbi, 447 -448 n. 85

Namche Bazar, 53 . See also Nauje

Namdakserwa Nasa, 305

Nangpa La, 26 , 335 -336;

and Sherpa migration to Khumbu, 47

Nangzum (small-scale trade), 340 -341, 347 . See also Trade

Nauje, 43 , 44 ;

abandonment of pastoral management, 156 ;

agriculture, 89 , 386 ;

Nauje (continued )

grazing pressure, 156 ;

history, 53 ;

lodges, 364 , 366 ;

origins of name, 279 , 443 n. 58;

population, 40 ;

potato monocropping, 89 , 90 ;

shops in, 363 ;

tourism development, 44 ;

urang zopkio, 155 ;

and wealth, 379 -380;

weekly market, 353 -354

Nawa, 135 ;

and blight regulations, 138 -139;

declining responsibilities, 236 -237;

duties, 160 -161, 166 ;

and forest management, 207 , 208 (table 18);

origins of, 248 -252;

and pastoralism, 159 -163, 174 -176 passim, 178 -179 passim;

and rotation of office, 160 -161;

selection of, 160 -161. See also Forest management; Pastoral management

Nepal: midlands, 21 ;

physiography, 21 -22

Nepal-Tibet War of 1855-1856, 34 , 53 , 448 n. 87

Nepali: language, 33 , 38 , 39 ;

people, 33 . See also Paharis

Netting, Robert, 224 , 454 n. 29

New Zealand: and establishment of Sagarmatha National Park, 310 -312, 314 , 315 , 394

New Zealand mission, 310 , 394 , 401

Newars, 452 n. 14;

intermarriage with Sherpas, 39

Ngalok. See Reciprocal labor

Nima Wangchu Sherpa, 40 , 392 , 393

Nomadism. See Pastoral nomadism

Nomads, 450 n. 6, 451 n. 10, 469 n. 16;

alleged early Sherpa practice, 215 , 223 ;

transhumance in Tibet, 472 n. 43

Non-palatable vegetation, 288 -289

Nyingmapa sect, 33

O

Olkadunga: and Khumbu forest administration, 206

Ongbu (irrigation tool), 135

Oppitz, Michael, 47 -48, 434 n. 8, 444 n. 65

Oral history, 3 , 8 -11;

agropastoral change 1930-1960, 232 -236;

changes in trade, 345 -353;

decline of Tibet trade, 350 -353;

early agropastoralism, 215 -217;

early twentieth-century herding, 252 -262;

economic change, 214 ;

forest change, 278 -283, 281 (table 25), 282 (map 19), 303 -307, 304 (map 20), 305 (table 26);

introduction of potato, 219 -220;

mountaineering expeditions, 359 ;

previous work, 10 ;

research methodology, 9 , 16 -17;

Sherpa trade routes, 337 -344. See also Agricultural change;

Forest change; Oral traditions; Pastoral change; Research

Oral traditions, 8 -11;

early agropastoralism, 215 -217, 246 -248;

early settlement, 50 -54;

early trade routes, 345 ;

and economic change, 214 ;

forest change, 278 -279;

methodological challenges, 9 ;

previous work, 10 ;

Rai trade, 348 ;

Sherpa trade, 345 . See also Agricultural change; Forest change; Migration; Oral history; Pastoral change; Potato: introduction and adoption of; Research

Orsho, 136 . See also Religion: and protective crop rites

Ortner, Sherry, 433 n. 1;

and early Khumbu history, 52 , 446 nn. 75, 77, 447 nn. 80, 85, 462 n. 51;

and Khumbu population growth, 41 ;

and oral history research, 10 , 16 , 434 n. 9, 439 n. 30;

and origin of Khumjung's name, 443 n. 61;

and regional differences in culture, 439 n. 32;

and trade, 345 , 348 , 496 n. 3

Overgrazing, 90 ;

debate over degree of, 401 -402;

decline in winter pasture quality, 332 ;

early reports of, 401 ;

recent, 402 -403;

and Tibetan refugees, 266 , 289 -290, 468 n. 15. See also Carrying capacity; Terracertes; Vegetation change

P

Pack stock, 149 ;

and crop damage, 244 ;

current rates for, 373 ;

increased emphasis on urang zopkio, 366 -377;

mountaineering expedition use, 360 ;

trekking use, 363 , 366 -367;

use of Tibetan stock, 257 ;

and women stock drivers, 363

Pahar, 21

Paharis, 26 , 441 n. 46;

middle-altitude agropastoralism, 65

Pamu (cow), 150 . See also Cattle

Panchayat, 54 -55, 318 . See also Government, local

Pangboche, 43 , 44 -45;

founding, 51 -52;

fuel-wood sales, 392 -393, 397 -398;

population, 40

Pangyi, 33

Paper: trade in daphne bark, 338 , 338 (table 27), 345 , 349 , 351

Pare, 45

Pastoral change, 80 ;

assumptions of recent change, 246 ;

and crossbreeds, 262 ;

decline of large yak herds, 256 -257;

decline in nak, 146 , 153 , 262 -265, 255 -258;

decline of Tibet herding, 163 ;

developing generational gap, 392 ;

development of hay growing, 247 -248;

development of year-round Khumbu herding, 257 ;

early use of tents, 214 -215, 247 ;

early views of lack of, 213 ;

historical dy-

namism, 214 ;

impacts of Chinese administration in Tibet, 264 -265;

increased emphasis on zopkio, 366 -367, 389 -390;

increased fodder production, 163 ;

and Khumbu Sherpa sheep herding, 258 ;

Khumbu yak and Younghusband expedition to Tibet, 256 -257;

large early herds of nak and yak, 252 -255;

and milk stock, 150 ;

and Nauje nak herding, 150 -151, 157 ;

origins of nawa system, 248 -252;

shortages of pastoral labor, 391 -392;

Tibetan refugees and Sherpa yak, 266 ;

and tourism, 388 -392. See also Cattle;

Dimzo; Goats; Nak; Pastoral management; Sheep; Tourism; Urang zopkio; Yak; Zhum

Pastoral management: abandonment of Nauje system, 160 , 285 , 327 -328, 331 ;

abandonment of Thamicho system, 176 , 285 , 327 , 329 -331;

bans on non-Sherpa grazing, 250 ;

challenges to, 285 -286, 326 , 327 , 328 ;

and conservation, 419 ;

decline of, 285 , 326 -331;

evaluation of, 284 -287, 326 -327;

historic systems, 159 -160, 161 (map 9), 162 (table 12);

impact of increased number of crossbreeds, 244 ;

impact of tourism, 397 ;

limitations of, 286 -287;

local resource management institutions, 80 , 159 -163, 161 (map 9), 162 (table 12), 175 (map 11), operation of system, 161 -163, 166 , 174 -180;

origins of, 248 -252;

principles of, 159 , 251 ;

rotational grazing, 159 -160, 286 ;

violations of rules, 166 , 178 , 473 n. 60

Pastoral nomadism, 63 , 64

Pastoral strategies, 146 , 152 -155. See also Transhumance

Pastoralism: economic differentiation, 89 -90;

and environmental change, 90 ;

herd size, 87 ;

and income, 70 -80, 149 ;

linkages to agriculture and forest use, 85 -87, 86 (fig. 9);

livestock types and emphases, 79 ;

subsistence contributions, 79 ;

winter herding in Tibet, 70 -71, 77 , 80 , 163 , 174 , 252 -254. See also Cattle; Crossbreed; Fodder; Goat, Local resource management; Nak; Overgrazing; Pastoral nomadism; Sheep; Transhumance; Water buffalo; Yak

Pathi, 109 Pawson, Ivan, 40

Pemba Tenzing: and introduction of yellow potato, 237 -238

Pembu, 53 , 160 ;

conflicts, 447 n. 80;

and corvée labor, 122 -123;

and forest management, 197 , 202 -203, 203 -205 passim, 203 (table 17), 207 , 208 (table 18), 209 (table 19);

and Gurung sheep in Khumbu, 250 ;

and taxes, 53 -54, 122 -123

Pemi Sa (sandy soil), 98 , 98 (table 3)

Periodic markets. See Weekly market

Pezu. See Mustard

Pharak, 26 , 31 , 35 ;

market gardening, 384 ;

subsistence practices, 69 , 107 ;

and timber supplies, 43 , 196 . See also Sherpas, Nepal midlands

Phortse. See Phurtse

Phu, 46 . See also High-altitude herding settlement

Phurtse, 43 , 45 ;

continuing forest management, 300 ;

history, 53 ;

population, 40

Phytophthora infestans. See Blight

Pigs: and Sherpa land use, 69

Pijin. See Tenant farming

Pine: distribution, 189

Pipal, 476 n. 17

Place names: and historical change in forests, 278 -279;

possible Rai or Gurung influence, 49 , 260 ;

Sherpa place names, 28 ;

Western and Nepali names and mapping, 22 , 28 , 436 nn. 8, 11, 455 n. 6

Plantations, 310

Planting calendars, 133 -134

Plowing: changes in, 234 -236;

humanpulled plows, 234 , 236 . See also Agricultural cycle: field preparation

Political economy, 122 -125;

and cultural ecology, 5 , 6 ;

and forests, 187 , 200 , 202 -203;

and land use, 55 , 123 , 149 , 165;

and production systems, 60 ;

and resource management, 284 -285, 494 -495 n. 38;

and subsistence systems, 65 , 71 . See also Forest nationalization; Government; Market economy; Land registration; Land tenure; Sagarmatha National Park; Taxes

Pollen: and evidence of early agriculture, 273 ;

and evidence of vegetation change, 272 -273

Pom, 192 . See also Juniper

Population, 39 -41;

current regional, 40 ;

ethnic structure, 39 ;

historical regional, 41 ;

villages, 40

Population growth: historical, 41 , 48 , 224 ;

and potatoes, 223 -224;

and Tibetan immigration, 34 , 224

Porters: base camp, 371 ;

high-altitude, 371 ;

mountaineering, 358 -359, 360 , 374 ;

Rai mountaineering and trekking, 375 ;

and Tibet trade, 257 , 341 , 359 ;

wages, 371 -372;

women, 363 . See also High-altitude porters

Potato, 110 -121;

abandonment of early varieties, 233 ;

adoption in Dingboche, 225 ;

and agricultural practices, 117 ;

altitudinal range, 110 ;

and blight, 102 ;

crop area and sites, 110 ;

declining yields of, 114 -115, 233 ;

and diet, 77 ;

disease resistance, 120 ;

early Khumbu varieties, 221 -223;

emphasis in Khumbu, 77 , 84 , 89 , 104 , 111 , 225 ;

emphasis on, 110 , 111 ;

field measurements of yields, 116 -117;

frost hardiness, 99 -100;

high-altitude cultivation of, 74 (table 2), 74 (fig. 6), 84 , 114 , 118 -119;

introduction and adoption of, 113 , 124 , 217 -221, 221 (table 20), 225 -226, 237 -241;

Khumbu trade and marketing, 242 -243;

monocropping, 89 , 90 , 125 , 222 , 241 ;

preparation, 110 -111, 140 ;

and regional population growth, 223 -225;

in Rolwaling, 73 , 217 , 221 ;

and sale of surplus, 124 -125;

Sherpa classification of, 111 ;

storage, 140 ;

storage qualities, 120 ;

and taste, 112 -113, 118 -119, 240 ;

tourism demand for, 243 , 381 ;

trade to Tibet, 111 , 354 -355, 481 n. 15;

use as fodder, 120 -121;

varieties, 111 -114, 112 (table 6). See also Development potato; Potato, red; Potato, yellow; Riki Belati; Riki hati; Riki koru; Riki kyuma; Riki linke; Riki ngamaringbu; Riki yumbu; Yields

Potato, brown, 118 ;

introduction of, 233 , 241

Potato, red: decline in yields, 385 ;

historical emphasis on, 114 , 232 ;

introduction and adoption of, 113 , 232 -233;

taste, 112 -113, 114 ;

yield, 117 , 118 -119

Potato, yellow: introduction and adoption of, 113 , 114 , 237 -240;

taste, 113 , 240 ;

yield, 112 , 114 -115, 117 , 118 -119

Pradhan Pancha, 55 ;

and forest management, 300 -301

Pre-capitalistic societies, 268

Predators, 182

Prithivi Narayan Shah, 50

Private forests, 202

Production systems, 59 -63, 70 ;

Khumbu, 78 ;

middle-altitude, 69 . See also Altitudinal production zones

Production zones. See Production systems

Protected forests. See Forest management

Purba. See Tibetans

R

Radish, 77 , 121 , 132 , 239 ;

early emphasis on, 215 , 222 ;

and sale to Rais, 110 , 354 . See also Intercropping

Rai, 26 , 33 , 36 , 441 -442 n. 46;

and claims to be Sherpa, 37 ;

conflicts with Sherpas, 50 ;

and early Khumbu settlement, 49 -50;

and Khumbu place names, 49 ;

origins of name, 446 n. 75;

population, 438 n. 24;

sheep herding in central and eastern Nepal, 259 , 263 (map 17);

sheep herding in Khumbu, 259 ;

subsistence practices, 69 , 75 , 76 ;

swidden, 65 ;

and tourism, 360 , 371 ;

trade, 44 , 336 , 341 , 342 , 345 -348 passim, 352 -354;

transhumance and Khumbu, 49 -50;

wage labor in Khumbu, 39 , 474 n. 9, 493 n. 31. See also Dongbu

Rain-shadow: and high-altitude agriculture, 452 n. 16

Rajbiraj, 496 n. 5

Ralha: and Gurung herding, 260

Rana, 54

Rana, Chandra Shamshere Janga, 202

Ranas, 122 ;

and rani ban establishment, 202 -203

Range resources, 163 -164

Rani ban, 198 (map 13), 202 -205, 203 (table 17);

administration of, 202 -203, 203 (table 17), 207 , 208 (table 18), 209 (table 19);

decline of, 205 ;

establishment of, 202 -204;

evaluation of, 274 -276, 278 (map 18), 281 -283;

lack of grazing regulation in, 276 ;

location of, 198 (map 13), 202 ;

regulations in, 202 -204, 207 , 276 ;

revival of, 205 ;

significance of, 204

Reciprocal labor, 92 , 94 , 125 -127, 140 , 141

Region, 37

Regional political ecology, 434 n. 6

Relay cropping, 458 n. 24

Religion: and adoption of potato, 226 -227;

and barley, 108 ;

and buckwheat, 108 ;

Buddhism and nonviolence, 269 ;

and crossbreeding, 35 , 150 ;

and establishment of shrines and temples, 227 ;

and geography, 29 , 34 ;

and identity, 33 ;

and land use, 29 , 35 , 269 , 437 n. 22;

and plant use, 192 -193;

and protection of livestock, 246 -247;

and protective crop rites, 100 , 135 -136, 137 ;

tourism and support for, 424 . See also Lu; Nyingmapa sect; Sacred forests; Sacred mountains; Sacred places; Sacred trees; Tibetan Buddhism

Repeat photographs, 490 n. 11

Resa (temporary shelter), 46

Research: fieldwork conditions, 16 -17;

fieldwork period, 14 -15;

methodologies, 14 -16;

regional perspective, 15 . See also Cultural ecology; Oral history; Oral traditions

Resource partitioning, 75

Rhoades, Robert, 160

Rhododendron: distribution, 189 -191

Ri tsa (wild grass hay). See Hay

Rice, 64 , 66 , 69 ;

and Khumbu diet, 77 ;

and Sherpa land use, 69

Riki Belati (English potato), 220 , 221 (table 20). See also Potato

Riki hati, 111 , yields, 114 . See also Potato

Riki koru, 111 , 114 , 220 , 221 (table 20), 222 ;

yield, 114 . See also Potato

Riki kyuma, 111 ;

decline in cultivation of, 233 ;

decline in yield, 385 ;

export to Tibet, 222 ;

introduction of, 220 , 221 (table 20), 222 ;

yield, 114 -115, 222 -223. See also Potato

Riki linke, 233

Riki moru (red potato). See Potato, red

Riki ngamaringbu, 117 , 241

Riki nyumbu, 113

Riki seru (yellow potato). See Potato, yellow

Riki shakpa. See Potato, preparation

Risk minimalization, 82 , 95 , 99 , 102 , 103 -104, 283 , 416 -417. See also Climatic hazards;

Diversification; Local knowledge and beliefs

Rolwaling, 26 , 37 ;

herding huts, 45 ;

introduction of potatoes to, 217 , 221 ;

and Khumbu emigration, 230 ;

settlement and land use, 72 -73

Rongba, 33 , 37 , 439 n. 33. See also Hindu hill castes; Paharis

Rongbuk monastery. See Rumbu

Rongshar, 27 ;

and Khumbu pastoralism, 254 , 343 ;

and trade, 338 , 343 , 496 n. 3

Rotational grazing, 159 -160, 286 . See also Pastoral management

Rumbu (Rongbuk) monastery, 27 , 466 n. 79

Ruyi, 47 , 444 n. 65

S

Sa Nakpu (black soil), 97 -98, 98 (table 3)

Sa Seru (yellow soil), 98 , 98 (table 3)

Sacherer, Janice, 441 n. 43;

and intensification, 230 -231;

and introduction of potatoes to Rolwaling, 217 , 221

Sacred forests, 45 , 187 , 198 (map 13), 200 -202, 201 (table 16), 292 ;

early establishment of, 196 ;

importance of, 197 ;

lack of early research on, 197 ;

management goals of, 197 ;

Mong, change in status of, 200 , 251 ;

Pangboche, 199 -200;

recent change at Phurtse, 330 ;

strict protection of, 275 , 300 , 325 . See also Lama's forest; Temple and monastery forests

Sacred mountains, 29 , 108 . See also Khumbila; Khumbu Yul Lha

Sacred places, 29

Sacred trees, 189 . See also Lu; Pipal

Sagarmatha, 435 n. 6. See also Everest, Mount

Sagarmatha Club, 399 -400

Sagarmatha National Park, 44 , 55 ;

concern for Sherpa participation in, 310 -312, 314 ;

establishment of, 310 ;

and forest use and management, 193 . 194 , 196 , 310 -312, 394 -395, 476 n. 14;

and grazing management, 311 ;

and land reclamation, 124 , 386 ;

recent innovative forest management approaches, 196 , 315 , 317 -323;

regulations concerning garbage, 399 ;

relationship with Sherpas, 311 -315;

zoning, 322 -323

Salleri, 28 , 296 , 353

Salmo Gang, 47

Salt: Indian salt and trade, 351 ;

range of trade in, 347 ;

Tibetan salt and trade, 337 -341, 346 -348, 350 -351, 352 -353 passim

Sangye Tenzing, 434 n. 8

Sangye Tenzing Lama, 497 n. 9

Sauer, Carl, 4

Scale: and cultural ecology, 6 -7

Schneider, Erwin, 490 n. 11

Scholarships, 374 , 380

Se (frost). See Climatic hazards

Secondary high-altitude agricultural sites, 42 (map 5), 46 , 82 -85, 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8). See also Dingboche; Tarnga

Seed potatoes, 132 , 140 ;

and experimentation, 112 , 245 ;

and trade, 79 , 354 . 460 n. 38

Servants, household, 127 ;

and tourism work, 376

Settlement pattern, 25 , 41 -43, 42 (map 5), 82 -85, 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8). See also Multialtitudinal settlements

Sharwa, 47

Sheep: and Gurungs, 49 , 151 , 163 , 258 -262, 261 (map 16), 263 (map 17), 418 -419, 468 n. 15;

and high-altitude agropastoralism, 70 ;

in Khumbu and Tibet, 34 , 151 -152;

lack of Sherpa emphasis on, 151 -152;

and middle-altitude agropastoralism, 66 -69 passim;

and transhumance, 155 ;

and utility of, 155 ;

varieties, 151 . See also Gurungs

Shekar, 50 , 336

Shere, 345 , 349 , 351

Sherpa Guide Lodges, 411

Sherpa Pollution Control Committee, 399

Sherpas, 29 -35;

anthropological studies

Sherpas (continued )

of, 32 ;

cultural differences among groups, 33 , 39 , 69 ;

distinctiveness from Tibetans, 34 -35;

and environmental change, 414 , 421 -422;

identity, 33 , 37 -39, 69 ;

migration to Nepal, 31 ;

mountaineering fame, 31 -32;

population, 31 ;

settlement regions, 31 , 35 -39;

36 (map 4);

Tibetan origins and affinities, 29 , 33 -34. See also Architecture; Dress and ornamentation; Language; Migration; Religion; Settlement patterns; Subsistence strategies

Sherpas, Nepal midlands: subsistence strategies, 69 ;

wage labor in Khumbu, 39

Shigatse: trade in, 344 , 349 , 351 . See also Butter; Paper; Trade, luxury goods

Shimbak (blight), 101 . See also Blight

Shinggi nawa (forest officials), 187 , 206 -207;

authority of, 207 ;

selection of, 207 ;

significance, 204 . See also Forest management; Rani ban

Shipton, Eric, 358

Shops:, 363 ;

in Nauje, 44 ;

ownership and operation of, 374

Shorung, 28 , 31 , 37 ;

anthropological research in, 32 ;

livestock traders, 342 ;

rani ban, 203 ;

subsistence practices, 69 . See also Sherpas, Nepal midlands

Shyangboche: airstrip, 28 , 411 ;

clearing of forest, 276 ;

dispute over control of lands, 251 -252;

grazing conflicts, 328 Sikkim: and potato introductions, 113 , 232 -233

Silk, 344 , 349

Silver, 344 , 349

Sirdar, 357 ;

mountaineering, 371 , 372 ;

trekking, 371 , 372 -373, 375 ;

and zopkio ownership, 366

Social structure, 33 , 38 , 39 . See also Clan;

Marriage practices

Socioeconomic differentiation: and decisions, 6 ;

in Khumbu, 87 -90;

and production systems, 63 ;

and subsistence strategies, 61 , 69 . See also Economic differentiation

Soils: and crop yields, 98 , 98 (table 3);

Khumbu soil types, 97 ;

Sherpa classifications of, 97 -98, 98 (table 3);

and Sherpa practices, 97 -98

Solu. See Shorung

Solu-Khumbu district, 28 ;

ethnic composition, 28 ;

forest administration, 203 ;

population, 28 , 31 , 438 n. 27

Soluk, 86 -87, 131 , 171 ;

and rani ban, 204

Sonam Hishi, 16 , 172 , 241 , 300 , 441 n. 42

Specialization: in Khumbu, 104 ;

and risk, 102 ;

and trade, 335 , 354

Staple crops, 77 . See also Barley; Buckwheat; Potato

Stem families, 91 -92, 94 . See also Marriage practices

Steward, Julian, 5 , 7 Stock losses, 172

Subsidiary settlements, 45 -46. See also Gunsa;

High-altitude herding settlements; Secondary high-altitude agricultural sites

Subsistence. See Agropastoralism; Household subsistence; Subsistence strategies; Subsistence systems

Subsistence strategies, 58 -63;

continuity in, 387 ;

high-altitude agropastoralism, 70 -73;

in highland Asia, 450 n. 6;

Himalayan, 63 -65;

historical change, 65 ;

Khumbu, 76 -86, 104 -105, 412 , 504 -505 n. 1;

and lowland winter migration, 307 ;

middle-altitude agropastoralism, 66 -70;

pastoral, 146 ;

role of trade in, 335 ;

variation in, 61 . See also Agropastoralism; Subsistence systems

Subsistence systems, 433 -434 n. 4. See also Subsistence strategies

Sugar: trade in, 341

Sun Kosi, 22 , 31

Sun Tenzing: and account of potato introduction, 219 -220

Sunwar, 33

Surplus: and new potato varieties, 233

Surya Bahadur Pandy, 318 -319

Swidden agriculture, 63 -64;

integral swidden, 65 ;

in Pharak, 274 ;

possible Khumbu historical use, 273 -274;

Sherpa practices, 69 ;

supplementary swidden, 63

T

Tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus ): and crop losses, 101 , 230

Takshindo, 37

Tamangs, 33 , 439 n. 34, 442 n. 46;

and claims to be Sherpa, 37 ;

intermarriage with Sherpa, 39 ;

and Khumbu mountaineering, 360 ;

origins, 438 n. 24;

population, 438 n. 24;

and swidden, 65

Taplejung: and Sherpa settlement, 35 , 37 , 38 , 438 n. 26

Tarai: Sherpa trade in, 341 , 338 (table 27), 343

Tarnga, 46 ;

abandoned irrigation network, 215 -216;

abandoned terraces, 228 ;

and early barley cultivation, 215 -217;

and early buckwheat cultivation, 222 ;

and early radish cultivation, 222 ;

history, 51 ;

and potatoes, 117

Tashi Laptsa, 26

Taxes: grazing taxes, 484 n. 45;

land, 122 , 123 ;

and migration, 54 ;

paid to Nepal, 53 , 54 ;

paid to Rais, 50 ;

paid to Tibet, 34 , 53

Tea: trade in, 344 , 349

Temcha, 129 . See Fertilizer

Temple and monastery forests, 197 , 198 (map 13), 201 -202, 201 (table 16)

Tenant farming, 121 , 123

Tengboche Monastery, 115 , 121 , 466 n. 79;

and forest management, 195 , 201 -202, 206 , 320

Tengur, 136 . See also Religion: and protective crop rites

Tenju (autumn rain), 101 . See also Climatic hazards

Tents, black, 71 ;

historical use in Khumbu, 214 -215, 247

Tenzing Norgay, 32 , 45 , 358

Terraces, 95 -96, 97 , 101 ;

morphology, 97 ;

sites, 97

Terracettes, 288 -289, 402

Terton Ratna Lingba, 47

Thak Khola, 351

Thakalis, 363

Thame. See Thami Og and Thami Teng

Thami monastery, 456 n. 10, 461 n. 48, 466 n. 79;

and forest management, 317 -318

Thami Og, 43 , 45 ;

origins of name, 45 ;

and political power, 51 , 53

Thami Teng, 43 , 45 ;

origins of name, 45

Thamicho: multialtitudinal settlement, 83 (map 6), 84 -85, 84 (fig. 8), 443 n. 55, 444 n. 64;

population size, 40 ;

and potato monocropping, 90 ;

settlements, 43

Thamite. See Thami Teng

Thimi Sangbu Tashi, 48

Thompson, Michael, 160 , 296 -297, 491 n. 18

Tibet, 26 -28;

crop varieties, 107 ;

land use, 462 n. 53;

Sherpa winter herding in, 70 -71, 77 , 80 , 163 , 174 , 252 -254, 266 -267. See also Ganggar; Rumbu; Tibetans; Tibetan Buddhism; Tingri

Tibetan Buddhism, 29 , 33 -34. See also Nyingmapa sect

Tibetan culture region: area and characteristics, 29 , 30 (map 6);

population, 29 -30

Tibetan refugees, 350 , 442 n. 51;

and shopkeeping, 363

Tibetans, 29 ;

language, 33 ;

land use preferences, 34 ;

religion, 34 ;

trade with Khumbu, 44 , 257 . See also Drokba

Tilman, William, 358

Tingri District (Tibet), 27 , 34 , 35 ;

and early Sherpa settlement, 47

Tinkye, 47

To (edible tuber), 110

Tokzi (hoe), 128

Top Dara, 444 n. 61, 448 n. 87

Torin (rented land), 121

Tourism: and agricultural commercialization, 383 -384;

and agricultural labor, 383 -385;

and construction timber use, 493 , 393 -394;

continuity in subsistence practices, 85 , 383 -388;

and cultural continuity, 424 ;

and dairy stock, 390 -391;

and deforestation, 394 ;

and demand for potatoes, 243 , 381 ;

and demographic cycle, 94 ;

and development, 355 -357, 410 -411;

early Nepal policies, 355 ;

early Sherpa involvement in, 357 -360;

environmental impacts of, 398 -408;

first Western visitors to Khumbu, 358 ;

and forest change, 308 ;

and forest management, 397 -398;

and fuel-wood use, 308 , 363 , 392 -395, 405 , 406 (map 22);

and grazing pressure, 402 ;

and household economy, 85 , 94 , 370 ;

impacts, 356 , 369 ;

income from 382 ;

Khumbu as a tourist destination, 357 ;

litter and garbage problems, 398 -400;

mountaineering work, 371 -374;

and multi-career households, 382 ;

national scale and patterns, 355 -356;

and pack stock, 243 -244;

and pastoral change, 388 -392;

in regional economy, 370 ;

and regional resource use, 395 -398;

replacement of trade in local economy, 337 ;

role in national economy, 356 ;

and socioeconomic differentiation, 88 -89, 90 ;

and support for religion, 424 ;

transition from trade to tourism economy, 367 -368;

trekking work, 371 -374;

and urang zopkio, 80 , 151 , 366 -367, 389 -390;

visitor numbers, 361 , 362 (table 28);

and women's labor, 383 -384. See also Adventure travel; Camp staff; Cooks; Deforestation; Grazing impacts; Group leaders; High-altitude porters; Lodges; Mail runners; Mountaineering; Pack stock; Porters; Sirdar; Trekking; Trekking agencies; Urang zopkio

Trade: and agricultural surpluses, 79 , 354 -355, 481 n. 15;

current trade, 45 , 353 ;

decline of dimzo trading, 265 ;

decline of Tibet trade, 350 -353;

and high-altitude agropastoralism, 70 -71;

historical change in, 344 -353, 346 (fig. 17);

historical lack of grain exports to Tibet, 338 ;

impact of 1962 China-India war, 351 ;

impact of Chinese administration of Tibet on, 350 -352;

impact of Tibetan refugees on, 350 -351;

increasing scale in twenti-

Trade (continued )

eth century, 348 -349;

and Khumbu household economies, 85 ;

and Khumbu pastoralism, 79 -80, 150 , 472 n. 46;

Khumbu trade monopoly, 53 , 54 , 336 , 344 -345;

Khumbu trade and subsistence strategies, 76 , 85 ;

large-scale traders (tsongba), 339 -340;

luxury goods, 343 -344;

and middle-altitude agropastoralism, 66 ;

and political economic conditions, 336 ;

Nangpa La route, 26 -27;

role of Nauje, 44 ;

Rongshar route, 27 -28;

small-scale (nangzum), 340 -341, 347 ;

and subsistence strategies, 59 , 64 , 65 , 75 , 90 , 339 ;

Tibet trade in the 1960s, 346 (fig. 17), 351 -352;

trade routes, 337 -344, 339 (fig. 15), 340 (fig. 16), 346 (fig. 17);

types of trade, 337 -344, 338 (table 27), 339 (fig. 15), 340 (fig. 16);

weekly market, 354 . See also Buffalo hides, Bure;

Butter; Calcutta; Carpets; Crossbreeds; Darjeeling; Dimzo; Ganggar; Herbs; Horses; Iron trade; Kalimpong; Lhasa; Lungtang; Maini; Nak; Paper; Potato; Rais; Salt trade; Shere; ilk; Silver; Sugar; Tea; Trading partners; Tibetans; Wool trade; Zhum

Trading partners, 347 -348

Traditional societies, 268

Transhumance: and cattle, 154 , 173 ;

and economic differentiation, 89 ;

and festivals, 172 , 177 , 182 , 184 -185;

and field fertilization, 85 , 172 , 183 ;

and hay availability, 168 , 172 , 183 ;

in high-altitude agropastoralism, 64 , 65 , 70 ;

in Khumbu, 41 , 80 , 169 -174, 170 (fig. 13);

and Khumbu lifestyles, 176 -177;

and local knowledge, 416 -417;

in middle-altitude agropastoralism, 64 , 65 , 66 -68;

and nak, 152 -153, 168 , 180 -186, 181 (table 13), 355 ;

Rais and Khumbu pasture, 49 -50;

and subsistence strategies, 61 , 64 , 76 ;

and Tibet winter herding, 70 -71, 77 , 80 , 163 , 171 , 174 , 252 -254, 266 -267;

and urang zopkio, 154 ;

and yak, 154 , 168 , 355 ;

and zhum, 173 . See also Village herding patterns

Trekking: and economic differentiation, 361 -363, 362 (table 29), 375 -377, 377 (table 31);

early trekking, 356 , 360 -361;

employment in, 361 -363, 362 (table 29), 371 -374;

and fuel-wood use, 393 ;

and household economy, 361 -367, 362 (tables 28, 29 ), 368 ;

independent trekking, 364 -365;

permits, 365 ;

and regional economy, 361 -363, 362 (table 28), 367 -368;

seasons, 361 ;

and women, 363

Trekking agencies, 356 , 360 ;

Sherpa ownership of, 357 . See also Adventure travel; Mountain travel

Trekking companies. See Trekking agencies

Troll, Carl, 59

Tsam khang (hermitage), 442 n. 54

Tsampa, 109

Tsepal, 53 , 447 n. 79, 448 n. 88;

and barley at Tarnga, 215 , 253 ;

and Dingboche potatoes, 225 ;

and large-scale herding, 253

Tsigpa (stone terrace riser), 97

Tsongba (large-scale trader), 339

Tubers, 110 -114;

early twentieth-century emphases, 222 ;

historical cultivation, 215 ;

Khumbu emphasis on, 35 , 77 ;

prepotato cultivation of, 215 . See also Jerusalem artichoke; Potato; Radish; To; Turnip

Tulu. See Turnip

Turnip, 77 , 110

U

Ua. See Barley

Urang zopkio, 150 -151, 154 ;

breeding of, 150 -151;

cost of, 366 , 390 ;

and fodder requirements, 154 , 167 ;

herd size, 154 ;

increased numbers of, 366 -367, 389 -390;

lack of early emphasis on, 389 ;

ownership by sirdar, 366 , 390 ;

transhumance, 154 ;

trekking use, 366 -367;

use as draft stock, 151 ;

use as pack stock, 151 , 154 ;

use on Lukla route, 366

V

Vegetables, 105 -106, 245

Vegetation: altitudinal zonation of 188 -191, 189 (fig. 14), forest line, 23 ;

regional patterns, 23 . See also Alpine shrub; Forests

Vegetation change: grazing and forest composition, 289 ;

grazing and grass and shrubland composition, 288 ;

historical impacts of grazing, 287 -290. See also Deforestation;

Forest change; Overgrazing

Verticality, 59

Village development committees, 55 , 318 -319

Village herding patterns, 155 -159, maps 8 and 11

Village lands, 156

Villages, 41 -45, 42 (map 5), 83 (map 6), 84 (fig. 8);

economies, 44 . See also Population

W

Wage labor, 92 , 127 , 166 ;

in tourism, 371 -374. See also Agricultural day labor;

In-

come; Migrant labor; Porters; Sirdar; Tourism; Trekking

Warburton, Michael, 296 -297, 491 n. 18

Warts, potato, 102 -103

Water: tourism and demand for, 396

Water buffalo, 64 , 66 -67 passim, 70 ;

sale of meat in Khumbu, 468 n. 7

Weekly market, 44 , 55 , 124 -125, 243 , 353 , 384 ;

establishment of Nauje market, 353 ;

tourism impacts on, 382

Wild grass: and hay, 165 -166. See also Hay

Wildlife: and abandonment of fields, 386 ;

and crop damage, 101

Winter livestock losses, 333 , 495 n. 46

Wolves, 182 , 269

Women: and agricultural experimentation, 111 -112, 245 ;

and agriculture, 17 , 125 -127, 128 , 129 , 131 , 132 , 135 , 139 -142 passim, 166 , 384 , 387 -388;

corvée labor, 122 ;

fuel-wood gathering, 194 ;

and household division of labor, 125 -126, 126 (table 8);

and lack of generational gap in farming, 387 -388;

and lu spirits, 199 ;

pack stock driving, 363 ;

tourism work, 363 , 388 ;

wage labor, 127

Woodstoves, 193

Wool trade, 341 , 351 , 353

World Wildlife Fund USA, 400

Wulok (corvée labor), 55 , 122 -123

Y

Yak, 70 , 146 -149, 154 ;

Asian distribution of, 147 -148;

characteristics of, 148 ;

and herd size, 154 ;

and high-altitude conditions, 148 ;

and pack stock, 154 , 355 ;

and plowing, 135 ;

Sherpa preferences for, 34 , 146 , 147 (table 10);

subsistence uses, 148 -149;

in Tibet and Khumbu, 34 ;

and Tibet winter herding, 70 -71, 77 , 80 , 163 , 174 , 252 -254;

and trade, 355 ;

and transhumance, 154 ;

in Rolwaling, 73 ;

wild yak, 148 , 467 n. 2. See also Pastoral change; Pastoralism; Pastoral management; Transhumance

Yarin. See Lama's forest

Yelmo. See Helambu

Yerchang, 33 , 173 , 177 ;

and summer herding, 177 , 182 , 185

Yerchu (summer rain), 100 -101. See also Climatic hazards

Yersa (summer herding place), 46 . See also High-altitude herding settlement

Yeti, 51 , 359 , 435 n. 5

Yields: and altitude, 84 , 104 , 118 -119;

of barley, 109 ;

and blight, 102 , 116 ;

of buckwheat, 109 ;

concern with maximization of, 418 ;

and frost, 99 -100;

and household subsistence requirements, 79 , 118 ;

household variation, 115 ;

field measurements of, 116 -117;

of potatoes, 109 , 114 -118, 143 , 233 ;

regional variations, 116 , 143 ;

and weather, 104

Younghusband, Sir Francis: and Khumbu yaks sent to Kalimpong, 256 -257

Yul. See Villages

Yul Lha (regional god), 34 . See also Khumbu Yul Lha

Yulajung, 43 , 45

Z

Zarok, 43

Zebu, 58

Zhum, 90 , 147 (table 10), 150 , 151 (fig. 11);

increased ownership of, 390 -391;

and milk, 150 ;

and trade with Shorung, 150 , 254 , 342 , 355 ;

and transhumance, 173 . See also Crossbreeds

Zi stones, 29 , 344

Zopkio, 90 , 147 (table 10), 151 (fig. 11);

and plowing, 135 . See also Crossbreeds; Dimzo; Urang zopkio

1. This includes recent books on Khumbu Sherpas by James Fisher (1990), Ortner (1989), and Fürer-Haimendorf (1984) as well as a wealth of other work. For further references to the literature on Sherpas and Khumbu see chapter 1.

2. Although Sherpas have inspired a considerable amount of research, Sir Edmund's evaluation may be exaggerated. The Thakalis, Tamangs, and Newars of Nepal have also attracted considerable study, and the work to date on Sherpas can hardly surpass anthropological efforts in parts of New Guinea, the Andes, the Amazon basin, Mexico, or Native American-inhabited regions of North America.

3. Here I refer to cultural ecology in a sense which also includes work sometimes referred to by its practitioners as human ecology and ecological anthropology as well as much work in geoecology. For surveys of the history of the field and its theoretical diversity consult (Moran 1979; Orlove 1980). Some of the differences between geographical and anthropological approaches to cultural ecology are discussed by Grossman (1977).

4. I include here the consideration of both land use and resource management which is adaptive to environment (in the sense of representing an effective and sustainable form of use) and that which becomes maladaptive in the sense of being environmentally nonsustainable. Both represent local adjustments of subsistence practices to local conditions. I am less concerned here with adaptation in the larger sense which includes physiological adaptability to environment and such cultural stratagems as vernacular architecture, clothing styles, diet, or patterns of work and rest, through which peoples may adjust to local environmental conditions. I define subsistence system for the purposes of this book more broadly than is often done. I emphasize noncommercial land use for household

sustenance, and this is what Khumbu economy is based on. But I also include the full set of economic practices (and particularly land-use practices) and social institutions by which peoples obtain and distribute natural resources. This especially requires attention to the role of trade and tourism in regional and household economies. Income and goods obtained from these activities influence the degree to which Sherpas rely on the resources of Khumbu itself to sustain themselves as well as placing commercial pressures on some Khumbu natural resources.

5. Brookfield called for cultural ecological focus on microregions as a way of working at a scale which includes individuals, stressing that only in this way could human geographers study process through exploring perception and decision making (1964). More recently he and Blaikie reemphasized this point in their stress on studying "land managers," the individuals and groups who make land-use decisions, while at the same time noting the need for attention to wider regional, historical, and political economic processes and conditions (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987).

6. The importance of linking the often local and microregional scale of cultural ecology to larger spatial contexts has been especially well argued by Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), who coined a new term—regional political ecology —for the larger regional, national, and international analysis.

7. This dissertation has recently been published (Sherpa of Khumbu: People, Livestock, and Landscape , Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).

8. In the nearby Sherpa-inhabited region of Shorung, by contrast, excellent work has been done by the German anthropologist Michael Oppitz (1968) and the Sherpa lama and historian Sangye Tenzing whose work is discussed in Ortner (1989). Both used written clan histories and oral traditions to reconstruct some details of the legend of the migration by the ancestors of the Sherpas from easternmost Tibet to Nepal in the sixteenth century and the history of Shorung.

9. Although it should be noted that Ortner (1989) has made an effort to consider the history of the common people and the ways in which this underlies and helps shape events that both Sherpas and outsiders often attribute simply to the actions of a few prominent individuals.

10. Chapter 5 discusses contemporary forest-use practices, but also provides background on how forests were used and locally managed before the establishment of Sagarmatha National Park.

11. These mapping activities were enriched by "walkabouts" with local experts such as Konchok Chombi and Sonam Hishi. Walking the country provided insights into the history and meaning of places. Particular views and sites often evoked memories and recitations of oral traditions, calling forth glimpses of the past and perspectives on change as it has occurred in particular places.

1. Geographically the Himalaya is usually distinguished from adjacent mountain ranges such as the Karakorum, the Zanskar and Ladakh ranges, and the Hengduan Shan. It is generally considered to extend from Nanga Parbat

(8,125 m) in the great bend of the Indus river to Namcha Barwa (7,775 m) in the great bend of the Tsangpo-Bramaputra river and is bordered on the south by the Ganges plain and on the north by the Indus-Tsangpo depression and the Tibetan (Qinghai-Xizang) Plateau. The name of the range is ancient Sanskrit and means the Abode of Snow.

2. All of the world's peaks of 8,000 meters or more in height are located in Asia. Ten of the fourteen 8,000-meter peaks are located in the Himalaya and eight of these are located wholly in Nepal or on its borders with Tibet and Sikkim.

3. In some regions of eastern Nepal, including the Mount Everest area, the Great Himalaya also forms the watershed between Nepal and Tibet, with southern drainage to the Ganges and northern drainage to the Tsangpo. Elsewhere the watershed lies well into Tibetan territory and transverse rivers such as the Sun Kosi and the Arun cross the Himalaya en route to the Ganges. In western Nepal the Great Himalaya runs far south of the Tibetan border and does not form the watershed.

4. The mountains of the Mount Everest region, like the rest of the Great Himalaya, primarily consist of highly metamorphized Precambrian gneisses that have been overthrust along the Main Central Thrust Fault upon older formations. In the highest reaches of the Khumbu Himal, and particularly on the upper heights of Lhotse and Mount Everest, the black gneisses (dark-colored paragneisses) are overlaid by sedimentary rock formed of sediments laid down in the Tethys Sea, the ocean that was displaced by the collision of India and Eurasia and the subduction of the Indian plate. These rocks are either unmetamorphized or only slightly metamorphized. The Everest metasediments include biotite schists, marbles and phyllites, and grey crystalline limestones (Vuichard 1986:44-47).

6. Mount Everest and Lhotse are foreigners' names for Khumbu peaks. So too are the names of a number of other famous peaks such as Nuptse and Pumori. In some cases these peaks had no traditional Sherpa names. Mount Everest was called Chomolungma by Khumbu Sherpas, as it was by Tibetans, and was considered to be the home of Miyolangsangma, a goddess of nourishment and wealth. The meaning of Chomolungma is not certain, though it is often translated as Goddess Mother of the World, or Goddess of the Wind (for a more detailed discussion see Bernbaum 1990:7). The Nepali name for the mountain, Sagarmatha, means Forehead in the Sky, or Forehead Touching the Sky. Sherpas often now refer to the mountain as Everest, a name which honors Sir George Everest, the early surveyor general of the Survey of India, whose work helped establish the baseline from which the height of the mountain was first determined in 1852.

The only 8,000-meter peak in the Mahalangur range located outside of Khumbu is Makalu (8,463m), just beyond the high ridge which defines the eastern border of Khumbu. Lhotse Shar (8,383m), a subsidiary peak of Lhotse, is sometimes counted as a fourth 8,000-meter Khumbu Peak.

7. This range was also uplifted by the same process which produced the Khumhu Himal crest to the north and consists mainly of migmatitic and granitic rocks (Vuichard 1986:48).

8. The northern stream is also known locally as the Pheriche Chu. I follow the Lobuche Khola usage established by the National Geographic Society in its 1988 map of the Mount Everest region. The names in Western languages and Nepali used today for Khumbu rivers were bestowed by outsiders. Kosi and Khola, Bhote and Dudh are Nepali not Sherpa words. Kosi and Khola are Nepali terms for rivers. Dudh is Nepali for milk and Bhote for Tibetan . How long ago these names were bestowed on local features is unknown. Two of the earliest European maps of Nepal, the 1811 Kirkpatrick map and the 1819 Buchanan-Hamilton map (Gurung 1983:18-21) show the "Dud Kosi." Khumbu Sherpas conceive of rivers in a rather different way than Western geographers. They do not refer to the entire length of a river as a single entity. Instead they refer to a river (tsambu ) or stream (chu , which also means water or spring) in terms of particular reaches of water named according to the settlements and regions along the bank. An individual river may thus be referred to locally by many different names.

9. Hagen et al. (1963) and Vuichard (1986) suggest that the Bhote Kosi may predate the rise of the Great Himalaya. Hagen et al. note that the present valley appears to be far too large for the river flowing through it today to have fashioned it and suggest that previously it was the watercourse of the Dzakar Chu that now flows north from the Nangpa La into the Arun river in Tibet. Vuichard also suggests that this Bhote Kosi-Dzakar Chu system may have originally flowed northward, draining the slopes of a pre-Himalayan range located in the vicinity of the present Numbur-Kantega range.

10. There is some disagreement over the naming of the reach of river between the confluence of the Dudh Kosi and the Imja Khola and the confluence of this new stream with the Bhote Kosi. Some authorities refer to this as part of the Imja Khola (e.g., Schneider 1963). Sherpas, however, today refer to the same reach of river as part of the Dudh Kosi. I have adopted the Sherpa approach.

11. Sherpas did not name glaciers and the first cartographers to produce detailed Khumbu maps bestowed the names which are now in use (Schneider 1963). Often the names of local grazing areas and herding settlements were applied to adjacent glaciers. One of these, the Lungsampa Glacier in the upper Dudh Kosi valley, is misnamed, as the grazing area by that name is actually located in the next valley to the west alongside what is now known as the Sumna Glacier.

12. A more detailed treatment of altitudinal zonation of vegetation is provided in chapter 5, while soils are taken up in chapter 3.

13. Climatic data have been collected by the government of Nepal in Nauje since 1948 (Joshi 1982:399) and for shorter periods of time at Shyangboche, Khumjung, Tengboche monastery, and Lhajung (Byers 1987b; Muller 1959). Data for Nauje and Tengboche monastery, the two stations where they have been collected for the longest period, may have sometimes been based on haphazard measurement and recording.

14. The relatively dry conditions of these valleys enable agriculture to be carried out at higher altitudes than in wetter regions of the Himalaya. High rainfall and a high percentage of cloud cover during the summer encourages the development of cloud forest at altitudes above 2,500 meters on windward slopes in many areas of Nepal (Metz 1989:161).

15. In Nauje, for example, 89 percent of the annual mean rainfall (1949-1977) of 1,048 millimeters fell between May and October and 79 percent of it fell between June and September (Joshi 1982:400).

16. Occasionally autumn hurricanes in the Bay of Bengal cause torrential rains in the Himalaya which can fall as heavy snows. In October 1987 such a storm dropped more than 100 millimeters of rain on Nauje in less than twenty-four hours and heavy snowfalls occurred above 3,500 meters which blanketed much of Khumbu for many weeks.

17. The settlement of Milingo is also sometimes referred to as a village, although today only six families regard their dwellings there as their main house.

18. Occasionally Khumbu Sherpas say that Pharak begins at the first Pharak Sherpa village, Thumbug (Nepali Jorsale), rather than at the confluence slightly upstream. Similarly some people consider other Sherpa regions to begin with the first settlement that is culturally distinct from neighboring ones.

19. According to legend the Amphu Laptsa was crossed long ago by Rais from the upper Hinku valley to the southeast, who unsuccessfully attempted to settle Khumbu before the arrival of the Sherpas. There are no traditions of Khumbu Sherpas using the Amphu Laptsa or the Mingbo La other than when accompanying foreign exploring, surveying, mountaineering, and trekking tourist parties.

20. Another road has now reached a similar distance southwest of Khumbu and may well ultimately be extended to Salleri.

21. For an eyewitness account of the construction of the Lukla airstrip and a discussion of its consequences see James Fisher (1990). The Lukla airstrip has become the main conduit for mass tourism into the region. Shyangboche airstrip was used very little during the 1980s and is only suitable for the very small Pilateus Porter planes. In autumn 1990, however, the Everest View Hotel began running a regular Pilateus Porter air service to Shyangboche and helicopter charters to the hotel also became common. In recent years the Royal Nepal Air Corporation has kept Lukla airport open for limited service during the monsoon months.

22. The sacred peaks, however, are not places which are set aside from all resource use as has sometimes been suggested (BjØnness 1986). Khumbu Sherpas object to attempts to climb Khumbila and certain mountains sacred to particular clans, but they do not consider the slopes of these mountains off-limits to forest use, grazing, or agriculture.

23. See Berreman (1963b ) and Karan and Mather (1987) for discussions and maps of Himalayan culture regions. The distinctively long-sleeved Tibetan and Sherpa cloak style, with sleeves extending a foot and more longer than the arm length, seems likely to have been adopted from Tang dynasty Chinese styles. Zhi stones may be a rare form of agate and are so valued that a single stone may cost three thousand dollars or more today in Khumbu.

24. The Bhotia peoples of the high-altitude Tibetan border regions of the Great Himalaya and the trans-Himalayan valleys of the Inner Himalaya (including the Sherpas) comprise less than 1 percent of Nepal's total population. According to the 1981 census (Nepal. Central Bureau of Statistics. 1984) there were 73,589 speakers of "Bhote-Sherpa" (a bureaucratic category rather than an actual language), accounting for only 0.5 percent of the total population of the country. If peoples such as the Tamangs (522,416) and Gurungs (174,464), some of whose ancestors according to legend came from Tibet (Fricke 1986:29-30; Holmberg 1989:14, n. 8; Messerschmidt 1976b ), are included, the percentage of Nepal's population descended from immigrants from Tibet rises to at least 5 percent. It has been suggested that the 1981 census considerably underestimated the number of Tamangs and may also have underestimated Bhotias. The reported decline in the number of Sherpas in the Solu-Khumbu district between 1971 and 1981, for example, appears much too high.

25. The Nepali word Bhote and the anthropological term Bhotia are derived from Bhot , an old name for Tibet. It is used by a number of lower-altitude, nonethnically Tibetan peoples in India and Nepal to refer to the ethnically Tibetan peoples living on the border of Tibet.

26. While some of the inhabitants of the Taplejung region of northeastern Nepal (and particularly the village of Gunsa and other parts of the Kambachen valley near Kachenjunga) are often referred to as Sherpas (Bremer-Kamp 1987; Sagant 1976), their relationship culturally and historically to the other groups who call themselves Sherpa has not yet been established. The complex multi-cultural settlement pattern of Helambu and some other areas in which Sherpas form a component of the population is discussed below.

27. The Solu-Khumbu region (including Pharak) constitutes a large part of the district of Solu-Khumbu, a district shared also with substantial Rai and Nepali populations who actually outnumber the Sherpas. J. Fisher gives the number of Sherpas in the Solu-Khumbu district as 17,000 (1990:55), whereas the 1981 census puts the total at 15,166 out of a total district population of 88,245. Estimates of the number of Sherpas outside of Solu-Khumbu are far rougher. Hutt (1986) suggests that there may be approximately 20,000 Sherpas in Nepal. There may be another 7,000 in the West Bengal district of India, most of them in the Darjeeling area (J. Fisher 1990:55). Twenty thousand may be low for the total in Nepal. There may be as many as 25,000 or even 30,000 depending on how "Sherpa" is defined and whether or not the "Sherpa" population of northeasternmost Nepal in the Taplejung-Gunsa region or part of the population of Helambu are included. In Solu-Khumbu and adjacent areas (Olkadunga, Khotang, Ramechap, and Dolakha districts), however, it is likely that all or nearly all of the population classified "Bhote-Sherpa" by the Nepal government in recent censuses is Sherpa. The total number of people recorded in the 1981 census (Nepal. Central Bureau of Statistics. 1984) as native speakers of "Bhote-Sherpa" in these districts alone is 26,473. (In a number of other districts it is impossible to use census figures as even a rough guide to count Sherpas since these areas are inhabited by both Sherpas and other "Bhotia" groups).

28. It is somewhat ironic that Tenzing Norgay's achievement on Mount Everest made Sherpa a household word around the world. Tenzing Norgay grew up in the Khumbu village of Thami Og and married a woman from nearby Chanekpa before he emigrated to Darjeeling to seek his fortune in mountaineering. But he was not a Sherpa in the strictest sense, having been born in Tibet of non-Sherpa parents, and would be considered to be a "Khamba" by Khumbu Sherpas. This important social distinction is discussed later in this chapter.

29. All the pre-World War II Everest expeditions were forced to recruit their Sherpa high-altitude porters in Darjeeling and to approach the mountian via Tibet.

30. Among the most notable anthropological contributors to this still-continuing exploration of Khumbu society and culture have been Ortner (1978, 1989), Pawson, Stanford, and Adams (1984), Pawson et al. (1984), J. Fisher (1990), and Adams (1989). Fürer-Haimendorf's work (1964, 1979, 1984) is worth special note as still constituting the finest, broad ethnographic treatment of the Khumbu Sherpas. Ortner's analysis of the beliefs, values, and cultural patterns which underlie Sherpa social behavior, ritual, and history (1989) is also exceptional, although it should be read while keeping in mind that her earlier work (1978) is based on fieldwork in Shorung and that these observations and insights are not always fully applicable to Khumbu.

31. For a fuller review of the geographical literature and pertinent reports by physical scientists and national park administrators see Byers (1987b ).

32. That these basic characteristics are widespread and have been relatively enduring, however, should not obscure historical and regional differences in Sherpa culture—a point which Ortner has also recently raised in discussing the difficulties of identifying a Sherpa cultural style or ethos (Ortner 1989:4-6).

33. I base these brief remarks on Sherpa identity and the discussion later in this chapter on Sherpa regions on my experiences discussing regional geography with Sherpas in the Solu-Khumbu district and adjacent areas. The term by which Sherpas refer to Nepalis, rongba , is also used by Tibetans and signifies people of the lower valleys.

34. In many cases there are clear differences between Sherpas and non-Sherpas on all four of these points. Tibetans and Tamangs share with Sherpas a faith in Tibetan Buddhism and are therefore considered, at least by Khumbu Sherpas, to be in a special class of peoples who are also "believers." But distinctions among Sherpas, Tibetans, and Tamangs are easily drawn on the basis of the other three as well as many additional points.

35. Many Khumbu people today speak of the Sherpas as a people who mountaineer and work for trekking companies and who raise yak and potatoes. Some of these features may indeed set contemporary Khumbu Sherpas apart from non-Sherpas or from some other Sherpa groups, but, like the characterization of some recently popular styles of dress or architecture as distinctively "Khumbu Sherpa," even such long-standing traits as mountaineering prowess and potato cultivation have not always set Khumbu Sherpas apart from other Sherpas.

36. If Sherpas did indeed migrate to Nepal from the eastern Tibetan area of

Kham (see below) it seems likely that their language may have even closer linguistic similarities to eastern Tibetan dialects.

37. Most Sherpa marriages are monogamous, although like Tibetans, Sherpas also tolerate polyandrous and polygynous arrangements. These, however, are very rare in Khumbu today and for at least the last several generations polyandry was not nearly as common in Khumbu as it was in Tibet.

38. Much of Tibetan society, including that of the central region of Tibet, is apparently not organized along a clan basis. Fürer-Haimendorf (1984:187), however, reports that Tibetans from the Kham region, the reputed original homeland of the Sherpas, do have clan affiliation.

39. The Nyingmapa is the oldest of the four major sects of Tibetan Buddhism (the name itself refers to "old ones"). It developed out of the introduction of Tantric practices by the Indian adept Padmasambhava, called Guru Rinpoche (Precious Teacher) by Tibetans and Sherpas. Nyingmapa is noted among the Tibetan sects for its rites of exorcism and other magical practices and for its married village lamas who are caretakers of village temples and preside over local life-cycle ceremonies.

40. Shrines and temples are constructed on Tibetan models as described in Tibetan texts. Some use may also be made of Tibetan geomantic principles, that are recorded in certain other texts. House styles differ in some important respects (particularly in Sherpa use of pitched roofs and noncourtyard design). Houses more similar to Sherpa design, however, are found in eastern and southeastern Tibet.

41. MacDonald (1980:141) also notes oral traditions of early administrative control of Khumbu by Tibet, Tibetan claims to which were given up after Nepali authorities sent troops to the region to rectify the situation. He relates this story, however, in the context of an era in Khumbu history which he dates to 400 years ago. This would put the Tibetan administrative presence in Khumbu long before the unification of Nepal in its current sense in the late eighteenth century. Suggestions of Tibetan administrative activity in Khumbu in the nineteenth century are still more startling, for Khumbu was supposedly incorporated into the Nepali state in the late eighteenth century and was visited as early as 1805 by a Nepalese official (Stiller 1973:265). If there is any substance to these legends it would testify not only to the ambiguous allegiances of Khumbu Sherpas of that era but also to the remoteness of the region from the centers of administration of both Nepal and Tibet. According to Khumbu traditions Sherpas paid tax simultaneously to both Nepal and Tibet in the early nineteenth century and discontinued this only after the defeat of the Tibetans in this area by Jung Bahadur Rana's forces in the war of 1855-1856.

42. G. Clarke (1980a , 1980b ) has observed that many of the inhabitants of Helambu (Yelmo) who have often been called "Helambu Sherpas" or who call themselves Sherpas, are actually not related to the Sherpas of Solu-Khumbu. He traces their descent to intermarriage between Tibetan immigrants from the Kyirong area and Tamangs from the lower country just to the south. There are also a number of families, especially in the large village of Tarkyagang, who are descended even more directly from more recent Tibetan immigrants and in the

. Some of the Sherpa settlers in the Arun region left Shorung around 1825 (Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:117). Others emigrated there from Shorung and Pharak later in the century. In the villages of Navagaon and Tashigaon there are families of several Solu-Khumbu clans (including Salaka, Chawa, Pinasa, Gole, Lamaserwa, and Goparma), and some elderly individuals trace their origins to their ancestors' migration from Solu-Khumbu settlements four or five generations ago. The Chyangma area was settled by a group of Shorung migrants between 1725 and 1750 (Oppitz 1968). Rolwaling was settled by families from western Khumbu around 1860 (Sacherer 1975; 1981:157). Sacherer notes that early Rolwaling settlers were poor families, some of which included people who were escaping from bad debts or fleeing after having committed crimes. Aziz (1978) has noted that some of the Tibetans who came to Khumbu in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were also people fleeing exactly the same kinds of situations. Similar stories go back as far as the tale of Dzongnangpa (see below) and the early days of Khumbu settlement. Some Sherpa emigrants to Darjeeling also may have migrated not so much because of the allure of career opportunities there as to leave behind awkward situations in Solu-Khumbu.

44. Sherpas began settling in Darjeeling in the nineteenth century, drawn by wage labor and trade opportunities in the then summer capital of the British Raj. By 1901 there were already 3,450 Sherpas in Darjeeling according to A. J. Dash (Darjeeling 1947, cited in Ortner 1989:160). Beginning in 1907 Sherpas became noted for high-altitude mountaineering and this became a major source of work during the period before World War II when Darjeeling was a major mountaineering center. By 1951 the number of Sherpas in the region had reached 7,539 (B. Miller, Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1958; cited in Ortner 1989: 217 n. 4). These Sherpas included emigrants from Khumbu as well as from Shorung and Pharak. The relative percentage of Khumbu migrants, the degree to which they hailed from different parts of the region, or the effect that this emigration had on Khumbu population density and land use are not known. In 1984 I was told by Sherpas in Darjeeling that their numbers had declined since the 1950s. A number of families were said to have moved back to Nepal following the eclipse of the mountaineering and tourism industry in Darjeeling by tourism development in Nepal.

45. Farther up the Arun are communities of non-Sherpa Bhotias known as Shingsawa.

46. Such cultural diversity within a population often considered to be a single "people" is not unique in the Himalaya. Berreman, for example, has noted considerable cultural variation among the Pahari of northern Uttar Pradesh (1960). The Rais are perhaps an even more striking example. Anthropologists

have discussed a dozen different Rai groups that are said to speak mutually unintelligible dialects (McDougal 1979) and among whom religious practices, architecture, and other facets of life are by no means uniform. Ethnic diversity among the Tamang has also been noted (Fricke 1986; Holmberg 1989).

47. Such marriages may have been forbidden, however, in Shorung.

48. In many other spheres, however, cultural variation within Khumbu is minor. Dialects, for example, do not differ nor do any customs of building houses or wearing a distinctive village style of dress.

49. Khamba is generally considered to mean "people of Kham", the region presently divided between the easternmost part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and the Chinese province of Sichuan. In the sense in which Khumbu Sherpas use it the word means an immigrant from Tibet or from a Bhotiainhabited region of the Himalaya who arrived in Khumbu before the great influx of refugees in 1959. Khumbu Sherpas even speak of Thakali, Nupri, and Lowi Khambas, Bhotia people from Thak Khola, Nupri, and Mustang. The very similar word Khyampa means "wandering" in the Tibetan dialect of the Humli-Khyampas of northwestern Nepal (H. Jasehko, A Tibetan-English Dictionary 1968; cited in Rauber 1980:59), and perhaps the Khumbu use of the word carries a little of that connotation.

50. Khumbu Sherpa society is much more ethnically varied than is the Shorung Sherpa population. There are very few Khambas in Shorung.

51. The number of lowland Nepalis stationed in Khumbu has increased from 84 in 1970 to 339 in 1982 (Fürer-Haimendorf 1984:32). Pawson counted 187 Tibetan refugees in Khumbu in 1982, a significant decline from the 274 counted in 1970 by the Langs (Pawson, Stanford, and Adams 1984:75). I know of fourteen Tibetan refugee families in Nauje, six in Khumjung, and one in Thamicho. There may be a few others.

52. Adams (1989:175-176) found in 1987 that only 45 percent (64 of 141) Khumjung household heads were considered to be Sherpa on the basis of their clan membership, while 43 percent (60) were Khamba or Khumbuwa. Presumably the "Sherpa" status here referred to "old" clan members. The remaining 12 percent of Khumjung households were Tibetans, a blacksmith family, a Tamang family, and several lowland Hindus who mostly came to the area as schoolteachers.

53. They may, not, however, have fully tallied the Bhote Kosi valley population since they reported an astonishingly high 32.5 percent of the houses there empty and presumably abandoned (Pawson et al. 1984:244).

54. The number of dwellings in most of these places is larger than the figures suggest since some families own houses in more than one village and I have tallied each family only once. Monks and nuns are not included in the count, nor are people who have retired to religious hermitages (tsamkhang ). Some families who maintain their main residence in a community other than one of the main villages, such as the gunsa settlement of Thami Og in the Bhote Kosi valley or the secondary, high-altitude agricultural sites of Dingboche and Tarnga, may also have been missed in the count.

55. The full, multialtitudinal settlement pattern is most highly developed in

the Thamicho region. In this twenty-two-kilometer stretch of the Bhote Kosi valley and its tributaries there are forty-seven settlements situated at altitudes ranging from 3,400 to 5,000 meters. Only three of these are main villages.

56. Yul is used by Khumbu Sherpas to refer to village, valley, and region. Main villages are distinguished locally from other settlements in terms of function rather than simply by size, for some high-altitude secondary settlements (Dingboche, Tarnga) are larger than some main villages in terms of the number of houses in them. Main village residence defines one's participation in such important festivals as Dumje, Losar, and Pangyi; eligibility and responsibility to hold certain types of community offices; the site of ritual practices such as the placing of prayer flags on dwelling roofs three or four times per year; and the site of life-cycle ceremonies such as weddings (zendi ). Main village houses are larger than those owned in secondary settlements and families usually spend more months per year living in them.

57. The sandy surfaces and level expanses of these three sites suggest that all three may once have been glacial lake beds.

58. The origins of both the names Nauje and Namche Bazar, the Nepali name, have been lost. Some Sherpas suggest that Nauje might be derived from the phrase nating uk che , which refers to a big forested "corner."

59. There were no bazaar or shops in Nauje prior to 1965. Tibetans and Rais instead visited Sherpas in their homes in order to trade.

60. Although lodges and shops are rare in these villages their economies today nevertheless are entwined with tourism. Most families depend on income from mountaineering and trekking work to purchase grain at the Nauje weekly market. Some also operate lodges in the high-altitude herding settlements on the approach to Mount Everest.

61. The origin of the name Khumjung is also uncertain. According to Ortner's reading of the nineteenth-century account of the Indian Survey pandit Hari Ram the name comes from Khumbu Dzong and was the home of the leading Khumbu administrator (Ortner 1989:23, 92-93). Fisher disagrees with this interpretation and suggests instead that the name signifies Khum Jung or Khum valley (J. Fisher 1990:xv-xvi). Perhaps this is short for Khumbu Jung, Khumbu valley. I can cast no further light on the question other than to suggest that Ortner has misinterpreted Hari Ram's account of his 1885 trip up the Bhote Kosi river and that his Khumbu Dzong is not at Khumjung but rather in Thamicho (the home of the gembu , the foremost officials of the nineteenth century), perhaps in the village of Thami Og. I have not heard of any oral tradition that makes direct reference to the site of the Khumbu Dzong which Hari Ram reported in 1885. This was the era when Shangup Dorje of Thami Og was gembu and it seems likely that the dzong was located in or nearby that village.

In a summary of Hari Ram's report Rawat (1973) describes the location of the dzong in the context of what appears to be the Bhote Kosi valley: "From a few miles north of Jubang [Jubing, a Rai village in the lower Dudh Kosi valley south of Pharak and Kharikhola] to Khumbu Dzong, the lower parts of the mountain sides are thickly wooded. . . . For the four or five miles beyond

Khumbu [Dzong], a solitary pine, rhododendron, or a Tibetan furze may be seen. After this not a tree is to be seen, and till the suburbs of the Ting-ri [Ganggar] are reached the only vegetation met with is a short grass." (Rawat 1973:165). This describes a trip from Jubing to Tibet which would have passed Nauje and then continued up the Bhote Kosi valley to the Nangpa La. Hari Ram notes that Khumbu Dzong is "about two miles north of Nabjia [Nauje] and on a flat part of a spur" (Survey of India, Exploration in Tibet and Neighboring Regions, 1879-1892 , 1915 vol. 8, pt. 2; cited in Ortner 1989:23). Nabjia is clearly Nauje from his detailed description of the place. Two miles north might indicate the Thamo-Mende area, two major gunsa which might have been a seasonal home of the Thami Og gembu. Thami Og, the home of the gembu in those days, is about four miles north of Nauje and otherwise fits Hari Ram's description fairly well.

The only dzong about which legends still circulate in Khumbu, however, is the ruin of one building locally called a dzong that could be seen as recently as 1990 at Top Data (Cannon Hill) not far from Nauje. This site is believed to have been a Tibetan post in the nineteenth century, but in spring 1991 a Magar work crew dismantled the ruins of the two-room structure to supply building stone for a nearby teashop. There was also said to be a large ruin early in the twentieth century at Tarnga which some people think may have been a dzong and attribute to Dzongnangpa.

62. Sherpas consider that this name was probably earlier Khum Te, or upper Khum in contrast to Khum Jung.

63. Upper village families do, however, have land in lower Pangboche, as do two families who are based in nearby Milingo.

64. Gunsa are often occupied only for a very few weeks each year during times when crops must be tended or when they serve as a herding base. In the Bhote Kosi valley, however, many families move to houses in settlements such as Pare, Thamo Og, Thamo Teng, Samde, and Mende for the winter. In the Thamicho region many families formerly only lived in their houses in the main villages for a few weeks each year, primarily in spring and autumn. These families often had quite large houses in the gunsa settlements and moved many of their possessions there with them in winter. In recent years these moves have been decreasing somewhat and the main villages are becoming more important winter bases.

65. The familiar name Sherpa is actually a distortion by outsiders.

The accuracy of the clan records that Oppitz discovered is by no means certain. Nor is it known when the texts were actually written (although Oppitz suggests that the most important, the Ruyi or The Report on the Clans , is "probably four hundred years old" (1968:143). MacDonald has challenged this claim and has even suggested that the apparently old text may be a recent prank (1987:58).

66. Both the date of the emigration from Kham and the arrival in Khumbu remain, however, very tentative.

67. It is entirely possible that the pass may already have been known as a route into the southern lands and it could conceivably have been used by earlier

migrants, pilgrims, and traders. This, however, is not clear from surviving legends. Ortner (1989:26) suggests that Tibetan hermits were already making use of some of the caves in eastern Khumbu before the Sherpa arrival. There is an oral tradition that early Sherpas may have arrived in the Bhote Kosi valley before the main group crossed the Nangpa La, and that they came to Khumbu via Rongshar valley, Rolwaling, and the Tashi Laptsa pass. But some Khumbu elders do not agree with this idea, and the version which I have stressed is the one most widely accepted today in Khumbu.

68. Some Khumbu Sherpa clans such as Mendewa, for example, trace origins not to Kham but to very nearby regions of Tibet. Presumably they came to Khumbu at some time after the first group of settlers. Other lineages trace their Khumbu ancestors to eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century Sherpa immigrants from Shorung and adjacent areas.

69. One variant Khumbu legend has it instead that the original Khumbu settlers were seven brothers, each of whose lines became a clan.

70. This is a common Sherpa interpretation of the Tibetan concept of beyul or hidden valley. Khumbu Sherpas believe that Guru Rinpoche, the great spiritual hero of Nyingmapa Buddhism and the man who did so much to establish Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century, himself visited Khumbu and through his powers established it as a beyul. Guru Rinpoche is said to have flown north to Khumbu after having obtained special spiritual power during meditation at Mara Tika (Halashe), a cave in a ridge saddle near the confluence of the Dudh Kosi and Sun Kosi which is now both a Sherpa and a Hindu pilgrimage place. His stay at Arka Phuk, a cave on the slopes of Khumbila above Khumjung, is said to be marked by several of his handprints on the cave wall.

71. They could, however, also be relics of the activities of more recent Gurung shepherds or even former generations of Sherpa herders. These particular ruins predate the arrival of the Tibetan refugees who left behind many similar abandoned structures in the Bhote Kosi valley after their sojourn there in the early 1960s.

72. The Kulunge Rai inhabit the Hinku and Hongu Khola valleys southeast of Khumbu. One elderly Sherpa relates that Kulunge Rai have told him that they honor Ma Pe with special rites.

73. Unfortunately important details such as the type of grain pollen discovered are not given.

74. Arrangements between Sherpas and Rais in a number of areas appear to reflect Sherpa recognition of earlier Rai territorial rights. Some parts of Pharak, for example, paid a herding tax to Rais earlier in this century and families who use summer grazing grounds to the east of Pharak in the Mera area pay grazing taxes today. Arun Sherpas continue to pay a tax to nearby Rais in order to occupy their village lands and this may also be true for Sherpas in the Kulung and Salpa areas.

75. According to a Khumbu legend the Rais were asked to help restore to power the sons of a woman who had escaped the assassination of Dzongnangpa, an early Khumbu political leader and his associates (see below) and made her way south to settle in Dongbu country. The Rai king obliged and sent an army

up the Dudh Kosi. For six months they were stymied in upper Pharak below the confluence of the Bhote Kosi and Dudh Kosi and were unable to advance into Khumbu. The Rai forces were victorious, however, after the sons' mother helped them outflank the Sherpas by guiding them along a high route on the slopes west of the Bhote Kosi.

Ortner also discusses these events, and gives the Dongbu king's name (or the name of his descendant who was conquered by Prithivi Narayan Shah's forces) as Makwan Sher. She suggests that Makwan Sher was a Sen ruler (Ortner 1989:89), whereas Konchok Chombi testifies that he heard that Makwan Sher was the Kiranti ruler of Kirtipur in the Kathmandu Valley. He further notes that the troops who invaded Nepal were Rai from the lower Dudh Kosi valley region, not forces from the Kathmandu valley. But Karna Sena, ruler of Vijaypur (with a capital at that place in the hills north of Dharan in eastern Nepal) was in control of the lower Dudh Kosi valley at the time of Prithivi Narayan Shah's conquest of that region in 1772 and the Rai leaders there had recognized his sovereignty (Pradhan 1991:67, 113-115). Indeed, the current name Rai may derive from the Sen practice of giving the tital raja to the Rai leaders, which was then also conferred on them by Prithivi Narayan Shah. This was spelled raya and latter was changed to Rai (ibid.:52) for the groups that called themselves Khambus. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political status of the upper Dudh Kosi valley, including Khumbu, however, is still far from clear.

74. Arrangements between Sherpas and Rais in a number of areas appear to reflect Sherpa recognition of earlier Rai territorial rights. Some parts of Pharak, for example, paid a herding tax to Rais earlier in this century and families who use summer grazing grounds to the east of Pharak in the Mera area pay grazing taxes today. Arun Sherpas continue to pay a tax to nearby Rais in order to occupy their village lands and this may also be true for Sherpas in the Kulung and Salpa areas.

75. According to a Khumbu legend the Rais were asked to help restore to power the sons of a woman who had escaped the assassination of Dzongnangpa, an early Khumbu political leader and his associates (see below) and made her way south to settle in Dongbu country. The Rai king obliged and sent an army

up the Dudh Kosi. For six months they were stymied in upper Pharak below the confluence of the Bhote Kosi and Dudh Kosi and were unable to advance into Khumbu. The Rai forces were victorious, however, after the sons' mother helped them outflank the Sherpas by guiding them along a high route on the slopes west of the Bhote Kosi.

Ortner also discusses these events, and gives the Dongbu king's name (or the name of his descendant who was conquered by Prithivi Narayan Shah's forces) as Makwan Sher. She suggests that Makwan Sher was a Sen ruler (Ortner 1989:89), whereas Konchok Chombi testifies that he heard that Makwan Sher was the Kiranti ruler of Kirtipur in the Kathmandu Valley. He further notes that the troops who invaded Nepal were Rai from the lower Dudh Kosi valley region, not forces from the Kathmandu valley. But Karna Sena, ruler of Vijaypur (with a capital at that place in the hills north of Dharan in eastern Nepal) was in control of the lower Dudh Kosi valley at the time of Prithivi Narayan Shah's conquest of that region in 1772 and the Rai leaders there had recognized his sovereignty (Pradhan 1991:67, 113-115). Indeed, the current name Rai may derive from the Sen practice of giving the tital raja to the Rai leaders, which was then also conferred on them by Prithivi Narayan Shah. This was spelled raya and latter was changed to Rai (ibid.:52) for the groups that called themselves Khambus. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political status of the upper Dudh Kosi valley, including Khumbu, however, is still far from clear.

76. This conflict is said to have occurred because a Sherpa yak was killed in the Golila area (just south of the Lamjura pass) by Rais who were unfamiliar with yak and believed that it was a wild animal of a new type. The Sherpas and Rais agreed to meet on an appointed day and fight to determine territorial control. The Sherpas won and as a result came to exclusively settle the areas they inhabit today.

77. Ortner (1989:26) believes that the Pangboche and Dingboche areas of eastern Khumbu were the center of early settlement. It is conceivable that the arriving immigrants from Kham might have established themselves early on in this region, but from the oral traditions it appears that no permanent settlements developed there until several generations later following the establishment of a temple at Pangboche by Lama Sanga Dorje. Stories of the early settlement of Dingboche and the idea that Dingboche was the first Khumbu village are probably later Sherpa speculations based largely on observations of the area's suitability for yak and barley. The Bhote Kosi valley at the foot of the Nangpa La would have provided equally fine grazing and excellent opportunities at Tarnga and other sites for the cultivation of irrigated barley.

78. Several versions of the stories about Dzongnangpa's misrule and attempts on Lama Sanga Dorje's life are told. All accounts agree that Dzongnangpa was unsuccessful in having Lama Sanga Doric killed and was eventually assassinated himself by Sherpas near Tarnga at Chakuparteng after he had killed the Zamde lama whose hermitage was above the Langmoche Chu just south of Tarnga. Dzongnangpa was killed during a party in a tent. Sherpas collapsed the tent and beat the trapped Dzongnangpa to death. Some people relate that a number of his followers were also killed.

79. Temples were established at Thami Og and Kerok in Lama Sanga Dorje's lifetime, apparently in the mid-seventeenth century. But it is unclear whether the Thami Teng and Thami Og areas were already settled or whether the temples were built in then isolated sites. Through much of the nineteenth century the gembu were members of a Thami Og lineage. The office passed to a Nauje resident (Tsepal, who was a Golila-Gepchua Sherpa who had married a Nauje woman) in 1895 following complaints against the previous gembu's (Shangup Dorje of Thami Og) handling of the office (Fürer-Haimendorf 1979:120-121).

80. Ortner describes this as a political conflict between two pembu (1989:51). My impression from the Khumbu accounts is that the pembu system had not yet developed at this time, and that while Dzongnangpa was a political leader who had built autocratic power the lama was a spiritual leader who was interested in pursuing his meditations in a series of hermitages and in instructing followers. From this perspective the conflict resulted from Dzongnangpa's jealousy over Lama Sanga Dorje's spiritual power and popularity among Sherpas and his disciples and his resentment of lamas, their disciples, and religion in general. This same attitude underlay Dzongnangpa's later murder of the Zamde lama (see Ortner 1989:85-86) which he accomplished by destroying his spiritual power. Sherpa horror at these excesses (and specifically the anger of some of the Zamde lama's followers) led them to assassinate Dzongnangpa and end his terrorizing of religion and the religious. There may also have been an element of political competition as well, however, if it is true that the Zamde lama was the local political leader in the Tarnga area at the time Dzongnangpa arrived. Lama Sanga Dorje may also have had some political aspirations. There is a tradition that he had been advised by a high Tibetan lama to be a spiritual and temporal leader in the style of powerful Tibetan lamas. This desire may have been behind his emigration from the Bhote Kosi valley with his followers and their establishment of a new community in the wilds of eastern Khumbu.

81. Sherpas sometimes talk of a four-hundred-year tradition and note that the temple has been rebuilt three times after the initial structure was destroyed by an avalanche.

82. This is also referred to in a 1919 document granting nearby local land to the Tengboche monastery (Ortner 1989, appen. 2).

83. MacDonald notes that most of the small, early Khumbu "temples" were "not within the limits of human settlements" (MacDonald 1980:141).

84. The settlement area of Khumjung and Kunde, a narrow valley between the cliffs of Khumbila and an area of tremendous boulders, is popularly likened to a horse. A rock which is said to be the horse's head is located on high ground southeast of Khumjung.

85. Ortner (1989:93) discusses the establishment of the Khumjung temple and its possible relation to increasing village political power, speculating that the office of the gembu may have become established in the village at that time. According to Khumbu oral traditions founding the temple was related instead to the conflicts at the Dumje festival between Khumjung and Thamicho villagers. It was also made possible by the increasing population of Khumjung and Kunde and the growing wealth and power of villagers such as Nam Chumbi, a man who

established several shrines (chorten ) in the area and who was a powerful and at times feared and hated pembu prior to his assassination sometime after 1830 (and according to one account in about 1851-52). In any case it is incorrect to relate events in Khumjung to the gembu, since nineteenth-century gembu were Thami Og residents. There are no oral traditions of any Khumjung man ever having held the office.

86. They also had fields at Chorkem, a saddle just above Nauje, where today only Nauje families farm. Chorkem in that era was an important place in Khumbu, for here Sherpas from Khumjung, Kunde, and Thamicho met Rais hauling grain from the lower Dudh Kosi valley and bartered salt for it. There is some evidence of an old, direct trail from Chorkem to the upper Bhote Kosi valley and stretches of an old trail along what is said to have been the main route from Pharak to Thamicho and Tibet can still be followed along the Bhote Kosi valley slopes below the site of Nauje. This main route bypassed Nauje taking a more direct line up the valley. Chorkem is also infamous as the place where Nam Chumbi was assassinated.

87. According to some Sherpas Khumbu families in the early nineteenth century may have thus been paying taxes simultaneously to both Tibet and Kathmandu. One campaign of the 1855-56 conflict is said to have been conducted in the Dudh Kosi valley. Nepali troops outflanked the Tibetan fort at Top Dara near Dzong Chu Tok below Nauje and with the help of Sherpas temporarily pushed the Nepalese zone of control beyond the Nangpa La to the area of Kaprak. After the war the area north of the Nangpa La was returned to Tibetan administration, but Khumbu remained firmly in Nepali control.

88. It seems possible that this may have been an already existing local system of administration that was simply validated by the central government as a convenient way to implement its rule in a remote area. The Sherpa institution of gembu may well be derived from the similar Tibetan office of the Tingri region (Aziz 1978:199-200), as may have been the office of pembu. The gembu was the most powerful local official in the region until the early twentieth century when gembu Tsepal abandoned his office and fled to Tibet following a second failed attempt on his life during which he killed three men. (According to Ortner (1989:116) one of these was the former gembu, Dorje, but Fürer-Haimendorf (1964:121) and Konchok Chombi do not agree that Dorje was killed.) His son Pasang assumed the office and carried out the gembu's duties for some years, but eventually moved to the ancestral family home village in Golila-Gepchua and gave up Khumbu administration about 1933. The office thereafter lapsed.

89. Both the offices of gembu and pembu were regarded as hereditary, although either could be relieved of his authority by the Nepal government and the office given by the state to someone of its choosing. This, however, has occurred only twice in the last hundred years, once with a gembu and once with a pembu, both around the turn of the century.

90. A few years earlier, in 1810, there had been a royal decree which allowed Shorung traders to trade as far north and Khumbu traders as far south as they wished (Schrader 1988:245).

91. Khumbu Sherpas, for example, made use of Nepali courts for several

major cases in the nineteenth century, including a dispute between the gembu and villagers of Khumjung over herding regulations and a land dispute between Khumjung and Phurtse villagers which involved a sacred forest. In both these cases the government interestingly deferred the final decision to local Sherpa officials. In one twentieth-century case Khumbu-based Nepali officials were accused by Sherpas of hunting illegally in Sherpa protected forests.

92. A village panchayat often did not correspond to a single village, but was rather a governmental unit established to administer a population of approximately 2,000-4,000 people and might encompass a number of communities. This was the case in Khumbu. In some parts of Nepal lack of correspondence between the boundaries of the new local government's jurisdiction and the individual villages had important ramifications for resource-management policies, because forests and pastures previously owned and regulated by a single village sometimes now came under the joint control of a number of settlements.

93. The authority of the pembu remains substantial. Besides collecting taxes several pembu also continue to settle local disputes and carry out other roles that they formerly performed. Two have held the office of pradhan pancha as well.

94. In an effort to promote regional economic growth the central government encouraged the development of a country-wide system of periodic markets. Weekly markets were established in the mid-1960s in the Solu-Khumbu district near the district center of Salleri in Shorung (originally at Dorphu and later at Naya Bazar) and at Nauje as well as lower in the Dudh Kosi watershed at Olkadunga and Aislalukarka. Within a short time market transactions in Nauje for grain and other products virtually replaced the old barter exchanges that Sherpas had previously made with Rais and lower-altitude Sherpas. The establishment of the weekly market, however, has not transformed Khumbu subsistence crop production into a commercial activity.

1. Altitudinal variation of climate and vegetation is certainly one of the most striking and fundamental characteristics of mountains and has rightly been highlighted in geoecological studies of land use ever since von Humboldt first called attention in the early nineteenth century to the altitudinal zonation of climate and natural vegetation and agriculture in the Ecuadorian Andes. But as Goldstein and Messerschmidt (1980) and Metz (1989) have ably noted it is important to examine other types of microenvironmental variation as well, and in the Nepal Himalaya land-use patterns are especially influenced by wide regional rain-shadow effects and local contrasts due to slope. Goldstein and Messerschmidt (1980:120) referred to these differences as "latitudinality" in contrast to altitudinal "verticality," highlighting the fact that the general west-to-east trend of Nepal's mountain ranges creates a south-to-north rain-shadow effect that some peoples exploit through seasonal movement of livestock and trading activities along longitudinal meridians.

2. I refer here to the difference between broad overall goals and plans (strategies) and individual techniques (tactics) used to implement these plans.

3. Murra's verticality thesis emphasized a strategy and cultural value of controlling the maximum number of such altitudinal zones, and he referred to the distant lowland jungle cultivation areas as archipelagos (Murra 1972, 1985b ). Subsequent research has defined central and southern Peru and northern Argentina-Chile as the area where this subsistence pattern was practiced (Shimada 1985:xiv) and expanded attention to the role of trade, tribute, and other arrangements rather than direct cultivation for gaining access to the agricultural possibilities of diverse microenvironments (Salomon 1985). There has also been a realization, somewhat later than in Himalayan work, that the key factor is microenvironmental diversity rather than altitudinal zonal variation per se and as a result, by 1985, many Andean scholars had begun to refer to "ecological complementarity" rather than "verticality" (Murra 1985a ; Salomon 1985; Shimada 1985:xiii-xiv; Yamamota 1985). I retain the term verticality here to emphasize not only the altitudinal dimension of microenvironmental variation but also the role of mountain topography, structure, and geomorphological processes in creating the conditions of local variation of climate, soil, and other conditions that make mountain regions places of such high microenvironmental density.

4. This remains a usable basic set of categories. Salomon (1985:512-516), in a more sophisticated analysis, had identified eight major strategies for gaining access to multiple ecosystem resources.

5. I prefer to refer to production systems rather than production zones to emphasize that these sets of practices have been developed for use in particular types of physical environmental conditions that in mountain regions are not found in simple zones but rather in complex mosaics of microlocalities whose environmental characteristics reflect a number of factors besides altitude. By using the word system I also mean to focus attention on the complex inter-linkages between crops, livestock, and the natural environment. Individual production systems should be conceived of as agroecosystems.

6. These five strategies have also been important in other highland Asian regions, including adjacent areas of western China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet). Settled, mixed farming based on barley has been practiced at high altitudes in Tibet, at more moderate altitudes emphasizing wheat in the Hindu Kush by Pathans and others, and by the Bai (rice and maize) and Naxi (wheat, barley, maize) in northwestern Yunnan. Examples of peoples practicing middle-altitude agropastoralism can be found in the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, in parts of Tibet and Sichuan, and perhaps also in Yunnan. Swidden cultivation has historically been practiced by some of the peoples of mountainous northwestern Yunnan and western Sichuan such as the Yi. High-altitude agropastoralism is a familiar Tibetan strategy. Tibetan Drokbas, Mongolians, Kazaks, and Kirghiz (Kyrgyz) all practice nomadic pastoralism.

7. Other strategies based on commercial agricultural and pastoral production, circular migration and remittance economies (including mercenary service), cottage industrial production, trade, and income from tourism are, or have been, important for some rural mountain peoples. In rural Nepal these income-generating pursuits generally supplement rather than replace subsistence agriculture and pastoralism, although in certain regions they have become

increasingly important and now form the basis of the local economy (N. Bishop 1989; Fricke 1989; Fürer-Haimendorf 1979).

8. Government tax policies, inequalities of land ownership, widespread land tenancy, high land rents, rural indebtedness, and land fragmentation through inheritance have also undoubtedly contributed in some areas to interest in cultivating cash crops and the inability of some families to pursue multialtitudinal mixed farming and transhumance. Across Nepal, however, a relatively small number of families are today wholly involved in commercial farming. Metz (1989:156) estimates that 85 percent of Nepal's population engage in subsistence farming.

9. In distinguishing between integral and supplementary swidden (shifting agriculture) systems I follow Harold Conklin (1954, 1957). Integral swidden refers to the use of shifting field agriculture based on clearing and firing forest and planting in the fertile ash by peoples for whom it is the sole agricultural basis of subsistence. Supplementary swidden is carried out by peoples who rely on permanent fields for their main source of sustenance and for whom these swidden fields can be used for subsistence or commercial crop production.

10. The best-known Himalayan nomadic peoples are the Gujars and Gaddis, both of whom move herds to high-altitude (and rain-shadow) pastures in the summer, living in tents or herding huts, and move to winter herding grounds in lower-altitude mountain regions or the adjacent lowlands. Another such people are the Bakrwal, who primarily herd sheep in the Jammu and Kashmir region. Some of these groups, however, also cultivate some land. Gaddis in Himachal Pradesh, for example, combine long-distance pastoral migrations with fields and houses in main villages in middle-altitude areas. Some Bakrwal have acquired fields in the valley of Kashmir and the Jammu area since the mid-1960s (Casimir and Rao 1985:222). And the Kazaks of the Tian Shan, who follow a similar mountain transhumant strategy, today sometimes cultivate a few crops in their winter-quarter areas. A different type of pastoral nomadic herding strategy is followed by the Tibetan Drokbas, who remain on the Tibetan plateau year round at high altitudes (Ekvall 1968; Goldstein and Beall 1990; Goldstein, Beall, and Cincotta 1990). Both these styles of nomadism rely, as is common with so many other pastoral nomads, on trade with adjacent agricultural peoples to supplement the limited food resources available from herding. In westernmost Nepal there are also nomadic peoples such as the Humli Khyampas (Rauber 1982) who keep livestock primarily as pack stock and base their subsistence on an annual round of trade journeys between Tibet and the lowlands of southern Nepal and the Ganges plain.

11. Allan (1986) has argued that with the expansion of road networks and the commercialization of agriculture there is a fundamental change in the nature of mountain economies in which accessibility rather than altitudinal, environmental zonation becomes the key factor characterizing land use. While accessibility (and other market conditions) are obviously of great importance in those mountain regions that have become involved in commercial agricultural and pastoral production, this has been much less widespread thus far in the Himalaya (and especially in Nepal and the eastern Himalaya) than in the Alps or

Andes. And it should not be overlooked that altitudinal variation continues to play a fundamental role in land use even after commercialization, for environmental conditions are an important influence on the productivity and profitability of particular types of agriculture and pastoralism. Within commercial agropastoralism differences in emphasis can be noted which reflect not only access to markets, land rents, supply and demand, and state policies but also the limitations and possibilities of raising particular types of plants (e.g., jute, rice, tobacco, cardamon, ginger, tea, citrus fruits, apples, potatoes) and animals (e.g., dairy cattle, water buffalo, chickens) at different altitudes and in different microenvironmental conditions.

12. Swidden was once also much more common as a supplementary method of crop production among the Pahari.

13. Here there are parallels with Hindu hill-caste practices in India. In northern Uttar Pradesh swidden was practiced in the 1930s as a supplementary form of agriculture (Pant 1935).

14. Settled mixed farming has long been characteristic of the Newars of central Nepal as well as the Kashmiris of the western Himalaya and the Apa Tanis of Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern Himalaya. All of these peoples have agriculture based on irrigated rice cultivation. The Bai of the Dali region of Yunnan are another example of a rice-based permanent settlement at a similar altitude. Some Paharis, Magars, and Tamangs have adopted settled montane farming in the twentieth century, relying on adjacent forest and woodland for fodder and grazing rather than practicing transhumance. A second pattern of permanent settled agriculture is followed at much higher altitudes in Tibet, where it is based on barley and wheat rather than rice.

15. Not all families may practice this full round of transhumance, and there may be important variations among households that emphasize different degrees and types of herding. The patterns of transhumance followed by herders with sheep and goats and those with water buffalo and cattle are often quite different. Herd size, family labor resources, and the ability to hire wage labor can also be major factors.

16. The highest-altitude-dwelling peoples of Nepal typically inhabit rain-shadow regions. Many of these live to the north of the main crest of the Himalaya in environments similar to those of Tibet and Ladakh. The peoples of the Thak Khola and Mustang areas of the upper Kali Gandaki valley, the Manang valley north of the Annapurna range, the Dolpo region, Mugu and Humla all live in such country in north-central and northwestern Nepal. In eastern Nepal there are other regions which, while not north of the main Himalayan crest, have locations that shield them from the main impact of the summer southeast monsoon. These include the Sherpa-inhabited regions of Khumbu and Rolwaling. On the windward, high-precipitation, southern-aspect slopes of the main Himalaya main villages tend to be developed below 2,500 meters (Metz 1989:161). Above this high rainfall, a high degree of cloud cover, and wet soil conditions make crop production difficult and upper slopes and valleys tend to be heavily forested rather than settled and cultivated. In the Dudh Kosi region this difference can be seen quite strikingly in the contrast between altitudinal land use in

Khumbu and in the Dudh Kosi valley. In Pharak fields are not developed much higher than 2,800 meters. In Switzerland the highest-altitude agriculture also is conducted in rain-shadow regions (Netting 1971:133).

17. Current crop distribution does not reflect actual altitudinal limits of crops but rather historical patterns of production (chap. 6). Current crop distribution suggests an altitudinal limit for buckwheat, for example, of below 4,000 meters, but it was once commonly grown slightly higher as a major Tarnga crop. Wheat is now grown no higher than 2,800 meters in Pharak and is not grown at all in Khumbu, but a generation ago was grown in the lower Bhote Kosi valley at Tashilung (3,400m) near Nauje. Barley is certainly not physically restricted to the narrow, high-altitude range in which it has been grown in this century and could with irrigation be grown profitably in lower Khumbu as well. Some viable high-altitude crops such as turnip are not being grown to the edge of their range. Only potato appears to be pushed to its limits, and this on a very small scale in the uppermost crop-growing sites. The vast rolling slopes of the glacial, U-shaped valleys are not extensively planted to potato even at altitudes of 4,000 meters where they would certainly thrive.

18. It would also be useful to link production systems not only to altitude but also to other broad, zonal, mountain microenvironmental conditions such as types of terrain and levels of precipitation. A pioneering attempt at such a classification for central and western Nepal has recently been made (Metz 1989). Metz distinguishes ridge-valley sequences of production zones and places a set of five production types in both altitudinal and geographical contexts. These zones are the lower (below 1,500m), middle (1,200-2,000m), upper (1,000-2,400m), and high (above 2,500m in partial rain-shadow areas) elevation hill production types and the inner valley production type (1989:157-164). Metz relates these to locations in the midlands, high Himal, and trans-Himalayan valleys and describes their characteristic land-use features. This is a good beginning, although it would be useful to also examine how some peoples follow subsistence strategies that incorporate multiple production types and make use of the opportunities of several microenvironments. Metz's lower-altitude production type corresponds to the low-altitude, settled, mixed-farming category in my set of Himalayan subsistence strategies, his middle- and upper-production type to middle-altitude agropastoralism, and the high-elevation and inner-valley production types to the high-altitude agropastoral strategy.

19. In Switzerland potatoes were also grown year after year without rotation, and according to one report were cultivated in this way for generations without a sign of declining yield (Netting 1981:163). In the Andes, by contrast, potato fields were usually rotated and also fallowed for several years (in some areas for four to seven years) before being used again—in part to decrease crop losses from nematodes. Here many communities enforced this rotation and fallow system through communal regulations, a practice now known as sectoral fallow.

20. According to estimates offered by eleven Nauje families (average size 4.5 adults, including 1.1 servants and .7 children, counting teenagers as adults), a household required twenty-five loads per year of potatoes. In Nauje loads of

potatoes are often calculated at four tins per load, with a tin nearly 12 kilograms. This gives 1,200 kilograms of potatoes per year, or .72 kilograms per adult per day. Families from other villages, however, seem to consume a good deal more potatoes than do Nauje villagers.

21. The eleven families interviewed about family food requirements estimated their grain consumption at 15.4 muri per year (a muri is equal to 2.4 bushels or 90.9 liters and varies in weight with the type of grain), a little more than a metric ton of grain. One-third to one-half of this grain requirement was rice (70 kg/muri). Nauje villagers, however, probably tend to consume more grain than villagers elsewhere in Khumbu.

22. On my return to Khumbu in 1990, after having been away since 1987, I was told of a great tasting new sauce that could be used on potato pancakes. This proved to be mayonnaise! Families who own lodges may be particularly inclined to incorporate foreign foods into the family diet on a regular basis.

23. It may be that families for whom selling some surplus is an important component of their household economy are relatively quick to adopt higher-yielding varieties of potatoes, although further research will be needed to establish this. But it is certainly also true that many families with no interest in the sale of surplus are also often quite interested in new higher-yielding varieties. For example, such varieties have tended to be very rapidly adopted in Nauje, a settlement where almost no one raises a surplus. The interest in higher-yielding varieties seems to be widespread in a region in which land is scarce relative to food requirements. The price of potatoes at the weekly market in Nauje is the same for all varieties of potatoes, regardless of the local value put on one over another in terms of taste.

24. Formerly some goats were also kept until they were regionally banned at the request of Sagarmatha National Park administrators.

25. Apparently hay is not grown in walled fields in Rolwaling and only a little wild grass is cut for hay from steep slopes.

26. Gunsa holdings (or land in Nauje) enable families to eat fresh potatoes two or three weeks earlier than the main village harvest, a much appreciated benefit in August when the year's potato stockpile has been exhausted.

27. This practice also common at lower altitudes in Nepal (Metz 1989:160).

28. In a few cases, however, the women of wealthy families simply supervise the fieldwork of hired agricultural laborers.

29. The importance of demographic change, and particularly population growth, in mountain cultural ecology was highlighted by Netting (1981) and MacFarlane (1976). The role of the demographic cycle in household land use, however, was largely neglected in Himalayan studies until Fricke's recent work on the Tamangs (1986).

30. Care must be taken not to overgeneralize from Chayanov's model, however. Fricke (1986) notes that Chayanov's analysis of Russian peasant family dynamics was not entirely applicable to Nepal's Tamang population with its different cultural concepts of marriage, household economy, kinship, mutual aid, and other socioeconomic institutions, practices, and values. The same is certainly true of Khumbu Sherpas.

31. Ortner reports that youngest sons sometimes refuse to care for their parents (1978). While this may occur in Shorung, it is very rare in Khumbu.

32. An adult woman who is part of a reciprocal labor group can easily plant and harvest enough potatoes and buckwheat to meet household requirements in these staples, provided that the household owns sufficient land. Supporting young children may not be as great a burden as might be supposed. Women take their babies and young children to the fields with them when childcare is not available.

33. The prospective son-in-law of a woman whose parents have no sons works for his in-laws as a son once the engagement begins. He also tries to help out his own family until the time of the marriage ceremony and his formal move into his in-laws' home.

1. Such poor harvests are not disastrous since families have long been able to make up shortcomings through obtaining extra stocks of low-altitude grown grain as well as by trading for or purchasing surplus potatoes from regions of Khumbu which may have been less affected by poor weather or disease. These added expenses (and in former days the greater work they required to haul bartered grain from the Nepal midlands) are an inconvenience to all, and poorer families sometimes have to lessen the amount of grain in their diets during years when they have had a poor buckwheat harvest. But there is no memory of a Khumbu famine.

2. More land could be put to crops than is currently cultivated and there are even substantial areas of abandoned terraces in some parts of Khumbu. The wide floors of the upper valleys between 3,800 and 4,500 meters in particular are used more for hay and grazing than for growing crops even though potatoes and probably barley will flourish throughout this range and buckwheat can be grown to 4,000 meters. Terraces could also easily be extended in many gunsa areas and a number of main villages although the best land is already in cultivation.

3. Both terrace risers and the walls that protect the fields are similarly constructed with unmortared stone. Some terrace risers are very carefully built and in Phurtse some old terraces are even anchored into the slope with timbers. The degree of care taken in constructing field walls varies tremendously reflecting differing assessments of the degree of risk from livestock. In Phurtse, for example, walls may be only a single stone high, serving more as a boundary marker than a barrier, and there are excellent, large fields in the central part of the village having no walls at all.

4. There is evidence that some of these areas have podzolic palaeosol spodosols buried below their brown grassland soils. This suggests that forest once covered those regions and was subsequently modified by climatic change and/or human impacts (Byers 1987c: 212; Hardie et al. 1987:19).

5. Several other soil conditions are also considered to be poor for crop growing. In the few areas where they occur in Khumbu waterlogged soils, for example, are regarded as a problem and special care is thought necessary in order to grow crops there.

6. Autumn frost is not considered a problem for potatoes.

7. There was considerable spring frost damage in some settlements in 1981 (Thamicho, Khumjung, Kunde) and in 1984 (Pangboche, Phurtse, Khumjung, Kunde, Dingboche). In 1986 frost was a problem throughout the region.

8. Radish is considered to be much less vulnerable to frost damage.

9. In 1986, for example, Phurtse villagers reported five or six frost days during April, and three or four were reported for Khumjung.

10. In this area the circumambulation is performed by monks from Thami monastery. That year the head lama of the monastery had chosen to make the circumambulation accompanied by two foreign tourists. Some villagers concluded after the frost that the presence of the foreigners was the cause for the failure of the protective rites.

11. Too much rain, however, is rarely a problem in the drier, high-altitude crop sites.

12. In Phurtse one Sherpa noted a connection between the two unusually heavy rains, observing that heavy tenju rains only occur in years when there has been a major yerchu rain. The heavy rain and snowfalls of autumn 1985 and 1987 were not considered to be tenju, although in 1987 more than 125 millimeters of rain fell within a twenty-four-hour period in Nauje.

13. Himalayan tahr are a problem, for example, in the potato fields at Rhokumbinan, adjacent to Nauje, and Nyeshe and Tashilung in the lower Bhote Kosi valley, and in some gunsa near Phurtse where they are reported to dig up potatoes with their hooves. Pheasants are a problem in Phurtse, the eastermost fields of Khumjung, Sonasa, Samde, and other areas. Fifteen or twenty birds at a time may pick over a field, rooting up potatoes and eating buckwheat seed. Choughs can make such an impact on freshly planted barley and buckweed seed that many farmers plant extra seed to make up for the share taken by the birds. Farmers try to scare off birds and wildlife. Some make replicas of bamboo traps and put these around their fields in the hope that it will keep pheasants out. In Nauje several families have begun to suspend lines of audio cassette tape across their fields, where they wave, glint in the sun, and hopefully discourage choughs. Earlier in the century, when wildlife or birds became too much of a problem, farmers called in the Nauje blacksmiths to shoot them. Sherpas themselves do not hunt, but the Hindu blacksmiths formerly kept guns and were willing to kill wildlife.

14. Sherpas note that blight affects buckwheat at the time it flowers in midsummer. Cases are described in which blight-infected buckwheat formed linear patterns across fields, corresponding, Sherpas believe, to the track taken by livestock that had strayed into the field during the summer.

15. Sherpas are not sure about the origins of the name shimbak or the meaning of the word. Some Sherpas consider that it must refer to shi , death. An anonymous reviewer of this manuscript suggested that the word might be derived from the Tibetan shing bak , or "field pollution."

16. Late blight was first reported in the Himalaya in 1883 at Darjeeling. It spread rapidly into adjacent eastern highland areas of Bhutan and Nepal. By 1897 it was also being reported in northern Uttar Pradesh in the Indian Himalaya west of Nepal. Since 1900 blight has been prevalent throughout the Himal-

ayan potato-cultivating region. In middle-altitude eastern Himalayan areas, including Darjeeling, it occurs annually (Dutt 1964:70-71). Khumbu cases are remembered from before 1920.

17. In 1987 blight first appeared in Nauje in June and by mid-July most of the village's red and yellow potato plants had died. By that time there was also blight in Kunde, Khumjung, Teshinga, and Thamicho. Even in August, however, the infestation was minor in Pangboche and Phurtse. The spread of blight in 1987 might have been associated with the wetter than normal conditions, and local farmers also attributed it to violations of the community regulations believed to prevent the spread of blight.

18. People are still restricted from working in summer fields in some communities, including Pangboche, Phurtse, and Dingboche. Livestock are still excluded from Khumjung, Kunde, Phurtse, Pangboche, and Dingboche during the critical months of blight risk.

19. Warts have not led to major crop failures in Khumbu, but apparently have in some other Sherpa-inhabited regions. Sherpas in the Salpa area blame this disease for a major disaster about 1980 when entire crops of red potatoes and kyuma varieties failed. After this many families abandoned cultivating those two varieties and instead have relied on the yellow potato, which like the other varieties was originally obtained from Khumbu.

20. High rainfall in the upper Dudh Kosi valley, for example, is considered by some Phurtse people to be beneficial for hay and potato crops on the eastern side of the river, while the shadier fields on the other side of the river produce good hay but very poor potato harvests.

21. The main advantage here is that gunsa fields can be prepared, planted, and also harvested earlier than the main village fields that are slightly higher in altitude. A family can thus cultivate substantially more land through its own labor efforts than would otherwise be possible. Land in the high-altitude, secondary agricultural sites and the high-herding areas offers less of an advantage, for the tasks of the agricultural cycle often overlap with those in the main village, stretching the ability of households to conduct both simultaneously and sometimes forcing them to delay practices that optimally might be conducted slightly earlier. In terms of labor scheduling alone a family would be better off with more land in the main village rather than plots scattered at several locations in the upper valley.

22. Pangboche, Phurtse, and Nauje families do not own very much gunsa land, although in the Nauje case the main village fields are situated at an altitude comparable to gunsa elsewhere. Nauje households also do not own much high-altitude crop land. Khumjung and Kunde families own relatively little high-altitude crop land in comparison to the holdings of Phurtse, Pangboche and the Thamicho villages.

23. Maize (Sherpa litsi ) was grown by one Nauje family thirty years ago. They grew it, however, not in Nauje itself but rather in a set of gunsa terraces at Jangdingma, a place along the shore of the Bhote Kosi at an altitude of approximately 2,800 meters. Wheat is no longer grown in Khumbu as a food crop, although it is raised on a very small scale for fodder. A generation ago, however,

it was raised for grain by Nauje families at Tashilung (3,400m). This raises questions about the reason for its relative lack of importance regionally both today and in the past.

24. Very little Khumbu land is put to vegetables. Mustard is grown by a few families in Nauje as a second crop following potatoes, which must be harvested slightly early to allow this. A few other families intercrop potatoes and mustard in fields adjacent to the house, broadcasting the mustard seed and covering it with earth scooped with a weeding tool. The mustard ripens earlier than the potato and is picked as it ripens. Mustard leaves are pickled (shotzi ) and this is virtually the sole vegetable available in winter when it is very commonly eaten in noodle soups. No other vegetables are ever grown as field crops, although a few are raised in household gardens and window boxes. The largest gardens are found in Nauje where several dozen households raise plots, mostly pocket-sized patches on odd corners of ground between houses and adjacent trails and at the edge of terraces. Fewer than 10 percent of households even here, however, keep a garden as large as 100 square meters. Elsewhere in Khumbu gardens even of this size are very rare. Special care is taken with gardens, which are well-fertilized and watered. In March and April some people also protect vegetable seedbeds by covering them or by standing boughs of dwarf rhododendron (kisur ) around the bed as a sort of tiny hedge or erecting these all through the plot. This is said to protect the seedlings from wind, heavy rain, frost, and strong sunlight.

25. The twentieth century decline of buckwheat cultivation is discussed in chapter 6.

26. The main barley grown in the adjacent Tingri region of Tibet is a naked white barley that is distinct from the Pharak variety. In the Tingri area the black Dingboche variety occurs only rarely, interspersed in white barley fields. Sherpas who have traveled through the area during the growing season note that only a few black barley plants per field is usual. The white Tibetan variety was grown in Khumbu up until the early twentieth century, but only in the Bhote Kosi valley, an area in which no barley cultivation whatsoever is any longer attempted. The custom of cultivating only black barley at Dingboche may have origins in local environmental and agronomic knowledge. One man who experimented recently with cultivating white Tibetan barley at Dingboche reported that the grain had not matured well and required not only a longer growing season but also more irrigation.

27. Barley responds to nitrogenous fertilizers by producing higher yields as a result of the increased photosynthesizing area it develops. Fertilizer use can also encourage a higher concentration of protein in the grain (Langer and Hill 1982:54). The benefits of higher-protein grains and increased grain yields may be especially high with a short-stem variety such as that raised in Khumbu, where the additional nutrients are channeled less to increasing stem height than to other parts of the plant.

28. Buckwheat, by contrast, is considered very inauspicious. Wheat and millet are also considered ritually impure. No millet, buckwheat, or wheat can be offered to the gods. In the case of millet its black color is the offensive quality.

29. It is also noted for having the ability to soak up much larger amounts of tea than other tsampa, a quality to which much importance is attached in Khumbu.

30. One Pangboche field, however, yields at best just under a one-to-four-ratio, and at worst yields only two to three pathi of grain from four to five pathi planted.

31. To is never planted, but instead grows as a volunteer (to yem ) in potato and buckwheat fields and is harvested for its edible root. Care is taken to leave some plants in the fields to seed in order to ensure a harvest the following year. There is no oral history record of it having been grown as a crop in Khumbu. It is interesting, however, that it today and in the remembered past this plant only grows in fields, possibly reflecting original planting or at least transplanting. It is distributed from Nauje to high-altitude settlements such as Dingboche. The tuber is quite astringent and elaborate preparations are necessary to render it edible. It must be washed, dried in the sun, and then ground into flour (to pe ) that is then mashed into sen mush, cooked into soup, and then finally rolled by hand into noodles. These noodles have to be eaten without chewing, for if chewed they burn the throat. To is occasionally eaten in a porridge, but if this is done it is also considered important to bolt it down without chewing.

32. The Sherpa custom of not eating potato skins unfortunately deprives them of a significant source of nutrition. They do feed them, however, to livestock along with other table scraps.

33. Potatoes were introduced to one area in southern Dolpo, for example, only forty or fifty years ago by a lama who brought them from an area two passes to the west towards Jumla. They were adopted quickly, and made a major difference in the subsistence of poorer families who were able to become self-sufficient in their food production as a result (J. Fisher 1986b :58). Potatoes conceivably also could have been introduced relatively late to higher-altitude areas of Dolpo and to the far northwest of Nepal. The rate of cultural adoption of a new crop can also vary enormously after it has been locally introduced. In the case mentioned above the rate of adoption was rapid. Potatoes were accepted only very slowly in Europe, however, after their initial introduction around 1570. Even in Ireland, where they became a staple earlier than elsewhere, potatoes had replaced porridge and wheat bread in only a small part of the region by the 1770s and were really only widely incorporated in local diets after 1790 (Salaman 1985:494-507). Its importance in Germany and the Alps came only in the eighteenth century after a series of famines spurred efforts by government, clergy, and learned landowners to promote it. Local cultural biases against the new crop were overcome only slowly (Netting 1981:160-161).

34. Today only eighty-one varieties of potato are reported for Nepal (Khanal 1988:28), a meagre range in comparison with the more than 12,000 named varieties known in Peru (Brush 1987:276). All the Nepal varieties belong to a single species (Solanum tuberosum ), while in the Andes seven species were domesticated by Neolithic farmers (ibid.).

33. Potatoes were introduced to one area in southern Dolpo, for example, only forty or fifty years ago by a lama who brought them from an area two passes to the west towards Jumla. They were adopted quickly, and made a major difference in the subsistence of poorer families who were able to become self-sufficient in their food production as a result (J. Fisher 1986b :58). Potatoes conceivably also could have been introduced relatively late to higher-altitude areas of Dolpo and to the far northwest of Nepal. The rate of cultural adoption of a new crop can also vary enormously after it has been locally introduced. In the case mentioned above the rate of adoption was rapid. Potatoes were accepted only very slowly in Europe, however, after their initial introduction around 1570. Even in Ireland, where they became a staple earlier than elsewhere, potatoes had replaced porridge and wheat bread in only a small part of the region by the 1770s and were really only widely incorporated in local diets after 1790 (Salaman 1985:494-507). Its importance in Germany and the Alps came only in the eighteenth century after a series of famines spurred efforts by government, clergy, and learned landowners to promote it. Local cultural biases against the new crop were overcome only slowly (Netting 1981:160-161).

34. Today only eighty-one varieties of potato are reported for Nepal (Khanal 1988:28), a meagre range in comparison with the more than 12,000 named varieties known in Peru (Brush 1987:276). All the Nepal varieties belong to a single species (Solanum tuberosum ), while in the Andes seven species were domesticated by Neolithic farmers (ibid.).

35. There may be several different varieties of development potato currently being grown in Khumbu. The one that is being adopted for food and fodder use has a pink or purple flower. There is another variety, however, that

has a white flower and which some people say has a quite bad taste and is unfit for consumption.

36. Relatively high yields have also been reported for Swiss villages in which potatoes were a major summer crop. Netting reports 1960s' yields of nineteen metric tons per hectare (Netting 1981:163). This, of course, is at a much lower altitude (1,500m) than Khumbu, but also is from fields situated near the uppermost limits of potato cultivation in Switzerland (ibid.:191). The Swiss national average production of forty-two tons per hectare is the highest in the world (Langer and Hill 1982:281).

35. There may be several different varieties of development potato currently being grown in Khumbu. The one that is being adopted for food and fodder use has a pink or purple flower. There is another variety, however, that

has a white flower and which some people say has a quite bad taste and is unfit for consumption.

36. Relatively high yields have also been reported for Swiss villages in which potatoes were a major summer crop. Netting reports 1960s' yields of nineteen metric tons per hectare (Netting 1981:163). This, of course, is at a much lower altitude (1,500m) than Khumbu, but also is from fields situated near the uppermost limits of potato cultivation in Switzerland (ibid.:191). The Swiss national average production of forty-two tons per hectare is the highest in the world (Langer and Hill 1982:281).

37. The finest yields of all are considered to come from the middle and upper Bhote Kosi valley, a region of Khumbu that is also noted for being relatively arid by Khumbu standards. The ability of potatoes to thrive in areas of moderate rainfall is also recognized in the Alps, where one local proverb in a village located in the lowest-rainfall region of the country proclaims "the drier the mountain, the better the potatoes" (F. G. Stebler, Sonnige Halden am Lötschberg 1914, cited in Netting 1981:163).

38. Inability to maintain viable seed potatoes is a factor in potato cultivation at middle and low altitudes in Nepal and as a result seed potatoes are often obtained by these farmers from high-altitude areas. Khumbu Sherpas supply some seed potatoes, for example, to Rais and middle-altitude Sherpas who come to Khumbu to obtain them.

39. Potato yields similar to those in Khumbu have been reported for traditional varieties cultivated with traditional technologies at the horticultural farm at Lumle (5,500m) in the hill country south of the Annapurna Himal, where twenty metric tons per hectare have been produced (Khanal 1988:27).

40. Potatoes were weighed in monocropped, yellow potato fields at Nauje (four fields), Pangboche (six fields), Dingboche (six fields), Thami Og (three fields), and Tarnga (two fields). Monocropped, red-potato-field yields were weighed at Nauje (four fields), Pangboche (two fields), and Dingboche (two fields). Tarnga yellow potatoes produced far better than Dingboche ones did, yielding 4.75 kilograms per square meter.

41. Small amounts of brown potatoes are also grown at lower altitudes and are planted, for example, by a few households in Thami Og and in Nauje.

42. The higher yellow potato yields may well be related to the larger leaf area of this variety, for leaf area is the key factor in determining yield once adequate moisture and soil nutrients are available (Langer and Hill 1982:281). The variety's large leaf area also acts to shade out weeds, which farmers consider to be less of a problem with yellow potatoes than with red ones.

43. Site as well as altitude, however, can also be a factor. Yellow potatoes grown at Tarnga (4,000m) are considered to be very good tasting (although not as good as red potatoes from the same place), far superior to potatoes grown at similar heights in the Dudh Kosi or Imja Khola valleys. Farmers in the Bhote Kosi valley, however, feel that the yellow potato changes in taste above Tarnga and only a few grow it at Arye and Apsona.

44. Some people recall that kyuma and koru 2 stored even better than the yellow potato does.

45. All crop and hay land is owned by nuclear households with the exception of a small number of fields that are owned by the Tengboche monastery in the upper Imja Khola valley and Lobuche Khola region and rented to individual Sherpa farming families.

46. There is certainly much interest in land purchase, for many families do not own enough land to produce all of their household's requirements of potatoes and buckwheat and few families own barley land. In recent years Nauje families have been especially active in purchasing land, most of it from Thamicho families. Many of the purchasers have been Khamba families who previously owned little land and have now acquired the means to do so from earnings from tourism. They find, however, that it is difficult to find sellers in most of the region. Today land is primarily sold for cash, with prices varying not only with the quality, size, and location of a field but also with the social context of the exchange, for relatives and friends may be given generous terms. Land prices vary greatly between villages. Ten to fifteen thousand rupees ($333-$500) will buy a 300-square-meter field in the famous potato-growing settlement of Tarnga, but the same size field would cost 25,000 to 30,000 rupees in Nauje, where its yield would be between ten and eighteen loads at best. A field with possible commercial value as a site for a lodge, however, could well command a price of over 100,000 rupees in Nauje.

47. In practice the division of land and livestock among sons may not always be equal (see Ortner 1989). Women normally do not inherit land, but receive instead household goods, jewelry, and cash at the time of their marriage. Occasionally, however, the daughters of wealthy families or of families without male heirs may inherit fields (gyashing ). Such inheritances sometimes underlie anomalous land-holding patterns. The ownership by some Khumjung families of land in Phurtse and in otherwise solely Phurtse family-inhabited high-altitude herding settlements can be traced to a Phurtse woman who brought title to these lands to the Khumjung household into which she married.

48. The Tengboche monastery owns more than twenty cropfields and another twenty hayfields in a number of widely scattered areas in the Imja Khola valley. These include fourteen fields at Dingboche and seven or eight at Pangboche, plus hayfields at Pheriche (seven), Phulungkarpo (three), Yarin (two), Omoka (one), Ralha (one) and others at Tsadorji, Lobuche, Tugla and Kuma. These lands were bequethed to the institution by Sherpa families. Rents for these lands are very nominal and are used to finance prayers on behalf of their former owners. Giving land (or animals) to the monastery gains one good merit for future rebirths. The monastery above Thami Og, the other major Khumbu institutions, owns no hayfields and only two or three fields at Thami Teng and Tarnga.

49. Rent for Tengboche monastery-owned fields at Dingboche, for example, can be paid in barley, the amount being calculated for each field by the monks on the basis of its size and usual productivity. A rent of twenty to thirty pathi of barley, between a fourth and a half of the usual harvest, is typical. Renters must provide all their own inputs, including seed, fertilizer, and labor. This contrasts with tenant farming where the harvest is divided equally, but the landowner is obligated to provide seed and other inputs.

50. These men received this labor as payment for their services and were required to submit all the tax receipts themselves to the central government. As far as people today are aware the gembu did not receive any taxes. According to Hari Ram's nineteenth-century account, however, they may have claimed 15 percent of the net revenue of the region as their pay (Ortner 1989:23). During the twentieth century, at least, no labor had to be given to the gembu.

51. Although one twentieth-century Khumjung pembu acquired lands both in the Khumjung-Kunde region and in other areas through adroit use of the powers of his office, it does not appear that in general Khumbu pembu were able or interested in doing so. Those who had extensive lands by Khumbu standards—a hectare or two of fields—usually came by these through inheritance and often had family fortunes based on trade and livestock rather than on crop production. The degree to which their offices contributed to their accruing cash for trade enterprises is a question that requires further exploration. So too does the issue of whether or not the government in effect created a wealthy elite through conveying pembu privileges as Ortner suggests (Ortner 1989:92, 109-111) or only recognized already wealthy and locally powerful individuals and lineages.

52. There is also a house tax. Half a century ago this was six percent of a rupee per floor at a time when the day labor rate was one rupee per day. Today the rate is 2.5 rupees per floor.

53. Exceptions to the typical gender-based division of labor sometimes reflect household shortages of labor as well as cases of individual preference. Some women who herd, for example, do not do this by choice. In discussing two Thami Og families and one Thami Teng family in which daughters tend nak all year in the remote herding settlements one Sherpa observed they were doing so only because their families had made that decision for them.

In the adjacent Tibetan area of Tingri a similar gender-based division of labor exists. Here women do most agricultural work and men tend to herd, but women when necessary take up herding duties (Aziz 1978:108).

54. Separate groups are organized for each activity, and usually a single group of women does not remain together for all the activities of an agricultural season. Groups contain women of various ages, who may or may not be relatives or neighbors. The composition of groups also often changes from year to year. Ngalok are also organized for gathering fuel wood, and these can be mixed-sex or even all-male groups.

55. Wages can also be paid in food. This was formerly more common, but it remains customary in some places, particularly for haycutting. Wages may be paid in potatoes, grain, or butter. A ghar (about half a kilogram) of butter, for instance, might be paid for six days of labor, or a price might be set by the field for haycutting, which might range from one to three ghar depending on the size of the field. Thamicho laborers may also be paid in potatoes for some field tasks. A day's work weeding fields, for example, paid ten or eleven kilograms of potatoes in 1987.

56. Most of these migrants remain in Khumbu for two to five years, working for a Sherpa family on a year-round basis as a kind of household servant. A few come only for the harvest season. Those who stay on year round as hired hands

are given responsibilities that range from childcare and kitchen work to field labor, woodcutting and water hauling. Some are also given the opportunity to work with the men of the household as porters or camp staff on trekking tours, thus trading months of relatively low-paid labor for the chance to make a few months of good wages in tourism. After several years young migrant workers take their accumulated savings and return to their home regions, the money often being put towards dowries, wedding costs, and land. Only one has thus far stayed on to settle permanently in Khumbu. In 1984 house servants in Nauje could expect a wage of 2,000 rupees per year if they were considered good workers. By 1987 this had doubled. Household servants who join family members for seasonal trekking work may choose to keep their full earnings from this work and in return for this wage-labor opportunity they work the rest of the year in the household with their upkeep as their only pay.

57. There are a few household servants in Khumjung and Kunde, one in Phurtse, and none in Pangboche and Thamicho. In Nauje, however, in the autumn of 1990 at least fifty households had roughly ninety-two people employed as household servants. Of these forty-nine were non-Khumbu Sherpas, twenty were Tamangs, and seven were Rais. Most servants were young men, but thirteen were women.

According to James Fisher (1990:122) a majority of the households of Khumjung and Kunde had at least one servant as early as 1978, when they were given six rupees per day in wages as well as their food and a place to sleep. Many of these workers, however, may have been seasonal agricultural laborers rather than year-round servants. Even today only about a sixth of Kunde households have servants.

58. This differential between agricultural day wages and portering wages has been characteristic for at least thirty-five years. In 1957 a wage of three-quarters of a rupee to a rupee a day for women was reported, with two rupees a day paid to men who pulled a plow (draft plowing had not yet become widespread in Khumbu) (Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:42). Early mountaineering expeditions, by contrast, paid 7.5 rupees per day for portering work between Nauje and Everest base camp (ibid. :87).

57. There are a few household servants in Khumjung and Kunde, one in Phurtse, and none in Pangboche and Thamicho. In Nauje, however, in the autumn of 1990 at least fifty households had roughly ninety-two people employed as household servants. Of these forty-nine were non-Khumbu Sherpas, twenty were Tamangs, and seven were Rais. Most servants were young men, but thirteen were women.

According to James Fisher (1990:122) a majority of the households of Khumjung and Kunde had at least one servant as early as 1978, when they were given six rupees per day in wages as well as their food and a place to sleep. Many of these workers, however, may have been seasonal agricultural laborers rather than year-round servants. Even today only about a sixth of Kunde households have servants.

58. This differential between agricultural day wages and portering wages has been characteristic for at least thirty-five years. In 1957 a wage of three-quarters of a rupee to a rupee a day for women was reported, with two rupees a day paid to men who pulled a plow (draft plowing had not yet become widespread in Khumbu) (Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:42). Early mountaineering expeditions, by contrast, paid 7.5 rupees per day for portering work between Nauje and Everest base camp (ibid. :87).

59. Men are generally paid slightly more than women for ordinary field work. Cutting hay and wild grass, which are mainly handled by men, also pays much better than other agricultural work. In 1987, when agricultural day wages of less than twenty rupees per day were common, wages for cutting wild grass were twenty-five to thirty rupees per day in Nauje, thirty-five to fifty rupees in Phurtse, and forty-five rupees per day in Kunde. In the upper Imja Khola valley haycutting wages jumped from thirty rupees in 1986 for Pangboche men to forty rupees per day in 1987 when it became difficult to find men willing to forgo mountaineering-porter wages. In 1990 the wage for haycutting at Pangboche was eighty rupees per day, double the wage in that region for agricultural day labor.

60. The iron heads of these hoes are today obtained from Kathmandu. Formerly they came from the iron-mining center of Those.

61. Buckwheat is nearly always grown in a rotation with potatoes, and it is felt that if a field is manured every other year when potatoes are planted that soil

fertility will be sufficient for buckwheat cultivation the next year even without further manuring. In the rare instances when buckwheat is planted several years in succession in the same field it is considered important to manure the field well the second year.

62. This is considered a relatively meager haul, and lower than in earlier years. Increasing competition, partly sparked by interest in gathering dung for local sale, has made it increasingly hard to find nearby the settlement. Dung is in far more demand commercially for fertilizer than for fuel.

63. In 1987 some Nauje families completed their planting by March 19 while others were only then beginning. The earliest planting was carried out on March 8. In 1991, however, many families began planting a week or two earlier.

64. Occasionally there are a few men in these groups, usually hired agricultural laborers. It is more common for one or two men to continue to carry loads of fertilizer to the fields in which women are planting, dumping the loads and then returning for more while the women quickly spread the fertilizer over unplanted portions of the field and begin working it in as they plant. Not all fields are planted by group labor, and it is most common to see men working when families attend entirely to their own planting. These are usually households with so little land that mobilizing the entire family for a few days sees the work through.

65. A few families in Nauje and Khumjung who have relatively large potato-fields now find it expedient to have them plowed by hired crossbreed teams rather than dug by hand. A large field that might require two days to dig by a crew of ten or more women can be plowed in a day. Substantial savings can be achieved by hiring a plow team rather than agricultural day laborers to prepare a field. Paying for plowing, however, may be more expensive than simply providing food and drink for a reciprocal work group. Harvests from plowed potato fields appear to be satisfactory, but some Sherpas believe that hoe cultivation is essential to achieve the best yields.

66. Seed potatoes are not seeds at all, but tubers that send out new stems, roots, and rhizomes from "eyes." Each stem arising from an eye becomes a new plant and there is no physical connection between them once the mother tuber dies (Langer and Hill 1982:278-279).

67. Seed potatoes that are small reduce the chances of disease (Langer and Hill 1982:281). Using cut pieces of potato increases the chances of loss of planting material due to disease.

68. The diversity of potato varieties planted per field and per family in some parts of the Andes is much higher. In eastern slope areas of Peru with fertile, volcanic soils and a comparable 3,000 to 3,800-meter altitudinal range a hundred or more varieties of potatoes may be grown in a single village. Individual families may have a repertoire of fifty varieties. The more meagre level of diversity found in Khumbu, however, is similar to that found in other areas of highland Peru where microclimatic conditions are drier. Villages in the western-slope Andean valleys at altitudes of more than 3,800 meters may cultivate fewer than twenty varieties and individual families may grow only five to ten varieties (Brush 1987:277).

69. In Nauje radishes are planted in late April. In Khumjung radish planting is done in early May, well before buckwheat is planted. In Pangboche, by contrast, radish may be planted several weeks later as the last event of the planting season.

70. In the Dudh Kosi valley potato planting is well underway at Phurtse by April 14 and in early May families are planting in Na, Tsom, and Charchung in the upper valley. Planting schedules in the Imja Khola valley are more complicated due to the requirements of barley sowing there (see below). In 1991 mild spring weather encouraged earlier planting; Tarnga was being planted in mid-April and by May 8 potato planting was completed in the Bhote Kosi valley.

71. This low-to-high sequence of planting is followed by most families in Khumbu, but in Pangboche a more complex sequence is common, as described later in this chapter.

72. According to one learned Tibetan monk living in Pangboche Sherpas do not follow the proper procedures for consulting horoscopes about planting times. Both the horoscopes of the man directing the plow and the woman broadcasting the seed should be consulted, he notes, and an astrological recommendation should also be taken concerning the direction in which the first furrow should be plowed.

73. Kunde and Khumjung families with fields at Dingboche mostly adopt a contrasting pattern. After barley planting they tend to return to Khumjung and Kunde for potato planting and then make another trip to Dingboche to plant potatoes in mid-May before the buckwheat in the main village requires sowing.

74. In 1987 the barleyfields of Dingboche were plowed by five teams of crossbreeds and a single yak. Most families relied on hiring the plow-team and its owner. Four of the teams were composed of two urang zopkio (male cross-breeds of yak and lower-altitude Bos indicus cows) each and one consisted of a pair of dimzo (male crossbreeds of nak and Tibetan Bos taurus bulls)

75. In the past few years there have been several experiments with irrigating other crops and there is some interest in irrigating hayfields.

76. In Dingboche this task is rotated among all the resident households, with a fixed order that is much more formalized than rotations of office elsewhere in Khumbu. One nawa is chosen from the houses above the main irrigation channel, and one from those below. In both cases families serve in a sequence that corresponds to their upstream position, beginning with the furthest upstream house and proceeding down through the settlement. All settlement residents are included in the rotation, which involves families from four villages.

77. A similar, special ceremony known as sa yang ("earth luck") is held in parts of Tibet.

78. They admit, however, that the opposite was said to be true that year in Pangboche. Such differing results may explain the persistence of such totally different responses and the lack of any single, accepted strategy for dealing with frost damage to buckwheat. There is also no universal agreement on which of two possible replanting techniques to use. The more common method is to use a small weeding tool to dig in the seed. People who did this after the 1986 frost

believe that they had better harvests than did people who instead broadcasted seed after scratching furrows with a thorn branch.

79. The more internationally renowned Mani Rimdu is not regarded by Sherpas in the same way, although it has often been depicted as the most characteristic Sherpa festival. Mani Rimdu, held at the Tengboche and Thami monasteries, consists of a multiday series of rituals and a day-long, masked dance drama celebrating the triumph of Buddhism over Bon in Tibet. It has none of Dumje's significance for community life, does not celebrate local history or religious heroes, and was introduced into the region only in the 1920s by the head lama of the Rumbu monastery on the Tibetan side of Everest.

80. Many Sherpas believe that the celebration was originated by Lama Sanga Dorje or his followers, who introduced it to Thami Og and Thami Teng, Pangboche, and to the temple at Rimijung in Pharak. Many Khumbu Sherpas regard the ceremony as a kind of memorial service celebrating him. Before 1830 Khumjung villagers celebrated Dumje in Thami Teng, whereas Kunde villagers went to Pangboche. In 1830, after arguments in Thamicho over Dumje administration, Khumjung villagers decided to build a new temple in their own village and organized their own Dumje rites. Kunde villagers also began to celebrate the rites there, as did Nauje families until a quarrel led to their own building of a temple in 1908. Only in Nauje is the festival today purely a single-village celebration. Elsewhere in Khumbu two or more communities come together each day for the rites, spectacles, and feasts and share in the responsibility for staging and administering them. It is the one festival of the year that absolutely everyone tries to attend. Sherpas even return from Kathmandu specifically for Dumje and herders who seldom come down to the villages try to catch at least a few days. Entire herds are often moved down from the high country for a few weeks so that families can be together with their fellow villagers to carry out the preparations and celebration.

81. Sherpas in other regions also have Dumje. Dumje is also held in Pharak (at Rimijung), Shorung (Junbesi), Golila-Gepchua (Golila) and the Likhu Khola region (Sete). Pharak holds the ceremony in summer as Khumbu does, but in the other areas it is a spring rite that contains some dances having clear fertility symbolism. An attempt some years ago to introduce these dances to Nauje ended in a fiasco when an outraged Sherpa woman grabbed a whip and chased off the participants.

82. In 1986 the festival was held on June 14-20, for example, whereas in 1987 it took place on July 4-10.

83. Fuel wood cut during the summer months is collected and stored just outside an agreed-on boundary line beyond the village and its fields. This can be seen today in the Phurtse area where large woodpiles appear each August on the western bank of the Dudh Kosi. Pangboche also bans freshly cut fuel wood from being brought into the village after crop planting is completed in May.

84. Some Sherpas also note that it is extremely unfortunate for villagers to die during the height of the dangerous blight season, because their deaths can trigger the outbreak of blight.

85. A few Nauje families also harvest some fields at this time in order to

clear land for a second crop of mustard or barley. Both are harvested by October. The barley does not produce mature grain, but is useful as fodder.

86. In 1987 the Nauje harvest was begun on August 25 in Thami Og, Thami Teng, and Yulajung at the beginning of September, in Khumjung and Kunde on September 7, and in Pangboche on September 21. In Nauje and Thami Og all but a few fields had been harvested by September 10, but elsewhere the work required from ten days to nearly three weeks longer. In Pangboche, for example, many families were still harvesting potatoes on October 1. The slower pace there, however, was related to the need to suspend work in the main village for part of September in order to harvest barley at Dingboche and cut hay in the upper Imja Khola valley.

87. Hot temperatures are also considered to lead to storage rot, and occasionally shelters are constructed to shade pit areas.

88. In 1987 Phurtse families, for example, began harvesting buckwheat on September 23 and completed work about October 15. In 1987 barley harvest began on September 12 and the final field was harvested on September 21.

1. There is a complex local categorization of yak and nak, with different names to distinguish animals by age, color, size, and horn shape and size. Some types are specially prized. White is considered the finest of coat colors, and handlebar-shaped horns are highly valued. See Brower (1987:247-248) for more detail.

2. The original range of the wild yak may have been equally vast, and in the nineteenth century herds of as many as 2,000 head were reported (Perry 1981:123). This has been tremendously reduced, however, by hunting and by competition with domestic stock. Although there are still reports of wild yak in remote parts of the Changtang plateau of Tibet (Goldstein and Beall 1990:41), the wild yak may be extinct in Nepal and endangered in Tibet. The extinction of the wild yak would be a tragic loss, for it is one of the great mammals of Asia. Males stand as tall as five-and-a-half to six feet at the shoulder and have three-foot-long horns (Perry 1981:122-123).

3. Some tourists, however, mistake yak-cattle crossbreeds for yak. This greatly amuses Sherpas, who also find extremely funny tourists' references to yak's milk and butter. Yak, they point out, are male stock and do not provide milk or dairy products.

4. Yak tails were among a number of precious goods whose export or sale to foreigners was forbidden by the Chinese emperor in an edict in 714 A.D. (Schaffer 1963:24, 74).

5. For detail on the economic use of livestock in Khumbu see Brower 1987:177-187, as well as Bjønness 1980a , Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:48-52, and Palmieri 1976.

6. In Nepal the killing of females of all species of cattle and related animals is forbidden by law. Killing yak is also forbidden and Hindu Nepalis find the eating of yak abhorrent. According to legend Khumbu Sherpas were long ago

given a legal exemption from the ban on yak killing and eating, in token of which they were presented with a royal edict inscribed on a yak-head-shaped copper plaque.

7. Lack of culling has affected the age structure of Khumbu herds and may have been a factor in the great livestock losses suffered by some herders during recent severe winters. The end of culling in Khumbu probably also contributed to the increased importation of meat (primarily water buffalo) from the lower Dudh Kosi valley.

8. Yak are more often used as pack stock than nak, but kama nak, nak that are not lactating and are not considered likely to calve, were used as pack stock not only in Khumbu but also on trading journeys to Tibet.

9. Crossbreeds bred from yak sires and kirkong pamu dams are also known as dim zopkio or dimzo (male) and dim zhum (female).

10. In the Pangboche region zhum give milk six or seven months out of the year. They provide two liters of milk per day in the summer when they are milked twice per day. By autumn they are milked only once per day and only provide a quarter to a half a liter of milk each. After December or January they give no milk.

11. Breeding does not occur along entirely natural lines, and herders manipulate stock in order to accomplish the mating. Nak, for example, are reluctant to mate with lang (Tibetan bulls), which may require encouragement to proceed. Details of the skills and techniques involved are discussed in Brower (1987:245-247).

12. Palang pamu are not kept in Khumbu, where climatic conditions are believed to be too severe for them.

13. Livestock census figures for 1984 that categorize zopkio by type are not available.

14. Sheep dung is not used for fuel in Khumbu as it is in Tibet and Mongolia. Nor are sheep or goats employed today as pack animals as they are in some other high-altitude Himalayan regions, although a few Khumbu families used sheep as recently as the 1960s to haul salt and grain between Khumbu and lower-altitude regions.

15. I refer here to Sherpa-owned stock. The number of sheep that grazed in Khumbu from 1959 until the early 1960s was much higher due to the flocks that Tibetan refugees brought with them. These sheep severly overgrazed Khumbu pastures and many of them were lost to starvation. In the late nineteenth century and up until the 1960s hundreds and in some years well over a thousand Gurung sheep also grazed Khumbu each summer. Fürer-Haimendorf (1975:59) tallied 1,230 sheep and goats in the region in 1971, but unfortunately included no figure for Nauje nor did he give separate totals for sheep and goats for several villages. In 1978 Bjønness found that only forty-eight Khumbu households kept sheep or goats (12 percent of all livestock-owning households) and that only three families owned more than thirty sheep (1980a :69). A partial livestock census in 1984 found sheep kept by approximately 10 percent of Pangboche households, 8-9 percent of Kunde households, and 12 percent of those Thamicho households that were surveyed (Brower 1987:203 n. 6).

16. In Qinghai in 1984 the number of sheep was 14,392,000 whereas the combined total for cattle, horses, camels, and donkeys was 6,009,000. In Tibet these totals were 15,988,000 sheep to 5,344,000 head of other livestock and in Inner Mongolia 23,774,000 sheep to 6,972,000 head of other stock (Yan 1986:241). Goldstein, Beall, and Cincotta report that the Phala nomads of western Tibet keep herds composed of 87 percent sheep and goats and 13 percent yak (1990:141).

17. The impetus for the ban on goat keeping came from Sagarmatha National Park administrators, but the actual ban was enacted by the local Khumbu panchayat governments after a community meeting on the issue. The measure was controversial among Sherpas, some of whom believed it to be an unwarranted intrusion into traditional practices and economic freedom. Goats, like sheep and yak, are considered to be animals under the protection of the local god Khumbu Yul Lha and their effigies are among the offerings made to him at the annual Yerchang summer rites that protect the herds.

18. Lack of regionwide household data on livestock ownership by village makes it impossible to compare the numbers of households in each village following the three patterns of cattle keeping.

19. In 1987 six Kunde families and twelve Khumjung families herded nak. Kunde herd sizes varied from seventeen to twenty-six head. Half of the Khumjung families herded more than twenty head.

20. These patterns are typical only of recent years. Contrasts in herding styles among most of the villages were not so prominent in the 1950s when nak keeping was more characteristic of cattle keeping throughout Khumbu other than in Nauje. Nauje families have not been much involved in nak keeping since the early decades of the century.

21. This contrasts with the system of exclusive pasture rights for nomad encampments in part of western Tibet, which were allocated by outside authorities according to herd size until 1959 (Goldstein, Beall, and Cincotta 1990:148-149).

22. It should be noted however, that they are not village lands in the sense of the community's exclusive rights to resources. Villagers cross the boundary lines to cut timber and herd livestock in other areas without being required to own land there or pay fees. Community ownership was important, however, in decisions about how land was managed. Disputes over land have resulted in the violation of sacred and other protected forests when the particular villages enforcing protective regulations lost ownership or effective control of the land.

23. There are exceptions to this, however, which often reflect intervillage marriages and the inheritance of herding huts and hayfields from the wife's parents.

24. Bjønness was the first to identify and map village patterns of pastoral movements (1980a :71), although her effort was marred by the assumption that Kunde and Khumjung patterns were identical.

25. A few Phurtse families have herding huts at Machermo, however, and the several descendents of one Khumjung household have herding huts at Charchung, Tsom Teng, and Tarnak. These reflect land inherited through sev-

eral generations from a Phurtse woman who had brought it into the household of her Khumjung husband.

26. Two Kunde families, however, herd nak in the upper Dudh Kosi and the Bhote Kosi valleys.

27. The possible origins of the Khumbu system of communal agropastoral management are discussed in chapter 6.

28. In Pangboche (and formerly in Nauje), nawa were also in charge of enforcing some forest-use regulations as will be discussed further in chapter 5.

29. There was no rotation at Kunde, for example, where a resident pembu selected the nawa, and both Phurtse and Dingboche began rotating the office during the twentieth century (in Phurtse during the 1940s). In Khumjung, Phurtse, and perhaps also in Pangboche not all families were included in the rotation.

30. When a zone is closed to livestock usually an announcement is made publicly and a notice or barrier is set up at the border. Sometimes small sections of stone wall are set up to symbolically close trails or bridges that lead into the zone.

31. Some Khumbu families also grow radish specifically for use as fodder. In Nauje, Khumjung, and Thami Og a few families are now experimenting with growing wheat and barley for fodder in fields that are either planted at altitudes too high for the grain to mature for human food or are planted as second crops following potatoes and consequently have no chance to develop more than an edible stalk.

Forest fodder is extremely important in many middle-altitude regions of the Himalaya, and some excellent studies have been done of the role of forest grazing and fodder collection in local economies in the Indian Himalaya (Moench 1985) and in Nepal (Fox 1983; Metz 1990).

32. Tibetans in the Tingri area rely on the vast winter grazing resources of the Ganggar plain and adjacent areas. Certain areas of rich wild grass that grow in wet areas (nama or na tsa ) are considered private property in the Ganggar region and are cut in autumn as hay. Several wild grasses are also harvested from nonprivately owned rangelands, including grasses known as jap and ke , which are cut, dried, and stored in homes as winter feed.

33. In the Bhote Kosi valley the additional step may be taken of manuring the area well for several years in advance by corralling livestock at the site. One Nauje family has made use of urea fertilizer available today only from Phaphlu in Shorung and then only at a relatively high cost.

34. Payment for cutting hayfields varies somewhat regionally. Khumjung-owned hayfields in the upper Dudh Kosi valley might bring one to three ghar of butter per field in 1986. A field that might bring one ghar of butter in the upper Dudh Kosi might bring double that (or 100 rupees cash) in Thamicho.

35. The fodder shortage in Nauje is particularly acute and grass cutters from that village now go as far afield as Tarnga in the Bhote Kosi valley and Dingboche in the Imja Khola valley.

36. Most Nauje families do not have crop residues for use as fodder due to the lack of grain cultivation in the village. A few families there, however, are now growing barley and wheat for use as fodder rather than as food.

37. Usually one or two Nauje families also lease grass-cutting rights to part of the large protected meadow at the Tengboche monastery.

38. Fodder requirements here may reflect the depletion of winter grazing in the area following the abandonment of summer livestock exclosure in 1979.

39. The amount of fodder required by an urang zopkio varies, of course, with age and with the amount of free time stock have to graze. A zopkio being used for tourism work in the spring has little time to feed and must be supplied with hay.

Urang zopkio may be fed grain (e.g., dry cornmeal) as well as turnips and potatoes. Potatoes are believed to supply good energy but, as one Sherpa put it, will not fill animals' stomachs the way that hay does. Earlier in the century, before regional population growth and tourism development increased regional demand for tubers, more of these may have been fed to livestock, especially to crossbreeds and calves. Surplus tubers are still commonly used as fodder on a small scale.

40. This procurement of different types of fodder from different sources can be seen in the following examples. In the winter of 1986 and spring of 1987 one Nauje family with six urang zopkio, one cow and a horse required approximately eighty-three loads of one man (forty kilograms) each, not counting the considerable amount of bamboo cut and fed to the horse or grain given to the horse and cattle. Of these twenty-five loads were dried wild grass, half of it collected in the Nauje area and half at Tengboche. Seven loads were shruku tsi , a wild fodder plant. Of the remaining 63 percent, fifty-two loads were hay. Of this about twelve loads were harvested from the family's own hayfields at Samde. Four were purchased from another Nauje family. A total of fourteen loads were purchased from Thamicho Sherpas from three settlements (Thami Og, Thomde, and Samde). And sixteen loads were purchased from Pharak Sherpas including hay from Monjo, Phakding, Benkar, Lukla, and Yulning, a small place just north of Ghat. In 1987 the same family purchased similar amounts of hay, part of it bought from seven Bhote Kosi valley families in Pare, Yulajung, and Samde. Another Nauje family with two dimzo and a cow harvested twenty-one loads of their own hay and bought sixteen, fourteen of them from Pharak at ninety rupees per load undelivered. Wild-grass hay figures for this family were unavailable. This level of investment in hay purchases suggests how great the demand for fodder is, how inadequate local supplies are, and how profitable urang zopkio must be to be worth this much cash outlay and trouble.

41. The effects of the sale of large amounts of Bhote Kosi valley hay to Nauje livestock owners is uncertain. It would be particularly interesting to investigate whether any Thamicho households put their own herds at greater risk by selling large amounts of hay.

42. In a few cases hay-growing sites are quite close to main villages and transport is more practical. Konar, for example, is only a few minutes walk from Phurtse. The amount of time herds are kept at Konar in the spring depends on the amount of manure herders need to collect there in order to fertilize their hayfields. If one already has plenty of manure on hand then it is possible to

move the herd more directly up to the high-herding settlements and utilize the hay stored there. In this case Konar hay can be shifted down to Phurtse and fed to stock there enabling herders to put off their move out of the main house for a few days.

43. In western Tibet, for example, nomad yak- and nak-herding camps are shifted seasonally, but within a rather small range of altitude. Here stock is herded year round at altitudes no lower than 5,000 meters (Goldstein, Beall, and Cincotta 1990:141).

44. Straw is not used for this purpose as it is feared that grass seed might thus be introduced into the crop fields.

45. Virtually all families today live in two-story houses. This was not as common earlier in this century and was very rare before 1900. This may have affected herding patterns for winter-sensitive stock. It is conceivable that for these stock more use was formerly made of winter herding bases in the gunsa where temperatures are somewhat milder than in the main villages. Some cross-breeds were also taken south to lower Dudh Kosi regions in mid-winter in former times.

46. Some Thamicho families herd in Gyajo in late winter if there has not been much snowfall in order to save their hay supplies. Others go in the spring during the worst years when the grass is poor everywhere else. Nauje families use the remote, unsettled, narrow valley during the summer for urang zopkio pasture. Gyajo was used for Nauje zopkio long before the recent increase in urang zopkio ownership there. Traders bringing young dimzo from Shorung to Tibet often summered the stock in Gyajo until the Nangpa La became easily crossable in autumn. During the 1950s some individual Nauje traders herded more than 100 dimzo at Gyajo. Gyajo was also much used by Nauje families herding yak during the 1960s after many families bought Tibetan yak cheaply from immigrants. Other important grazing areas for young dimzo were Pulubuk and the upper Imja Khola valley.

47. Yerchang is not a factor, however, for Thamicho families, for whom the celebration is not as important as it is for the other villages.

48. Residents of Dingboche do not consider the still-earlier ban on livestock in the Dingboche area to be a formal nawa-enforced exclosure but rather an informal understanding. The later nawa-enforced restrictions at Dingboche to guard against the outbreak of blight take effect on the fourth day of the sixth month, Dawa Tukpa. The entire area is also included in the post-Yerchang Dawa Tukpa livestock ban. Tengur in Pangboche and Phurtse is conducted in May-June, Dawa Shiwa. In both places regulations to guard against blight are not enforced until the end of the following month.

49. Formerly the other zones in the upper Bhote Kosi valley were closed on the fifteenth of Dawa Nawa (more recently this was set back to the twenty-fifth of that month).

50. Pasture areas in the lower Imja Khola valley near Pangboche are also closed about that time, within seven to ten days of the end of Dumje.

51. Besides the already-noted popularity of the Mong area for Khumjung herders, a number of Thamicho families have summer bases at Chosero,

Langmoche, and Mingbo, just outside the northern boundary of the Thamicho restricted area.

52. Thamicho is an exception. There the rites are conducted by individual households and are not held in such regard as they are elsewhere.

53. Such animals may be used as pack stock, however. Only prized animals with a particular coat color and other marks deemed important are dedicated. Sheep and goats can also be dedicated, but zopkio cannot because the infertile males are not considered suitable gifts to the gods.

54. This ceremony resembles one conducted on the second day of Dumje as well as the quarterly rite of erecting prayer flags on house rooftops.

55. Sometimes a family decides to move into a different social set, or young village friends decide to start their own group at a different settlement. This occurred in 1987, for example, when five young Pangboche men decided to begin holding Yerchang at Chukkung.

56. It must be noted, however, that not all Pangboche and Kunde herders elect to herd in those two upper valleys. Some families with zopkio, zhum, and cows prefer to remain in the relatively low-altitude Pulubuk and Ralha areas, both of which continue to be open to grazing throughout the summer.

57. This is the one area in Khumbu for which there are grass- and hay-cutting controls but no restrictions on grazing.

58. On September 14 Dingboche nawa reopened the settlement for cooking fires and the barley harvest got underway. Several families, however, had violated the community regulations and began harvesting on September 12.

59. The suggestion that the timing of the opening of Dingboche for harvest is based on the ripening of the barley there, and that this also serves as an indicator for when the wild grass and hay of adjacent areas is mature and cutting should begin (Brower 1987:228, 231-232) is incorrect.

60. Later I was told that this region and the Yarin area were not then officially opened, and that grazing was not supposed to take place there until October 2. People were upset about the widespread violation of the restriction on livestock and felt that the effectiveness of the management system was being undermined.

61. In many years Yerchang takes place in mid- to late July. In 1987 the ceremony was held late as a result of the same calendrical situation that resulted in the late observance of Dumje a month earlier, and the family spent only two weeks at Dusa in early August.

62. Our family owns land at Dingboche and cultivates barley there. Family members were harvesting there during the week when their nak were grazing in the Pheriche area. The amount of time that stock are kept in the Pheriche area following the opening of that zone to grazing varies from year to year by a few days. In some years when the weather is sunnier the hay and wild grass are cut, dried, and stored more quickly allowing the nawa to open the area to livestock a few days earlier.

63. The nak are not pastured at Teshinga during this time, although the family does have a house there and uses it as a herding base for their ten zopkio, zhum, and cows. These stock are based in Kunde for the winter and spring and in summer are herded with the nak.

64. The family does not have a house at either Pulubuk or Mingbo. At Mingbo they use a tarpaulin to set up a resa and at Pulubuk make use of the resa of Kunde families who do not arrive there until after Dumje.

65. Some go to Dingboche briefly en route. For several weeks in midsummer Dingboche can be used as a herding base. Although the field area itself is closed to grazing the surrounding area is not. Once the ban on building fires has been implemented on the fourth day of the sixth month, however, herders move out from the settlement and disperse with their nak to Shangyo, Pheriche, and Bibre.

66. Thirty or forty years ago the family did not go to Chukkung, but instead based at Do Ong Ma, a place north of Bibre on the way to the Kongma pass, where they stayed in caves.

1. Fürer-Haimendorf and others refer to shingo nawa . I will use the pronunciation used in Khumbu, shinggi nawa , Khumbu Sherpa for "nawa of wood."

2. Lower temperate montane forests are more extensive in Pharak where there is considerable land below 3,000 meters and where there are oak forests (especially Quercus sernecarpifolia ) as well as large areas of Pinus wallichiana . The oaks are absent from even the lowest-altitude areas of Khumbu, perhaps reflecting human use rather than natural vegetative patterns.

3. By forest line I refer to the upper limit of contiguous forest. The tree line is considered to be the upper limit of tree-sized (2m) individuals, which may grow at sites above the upper limit of contiguous forest (Byers 1987b :55 n. 22; Price 1981:271). Juniper trees (Juniperus recurva ) have been observed as high as 4,238 meters (Byers 1987b :64).

4. In Tibet the chotar is supposed to be erected only in front of houses in which a certain collection of religious texts is stored. But in Khumbu some Tibetan customs are more liberally interpreted.

5. Position relative to the fire is a matter of great concern in Khumbu and is determined by customs of status ranking. Men sit on the right of the fire with the highest-ranking males the closest to it. Women sit on the floor in front of the fire. The fire is always on the second floor of two-story houses, and both fire and hearth are considered to be the homes of respected spirits. Generally the amount of heat given off by the stone stoves is minor and is compensated for by those sitting at a distance of more than a few inches from it by wearing heavy clothes. Wealthy households sometimes burn oak charcoal in small braziers for the benefit of people sitting at a distance from the hearth. Traditionally Sherpas have worn heavy wool garments, but these are now being replaced by polyester and cotton and by down and wool mountaineering and trekking clothing. It is extremely common for men and women to wear multiple layers of clothing all year, with long underwear or jogging suits the preferred undergarments today.

6. Wood remains the primary fuel of many families at sites above the forest line such as Tarnga, Dingboche, Luza, Tugla, and Lobuche. Families in these places either make journeys down into forested country for fuel wood or depend

on high-altitude juniper (pom ). Dried cattle dung, however, is much used in the high country as well as to a lesser but still significant degree in many of the main villages. Yak and nak dung burns with little odor and with a hotter flame than fuel wood. Sherpas consider that dung collected in the autumn makes the best fuel for it is the product of the best-fed and healthiest livestock. Winter dung is considered to be quite poor as a fuel and spring-deposited dung the worst of all. During the autumn many families go to great effort to collect large amounts of dung from slopes in the village vicinity and even at distances of up to several hours' walk. At this season people set out before sunrise and hunt by flashlight in order to maximize their search time. Such competition leads to well-picked-over slopes. People maintain, however, that the use of dung as fuel has not been at the expense of its use as fertilizer.

7. Oak is ranked above birch by Sherpas familiar with it from travels in Pharak and Shorung, but is unavailable in Khumbu.

8. Tibetan refugees who camped in the Nauje area in large numbers during the early 1960s are said to have dug Cotoneaster microphyllus roots and also harvested a great deal of juniper. Some Sherpas believe the immigrants relied on shrubs for fuel because they were unfamiliar with forests and lacked axes or other implements for felling or lopping trees. Nauje villagers asked a Nauje pembu to keep the Tibetans from digging up Cotoneaster microphyllus .

9. Wealth becomes a factor because well-to-do households may hire people to supply them with fuel wood or assign this task to household servants. This is particularly a factor in the villages of Nauje, Khumjung, and Kunde. In the mid-1980s, moreover, Rais began coming to Khumbu for periods of several weeks in the autumn and spring to cut fuel wood for Nauje villagers. This was sold by the load, and through very hard labor a man or woman could gather two loads per day. At sixty rupees per load in the spring of 1991 this was more than the usual daily wage of a porter for a trekking or mountaineering group. In April 1991 it was common to see groups of thirty or forty Rai cutters returning from the Satarma area.

10. Nima Wangchu Sherpa uses a figure of twenty-eight kilograms for a basket load of fuel wood. The weight of these loads, however, varies considerably and can be a good deal heavier. Some people consider a load to be forty kilograms.

11. Average use of a full load of fuel wood per day was reported by 36 percent of Kunde and Thamicho respondents and 40 percent of those from Khumjung (Sherpa 1979:19). Whether or not this actually reflects greater fuel use is uncertain. Villagers may have claimed higher needs out of fear that the national park-sponsored survey was a prelude to an imposition of wood-use limits and a desire to be on record as requiring a large amount in case of rationing.

12. The idea that Sherpas had a ban on green or wet wood (lemba ) may have been derived from the Khumbu custom of prohibiting the importation of freshly-cut wood into some settlements during the height of the agricultural growing season. This, though, as already discussed earlier, was a measure to protect crops, not a forest protection measure and there were no ethical bans on felling trees.

13. Some residents also lop (and even fell) trees in very visible sites near their village when they consider this safe. There are some local differences in opinion on whether or not the national park regulations ban lopping.

14. It must be emphasized that these long distances between home and forest are not (except in the cases of Thami Teng and Thami Og) the result of forest and woodland adjacent to villages having been lost to deforestation, but only the result of more accessible forests no longer being places where it is possible to fell trees without risk of a fine or imprisonment. Some people, among them elderly, infirm, and young people, sometimes risk punishment and lop or fell trees closer to the settlement. Often such now-illegal forest use is done under the cover of darkness or foggy conditions.

15. Tree felling for Pangboche and Phurtse house construction , the building and rebuilding of the monastery, the construction of the nearby Devuche nunnery, and the building of houses for monks and nuns is very likely responsible for the large number of stumps in the forest to the east of the monastery. It seems likely that the present birch and rhododendron forest was once a mixed fir, birch, and rhododendron forest in which fir was much more common than today.

16. Kyak shing is used synonymously with the Sherpa terms for several different types of protected forests, including lama's forests and rani ban (from the Nepali for queen's forest). There is no separate term for the types I discuss below as temple forests, bridge forests, and avalanche-protection areas. Most Sherpas are unaware of the origins of some protected forests, almost universally referring, for example, to the rani ban simply as kyak shing. Young Sherpas from some parts of Khumbu would not even recognize the term kyak shing , having grown up in an era in which those near their villages have ceased to be protected. There is no term for village forest as such, probably because no forests were considered simply as the property of particular villages.

17. Sacred trees and groves have been a part of Buddhism since the origins of the faith. The groves associated with the great events of the Buddha's own life very early became important pilgrimage sites, particularly his birthplace in the Lumbini grove at Kapilavastu, the deer park at Sarnath near Benares (Varanasi) where he began his teaching, and the grove of Kusinagara in which he died. The pipal tree (Ficus religiosa ), which became known as the "Bodhi Tree" (bodhi referring to the enlightened mind), became one of the symbols of the faith, celebrated for having sheltered the Buddha during the last crucial hours of meditation which culminated in his enlightenment. The pipal had already been regarded as a sacred tree in India, but it now acquired still-more-exalted status, and "the original Bodhi Tree of Gaya, under which the Buddha sat, became an object of pilgrimage, and cuttings from it were carried as far as Ceylon" (Basham 1985:263). The pipal today remains the great sacred tree of South Asia long after Buddhism has ceased to be the great religion of the subcontinent.

Although sacred trees figure significantly in the Buddhist traditions of India and Southeast Asia there has been little commentary on their importance among peoples following the Mahayana Buddhist sects of Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. Sacred forests do, however, exist in some Tibetan-settled areas. In

Gansu, for instance, there is a protected forest near the monastery of Labrang, and a sacred tree associated with the founder of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsong Kapa, grows at Kum Bum (Taer Si) monastery in Qinghai.

18. Sherpa and Tibetan lu with the body of a woman and the tail of a serpent bear some similarities to Hindu naga (Basham 1985:317). These half-human, half-snake spirits are important in the Newar culture of the Kathmandu valley, playing a prominent role in religious belief and art through their connection with rain and fertility (Slusser 1982:353-361). Unlike the Newar naga, however, lu are not associated with clouds and rain, do not live in the earth, and are not usually identified with actual snakes. Sherpa lu are invisible except when seen in a shaman's vision when they appear as women and can be manifest in various ages and colors—black being angry and quite dangerous for people—depending on their current disposition (Fürer-Haimendorf 1979:266-269; Ortner 1978:279). I do know of one case, however, when a snake discovered in a tree near Kunde by a man who had been about to fell that tree was considered to be a lu. He abandoned his cutting of the tree.

19. It is believed that these lu migrate each year to Tibet. This is said to explain the dynamics of a Nauje spring whose flow decreases during the summer months in the midst of the monsoon rains and increases in the autumn after the rains ends. The spring usually only has a reduced flow during the absence of the lu, but has been known to go dry. About thirty years ago, it is said, the Nauje spring lu was offended by Nepali officials slaughtering goats beside it and went to Tibet prematurely. The spring went totally dry until Sherpa villagers performed special offerings to beg the spirit to return.

20. The rites for the household lu are also carried out by the women of the family. This is contrary to most Sherpa practice, for men generally conduct household rites. But women are believed to have a special affinity with the lu, so much so that there is danger that the lu may leave with a marrying daughter. It is said that the lu may envy the finely adorned bride and the attention she receives from the wedding party, and follow the procession to the bride's new house to take up residence there. To guard against this it is the custom for children to be dressed up grandly and given the task of dancing about the lu shrine to distract the spirit from observing the exit of the bridal party (Füer-Haimendorf 1979:267).

21. The Junbesi grove is revered particularly by the Lama clan, which holds annual rites there. A particularly huge group of oak in Pharak near Lukla is also regarded as sacred by a particular Sherpa clan, in this case the Chawa.

22. At times of lunar eclipses, however, some people believe that it is safe to lop branches from lu trees since the lu at these times goes to the moon's assistance. One old juniper in Nauje had a great many branches lopped from it on such an occasion some years ago and died soon thereafter.

23. Groves adjacent to temples which are respected because of the sanctity of the place are different from another type of temple-owned forests found in many parts of Nepal which are used as a source of funds for the maintenance of the temple and its operations. These revenue-producing forests need not be immediately adjacent to the temple. There are none in Khumbu.

24. There are only two other private forests in Khumbu, both in the Thami Teng area and neither even half a hectare in size.

25. Khumbu oral traditions about the establishment of these protected forests were substantiated by documents I was shown in Shorung in 1987. The details presented here concerning the forest regulations and procedures decreed by Kathmandu are taken from the Shorung documents and traditions. I have not yet located surviving Khumbu documents. It is very likely that the Khumbu instructions were quite similar to those for Shorung, although this is not certain. Similar orders directing local village headmen to designate protected forests have been reported from the Jiri area, and documents discovered there suggest that such orders were issued in at least four districts of eastern Nepal beginning in January-February 1908 (Archarya 1990:130-133, 422-426). These "forest-protection circulars" outlined general regulations and procedures for forest management and specified the boundaries of the forest under the care of a given headman. In Shorung such orders were being received in 1911-1912.

26. Konchok Chombi recalls that his father, who was a pembu at this time, told him that he received these orders when Konchok Chombi was about two years old (1915). I have been shown similar documents in Shorung and Golila-Gepchua which were dated 1911-1912. It is not known whether these directives were sent out to all village headmen (talukdar ) and pembu in what is now the Solu-Khumbu district at the same time. The Rana government began to issue such orders in areas slightly to the west of Solu-Khumbu such as Jiri as early as 1908 (Acharya 1990:130-134).

27. Petitions for permission to fell trees for use as beams had to be made with offerings of beer and the presentation of ceremonial scarves, but they were merely formalities since they were rarely denied. Pembu and other officials did not select the particular trees to be cut.

28. It is interesting that these first Khumbu efforts to establish a new type of local forest management came about only after Kathmandu's forest-protection directives. The high value that Khumbu Sherpas place on individual decisions about household economic activity and resource use may have hindered the earlier development of regulation of household forest use other than in the sacred forests. The Kathmandu government's action provided Khumbu pembu with power and legitimization to intervene in forest use and helped create a social context in which certain pembu were able to institute a new approach to local resource use that ran counter to the local spirit of individualism and customary rights to resources.

29. Some people say that the protection of forest near (and above) Thamo Og and Thamo Teng was in part to protect those places against avalanches. Avalanche protection is also given as a reason for the protection of an oak forest in Pharak near Lukla.

30. Neither these fines nor the grain that was collected each spring by the nawa from every community household went to these officials themselves as payment. The grain instead financed the ceremonies, celebrations, and village religious rituals that accompanied the annual installation of new nawa. In some other parts of Nepal, however, a mana-pathi system is followed in which each

household must give a mana (approximately one pint) or pathi (eight mana) of grain towards the salary of the forest watchers.

31. Phurtse changed this rule in recent decades to allow incumbent shinggi nawa to be rechosen.

32. Enforcing shimbak restrictions on the importation of freshly cut wood to the village was apparently the main forest duty of the nawa in both Nauje and Pangboche as well as the major enforcement activity of the Phurtse shinggi nawa.

1. This view differs from previous depictions (Bjønness 1980a, 1983; Brower 1987; Byers 1987b ; Fisher 1990; Fürer-Haimendorf 1975, 1979, 1984) which have portrayed Khumbu agriculture from 1850 until the present as relatively unchanging except for the introduction of the potato in the mid-nineteenth century. Earlier treatments only noted very minor twentieth-century change, most often the adoption of draft plowing and changes in the availability of wage labor (Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:41-42).

2. Some high-altitude herding settlements in which potatoes are grown today, including Luza and Dole, were apparently not farmed in the nineteenth century. They then served only as herding bases or hay-producing areas.

3. Brower suggests that formerly to, the small root which today is a semi-cultivate, might have been an early, pre-potato Khumbu tuber crop (1987:99). Sherpas today, however, do not remember to as a crop and there is nothing in the oral tradition about it once having been the region's staple.

4. Brower notes that barley was previously grown at Chosero, a site near Tarnga in a tributary valley of the Bhote Kosi (1987:99). Barley may once have also been grown at Na, a Dudh Kosi site at an altitude similar to the Bhote Kosi and Imja Khola valley barley-growing sites and with similar irrigation potential. This may be commemorated in its name, which is the Sherpa word for barley. Residents of the area, however, have no oral tradition that the grain was ever grown there.

5. Barley may even have been grown on a small scale at Khumjung, where an eighty-two-year-old Sherpa recalled in 1985 that when he was very young he saw a barley yusa (threshing place) in his village. He has no recollection of seeing barley fields then, but he surmises that there must have been some barley grown nearby.

6. This is not the small ditch that today leads water from an out-take further down on the creek. The present system is only intended to provide enough water to supply some families with their household needs.

7. No oral traditions survive of any early concern at Tarnga, as there was at Dingboche, that introducing potatoes there would affect barley yields.

8. Sherpas certainly did not bring the potato with them from Kham, for the crop was only introduced there early in the twentieth century by French missionaries (Guibaut 1987:54).

9. A search for evidence of the introduction of the potato to Shorung and adjacent areas might cast much light on the history of the crop's diffusion across northeastern Nepal.

10. Different people sometimes use different names for these two early varieties. The long potato is known to elderly people as kyuma, hati, and belati and the round potato as koru, kyuma, and belati. I will refer to the long potato as kyuma, the round one as koru. And there appears to have been more than one koru. Sun Tenzing characterized koru as white in color, low-yielding (much lower yielding than kyuma), and producing a distinctively high number of tubers per plant. None of these characteristics matches those of the later koru. He also noted that the Phurtse koru produced very inconsistent yields. In good years plants produced an extraordinary number of tubers that attained very respectable size. In other years the tubers were extremely tiny, hardly worth harvesting.

11. No one in Khumbu today knows any tradition about the introduction of this early, round potato. It is possible that it may have survived longer in the Phurtse area than elsewhere. Elderly Sherpas in other parts of Khumbu do not remember it, only kyuma (which was grown in their villages before their births) and a later, round potato introduced during their lifetimes which had different characteristics than the round potato described by Sun Tenzing. Phurtse may thus have obtained kyuma later than did some other Khumbu villages, an example of multiple introduction of varieties to different parts of Khumbu at different times. If this did occur it raises the question of why Phurtse families did not adopt kyuma earlier from Khumbu sources. There is also the question of why it was first planted in a gunsa and was apparently only subsequently introduced into the main village.

12. Potatoes have been monocropped in Nauje as far back as memory goes. Buckwheat has been grown only on a very few, marginal, upper terraces during villagers' lifetimes. There are stories, however, of buckwheat being grown there on a larger scale long ago. One large and very productive potato field in the center of the settlement area, for instance, is said to have been famous many years ago for producing good buckwheat.

13. As already mentioned, there are several difficulties in interpreting the number and sequence of varieties that were introduced during the early twentieth century. There may have been even more introductions, some of which never had more than very narrow, local distribution. Names that were used for one variety, such as kyuma, may have later been applied to new varieties with a similar morphology. There may have been, for example, yet another introduction of a long potato that was locally called kyuma (but that had a darker skin than the earlier kyuma variety), which was brought back from the Lazhen area of Sikkim to Thami Teng about sixty-five years ago.

14. Today kyuma is still grown by a very few families in Khumbu, especially in Dingboche (where it is also known as hati). An early koru (perhaps koru 2) is also still grown on a very minor scale by a family or two. Both tubers will probably soon cease to be grown. After three years of searching for kyuma and koru potatoes I finally found a family that still had some in 1987. They were phasing the koru out by separating it from the other seed potatoes and cooking it

up in curry rather than planting it! In 1987 I also found kyuma in the Salpa region which had been grown by a woman who noted that her stock was descended from tubers that had originally come from Khumbu.

15. Families from Khumjung, Kunde, and Thamicho exported dried potatoes to Tibet, as did a few families from Phurtse. Earlier in the century dried potatoes were also sold by Dingboche farmers to Thamicho villagers for trading to Tibet.

16. MacFarlane suggests that the population of Nepal "more than trebled in the years between 1850 and 1960, from a base of between three and four million" (1976:292). In the national context potato cultivation was not a significant factor in population growth, although other agricultural change was, including the adoption of maize and the diffusion of irrigated, terrace agriculture into areas previously cultivated only by swidden farming.

17. It is not clear whether other tubers were planted in Dingboche during the period before potatoes were accepted.

18. Gembu Tsepal was one of the wealthiest men in Khumbu. He owned considerable land, the largest yak and nak herd in the region, and several houses and herding huts. Besides his Nauje land and the Dingboche fields he also, as mentioned earlier, had land at Tarnga.

19. In another version of the story it is Ang Sani, Ang Chumbi's wife, who defied the gembu. Once potatoes were introduced it was found that barley continued to yield good harvests and that the potato harvests were good enough to merit a biannual rotation with barley.

20. The most recent rebuilding of the Tengboche monastery in 1990-1991 was an exception to the earlier traditions of building religious structures with donated labor. For this project Sherpas raised donations in Khumbu and abroad and used them to hire workers, mostly Magars from the lower Dudh Kosi valley.

21. A few cases might be cited as examples. In Nauje the temple was supported through the donation by each family of a small amount of grain. The big prayer wheels that were the original centerpiece of the place, however, were contributed by wealthy traders and a famous lama. The several large private chapels in the village all belonged to trading families. The five large prayer wheels in the village stream and the two in separate shrines were built by traders. The building of the Tengboche monastery was made possible by the inspiration of the head lama of Tibet's Rumbu monastery who convinced a Khumjung man to raise funds to build it, but it was the wealth of four Sherpas (two of them from Shorung) that launched the project.

22. It is not possible to determine the total amount of land abandoned in various periods, nor to estimate how much of this was later reclaimed. The lack of land records or accurate tax lists provides no basis on which to attempt such a historical reconstruction. The relatively high percentage of old, abandoned terraces in the Bhote Kosi valley could either represent a greater degree of historical abandonment there than in other valleys or simply a lower degree of subsequent reclamation. At Nauje, Phurtse, and Khumjung some expansion of the agricultural area took place during the first half of the twentieth century.

23. The dates of terrace abandonment shown in table 21 are tentative in

many cases and further research will be required to pinpoint the processes and time period involved. The preliminary treatment given here suggests, however, the large number of sites involved and the relatively small number of areas where terraces have been abandoned since 1960.

24. The reason for the abandonment of some other extensive areas at Nyeshe in an earlier period, however, is not known.

25. It is said that once families from all over Thamicho had houses at Leve. Elderly Thamicho Sherpas remember it as a place of ruins throughout their lives, inhabited early in the century only by a few people such as Leve Karsong and Leve Pasang. The latter is the grandmother of a Thamicho man who is now about fifty years of age. Leve was apparently a secondary crop-growing site for some families and the main dwelling for others. The last families to leave either shifted their operations entirely to other villages in Thamicho or moved out of the region to Rolwaling and Darjeeling. It had developed a reputation as a place of bad luck and this belief may have been a major cause of its demise, along with a lack of water. Two explanations of the inauspiciousness of the site are given. One is that Leve is situated at a place that has bad luck due to its topographic situation. The second and more common view is that Leve's decline began with a contest of powers between a lama living there and a female nun who dwelt at Samde. The lama succeeded in causing a large landslide below Samde, the nun in causing the spring to dry up in Leve. In some versions she also caused the collapse of the Leve chorten, but other people ascribe this to the 1934 earthquake.

26. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a greater emphasis in the Bhote Kosi valley on cultivating buckwheat (and perhaps barley) than there has been since the 1920s. The gradual and ultimately total abandonment of grain growing in favor of obtaining grain grown outside of Khumbu has greatly changed land-use dynamics in the valley.

27. Thamicho villagers, however, do not recall any major expansion in field area during this period despite population increases.

28. It will be extremely interesting to observe whether there is more widespread experimentation with plowing potato terraces in future years and whether a change in values and perceptions accompanies such a change.

29. He himself had forgotten the exact date by 1985, but a 1976 date was furnished by his neighbor Konchok Chombi, who obtained seed potatoes from him the following year.

30. Pemba Tenzing did not ask how Singh Gompa had obtained the variety. It is possible that it was introduced from Kathmandu agricultural experimentation projects, for in the mid-1970s a number of new varieties were introduced at Singh Gompa from Kathmandu (J. D. Sakya, National Potato Development Program, personal communication 1987).

31. Konchok Chombi himself makes no secret of having originally obtained the potato from Pemba Tenzing's wife, but a great many Khumbu Sherpas are astonished to learn about this. It is probably apt, however, that people continue to associate the yellow potato above all else with Konchok Chombi. His realization of the importance of a new, high-yielding potato variety, his lack of concern with personally profiting from his discovery of the variety, and his

ability to administrate his sales and gifts in order to maximize the early widespread diffusion of the seed potatoes all were a major contribution to regional welfare. He was clearly proud of his ability to do all of this and enjoyed the acclaim it brought him. Yet his motives seem to have arisen primarily from the particularly keen sense of civic responsibility that has characterized his career as a pembu.

32. It is not unlikely that some Thamicho families actually obtained their first yellow potatoes from Konchok Chombi, who has had long ties with many Thamicho families due to his having inherited responsibility as pembu for that area from his father.

33. In the last few years the adoption of the yellow potato has been given further impetus by the increasingly common perception that red potato yields are declining.

34. It is unclear which of the four varieties being promoted at Phaphlu is the one currently gaining acceptance in Khumbu. There may be more than one variety of "development potato" being grown today in Khumbu.

35. An initial 1984 experiment by one elderly Yulajung resident was very encouraging, with yields of twelve times the volume of seed potato. He was enthusiastic enough to consider putting as much of his land into development potatoes as he could obtain seed potatoes to plant, but poorer harvests during the next two years dampened his initial excitement and he has also had problems with the potato rotting in storage.

36. Some Sherpas consider the black potato to be identical to the brown variety. In the Pangboche-Dingboche area, however, the black potato was introduced even before the yellow potato. Further research on the introduction and diffusion of these minor varieties is required.

37. Buckwheat was grown on several sites near Nauje in the 1960s, but in the main crop-growing area of the village it has been virtually uncultivated since early in the century. Today some buckwheat is grown in gunsa such as Teshinga and Mende. Formerly, however, it was probably grown more widely in gunsa and was also grown in some high-altitude areas such as Tarnga, where it was a major crop early in this century.

38. Another reflection of this situation was the effort by some Nauje families to obtain more land. After 1975 at least ten Nauje families acquired fields at Tarnga and other families obtained land at Langmoche and Chosero. The Langmoche area was highly regarded because it was outside of the livestock-closure areas during the entire summer and also was close to forest. This meant that Nauje families could base their zopkio there for the summer in order to have sufficient manure supplies available for the following year and could also easily collect leaves for fertilizer from nearby woodland. Land was more readily available at Tarnga and more than a dozen Nauje families bought fields there. Fertilizing fields there was more difficult, however, for during the 1970s and until 1985 the summer livestock closure on this area was well enforced. Nauje families who only had Tarnga fields had difficulty pasturing their livestock in the area long enough to accumulate sufficient fertilizer and had to buy manure at relatively high prices from Thamicho households. In recent years manure has

been so much in demand at Tarnga that it is virtually impossible to purchase unless arrangements are made half a year or more in advance.

39. At Thami Og some long-abandoned land has also been reclaimed for hay production.

40. Konchok Chombi believes that the use of sheep manure indicates that the family had no yak because no one who had access to cattle manure would use sheep manure. He further speculates that at this time sheep keeping may have been common in Khumbu, and that many families were too poor to have yak.

41. Some Sherpas believe that the ban on goats initiated in 1983 by the national park may be offensive to Khumbu Yul Lha and that this has been responsible for various manifestations of poor luck in the region since the ban.

42. The Dzongnangba legend also refers to large tents, perhaps similar to the gaily decorated tents familiar in Tibet for summer use by the elite.

43. The fact that Sherpas were using black tents in the nineteenth century does not mean that they were more nomadic at that time, for clearly villages and gunsa settlements had been established much earlier. There were also high-altitude herding settlements with permanent huts at least as early as the late nineteenth century. Konchok Chombi's father and grandfather, for example, owned herding huts at Luza as well as the black tents that they used at Tugla, Tsola, and elsewhere.

44. The last time this occurred was in the 1940s.

45. Pharak Sherpas from Lukla, for example, use summer pastures on the upper Hinku Khola, an area that is also summer pasture for the sheep, water buffalo (and in at least one case yak) of Rais from Bung and Gudel as well as for Gurung sheep from the lower Dudh Kosi valley and its tributaries. In the upper Arun-Barun region Sherpas, Rais, and Gurungs share summer pasture at Khembalung in the Barun drainage, a place also regarded as a pilgimage site by all three groups, and Sherpas from Navagaon send their water buffalo to Rai-inhabited lower-altitude areas in winter. In these cases arrangements are made for the use of different areas and grazing fees may be collected. In the past Sherpas in the Salpa, Arun, and Katanga regions, moreover, paid taxes to the Rais for the right to inhabit their main village sites (and in the Arun pay them still), and in the early twentieth century Pharak Sherpas still paid Rais for the right to use some Dudh Kosi pasture as well as that in the Hinku Khola. It is not impossible that Khumbu Sherpas may have once had to pay similar taxes to the Rais.

46. Gurungs could have been coming to Khumbu for well over a century. They settled in the lower Dudh Kosi valley in the early nineteenth century.

47. Similarly some Gurung herders bound for the Bhotego area on the west bank of the Bhote Kosi river near Pare drove their flocks up the valley on the western side, choosing a difficult route rather than pass through major Sherpa settlement areas.

48. The powerful Khumjung Sherpa who had encouraged Dimal to come to Dingboche and apparently taken money from him was also the target of considerable anger and is said to have been seriously hurt when attacked near Khumjung by rock-throwing boys. This took place during the time of Nepal's Rana regime (e.g., before 1950).

49. It is conceivable that this unusually fierce resistance to Gurung grazing may have been linked to especially grave concerns about overgrazing. In 1959 and 1960 approximately 5,000 Tibetan refugees settled in Khumbu, bringing with them huge herds of yak and sheep. Many of them established themselves in the Nauje area and a serious grazing shortage soon developed.

50. And in the early 1960s a sheep could be purchased for a single rupee, compared to 200 rupees today for the dried meat of half a Tibetan sheep.

1. The recognition of the ecological wisdom of indigenous peoples has since become a basic theme of the radical environmental movement and agroecology as well as a factor in global conservation and protected area management planning.

2. Some cultural ecologists may still subscribe to the view that "in order to adequately conceptualize the ecological relationships of human groups, it may be necessary to treat them as if they were parts of a functionally integrated, persisting, homeostatic, isolatable ecosystem" (Netting 1984:231). Netting, however, cautions against a simple assumption that local ecosystems "epitomize a well articulated, self-sustaining interdependence of physical environment, subsistence techniques, and human population" (ibid.:227).

1. The recognition of the ecological wisdom of indigenous peoples has since become a basic theme of the radical environmental movement and agroecology as well as a factor in global conservation and protected area management planning.

2. Some cultural ecologists may still subscribe to the view that "in order to adequately conceptualize the ecological relationships of human groups, it may be necessary to treat them as if they were parts of a functionally integrated, persisting, homeostatic, isolatable ecosystem" (Netting 1984:231). Netting, however, cautions against a simple assumption that local ecosystems "epitomize a well articulated, self-sustaining interdependence of physical environment, subsistence techniques, and human population" (ibid.:227).

3. In particular this perspective has been a hallmark of the Berkeley school of geography since the 1920s, where it has underlain both the concept of the cultural landscape as a historically developed artifact distinct from the natural landscape and a continuing focus on studies of the past and present human transformation of the earth.

4. The last Khumbu wolf met his end in 1986. When villagers discovered in 1987 that a pair of wolves had apparently crossed from Tibet into the upper Bhote Kosi valley and produced a litter there they asked the national park to exterminate the animals. When this request was refused they took matters into their own hands. These activities bear a certain resemblance to the pragmatic Sherpa (and Tibetan) attitude toward the killing of livestock. Sherpas will not kill livestock suffering from disease, injury, or old age, nor will they kill unwanted crossbreed calves whose parentage makes them of little economic value. They will, however, allow livestock to starve to death or otherwise indirectly assist in their deaths. Similarly animals cannot be killed for meat, but meat can be eaten from stock that has "accidentally" fallen from trails.

5. This tension between communal institutions and cultural emphasis on household economic freedom has not been emphasized in the anthropological literature. Fürer-Haimendorf stressed the high degree of civic responsibility in resource-management institutions (1984:50-51) and the lack of village factional-ism (1975:98). This is certainly characteristic of Khumbu community resource management, although there has long been conflict within and among villages over rights to resources, the power to administer them, and the enforcement of regulations. At a deeper level, however, the rules themselves are very limited in

some ways that suggest a long-shared cultural attitude about the proper borders of social intervention in household economic life.

6. Fürer-Haimendorf (1979:110-113) primarily focused on Sherpa forest management as a social institution in the villages of Khumjung and Kunde. He was not interested in the actual boundaries of protected forests, regional patterns of forest use, or historical change in forests or management institutions. Fürer-Haimendorf assumed that the system he observed in Khumjung and Kunde was a Khumbuwide practice of some antiquity, that it regulated forests adjacent to communities that were used for subsistence purposes, and that it functioned effectively in conserving forests (1975:97-98; 1979:112; 1984:57). We have seen how erroneous a number of these assumptions are and the irony that the rani ban, including the very one Fürer-Haimendorf was describing, had in 1957 only been protected for less than fifty years. Brower (1987) describes the nawa system as a de facto rotational system of grazing that effectively distributes grazing pressure regionally, but does so without delimiting the areas regulated, analyzing the intensity of use of particular places, considering the constraints on the system as a result of sociocultural values and conditions, or exploring historical change in herding and pastoral management. Byers (1987b ) finds that Sherpa land use is in relative harmony with the local environment but considers only slope stability as a criterion.

7. Isolated trees are especially common in gullies and near the edges of forests and woodlands. Scattered juniper and rhododendron shrub are more common and are found throughout the altitudinal range of the grasslands. Barberries and rose bushes are more common in the vicinity of settlements whereas Cotoneaster microphyllus is especially prominent on the slopes that have been heavily tracked by livestock.

8. Cereal pollen was found in soil layers for which radioactive carbon dating of charcoal provides dates of 1,480 years plus or minus 360 years and 2,170 years plus or minus 330 years (Byers 1987b: 199).

9. For an account of the gradual adoption of permanent agriculture by the Rais and the decline of earlier integral swidden agriculture see English (1982, 1985). This process involved not only agricultural intensification but also migration, for the techniques were apparently brought to the region by Pahari immigrants from the central and western midlands of Nepal.

10. Twentieth-century Sherpas attest that they do not intentionally use fire as a tool for pasture improvement. Large fires such as the one that burned the grasslands and woodlands along the Dudh Kosi river just east of Nauje during the 1950s have resulted from herders' and woodcutters' cook fires accidentally getting out of hand. Many of these accidental fires seem to take place in the higher reaches of Khumbu, above the forests in the high grazing country. Here in any given spring or early summer one may come across blackened slopes very reminiscent of the intentionally burned high-pasture country in similar areas in the Annapurna range, where Gurung shepherds in the Modi Khola valley apparently deliberately encourage better grass growth in the alpine country above 4,000 meters. In the Khumbu case these fires are always said to be accidental, although many occur on slopes covered with rhododendron and other unpalatable shrubs and probably improve grazing there through encouraging grass growth.

11. This map also makes clear that the actual rani ban boundaries included a considerable area that is now neither forest nor woodland. This does not, however, represent post-1915 deforestation within the protected forest boundaries. Instead it reflects the original definition of rani ban and nawa agropastoral management zones in terms of topographic features such as ridges, streams, and trails. All trees within an area defined by such features were protected, regardless of whether they were within forests, and substantial rangeland areas were included in some rani ban.

12. Beyond a century and a half ago, however, there are no oral traditions about forest use and forest change. The earlier history of regional vegetation change will be sketched only with the help of pollen analysis.

13. This slope is sometimes incorrectly assumed to be the area near Nauje which Fürer-Haimendorf (1975:98) observed had been much affected by tree felling between his 1957 and 1972 visits.

14. There is a belief among Khumbu Sherpas that it is inauspicious for a household to own more than 100 head of yak and nak, and there is an oral tradition about an early Sherpa household that ran into misfortune when it exceeded this limit. The fact that no household in the past fifty years has amassed a herd of even half that size, however, makes this injunction less relevant than it might otherwise be.

15. In the Bhote Kosi and Dudh Kosi valleys almost no pasture area was closed above 3,800 meters.

16. This contrasts with the system in use in areas grazed by Phala nomads in western Tibet before 1959, where pasture allocations were based on herd size and each defined pasture area was considered suitable for a certain number of head of livestock calculated in terms of the type of stock (one yak was considered to be the equivalent of six sheep or seven goats). There was a limit of thirteen yak (or seventy-eight sheep) per standard pasture area. Every three years a stock census was conducted and pasture-use rights were reallocated (Goldstein and Beall 1990:69-71). This, however, was not a locally developed institutional arrangement. It was instead imposed by the landowner, the Panchen Lama of Tashilumpo monastery in distant Shigatse. It should not be assumed that this type of range-management system was typical of Drokbainhabited areas in Tibet.

17. This has meant, for example, that when Dumje came late in the lunar calendar in 1987 that livestock exclusions were nevertheless not enforced until after the festival. Despite the perception that closing off the winter pasture areas to livestock a month late invited trouble, the stock were not sent out of the village until late July. Changes are very seldom made to the customary rules about the closure of zones. Nawa in some areas, however, do exercise some discretion in deciding when to open areas to grass cutting and livestock.

18. A lack of concern with the possible impact of grazing on forest regeneration is a feature of Khumbu protected-forest regulation as well as the operation of the nawa system. Grazing has never been prohibited in any Khumbu forest, not even in sacred forests, nor have there have been any regulations that restricted forest grazing by any particular type of livestock, such as zopkio or

goats, which might be expected to have a particularly heavy impact on forest regeneration. It may be that the absence of this kind of concern reflects the belief of many Sherpas that grazing pressure does not affect forest density or composition.

19. Similarly, grazing may be responsible for the relatively poor rate of seedling survival in some national park plantations that have not been adequately protected from livestock intrusions. These plantations are surrounded by stone walls or barbed-wire fences, but stockowners find ways to enable their animals to enter them. The forest plantations are extremely unpopular with some local herders, who complain that the government is taking away some of their most important grazing land.

20. The equivalent incentive for pastoral management may well have been concern over maintaining enough fodder and winter pasture to successfully winter stock.

21. On the basis of his experience in central and western Nepal Gilmour suggests that two products whose scarcity is of special concern are leaf litter and large trees for construction purposes. Concern with leaf litter has been mentioned by Khumbu Sherpas as a possible factor in the protection of the Bachangchang rani ban near Thami Og and the Khumjung-Kunde rani ban, although Sherpas did not develop rules such as those Gilmour reported in western Nepal where local users limited leaf-litter gathering to a set period (1989:5). There was even more concern in Khumbu over safeguarding the supply of trees large enough to serve as beams, and this may well have been a factor in the establishment of the rani ban at Nauje, Pare, Khumjung-Kunde, and Samshing.

22. The protection of sacred trees and forests in Khumbu, however, is connected with fear as well as with faith. Villagers perceive real risks of loss of health and good fortune if they do not take effective community management action.

23. Evaluating the accessibility of forest resources should include examining not only the physical abundance and location of the types of forests needed for subsistence, but also the effects of religion and other cultural beliefs, local resource-management systems, and differences between households in wealth, land, and labor resources.

1. The exclusion of kipat forest lands from nationalization suggests that the Forest Nationalization Act of 1957 was not intended to undermine all community management of forests. (Kipat refers to a particular type of communal land tenure once common in eastern Nepal, often in areas where subsistence was based on swidden cultivation.) Acharya thus notes that "the Act neither affected nor was meant to affect communally managed forests (an estimated 6 percent of the total forest area at that time) or private forests smaller than 1.3 hectares in the hills" (1989:17). The act was rather intended to reclaim for the state the estimated 17 percent of forestland that had been granted to individuals by the Shah and Rana governments as gifts to relatives and in lieu of payment or reward to employees

(ibid.). In many areas, however, communally managed forests and other common lands were not registered as kipat and no provision seems to have been made to legally recognize these at the time of forest nationalization.

2. Not all nonprivate forests are administered directly by the Forest Department, for with the Forest Act of 1961 the government created a mechanism by which local governments could apply for the right to manage local forests under Forest Department supervision as panchayat forests. Community forest-management plans, however, must be approved by the Forest Department and thus far a rather small amount of forestland is actually being administered by communities. There are no panchayat forests in Khumbu and none can be created under current Sagarmatha National Park policies under which all forestland is under park ownership.

2. Not all nonprivate forests are administered directly by the Forest Department, for with the Forest Act of 1961 the government created a mechanism by which local governments could apply for the right to manage local forests under Forest Department supervision as panchayat forests. Community forest-management plans, however, must be approved by the Forest Department and thus far a rather small amount of forestland is actually being administered by communities. There are no panchayat forests in Khumbu and none can be created under current Sagarmatha National Park policies under which all forestland is under park ownership.

3. The responsibility for issuing permits was transferred to Salleri in 1970 and the present Forest Department office was established there in 1978.

4. The closer involvement of central government officials in the Khumbu area and the relative ease of obtaining permits, however, may have only increased the speed with which local forest administration in some communities was undermined and the scale at which tree felling took place in some previously locally protected forests. By 1971, however, a Forest Department office had been set up in Shorung and Sherpas were required to obtain permits there rather than from the Nauje branch of the Sagarmatha zone office. In most years it has not been necessary to go in person to Salleri to obtain a permit, as usually a pradhan pancha or other Sherpa with business in the area can handle the application.

5. At the time that the Nauje branch of the zone office was established all of Khumbu was under the jurisdiction of a single pradhan pancha, but by 1970 the area had been divided into two panchayats, one containing Nauje and the Bhote Kosi valley population and the other the rest of Khumbu, each area with a separate pradhan pancha. Since the panchayat system was established in Khumbu all pradhan panchas have been residents of either Khumjung or Nauje.

6. Recently it has become necessary to gain the approval also of the Chaunrikharka pradhan pancha (who administers the area of Pharak directly south of Khumbu), following Pharak complaints that Khumbu Sherpas were cutting large amounts of timber in that area without any local role in the process of approval and control.

7. The office apparently discouraged the traditional Sherpa practice of felling trees for fuel wood. Permits were only available for obtaining timber.

8. The official also kept the documents. These were apparently the forest protection circulars from Chandra Shamshere Rana's government which assigned responsibilities for particular, defined, forest areas to each pembu. It is possible that some copies of these will yet be found in Khumbu. I have had the opportunity to inspect a number of rani ban documents in Shorung and Golila-Gepchua.

9. Some villagers also took advantage of the lack of careful monitoring of the amounts of timber cut and exceeded the quantities authorized on their permits. Some Sherpas reportedly chose to interpret permits in ways that granted them rather more wood than was intended. One strategy was to cut many more trees than authorized, arguing that the number of cubic feet speci-

fled for cutting on the permit referred to the trees' basal area only, and that the rest of the timber obtained from the tree was free for the taking (P. H. C. Lucas, personal communication, 1990).

10. Fürer-Haimendorf (1975) did not mention tourism as a factor in this change in forest cover and presumably he assumed that the tree felling had taken place as a result of Sherpas' own demands for timber. Even in the early 1970s, however, some observers were concerned about the impacts of mountaineering and trekking tourism on Khumbu forests, a topic which will be taken up in chapter 10.

11. It should be possible to corroborate these accounts of forest change between 1965 and the 1979 enforcement of new forest regulations in Khumbu by comparison of photographs taken before, during, and after this period. Comparison of a 1962 photograph made by Erwin Schneider and another taken by Alton Byers (1987a: 78-79; 1987b: 207-208) from approximately the same site in 1984, for example, substantiates Sherpa accounts of post-1965 forest and woodland change at Shyangboche and near Khumjung and Kenzuma. Two of Charles Houston's photographs (J. Fisher 1990:8,144) similarly support Sherpa oral history testimony in that they indicate that the area adjacent to the northwest corner of Nauje was not forested in 1950 and that large areas on the slope immediatedly west of the Tengboche monastery were open woodland at that time. Much more could be done with historical photographs beyond the analysis of repeat photographs or individual historical "slice in time" photographs. What is really needed to augment oral history testimony are sequential comparisons of the conditions of particular sites over a period of years, with photographs from as many different times as possible between 1950 and the present.

12. That considerable logging occurred in the area has been confirmed by a ground survey which found large numbers of stumps (Byers 1987b: 211). Byers contrasts the density of juniper in a less-disturbed site near Shyangboche with that of juniper on the slope above Khumjung. At the less-disturbed site there was a "general absence of stumps" and a density of tree-sized individuals (i.e., greater than four centimeters in diameter at breast height) of 725 per hectare. Above Khumjung the density of juniper was only 533 per hectare. A full 36.5 percent of the Khumjung juniper that Byers tallied as stems, moreover, were merely stumps. He further notes that "it could also be argued that considerably more juniper existed in the mid-1950's and, because of the Sherpa practice of removing all woody material, this was not reflected in the 1984 sampling quadrants" (ibid.:212).

It could be further noted that there are now very few junipers more than a meter in height on the slope immediately above Khumjung. This contrasts strikingly with the stature of the protected juniper at the Khumjung village temple or the lu -inhabited juniper elsewhere in the settlement.

11. It should be possible to corroborate these accounts of forest change between 1965 and the 1979 enforcement of new forest regulations in Khumbu by comparison of photographs taken before, during, and after this period. Comparison of a 1962 photograph made by Erwin Schneider and another taken by Alton Byers (1987a: 78-79; 1987b: 207-208) from approximately the same site in 1984, for example, substantiates Sherpa accounts of post-1965 forest and woodland change at Shyangboche and near Khumjung and Kenzuma. Two of Charles Houston's photographs (J. Fisher 1990:8,144) similarly support Sherpa oral history testimony in that they indicate that the area adjacent to the northwest corner of Nauje was not forested in 1950 and that large areas on the slope immediatedly west of the Tengboche monastery were open woodland at that time. Much more could be done with historical photographs beyond the analysis of repeat photographs or individual historical "slice in time" photographs. What is really needed to augment oral history testimony are sequential comparisons of the conditions of particular sites over a period of years, with photographs from as many different times as possible between 1950 and the present.

12. That considerable logging occurred in the area has been confirmed by a ground survey which found large numbers of stumps (Byers 1987b: 211). Byers contrasts the density of juniper in a less-disturbed site near Shyangboche with that of juniper on the slope above Khumjung. At the less-disturbed site there was a "general absence of stumps" and a density of tree-sized individuals (i.e., greater than four centimeters in diameter at breast height) of 725 per hectare. Above Khumjung the density of juniper was only 533 per hectare. A full 36.5 percent of the Khumjung juniper that Byers tallied as stems, moreover, were merely stumps. He further notes that "it could also be argued that considerably more juniper existed in the mid-1950's and, because of the Sherpa practice of removing all woody material, this was not reflected in the 1984 sampling quadrants" (ibid.:212).

It could be further noted that there are now very few junipers more than a meter in height on the slope immediately above Khumjung. This contrasts strikingly with the stature of the protected juniper at the Khumjung village temple or the lu -inhabited juniper elsewhere in the settlement.

13. Interestingly, Byers reports researchers' impressions that Sherpas have insisted that the Khumjung slope was densely forested in the recent past:

It is of note, however, that most Sherpa informants interviewed by researchers since the early 1970's insist that the Khumjung slopes were covered by "thick forests" 20-

30 years ago, although the specific Sherpa landscape terminology used and translated is not known. (1987b: 212, n. 13)

Descriptions of the Khumjung slope as densely forested only thirty years ago, however, are considered by some elders to be extremely exaggerated. Local residents instead remember the vegetation there as having been between nating tukpu (thick forest) and nating shrerne (thin forest) in density during their lifetimes. Certain areas had more trees than others.

This confusion may have several causes. Sherpas may have misunderstood the degree of detail demanded by researchers and offered simple generalizations rather than detailed accounts. Researchers or other investigators may have misinterpreted Sherpa responses or asked imprecise questions.

14. The difference between the tree cover above Khumjung and that above Kunde only a few hundred meters away along the same slope is tremendous. At Kunde there are big junipers growing only a few dozen meters above the highest houses and an open juniper woodland extends unbroken up the slope until it feathers into fir woodlands. This may reflect better protection of this area since 1915 as well as possibly different forest conditions at the time of the establishment of the rani ban.

15. Not all families spent the entire winter outside of Khumbu and some made a series of shorter trips to Pharak, Katanga and other areas to trade salt for grain. Fürer-Haimendorf (1979), for example, noted that Dorje Ngundu of Khumjung made a number of such trips during the winter of 1956-57.

16. By the 1980s, however, it had become common for entire families to spend the winter outside of Khumbu again. Destinations by this time had changed and most people wintered in Kathmandu or made pilgrimages to Buddhist sites in India or Tibet.

17. Villagers made several adjustments to these new conditions. One common strategy was an effort to produce more potatoes. This became relatively easy to do once the higher-yielding yellow potato became available in the mid-1970s, but during the years before that many families had difficulty in growing enough tubers for their new household requirements or finding other farmers who had a surplus to sell. It is possible that some families may have shifted their cropping emphasis at this time toward a greater reliance on potatoes and less production of grains. Another strategy was to purchase more grain. Income from tourism enabled many families to pay relatively high prices to purchase this grain from lower-valley traders at the Nauje weekly market.

18. According to Thompson and Warburton (1985:122) Fürer-Haimendorf noted a change in fuel-wood use between his 1957 and 1971 visits. Whereas in 1957 Sherpas had kept fires going all day, in 1971 they used wood only when it was necessary for cooking. Thompson and Warburton use this simple observation to estimate that Sherpas may have been using a third less fuel wood in the 1970s than previously. This may be an overestimate, for they did not take into account the increased numbers of months that families were now spending at home in the region using fuel wood. It is very probable that Sherpas were making more thrifty use of fuel wood by 1971, but several factors ignored in Fürer-Haimendorf's comparison are very important in evaluating the amount of

conservation being practiced. It is not clear whether or not Fürer-Haimendorf took seasonal variations in fuel-wood use into account. He may have been observing differences between late autumn or winter practices and summer ones. It is also not clear how much time would have been spent cooking. Today Sherpas cook four meals, all of which require substantial time. The preparation of dinner in particular, especially in winter when the evening warmth is welcome, can occupy several hours. Additional fires may be lit to prepare tea.

19. It is possible that Tibetan refugees may also have made stove use more visible in Khumbu in the early 1960s (J. Fisher 1990:64). It seems, however, that stoves were mainly adopted in the mid- and late 1960s rather than at the beginning of the decade.

20. Sherpas do not try to heat their homes as a rule, but rather cluster close around the fire when they are cold. The new architectural fashions may in part be a response to the lower heating abilities of the stone stoves compared to open fires. Not all the new fashions are concerned with conserving forest resources in the larger sense, for multiple rooms, ceilings, and wood paneling have increased the amount of timber required. There has, however, been some conservation of timber as well, including the use of smaller beams and rafters, a change that also reflects the conversion to lighter metal roofs from the older styles of slate slabs or heavy fir shakes.

21. Perhaps the fact that New Zealand advising was so influential in the establishment and early operation of Sagarmatha National Park is partly to be credited with this attitude. New Zealand national parks are managed with considerable emphasis on local consultation, which there is ensured by having local representatives as members on the councils that administer individual parks.

22. Under the regulations that established Nepal's national park system the parks are required to pay for the posting of troops who operate under the independent command of their own officers. At times the army has been involved in efforts to halt musk deer poaching by Tamangs from outside of Khumbu who have been active even in recent years in the Dudh Kosi valley.

23. The new cost of timber has led to increasing use of sheet-metal roofing in some Khumbu villages. Sherpas note that now the cost of having metal roofing material carried in from Kathmandu is competitive with the cost of having fir shakes cut and transported from Pharak. Timber use has also been influenced. Since the cost of having timber cut and hauled to house sites increases with distance from Pharak, it has become extremely expensive in the villages of eastern Khumbu. This has affected the lives of residents of Pangboche and Phurtse, many of whom are among the families least involved in the tourism industry and who can least afford high prices for what was formerly a resource free for the taking.

24. This has probably contributed to the apparently rather poor seedling survival rate in some plantations.

25. This could be established at many levels. One would be the reestablishment of the long-defunct national park advisory committee with regular meetings and legal minutes that would be submitted to the director general of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in Kathmandu as well

as to park authorities in Khumbu. Annual open meetings should be held between the chief administrator of the national park and villagers. Conservation education programs could be developed in the schools. Greater mutual involvement of local people and national park staff in village development and Khumbu conservation activities could be encouraged. And at another level Sherpas could become a more intrinsic part of park planning and management through a reorganization of national resource management to grant more authority to village committees.

26. Some Sherpas consider that national park prohibitions on the use of green wood refer only to tree felling and not to the lopping of branches.

27. In the Pangboche area villagers complained that the park gave permits to Kunde and Khumjung villagers who cut beams to build tourist lodges in Pheriche and other sites along the trail to Mount Everest. These villagers apparently felt no need to respect Pangboche villagers' religious sentiments about the Yarin forest. Tree felling at Yarin by nonvillagers is said to have led some Pangboche people to obtain trees there as well. During the mid-1980s there was also a village controversy in Phurtse, this time precipitated by two villagers who felled trees for beams with national park approval without having obtained authorization from the shinggi nawa. In both cases park administrators could have been more aware of local institutions and procedures and more careful not to undermine them.

28. In theory government logging-permit policies after the nationalization of the forest would also have discouraged the felling of trees for fuel wood by awarding permits only for timber use. But there was no effort to enforce such a policy, and felling trees for fuel wood continued to be a common practice until the national park began to enforce its regulations.

29. Pangboche families have the most accessible fuel-wood supply today, with abundant dead wood available within an hour's journey across the Imja Khola.

30. The collection of these permit fees, however, was seen by park authorities as a reward rather than as a right and not all villages immediately won the authority to collect these fees for their own use.

31. This interpretation of the agreement, however, may not be shared by all Sherpas. In 1990 the bridge to Satarma was dismantled by national park workers. Much fuel wood continues to be gathered in the area, however, by Sherpas and also by Rai woodcutters who now come to Khumbu each autumn and spring to work for a few weeks selling fuel wood to lodges, government offices, and individual families. Two makeshift bridges have been established to provide access to the area. Some cutting also continues to take place without authorization on the Nauje side of the Bhote Kosi across from Satarma. It should be noted that many woodcutters at Satarma do exercise some care in selecting fuel wood. During a spring 1990 visit to the site I met Rai woodcutters who had selected a large birch tree that had been uprooted and fallen rather than fell a standing tree. Other Rais and Sherpas were climbing the steep slope above Satarma for up to an hour in order to reach remote areas of birch forest before gathering fuel wood.

32. Two large trees were considered to be enough to provide roof shakes for a modest-sized house. In Phurtse and Pangboche it was believed that areas closer to their settlements would also be opened for tree felling for roof shakes and in Phurtse, where slate slabs for roofing are popular, there was an understanding that families who were not interested in shake roofs could cut trees for use in window and door framing instead.

33. The New Zealand mission of 1974 recommended that three zones be established within Sagarmatha National Park, a human settlement zone, a pastoral zone, and a wilderness zone. Although these zones were not implemented the principles underlying them were embodied in park regulations.

34. It is remembered that about 1943 a large number of yak were brought down early in the autumn before the village had been opened, Until this time the custom in the village had been to choose two nawa annually but to place no limit on the number of successive terms a nawa could serve. As part of an effort to restore the effectiveness of the institution it was then decided that the offices must rotate each year.

35. The difficulty the nawa had in collecting fines is summed up in one incident where a Nauje family lavished beer (chang ) and rum on the nawa as they are supposed to when they are being fined for having violated community regulations, but then charged the nawa for the alcohol they had drunk. This incident did not help other enforcement efforts.

36. The next spring the customary system of holding a village gathering and electing new nawa broke down. Usually the previous year's office holders are responsible for collecting a small amount of cash and grain (half a rupee or a rupee and a very small amount of rice) from each village family to make a barrel of beer and pay lamas for conducting a ceremony at the village temple in the third lunar month (Dawa Shiwa). At that gathering of the village prayers are offered to Khumbu Yul Lha and the three new nawa for the coming summer are chosen. In 1980 two of the incumbent nawa were away from the village in the spring. Some community leaders discouraged the mens' wives from performing the collection in their absence, and given the lack of community will to carry on communal pastoral regulation no one came forward to organize the ceremonies.

37. Many zopkio, however, are taken to the nearby (and traditionally unregulated) valley of Gyajo where they can be left for weeks on their own. Nauje families who have bought land in Langmoche and Chosero base zopkio there for at least part of the summer. A few Najue families during the last few years have begun taking zopkio still further afield, letting them summer on their own in Tengbo in westernmost Khumbu and in the Gokyo area of the upper Dudh Kosi valley. The two main Nauje yak-owning households also take their livestock to the uppermost Imja Khola valley and the high elevations of the Bhote Kosi valley.

38. Grazing disputes between Nauje and Khumjung-Kunde are not new. Nearly twenty years ago there was a major argument as a result of Nauje livestock (especially zhum) being herded at Shyangboche in summer when that area is closed by Khumjung-Kunde-administered herding regulations. There was discussion of ending nawa regulation. Villagers from all three settlements took their complaints to the Nepali official of the Nauje branch of the Sagarmatha

zone office. He supported continuing the nawa system and asked them what they wanted to do. Nauje and Khumjung-Kunde villagers alike then spoke up in favor of restoring the administration of the grazing ban while blaming each other for its violation.

39. The Thamicho action of turning the task of enforcing livestock exclusion rules over to the adekshe is very reminiscent of the last approach taken by Khumjung and Kunde when community support of shinggi nawa regulation of the rani ban was evaporating. It may reflect a lack of willingness by villagers to voluntarily continue to accept their turn at a rotated office rather than an effort to increase the effectiveness of enforcement.

40. In this regard it might be significant that Phurtse also has had a history of enforcing forest-management regulations unusually effectively.

41. This cautions also against assumptions that because sacred forests have long been carefully protected by a community that they will continue to be because of the strength of cultural values and beliefs.

42. Before sending the zopkio to graze on its own the family conducted a ceremony that included the reading of protective prayers such as are read before people go on trading trips to Tibet and other long journeys. There is some risk involved in sending the stock out to these areas, for some have died in falls on steep slopes and others have been drowned in the Bhote Kosi.

43. Many Nauje families now hire people to cut wild grass, and many young non-Sherpa family household "servants" (particularly young men) are assigned this task. It is said to be increasingly risky to grow hay in some lower Bhote Kosi sites near Nauje because these wild-grass cutters may "mistake" unattended hayfields for wild grass when the mist is thick and no one is watching.

44. Some Nauje residents also note that the local population of Himalayan tahr has risen markedly and also competes for grass on local slopes. A possible connection between the end of goat keeping in the area and poorer grass was also suggested, on the grounds that the lack of goats means that nearby slopes where they formerly grazed are now less effectively manured.

45. This aspect of herding management requires further investigation.

46. In the autumn of 1985 there was a poor hay harvest in much of Khumbu and wild grass for hay was also scarce. That year it snowed in late autumn and the snow stayed on the ground. Households began feeding hay and other fodder in the late autumn and had to continue feeding more fodder than usual to stock as the winter continued. By spring many families' fodder stores were exhausted. The grass was poorer than usual in the spring, and there was further snow as well. Hay was so rare in the spring that its price doubled and soon it became totally unavailable. Livestock began dying in late April and early May. Some people lost a great deal of stock (in some cases half their herd) and many families lost at least some stock. Thamicho herders especially lost a great deal of stock. One Thami Teng herder lost ten head of nak and yak and a Thami Og stock owner lost eight nak. Many herders lost five or six animals. Such disasters were not unique to Thamicho in 1986. Pangboche and Kunde nak herders in the upper Imja Khola lost unusual numbers of stock as well. One Pangboche family had eleven nak die at Dingboche. Stock owners herding in the upper Dudh Kosi

valley also reported losses, in one case of eight nak and yak. In all these cases the stock that died were yak and nak, always in the high herding settlements and often the oldest and least mobile stock.

1. The role of multialtitudinal and multienvironmental exchange has also been important in Andean subsistence strategies since pre-Columbian times (Brush 1976; Salomon 1985).

2. Livestocks and men have, however, been killed while attempting the crossing. Bad weather, crevasses, and frozen glacial lakes are all hazards, and there are reports of traders having lost more than a hundred head of dimzo on the pass.

3. There may have been one exception to this monopoly, for in Shorung there is a tradition that four powerful families of that region had government authorization to trade across the Nangpa La. Other Shorung families gained access by marrying into Khumbu families, and there was some illicit trading by both Shorung and Pharak Sherpas. Marriages into Khumbu families have boosted the trading careers of some Shorung men since the late nineteenth century. Among the early examples of this phenomenon was gembu Tsepal, who left his first wife in Golila to marry a Sherpa woman of Nauje. Ortner (1989:109) notes two other examples, Karma of Junbesi, who late in his life moved to Khumjung, and Kusang, Karma's son-in-law, who had earlier made the same move. In the latter cases, however, it is not clear that marriages to Khumbu Sherpa women were involved. Marriages between the sons of prominent Khumbu traders (especially Nauje traders) and the daughters of politically powerful and wealthy Shorung Sherpas continued through the 1950s, but the degree to which this kinship link was exploited by Shorung Sherpas for trading purposes is not known. Shorung Sherpas, it should also be remembered, had trading options other than maneuvering for access to the Nangpa La route. The route through Rongshar, which was far closer to Shorung and which was open year round, was utilized by Shorung Sherpas as well as Tibetan traders. This was indeed a much more important conduit for grain exports from Nepal than was the Nangpa La, and it was also the major horse-trading route.

4. Besides the Khumbu traders a number of Tibetans also carried salt south and traded it in Nauje to Sherpas (they were forbidden to deal it directly to Rais). Some of these Tibetan traders came south with fifty or sixty yak, and the total number of Tibetan yak arriving in Khumbu during trading season has been estimated at five hundred to a thousand. Many of these yak returned north lightly laden, and it was possible for Khumbu traders to hire them as pack stock paying a daily fee of eight or nine rupees per yak in the 1950s.

5. Traders who operated east of the Dudh Kosi in Rai country went south as far as Rajbiraj (Hanuman Nagar) in the Nepalese Tarai. A yak-hair chara that was worth four rupees in Nauje in the early 1950s brought twenty pathi of husked rice in places like Lokhim, a seven- or eight-day journey south of Nauje.

6. Sherpas did not buy, sell, and exchange goods in Ganggar, Kaprak, Nauje, or even Shigatse in market center bazaars. Instead all trade was carried out in households or camps. When Khumbu traders traded in Shigatse, for example, they rented rooms or a house from acquaintances and when word spread of what they had to offer, clients dealt with them directly on an individual basis. Similarly when Sherpas traded in lower-altitude regions of Nepal they stayed with trading partners, relatives, friends, or acquaintances in the villages and traded from their homes or made rounds of the various houses in the villages. Permanent marketplaces were scarce in eastern Nepal and much of Tibet until recent decades, although in lower-altitude Nepal and Tibet there were great annual trade fairs known as melas , often associated with religious celebrations.

7. In 1947, for example, 248 Khumbu men brought a court case against 3 Pharak Sherpas from Ghat whom they accused of going to Tibet and bringing back a flock of sheep over the Nangpa La.

8. Paper made in Nepal from daphne bark was the major paper used in Tibet to print religious texts and government documents before 1960. Butter was used on a vast scale by monasteries for keeping alight millions of devotional lamps, for warming monks with endless cups of salt tea, and for creating the large butter sculptures for which some monasteries constructed special buildings.

9. A few prospered and returned to Solu-Khumbu. One of these was the son of a Shorung pembu and trader who later became one of the greatest political figures and wealthiest men in Solu-Khumbu history, Sangye Tenzing Lama. He had already been active in trading with Tibet from Shorung (probably via the Rongshar route) before he moved to Darjeeling in the late 1880s. He did not go to Darjeeling to trade, however, but rather to be a labor contractor on two road-construction projects. Sangye Tenzing Lama took these earnings back to Shorung and only then invested them in trade in Those iron and paper (Ortner 1989:104).

10. Iron from Those was traded both over the Nangpa La and via the Rongshar route to the west. Most of the iron passing through Khumbu was in the form of agricultural tools, whereas the Rongshar iron was primarily round balls of raw metal. Both the trade via Rongshar and iron trade from Those to Khumbu were in the hands of Shorung Sherpas.

11. A few families used crossbreeds or sheep as pack animals.

12. From those places other middlemen such as the Rais of Gudel traded Tibetan salt still farther.

13. Rais brought grain each autumn to Nauje and other villages, exchanging it directly with particular families with whom they had been accustomed to trading. Rais have been coming to Khumbu in large numbers to trade since at least the nineteenth century.

14. Big traders arranged for large quantities of these goods to be supplied to them in Khumbu. A load of paper in Nauje cost 100 rupees delivered in the 1950s and big traders might take 300 loads a year north to Shigatse. Shere was 230 rupees a load in the mid-1950s and butter 400 rupees. Bigger profits were possible with butter. A trader might anticipate doubling his investment by selling

paper or shere in Shigatse, but butter was worth double the Nauje price in Ganggar and double the Ganggar price in Shigatse.

15. Khumbu trade to Kalimpong in the twentieth century may have reached its peak during the 1950s.

16. Lower-altitude Sherpas and Rais shared the common Khumbu belief that Indian salt is unsuitable for livestock and for many human uses. Khumbu Sherpas believe that feeding female stock Indian salt can result in miscarriage. It is also believed to be less effective as a preservative and to make poor salt-butter tea.

17. The number of trekking tourists is certainly well below the number of permits issued, since some tourists go on more than one trek and others never set out on the journeys for which they have obtained a permit.

18. Over a three-year period from autumn 1987 through spring 1990 43 percent (131) of the 303 expeditions that climbed in Nepal attempted Khumbu peaks.

19. In 1978 Sherpas had a majority financial interest in four-trekking companies. By 1988, however, Sherpas controlled twenty-six of the fifty-six trekking agencies registered with the Nepal Trekking Association (Kunwar 1989). All but a few of these Sherpa agencies were operated by Khumbu Sherpas and all had obtained their ownership of these businesses with support from non-Sherpa benefactors (Adams 1989:18).

20. The first recorded occasions on which Sherpas were employed as porters on a mountaineering expedition date to the 1907 climbing holidays of the Scottish doctor and mountaineer A. M. Kellas and the Norwegians Rubenson and Monrad Aas (Mason 1955:127). Both groups were impressed by the Sherpas' abilities as porters and praised not only their strength but also their good spirits, behavior, and bravery (Cameron 1984:154, 161). These were but the first of many accolades the Sherpas would soon receive from mountaineers.

21. It was also possible to engage in seasonal circular migration, journeying to Darjeeling each spring for mountaineering work and returning for the monsoon and the rest of the year to Khumbu. It is not yet possible, however, to reconstruct how important seasonal migration was in comparison to longer-term settlement in Darjeeling.

22. There are also eighteen peaks that were designated in 1978 as "trekking peaks." Permits to climb these are issued by the Nepal Mountaineering Association, and there are fewer conditions to be met and lower fees for these peaks. Several Khumbu peaks are approved as trekking peaks for climbing by tourists: Island Peak (Imja Tse, 6,183m), Lobuche East (6,119m), Kongma Tse (5,849m), Pokalde (5,806m), and Kwangde (6,011m).

23. These figures also include tourists staying at the Japanese-built Everest View Hotel. The number of tourists staying at this hotel, however, peaked during the mid-1970s and the hotel was not operated for most of the 1980s.

24. By village the percentage of households involved in tourism in 1978 was Nauje 84 percent, Kunde 85 percent, Khumjung 76 percent, and Phurtse 47 percent. In Nauje and Kunde more than a quarter of the entire population worked in tourism. In Nauje 150 individuals worked in tourism out of a village

population of 540, whereas in Kunde 68 people of a village population of 227 had tourism jobs (J. Fisher 1990:115).

25. By tourist shop I mean one considered by local residents to cater primarily to tourists and emphasizing the sale of mountaineering and trekking equipment, foreign foods, and souvenirs. Many such shops also sell some staple foods, kerosene, and clothing to Sherpa customers. A few shops in Nauje and the shops in Kunde and Khumjung primarily cater to local demands.

26. These two narrow lanes are flanked by continuous lines of multistory lodges. Until the late 1970s they were only paths fronted by a few houses and they then followed slightly different routes. With very few exceptions all the structures that line them today have been built since 1973.

27. These places were Nauje, Tengboche, Pheriche, and Lobuche. These sites formed a set of overnight stops that were located an easy day's hike apart and at altitudes that related well to optimal schedules for acclimatization. There were no early lodges in the other Khumbu valleys. During the 1980s there has been a process of developing lodges at intermediate sites along the main trail and establishing them on increasingly popular secondary routes (Stevens 1983).

28. All but two of these were located along the main route to Mount Everest.

29. The small mountain (Gokyo Ri) adjacent to the herding settlement of Gokyo in the upper Dudh Kosi valley also offered a view of Everest, and the route up to it gained a reputation for being both very scenic and less crowded than the main trail to Everest. By 1986 as many as one-fourth of Khumbu visitors were including Gokyo on their itinerary, usually combining it with a trip to Kala Patar.

30. Virtually all the big Nauje lodges, for example, have been built with financial assistance from foreign sponsors. Some Sherpas have received gifts of several thousand dollars, equivalent to several years' wages. Others have been granted long-term loans with low rates of interest. In some cases sums of more than $20,000 have been involved.

31. The higher zopkio figure given by Fürer-Haimendorf (1975:44) for 1957 includes calves temporarily in Nauje in transit to Tibet.

1. Now classic studies of the impact of tourism with particular focus on societies in developing countries include Smith (1989) and De Kadt (1976). Sociocultural impacts on host societies vary among communities as a result of their internal dynamics as well as with regional political economy and the nature and scale of tourism. Environmental impacts also vary enormously as different types of tourist activities, infrastructural development, and accompanying change in local economies and land use interact in diverse and complex ways with local ecosystems.

2. An assessment of the sociocultural impacts of tourism alone, for example, would need to examine tourism's role in change in local identity, beliefs, social hierarchy, conceptions of status, intergenerational relationships, religion, art, reciprocity, politics, demography, and emigration. Some of these topics have

been discussed by Fürer-Haimendorf (1975, 1984), J. Fisher (1990) and Stevens (1983, 1989). In 1990-1991 I conducted further fieldwork on recent sociocultural change in the Khumbu region.

3. Sherpas often say that they "eat" these wages. In the Khumbu Sherpa sense "eating" income, however, also includes spending it on consumer goods, house improvements, and pleasure and pilgrimage journeys to Kathmandu, India, and Tibet. But for households with a relatively small income from tourism, the main use of tourism money is for purchasing food.

4. Investment in tourism is also possible through the purchase of materials for producing handicrafts such as woolen caps and mittens.

5. Precise figures on income and profits are unavailable, but only a few Sherpas perform relatively low-paying day labor or trade with Tibet. Day-labor income, like income from the sale of agricultural surpluses, moreover, is indirectly linked to tourism because tourism furnishes the money used for payment. The most important source of regional income that is entirely outside of the direct and indirect economic ramifications of tourism is probably the sale of crossbreed calves to Sherpas from Shorung and other regions.

6. Other factors, however, have also been at work, and some change that has often been attributed to tourism has had other roots altogether.

7. Porters often expect foreigners to pay more than local residents for their services, and the amount they demand rises if the route involves high-altitude conditions, cold weather, danger, or transit through regions known for expensive lodging and food. The daily wage is based on a load of twenty-five to thirty kilograms, with a load of twenty-five kilograms becoming more common. More pay is expected for greater loads and longer carrying days. It should be noted that in Khumbu porter rates today are high by standards for other areas of Nepal, including regions that have become tourist destinations, and that most porters in Khumbu are not Khumbu Sherpas but Rais, Tamangs, and Pharak Sherpas.

8. Sherpas who already have a full set of the necessary gear from previous expeditions are often given a cash payment in lieu of equipment, which in some cases amounts to a thousand dollars.

9. The company which pays its sirdar 3,000 rupees per month offers cooks 2,800 rupees, both quite high wages by Kathmandu trekking company standards.

10. The profits can be considerable even if a zopkio driver must be hired, in which case the income is split evenly. But it is common for a family member (usually a son but sometimes a wife or daughter) to carry out this task. During the late autumn, winter, and early spring, however, profits are much less if hay has to be purchased.

11. Sherpa sirdar, though, often pay a price for their high income. Both mountaineering and trekking sirdar work is often enormously stressful, requiring the shouldering of much responsibility on a round-the-clock basis and a great deal of close interaction with foreigners. Several Sherpa sirdar have developed ulcers, and others have taken to drink.

12. Thamicho people, including a few women, continue to do some of this work, as occasionally do a few Phurtse and Pangboche men. More Pharak Sherpas work seasonally as trekking porters, including groups of young women.

13. Until the mid-1980s the autumn tourist season was by far the largest, and October and November the busiest months. There was a second peak in the spring, but this was formerly much less important. The number of tourists during the winter months has increased somewhat in recent years, and although there are still two peak seasons the tourist season as a whole now lasts from late September until the first of June.

14. Price rises also took place in the pretourism economy, as reflected not only in the rising cash costs of purchasing nak, salt, and other goods in Tibet but also in the relative barter exchange rates between salt and grains.

15. Most of the rice sold in Nauje is not grown by the men and women selling it but has rather come from the Dingla and Aislalukharka areas or the Tarai and has reached Khumbu through a series of exchanges. Prices in Nauje are reached by direct bargaining between sellers and individual Sherpas.

16. One popular Dingboche lodge, for example, that relied entirely on purchased potatoes, bought approximately twenty-seven loads of potatoes for the autumn 1990-spring 1991 season and ran short. This is equivalent to the annual consumption of many Khumbu families.

17. Mountaineering expeditions and trekking groups bring most of their food and supplies with them from overseas and from Kathmandu. The vegetables, fruit, dairy products, and grain they buy at the Nauje weekly market are all grown outside of Khumbu.

18. The rise in day-labor rates I have described, however, has not been a problem regionally since the higher wages from tourism have more than compensated farmers for the added expense. More families than ever today can afford to hire agricultural wage workers. The one place where tourism has created a serious shortage of agricultural labor and has tremendously inflated wage rates is in the upper Imja Khola during hay-cutting season. This coincides with a time when Pangboche people can easily obtain work with expeditions that have completed their climb and need porters to help them haul their gear out of Khumbu. To compete with the wages offered to porters, Pangboche families must pay men double the usual agricultural day wage for hay cutting. In autumn 1990 this was eighty rupees per day.

19. Some lodge-owning families have also redoubled their efforts to buy more land so that they can also expand their potato production and cut down on the amount of potatoes they must obtain for lodge use either through deals with individual farmers or at the weekly market.

20. Similar complaints about lowland wage earners' lack of knowledge and sense of responsibility is also said to limit their usefulness as herders and to lead to careless and destructive fuel-wood gathering.

21. Field fertility, for example, could be lowered by an increasing depletion of key nutrients, including trace minerals. It may also be that fields are less well fertilized in some places where forest floor leaves and needles are less abundant now than in earlier periods.

22. At Nyeshe near Nauje there are many terraces that were used until only about ten to fifteen years ago along with other terraces that have been abandoned for a considerable time. Reasons for the abandoning of these fields in-

cluded poor harvests and increasing problems with wildlife depredations (mainly by Himalayan tahr). No one indicated that the problem was a lack of labor. Some land was converted to buckwheat production for several years before being abandoned. This suggests that additional potato production was no longer required, possibly reflecting larger yellow potato harvests. Buckwheat would have been especially difficult to guard against tahr and livestock depredation. The abandonment of wheat production at Tashilung in the middle of the twentieth century was also precipitated by problems with tahr. The great increase in the number of tahr in some parts of Khumbu, including the Nauje area, during the late 1980s and early 1990s concerns many farmers, and some believe that Sagarmatha National Park will need to take action. The fact that some fields at Nyeshe have been reclaimed during the last few years by families with little land in Nauje itself, despite the risks there of crop damage from livestock, testifies to the current degree of Sherpa interest in expanding crop production.

23. In some other areas of Nepal, however, such as Langtang and the Takshindo area adjacent to Shorung, the establishment of cheese factories with Swiss aid has had an effect on local pastoralism. This cheese is primarily destined for tourist consumption in Kathmandu. Some Takshindo cheese is brought to Khumbu and sold to lodges and Nauje shops.

24. One Khumjung family, for instance, kept about eight urang zopkio about fifty years ago when they were heavily engaged in salt trading, and a number of other families there owned a few urang zopkio that were used during winter trading trips south. Some urang zopkio were kept by a few Thamicho and Nauje families for similar purposes in more recent times.

25. Very few urang zopkio, however, are kept by Phurtse or Pangboche families. Only four Phurtse families had urang zopkio in the autumn of 1990 and among them owned only nine head of stock.

26. The 1984 figures may have included calves, which would have diminished the percentage of urang zopkio given that only three-year and older urang zopkio are imported.

27. Tourism has increased the local demand for milk and cheese. This demand, as well as the greater part of the increased Sherpa demand for more dairy products (especially butter but also some types of cheese such as shomar ), are met, however, by dairy products imported from outside of Khumbu. Most milk consumed in the region, and almost the only milk that any tourist ever tastes, is foreign powdered milk sold in the weekly market. Butter and other dairy products sold in Nauje and consumed by tourists and local residents alike are imported from Shorung, Kulung, and Pharak.

28. This did not mean, as Fürer-Haimendorf has assumed, that enough fuel wood had to be stored at base camp for the needs of the army of porters as well (1984:58), since they were dismissed and returned home after the establishment of the camp.

29. The felling of trees for this purpose ceased after the establishment of Sagarmatha National Park.

30. Showers are offered by most Nauje lodges and also by some lodges at the Tengboche monastery and even by a few lodges above the forest line at the

settlements of Pheriche, Dingboche, and Chukkung. Some Nauje lodges provide more than fifteen showers a day to tourists during the peak of the season. Four Nauje lodges have electric water heating. The others heat water on a wood stove. By mixing hot water with cold in nearly equal proportions and keeping the amount of water issued per shower to thirty-five liters, a load of birch will heat enough water for eight to ten showers.

31. The increasing pressure for timber was instead shifted to forests outside the park in Pharak. The unfortunate impact of Khumbu timber demand on Pharak forests offers dramatic testimony of what change the national park policy may have averted in Khumbu itself. In effect the shift of impact created by national park policy is very similar to that which took place under local Sherpa forest-protection systems when forest-use pressure was shunted to areas outside of rani ban and lama's forests—only in this case all of Khumbu is administered as protected forest.

32. It was not considered possible to forbid Sherpas or other Nepalis from making cookfires for their own use. This meant that expeditions and groups with large numbers of porters still contributed to increased demand on forest and woodland along the main trails and on the high-altitude juniper that supplied base camps. In spring 1991, however, a sign at the entry station to the park advised tourists that their porters were also forbidden to use fuel wood inside the national park.

33. The development of a small hydroelectric facility in Nauje in 1983 has had very little impact on local fuel-wood use. Under the best operating conditions the plant produces only enough electricity to power hotplates and immersion coils for water heating in four of the village's lodges from early morning until 6:00 P.M. No other village households have any electric power whatsoever for cooking (see Stevens 1989 for more detail).

34. This is reflected, for example, in the increasing importation of rice and its greater role now in Khumbu diets (especially in Nauje, Khumjung, and Kunde). The role of grain grown outside Khumbu in general has also increased and has made possible the shift of much land from buckwheat to potatoes. But cropland is not being abandoned as a result of this process, and the increased consumption of rice does not represent a fundamental shift in Sherpa food tastes. Potatoes and barley are still the preferred foods in Khumbu.

35. That some of these beams were used in building lodges at Pheriche is not the critical point. The key was the undermining of the local ability to enforce traditional rules.

36. There seems to be no link, however, between overgrazing and what Blower and some later reports described as severe gullying near Kunde, Thami Teng, and in the upper Dudh Kosi valley. These instead probably are the result of the geomorphological processes of debris and earth flows, wind ablation, landslides, and slumps, whose origins are unconnected with grazing pressure. The landslides in the upper Dudh Kosi valley probably reflect tectonic activity (Vuichard 1986), whereas the major landscape feature just to the east of Kunde village that had been assumed to be an erosive gully is a long-standing (and still active) debris flow generated high on the walls of Khumbila, and the supposed gully near Thami Teng is probably a feature of wind ablation.

37. Erosion rates may be higher, however, during the occasional years when heavy rains occur. In some years very heavy mid-summer and autumn rains occur, the yerchu and tenju rains which are of concern to farmers. There are also sometimes very intense rainfalls in May and early June before the onset of the main monsoon season. On several occasions in the mid-1980s rainfall was intense enough and runoff heavy enough that the trails in Nauje ran like creeks. They carried enough silt that the small hydroelectric plant down slope had to be closed for fear that the filtration system would be inadequate to prevent damage to the generators. In the late 1960s a heavy autumn rain flooded several Nauje houses and a number of people spent the night seeking refuge beside the village shrine, and on September 18, 1987 I recorded a rainfall in Nauje of more than 100 millimeters in a twenty-four-hour period. The erosive power of these unusual events is not known. It may be substantial in years such as 1985 when a relatively dry winter and spring retards spring grass growth and heavy late-May and early-June rains fall on relatively bare slopes. The role of wind erosion also needs to be evaluated, and it may be considerable in the spring before the growth of new ground cover.

38. Erosion levels, moreover, would undoubtedly have been far higher still if he had been able to measure wind erosion as well.

39. It is unclear how these figures of forest cover loss were reached, or how so much deforestation could take place on the snowy slopes of Mount Everest, or even at its base, an area that is a thousand meters above the forest line.

40. The comparison of several pairs of photographs from 1962 and 1984 that Byers carried out (1987b :207-208, 213-214, 217-218) and a pair from 1950 and 1989 made by J. Fisher (1990:144-145) suggest that relatively little deforestation has occurred in these particular sites. These photographs also offer support for Sherpa oral history accounts of localized vegetation change, including the clearing of juniper at Shyangboche in the 1960s and early 1970s, the thinning of juniper above Khumjung after 1965, tree felling between Nauje and Sonasa during the 1960s and 1970s, and pre-1950 forest use on the slope west of the Tengboche monastery.

41. These mules are currently mainly employed in transporting material for the building of the hydroelectric project near Thami Og and the rebuilding of the Tengboche monastery. When these projects are completed in the next year or two the mules may well be shifted to the tourist trade. Sherpas note that mules carry 100-kilogram loads rather than the 60-kilogram loads that urang zopkio do, and that they travel twice as fast. Mules, for example, routinely make the trip between Nauje and Lukla in a single day. It may be that Sherpas will decide that mules can be even more profitable for transport businesses than zopkio or yak. This could have an enormous impact on regional pastoralism as well as significantly change the character of the Khumbu rural landscape.

1. It should be reemphasized that Khumbu is not a homogeneous society and that within individual settlements a range of lifestyles are followed by different

households. This complexity increases when viewed diachronically, for both the demographic cycle and broader historical changes related to intensification, migration, and political economy widen the range of subsistence strategies followed by a given family or community. Yet a number of common themes characterize Khumbu Sherpa subsistence strategies: diversification that combines agropastoralism with trade or income from tourism; multialtitudinal resource use; specialization in high-altitude varieties of crops and livestock and in particular in potatoes, buckwheat, and yak and yak-cattle crossbreeds; seasonal movement between multiple dwellings; and localized transhumance.

2. Examples of household decisions to choose taste over yield in crop selection include not cultivating yellow potatoes and development potatoes and growing barley rather than buckwheat at Dingboche even though it requires considerably more labor for manuring and irrigating.

3. Not all villages, however, were able to respond to declining resource availability by developing community resource-management systems. The main villages of the Bhote Kosi valley (other than Nauje), for example, failed to establish controls over tree felling in nearby areas despite what must have been a very evident decline in the number of trees suitable for house beams. And in the early twentieth century establishment of the rani ban outside intervention in the form of orders from Kathmandu was critical in creating a climate in which local leaders were able to mobilize cooperation to establish new conservation measures based on local perception of environmental conditions and resource needs.

4. This leaves open the possibility that some indigenous peoples may decide to follow ways of life that may one day force them to adjust their land-use practices to different environmental conditions that they themselves have precipitated. Indeed, many indigenous peoples may have radically reshaped local ecosystems intentionally through swidden cultivating, clearing forest for farm and pasture land, changing forest and grassland composition through the use of fire, introducing species, depleting some forms of wildlife and plants through hunting and gathering for consumption, security, and trade, changing the courses of streams and the contours of slopes, and even encouraging or acquiescing in ecological degradation in one place in order to create environments that are more useful for subsistence activities in other places. An example of this would be a lack of concern with erosion from upper slopes in the knowledge that this would only increase alluvium and fertility in down-valley farmlands, a process which appears to have been important in early New Guinea (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987) and perhaps elsewhere in the Pacific.

5. The degree to which those Khumbu Sherpas who have migrated to Kathmandu will be able (or interested) in maintaining some aspects of their identity—or even whether what they perceive as central to their identities as Sherpas is the same as that perceived in Khumbu communities—is a very different question. James Fisher (1990) suggests that in Kathmandu language, to note just one important aspect of culture, is not being maintained and being transmitted to the children. It is interesting, however, the degree to which adult migrants to Kathmandu attempt to maintain some aspects of their former way of life. They

often do not sell their houses in Khumbu, either in the hope of some day returning after they have made their fortunes or, as is also common, so that they have a home to return to each year for at least a few months. Many Kathmandu-based Sherpas spend the summer monsoon months in Khumbu, the season when the great regional festivals of Dumje, Yerchang, and Pangyi take place and the time of weddings and other occasions for social interaction and celebration. In Kathmandu the emigrants try to maintain some sense of community, celebrate religious festivals and life-cycle rites, and even (in the case of the women) wear a modified form of traditional dress. But clearly there are important changes, among which is the sacrifice of the roles of homeland and traditional subsistence lifestyles as a part of their identity. Here the urban dwellers may be developing a generational gap with their parents for whom being Khumbu Sherpa continues to mean living in Khumbu on the land and practicing forms of agriculture and pastoralism that reach far back into the Sherpa experience.