The Nepali People
The Kirat, ancestors of the Limbu and Rai
Three major tribal groups have historically been present in the area we today call Nepal: the Kirat, ancestors of the Limbu and Rai; the Khas (a pejorative term no longer used), ancestors of the Chhetri and Bahun) and the Newar.
The name “Nepal” may be derived from the Sanskrit nipa-laya, which means “abode at the foot” — Nepal occupies one-third of the Himalayan mountain range. Ancient Hindu texts name the Himalayan-dwelling Kirata as the original inhabitants and rulers of eastern Nepal, whose language derived from Tibeto-Burman languages.
Caste system
Nepal has long been a country with a caste system that reaches into almost every facet of daily life, but the indigenous Kirati mountain tribes had no concept of any kind of caste system before it was introduced with the arrival of Hindu beliefs from the south. The four main divisions in the Hindu caste system are Brahman (priests and scholars), Kshatriya or Chhetri (rulers and warriors), Vaisya (merchants and traders), and Sudra (farmers, artisans, and laborers).
From this introduction of the caste system, the modern economic structure of Nepal began to take shape. The high-caste Hindus began to appropriate the cultivatable lowlands and introduced the system of private ownership, ignoring the Tibetan migrant’s system of communal ownership. Wealth, power and privilege converged around the high castes.
The Gorkha dynasty
The Khas, the indigenous people of the western hills, whose language is modern-day Nepali, migrated from the west and have traditionally been Nepal’s fighters; they will ever be associated with the Gorkhas/Gurkhas. The Gorkhali referred to their homelands as Khas desh (Khas country) until the C19th.
The origins of the Gorkha dynasty are legendarily linked to warrior princes who arrived from India in the C15th. Gorkha armies expanded their territory to the east into the Kirata country, annexed the hills to the west and pushed northward toward Tibet. They were forced to a stop by the stronger armies of China.
The face of modern Nepal
Nepal became a state in 1769 under Prithvi Narayan Shah, the Gorkhali king who reigned from 1743–75. Shah unified over 50 small principalities and ushered in the face of modern Nepal.
The Newari people, unlike the Kirati mountain tribes and the hill-dwelling Khas, have never been a single ethnic group. The term Newar rather designates people who historically lived in the Kathmandu Valley, a center of crossroads between Indians, Tibetans, and Mongols.
Newar has absorbed many disparate ethnicities and castes, from the south and the north, and two religions; some Newar are Hindu and some are Buddhist. It is the Newar who are responsible for Nepal’s art and architecture styles. Newari became the official language of under the Malla dynasty.
The suffix malla, (‘wrestler’ in Sanskrit), began to appear in the early C12th and the practice of adopting the name was continued by rulers in Nepal until theC18th.
This long Malla period witnessed the continued importance of the Kathmandu Valley as a political, cultural, and economic center of Nepal. The early Malla period saw the steady growth of the small towns that became Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhadgaon.
Nepal’s geographical location as a buffer between China and India has massively influenced its development and character, as well as its two major national religions, Buddhism and Hinduism (with Hindu devotion centered on Pashupatinath, the site of one of Hinduism’s most sacred Shiva shrines).
