The origins of Himalayan studies, Brian Houghton Hodgson in Nepal and Darjeeling. 1820-1858. David M Waterhouse London and New York Routlege Curzon( 2005).
Nepal: Hindu Adhirajyako Itihas (Pahtto Khand) Sylvain Levi Translation: Dilli Raj Upreti Patan: Himal Books (2005).
Those of us who have devoted much of our careers to the study of the societies and cultures of Nepal have contributed unconsciously, perhaps inevitably, to the notion that there is a group of works, written mostly in English, that form an indispensable canon dealing with that country. One thinks immediately of names such as Colonel William Kirkpatrick, Francis Buchanan Hamilton, Brian Hodgson, H A Oldfield, Daniel Wright, Perceval Landon and, of course, Sylvain Levi, the greatest of French Indologists. There are certainly others, and each can form his own.
Canonicity struggles against analysis and criticism. It is there to conceal, as much as it can, the politics of scholarship. The unread quickly becomes the unquestioned. To maintain its authority, the canon is occasionally plundered for individual facts, like the price of salt or musk in l829. Rarely, however, is it subjected to critical scrutiny. Like the gods, it floats in midair, above us all, its divine status taken for granted. But one has only to take a desultory look at, say, the complexities of English surgeon Daniel Wright's History of Nepal to get a sense of the human politics that surround this famous work, and to realise that its very structure derives from the politics of the British Residence, its divine status highly dubious.