The proliferation of community-based local ritual processions among the Newar of Nepal reflects the historical conditions of Hindu conquest of a Buddhist culture. The Hindu conquest led to the loss of royal patronage for monastic forms of Buddhism and the concomitant rise of popular religious forms. The Newar Buddhists rarely undertake long, arduous pilgrimages, but instead participate in shorter community-organized ritual journeys, such as the Dipankara ‘yatra’ and the ‘wola.’ Even before the Gorkha conquest, political organization in the Kathmandu valley was small in scale, another reason for the localized pattern of ritual activity.
