Nepal: Historical Study of a Hindu Kingdom (Volume I & II)

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This book presents the English translation of Sylvain Levi's monumental three- volume work, Le Nepal: Etude Historique d'un Royaume Hindou (1905), originally published in French. While the present translation encompasses Books I and II, Book III, consisting solely of inscriptions, has been omitted.

At the time of Levi's visit, Nepal was a kingdom, a status it maintained from the Licchavi period (5th century) until 2008, when the monarchy was abolished. While the title "Historical Study of a Hindu Kingdom" may appear anachronistic today, it faithfully reflects the original work's context, written over 120 years ago when Nepal was a Hindu kingdom. Changing the title due to the country's political transformation would be inappropriate. Rulers and regimes come and go, but nations endure. This book, therefore, serves as a unique window into Nepal's past, offering a glimpse rarely available to contemporary readers.

Dr. Deepak Shimkhada, a retired professor of art history and religion, brings his enduring passion for Nepal's art, culture, and history to this Nepal edition of Sylvain Levi's seminal work. Driven by this passion and a close association with the translator, Mary Harris, Dr. Shimkhada served as editor and annotator, overseeing the translation project launched in 1982.

Professor Shimkhada, in collaboration with Madhab Maharjan, Chief of Mandala Book Point, and Rudra Kumar Nepal, a former career diplomat, proudly presents this Nepal edition to all those eager to delve into Nepal's rich tapestry of cultural and historical heritage. This meticulous translation promises to broaden the accessibility of this invaluable resource, allowing a wider Nepali audience to appreciate the profound insights into their nation's past.

This is an English translation of the monumental work, Le Nepal: Etude Historique d'un Royaume Hindou, by Sylvain Levi, a French scholar, who gained his fame as an Indologist through his study of Sanskrit. As a scholar of Sanskrit, Levi taught at the Sorbonne, followed by his appointment as Professor of Sanskrit and Religion at the College de France. The book Le Nepal, in three volumes, has remained the standard for scholarly work on Nepal. Its scope and breadth are ambitious because it encompasses everything-including geography, history, people, art, culture, and religion-about Nepal. With the intent of acknowledging Sylvain Levi's contributions to Indology, András Höfer said in his article "On Re-Reading Le Nepal: What We Social Scientists Owe to Sylvain Levi," "It is almost a matter of decency to include Sylvain Levi's Le Nepal in the bibliography of any modern work on Nepal's history and religion. However, this pioneering book is unfortunately more often quoted than really read. This is true because I too have quoted Levi and have included his Le Nepal book in my Ph.D. dissertation but have not fully read it up until now.

The book's value has been abundantly noted by other scholars. Noting its importance in the study of Nepal, the late Professor Theodore Riccardi, Jr. of Columbia University, translated one chapter from Volume II of Levi's Le Nepal with a long introduction elucidating Levi's life and work.

It was clear from his travels to the East that Nepal was on Levi's bucket list. Riccardi in his introduction wrote, "[Levi] had wanted to visit [the Valley of Nepal] for several years. He had been greatly attracted by this small isolated place where local traditions and Buddhist influence had been preserved far better than in the provinces of India itself.

As an observant scholar, Levi understood the importance of Nepal's role in South Asian history. It is through Nepal that the trade route to India and Tibet passed. The Kathmandu Valley had become the crossroads where South, Central, and East Asian influences met and combined.

By a curious coincidence, the request to write a foreword for the English translation of Sylvain Levi's famous book of 1905 Le Nepal arrived simultaneously with a catalogue of an exhibition titled Nepal: oeuvres de la vallee de Katmandou (2021) from Paris. As I opened the weighty tome, the first image that jumped out at me was a photograph of an estampage of a beautifully carved Sanskrit inscription on the famous stone pillar at the sacred temple of Changu Narayana in the Kathmandu Valley. It was acquired by Sylvain Levi on his first visit to Nepal in 1898.

Unfortunately, Levi did not leave an account of that research trip, but having done my first field work for the distinctive architecture in Nepal seven decades later in 1956, I can imagine how difficult it must have been for Levi in 1898, despite the writings of his predecessors interested in the history and culture of that little-known country at the time.

It took Levi seven years thereafter to produce, between 1905 and 1908, his three-volume magisterial work Le Nepal, Etude historique d'un royaume Hindou which, even after more than a century, remains a major study not with standing all the research and publications since then. When Levi returned to Nepal in 1921 along with his wife Desiree Sylvain Levi (nee Bloch) (1867-1943), he was a guest of the Prime Minister Maharaja Chandra Shumsher (1863-1929). A rich source about their experiences in Nepal, the master's modus operandi, as well as picaresque and picturesque account of the country under the rule of the most progressive prime minster is her own book Dans l'Inde (de Ceylan au Nepal) (1925). I paraphrase below a portion of Madam Levi's diary that is encaptured in yet another photograph in the Paris exhibition catalogue mentioned above.

The name of Nepal is not unknown even outside the small circle of the erudite. The prestige of the Himalayas is, so to speak, reflected on the Hindu Kingdom which the great mountain range shelters. Gaurishankar and the other giant peaks which set the imagination of scholars reeling, evoke in memory the image of Nepal stretched on the map at the feet of these colossi.

Between Tibet on the north and British India which confines it on the south, east, and west the Kingdom of Nepal occupies a small area. Nepal, properly so-called would cover even less. Local usage, in agreement with tradition, reserves the name Nepal exclusively for an oblong valley, situated in the very heart of the country, halfway between torrid Hindustan [India] and the high plateausicy, pleasant, fruitful and populous. These plateaus have long been civilized, and have never ceased to exert authority over the rough mountains around them. It is the history of that humble valley which I have here tried to retrace.

Should I apologize for having spent so much effort on so limited a subject? I do not think so. A series of interrelated facts, whatever may be their apparent significance, is better than heedless curiosity. It stimulates reflection, and feeds the mind. If the destinies of the human race are not a mere game of chance, if there are purposeful, or blind laws which govern them, the history of a human community is of interest to all humanity, because it reveals the order and plan concealed beneath the confused mass of events. It is the unknown, always dangerous, which retreats if one manages to discover how a lost valley has been peopled, organized, ruled, how the religions, languages and institutions there have been slowly transformed. In the Hindu realm, the study becomes even more important. On the whole, India is a world with no history: it is made up of gods, dogmas, laws, sciences and arts, but has not revealed the secret of their formation or their metamorphosis. One must be initiated into Indianism to know at what a cost in patient labor European scholars have established rare benchmarks in the darkness of an almost impenetrable past; what strange combinations of anomalous data have enabled them to build an unsteady chronology, still riddled with enormous lacunae.

Civilized people are in general preoccupied with transmitting to posterity a durable memory of the past. Organized in community, they have directly extended to the group the instinctive feelings of the individual; they have tried to decipher the mystery of their origin and to survive into the future. Priests, poets and men of letters have offered themselves to satisfy this powerful need. The Chinese have their Annals as the Greeks have Herodotus as the Jews have the Bible [Tanakh]. India has nothing.