Peoples and Cultures of the Himalayas

Abstract

Recent events have focused interest on history, politics and strategic situation of Himalayas, but peoples who live in this spectacular region have been largely overlooked. There is no source to which one can go to find out who these people are or how they relate to one another and to populations bordering their homelands. This essay attempts to provide such a source in brief outline. The Himalayas form an arc more than 1,500 miles long, 150 to 250 miles wide and averaging 19,000 feet high at crest, rising out of Indo-Gangetic plain of northern India and Pakistan and bordering on Tibet. They extend from Indus River in Kashmir in northwest through north Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and through mountain countries of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan, turning northeast with Brahmaputra River in state of Assam where they comprise northern sections of what is known as North-East Frontier Agency of India. In northwest they merge into Karakoram, Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges and lower mountains which turn southward in West Pakistan. In east they connect with lower mountains perpendicular to them which form border between India and Burma. Davis aptly notes that the whole mighty barrier, with great subsidiary ranges curving southward at either end, looks on relief map like a folded curtain pushed back and draped around northern India and Pakistan.' Throughout Himalayas are great variations in climate; from arctic conditions of high regions to sub-tropical climate of terai, which is swampy forested belt at foot of mountains bordering Indo-Gangetic plain. The one common feature is rugged mountain terrain broken only occasionally by broad valleys such as that of Kathmandu in Nepal. It is not surprising that in vast and varied Himalayas are to be found a wide variety of peoples, though it is surprising to find people at all in some of localities in which they live. The peoples of this region, numbering about 21,000,000, are subject of this paper. The residents