1. It is, however, the site of an important shrine, a pitha , of one of the city's "Mandalic^{[ *]} Goddesses," Mahakali. [BACK]

2. A demographic sample survey conducted by the United Nations fund for Population Activities in 1976 (cited in Acharya and Ansari [1980, 104]) reported an annual growth rate based on differences in the birth and death rates of 1.88 percent per annum for Bhaktapur, which will, if it were to keep up without a large increase in emigration be another of the many foreseeable problems for a future Bhaktapur. [BACK]

3. The urban population of Nepal as a whole has been calculated by the Central Bureau of Statistics as having a 12.95 per hundred excess of males; Kathmandu has 15.42. Most of this seems to reflect differential male migration into cities, as rural Nepal as a whole has a male/female excess of only 0.66 per hundred males, and the total Nepalese population has an excess of 1.35 per hundred males. [BACK]

4. These functions are enumerated in the Nepal Nagar Panchayat act of B.S. 2019 (1961): (1) to construct, maintain, and repair roads, bridges, drains, public latrines, and to keep them clean; (2) to provide drinking water; (3) to keep the lanes and roads clean; (4) to arrange and maintain the cremation grounds; (5) to keep census, birth, and death records; (6) to construct and repair the shelters for religious pilgrims; (7) to take measures against rabid dogs; (8) to provide treatment and preventive measures against epidemics; (9) to establish and manage schools, in accordance with the policies and regulations of the central government; (10) to keep records of the number of houses and their distribution in the town wards; (11) to provide parking places; (12) to encourage and aid activities for cultural development; (13) to provide assistance to district projects; (14) to provide street lighting; (15) to arrange for exhibitions, fairs, and markets; (16) to plant trees along the sides of the access roads into the town; and (17) to provide social and health services (adapted from Krishna Prasad Pradhan 1968, 120ff.). [BACK]

5. These wards have been the focal units for several economic surveys. They are newly created modern administrative units and are not related to the traditional city spatial units with which we will be concerned. [BACK]

6. A detailed general economic study of Bhaktapur has not yet appeared. Partial studies that give useful statistical and survey data include, in addition to census data, the Nepal Rastra^{[ *]} Bank (1978) on household budget surveys, Acharya and Ansari (1980) on the "basic economic needs" of Bhaktapur, and Wachi (1980) on the economy of farming households. Important materials on land ownership and use in a large traditional Newar town, Thimi, with presumptive similarities to Bhaktapur, are in Müller (1981). Details on agricultural techniques in a Newar village are given in Toffin (1977). Toffin also treats the economy of a Newar town in 1984, chapter 11. For aspects of agricultural economies, see also Pant and Jain (1969), M. C. Regmi (1971, 1976, 1978), and Müller (1981, 1984). [BACK]

7. Data cited in Müller (1981, 62) gives the extent of land devoted to various crops as well as their yields for the Bhaktapur district m 1972/73. Note that because of the high yield of rice its actual production has even more relative importance than the land devoted to it would indicate. Rice: land, 5,653 hectares, yield, 20,135 tons; wheat, 5,500 hectares, 9,810 tons; maize, 2,528 hectares, 4,425 tons; millet, 850 hectares, 1,452 tons; potatoes, 438 hectares, 3,920 tons; oilseed, 360 hectares, 216 tons; sugarcane, 7 hectares, 90 tons; barley, 4 hectares, 4 tons. [BACK]

8. One source (His Majesty's Government Nepal, 1969, 85) gives an intensity index (cropping in relation to land in cultivation) of 127 percent for the Bhaktapur district. Müller reports on the basis of detailed studies in Thimi that "the degree of intensity with which the land is farmed is always over 200 percent [for example, for fields used for both rice and wheat]. In the case of vegetable and potato growing it can be as high as 300 percent. The highest degree of intensity is reached in all year round vegetable cultivation. The Newar farmers never leave the land fallow longer than one to two months a year" (1981, 61). [BACK]

9. The use of hand digging tools by the Newar farmers is associated with a rejection of the use of animal-drawn ploughs. The rejection of such ploughing is explained by Newars m terms of religious taboos about yoking and using cows, bulls or oxen, thought to represent a goddess or Siva to plow the earth. There has been some discussion about whether this represents in fact an ideological rejection of what would otherwise have been a superior method of farming (Webster, 1981). The digging of fields at the start of the rainy season in preparation for rice planting is done with the short-handled hoe, or ku . As Müller (1981, 57) states the problem, "as ploughing is generally regarded as a criterion for an advanced civilization in connection with wet rice growing, it is strange that in an area termed as the center of an 'advanced civilization' in Nepal, ploughing is not done, whereas it is common even in the smallest, terraced fields outside the Kathmandu Valley. It is not possible to give an explanation for this phenomenon, especially as the plough is known to the Newars. Nevertheless, its use is punished with expulsion from the caste. As human labor is not highly valued as a production factor and as the Newars believe that they obtain more yield with their own, traditional methods of working the land the farmers regard the work with the Kodali [or ku ], which seems archaic to us, as something very positive." Webster argues (1981, 129) that "the plough was not used by the Newars to any significant extent because of practical, economic and ecological reasons." Subsequently, later events, perhaps "related to a Newar fixation on status, led to a prohibition on ploughing. The preference for the ku crystallized into a taboo." [BACK]

10. We are talking here of families who actually farm. This is not necessarily the same as the large section of the city's hierarchical system who are locally referred to as Jyapus , that is, "farmers." Most, but not all, of the thars (see chap. 5) within the Jyapu group farm, but not all of the families within a farming thar , nor all of the working members of a farming family farm. Furthermore there are members of other nominally non-Jyapu groups who do farm. Farming, in fact, as everywhere in South Asia, is one of the activities least restricted by caste prescriptions. [BACK]

11. The contributions of the exchange of goods and services to household income and the payment of debts is of importance throughout the Bhaktapur economy. [BACK]

12. One kind of land that tenants rent and farm is "Guthi" land. Guthi land is land that was set aside in the past, often by the Malla kings, with the purpose of providing income through a portion of its produce for maintaining a variety of religious and charitable institutions (including the maintenance of temples and the support of festivals) and, for the support of various social services such as "schools, hospitals, orphanages and poor houses" (M. C. Regmi 1976, 17). These lands are administered now through a central government agency in Kathmandu. [BACK]

13. In the 1964 Land Act the ceiling on land ownership for the Kathmandu Valley was 2.67 hectares (6.6 acres). The rents for agricultural land were also limited depending on the quality of the land. For the Kathmandu Valley as a whole rents are estimated to amount to about one-third the value of the total produce (Pant and Jain, 1969; M. C. Regmi 1976). [BACK]

14. Note that sahu is linguistically distinguished from the "trader," the banja , who travels to sell his merchandise. [BACK]

15. Membership in the hereditary status system affects trades or professions followed by members in various ways. Some economic activities are more likely to be followed by members of certain clusters of hereditary status groups. Thus commerce and trade are most likely to be followed by Pa(n)cthar and Chathar groups, farming by the members of the Jyapu cluster. These clusters have many aspects of social class. In contrast, there are a number of professions specified entirely by one's status group membership, particularly by one's membership in the clan-like unit called a thar . A thar member does not have to follow the thar -specific trade, although he often—in many cases almost always—does. If he does not, he cannot perform the thar -specific profession or trade of another thar ; he must follow a profession or trade (mostly farming, commerce and trade, government service, or unskilled labor) not specialized by thar . His access to these other kinds of work may be informally restricted by the "classes" that already have and that tend to control these jobs. Membership in thars determines some twenty-one specific crafts or professions (chap. 5). There are also certain hereditary professions (laundering, shoemaking, knife sharpening, some kinds of healing, and certain priestly activities) that are traditionally done in Bhaktapur by "non-Newars." [BACK]

16. Acharya and Ansari remark that the percentage of the economically active population in Kathmandu that is involved in services is 77.5 percent (according to the 1971 census materials), and note that employment in the services sector for Bhaktapur Town Panchayat is not only the lowest among the towns of the valley but also includes a considerable number of persons who actually work in Kathmandu (1980, 109). [BACK]

17. The Household Budget Survey of the Nepal Rastra^{[ *]} Bank showed that Bhaktapur households had the lowest level of externally produced manufactured goods of the three valley cities. For example, in Kathmandu in 1972, 71 percent of the household had kerosene cookers; 4.7 percent, kerosene heaters; 43.6 percent, radios; and 15.9 percent, bicycles. For Bhaktapur, for the same items, 13.8 percent of the households had kerosene cookers; 1.0 percent, kerosene heaters; 9.1 percent, radios; and 0.3 percent, bicycles. Even for locally produced modern items Bhaktapur households had very few. Only 8.6 percent of the households had chairs, 6.8 percent tables, and 14.3 percent beds (1974 b , 15). [BACK]

18. Of 18 representative town panchayats and market centers surveyed in the early 1970s by the Nepal Rastra^{[ *]} Bank, Bhaktapur had the lowest household income and the second lowest per capita income but also (with the exception of two towns in far western Nepal) had the highest percentage of household income in kind, some 46.54 percent. (Nepal Rastra^{[ *]} Bank [1978], from a table reprinted in Acharya and Ansari [1980].) [BACK]