Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Royal Mountain Travel Magazine Issue 3 | Page 39

Buddhism in Nepal

by Marianne Heredge

Swayambhunath ‘Monkey Temple’. Photo: Sudeep Singh.

In many areas, Hinduism has absorbed
Buddhism to a large extent, but the two
religions have many shared deities and
temples.
As every Nepali is proud to tell you, the Lord Buddha was born
in Nepal. That is to say, he was born in the Shakya Kingdom of
Kapilvastu which is now in the Rupandehi district in the Lumbini
zone of Nepal. No one is exactly certain of the year when
Prince Siddhartha was born, but it was probably around 623
B.C. According to the Tripitaka, he visited his father’s kingdom
and converted his family and clan to Buddhism. Subsequently
the Shakya clans moved to the Kathmandu Valley where they
helped establish Buddhism there.
About 11 percent of Nepalese practice Buddhism and are mainly
from Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups like Sherpas, Tamangs and
Bhotia people from the mountain areas along the border with
Tibet. In many areas, Hinduism has absorbed Buddhism to a
large extent, but the two religions have many shared deities
and temples. In Muktinath, the temple there is sacred for both
Hindus and Buddhists.
Though most people in Nepal are Hindu, Buddhist influences
are pervasive in most aspects of Nepali culture. Tibetan

Buddhism is the most widely followed and the Newar Buddhists
practice a particular Newar variant of Vajrayana Buddhism and
Theravada Buddhism.
For a long time however, Buddhism was not widely followed in
Nepal. In the first half of the twentieth century, the government
of Nepal even banished a few Buddhist monks from Nepal in
an aim to suppress the resurgence of Theravada Buddhism in
the country. In 1926 and again in 1944, several monks were
deported from Kathmandu. Those exiled in 1926 were the first
group of monks to have been seen in Nepal since the 14th
century. They had been trying to revive Theravada Buddhism
which had disappeared from Nepal over five hundred years
before. The ruling Rana regime took a dim view of Buddhism
and Nepal Bhasa, the mother tongue of the Newar people. The
Ranas saw the monks’ activities as a growing threat, so after
police harassment and imprisonment failed to stop these Newar
monks, five of them were deported, along with their Tibetan
teacher, Tsering Norbu. They were marched to the Indian
border under police escort. From here they first went to Bodh
Gaya in India, and then dispersed to Burma and Tibet.
Another eight monks were exiled in 1944. Accused of
encouraging women to renounce their faith and also found
guilty of writing in Nepal Bhasa, they refused to promise not
to continue their activities and were thrown out of the country.
In India they founded the Dharmodaya Sabha (Society for the
Rise of the Teaching) to promote Buddhism and some stayed in
India, while others went to Tibet, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

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