Who In Bhaktapur Is A Newar?

We will be concerned in this volume with the social and symbolic organization of the 99 percent of the city's population who are called by others and by themselves Newars, and, for the most part, with the 92 percent of the city's population who call themselves not only Newars but also Hindus.

The term "Newar" is used by those people whom other groups in Nepal refer to as Newars in a complex way. It is used in a general way by the "Newars" themselves to differentiate themselves from various kinds of outsiders, usually lumped as "Khae (n)," the western Indo-Nepalese "invaders" on the one hand and the "Sae(n) ," or Mongoloid hill peoples of northern origin, the Sherpas, Tibetans, Tamang, and so on, on the other. In Bhaktapur in reference to people living in the city, the maximal use of "Newar" distinguishes those groups who "follow Newar customs," from others living in the city, whom we will introduce later in this chapter as "non-Newars." Some of those non-Newar groups have lived in Bhaktapur since the time of the Newar Kings (for example, the Jha and Bhatta^[*] Brahmans, and the Lingayat temple priests). These groups (and other "outsider" groups) are not Newars because although they have various functions in the city, they are not members of the central hierarchical and symbolically integrated system. They have not, in contrast to so many other groups over the centuries,

become incorporated into the "Newar" sociocultural synthesis. Such people are simply omitted from the listings "Newars" make for themselves and for inquiring outsiders of the members of Bhaktapur's "caste system." No one including members of those outsider groups seems to have any hesitation in saying that they are not Newars, in much the same way as tourists and visiting anthropologists are not Newars.

The usage of "Newar" is further differentiated internally within the "Newar community" in certain contexts. Middle-status and upper-status people will often use the term "Newar" to refer to the upper-status "ksatriya^[*] " and merchant thar s, those that were traditionally attached to the courts, in distinction to the Brahmans above them and the Jyapu farmers and others below them. The "Newar Brahmans," the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans (below), although, in most contexts they consider themselves Newars, conform to this usage in certain contexts, and refer to those upper-status groups who were their traditional patrons in the Malla days as "Newars" in distinction to themselves on the one hand and to the remaining mass of people—that is, the farmers and all middle and lower groups—on the other. The very lowest thar s, for example, the Po(n) and Jugi, will also in some contexts refer to all the Bhaktapur's "core" thar s—including Rajopadhyaya Brahmans—above them as "Newars," and say that they themselves are not Newars. This may be considered perhaps as a rejection of the system in which they are disadvantaged and stigmatized, but it also reflects a hesitation by others above them as to whether they are in or out of the Newar society. They are, in fact, uniquely both. The same low-status people will refer to themselves as "Newars" in other contexts, where they are emphasizing their membership in the town system. For those groups that have been integrated into the core systems as "Newars" in the largest sense there seems to have been an historical process, where a group coming from elsewhere slowly finds a position in the system, perhaps functionally replacing or displacing another group, and slowly becomes defined as Newar, with some hesitation for decades or centuries among those people with long historical memories. These usages and equivocations should not obscure the point that there is a major difference between those who are essential role players and carriers of symbolic meaning within Bhaktapur's mesocosmic system—whatever play on the term "Newar" may be involved—and those, whatever their economic and occasional ritual contributions to the city may be, who are "non-Newars" because they are ignored by that system, not defined in or

given precise symbolic value by it except in perfunctory ways as one or another kind of foreigner.

The vast majority of the Newars of Bhaktapur think of themselves—and define themselves to the census takers—as Hindu, or more precisely as Siva margi (followers of the path of Siva) Newars, in contrast to Buddha margi Newars. We will return later in this chapter to the fairly complex question of what it means for a Newar to be a "Buddhist" rather than a "Hindu," and the various ways that such Buddhists are related to Bhaktapur's core macrostatus system.