Innovation in Traditions of Transformation: A Preliminary Survey of a Quarter Century of Change in the Bāhāḥs and Bahīs of the Kathmandu Valley

Abstract

The Newar monastic compounds of the Kathmandu Valley (bāhāḥs and bahīs) are the centres of what is arguably the world's oldest continuously practised form of Buddhism. This article presents a preliminary analysis of a survey that revisited these compounds 25 years after the publication of John Locke's exhaustive study in order to understand how these fundamental institutions of Newar Buddhism have been affected by the radical transformations that Nepalese society has undergone since then. It suggests that Newar practitioners of the dharma have often expressed their devotion in ways that are at once traditional and vitally innovative, transforming these compounds as well as the means through which they transform them in myriad ways. The conspicuous democratisation of sponsorship of ‘repairs’ has resulted in alterations that conform to notions of authenticity—old and new, Newar and foreign—as well as deliberate departures from tradition.