The Sherpas of Nepal: Buddhist Highlanders.

This if the first anthropological study of the Sherpas, a tribe of hillmen figuring in the reports on all the great Himalayan mountaineering ventures. To many readers familiar with their prowess as intrepid mountaineers and hardy expedition porters their highly organized social order, their great civic sense and elaboration of ceremonial, their practice of polyandry and above all the devotion of many men and women to monastic ideals and a sophisticated religious life may come as a surprise. Between 1953 and 1962 Haimendorf spent 25 months in the Buddhist highlands of Nepal, and his descriptions of the social aspects of Buddhist ritual and monastic institutions form an important addition to our knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism as a living relibion