Essays Lectures on Religion of Hindu Vol 02

Author(s): H H Wilson
Publisher: Trubner and Company London

Page 11

NOTICE
OF
TIIREE TRACTS RECEIVED FROM
NEPAL.
From the Asiatic Researches, Vol. XVI, Calc. 1828, p. 450–78.
THE accounts hitherto published of the Religious System of the Nepalese are far from being comprehensive or satisfactory. They only establish the general conclusion that there are two predominant forms of belief, as well as two principal divisions of the people, the Párvatiya, or Mountain Hindus, who follow the faith of the Brahmans, and the Newárs, or original inhabitants, who adhere to the worship of Buddha.
The indistinctness and inaccuracy that pervade the descriptions of KIRKPATRICK and BUCHANAN are not however, in all probability, the fault of the describers. Much is, no doubt, attributable to their want of access to original authorities, on which alone dependence can be placed for a correct view of any mode of faith in India. The Spirit of Polytheism, always an accommodating one, is particularly so in this country, and the legends and localities of one sect are so readily