The Hinterland

Bhaktapur district, the area containing the city of Bhaktapur and its surrounding towns, villages, and open lands, with its 110,157 people in 1971, is the most densely populated of the three valley districts. There are some seven settlements (other than Bhaktapur) in the district with more than a thousand population. Six of these ranged between 1,200 and 3,000 people in 1968. One of them, Thimi, had more than ten thousand people (His Majesty's Government, Nepal 1969, 81). The other district settlements are hamlets and small villages. Some of the Newar towns in the various Valley districts have been studied (Barré, Berger, Feveile, and Toffin 1981; Toffin 1977; Müller 1981). What remains still to be done is a study of their past and present relations with the main cities, and the systematic transformations of Newar social and cultural life illuminated by the contrast in size of the central and peripheral communities. The relation of the city of Bhaktapur to

the rest of the district is for reasons given in chapter 2 only minimally considered in this present study.