TRADITIONS
According to campingship, Nepal is a country located in Asia. The most notable expression of the custom in Nepal can be found in the spirit that characterizes the participation of the residents in popular festivals. The scanning of the recurrences is structured on the Nepalese calendar, whose starting point is the Indian calendar Bikram Sambat, and which begins with the month of Baishakh (New Year roughly corresponds to April 13-14 on the Gregorian calendar). In these celebrations, which, adding up the religious, historical-legendary, agricultural, seasonal or regional ones, come to form a number almost equal to the days of an entire calendar, everything is homage to tradition: classic cuisine is found here, more typical clothing, the music and dances of the origins, the secular rites that have remained intact. Among the many we remember the Nawabarsha (the Nepalese New Year), the Buddha Jayanty (the birth of Buddha), the Dashain (the longest, 15 days, and choreographic of the appointments, dedicated to Durga, the universal mother goddess), the Tihar (5 days dedicated to Yama, the god of death). To these parties are added the private or family anniversaries, with their set of practices and peculiarities with more or less colorful and folkloric tones, weddings, births, funerals. The cultural heterogeneity of Nepal also characterizes other areas of lifestyle, such as nutrition: in fact, only some dishes are the same throughout the country (dal, lentil soup, bhat, rice, tarkari, curry vegetables). Finally, a distinctive trait of Nepalese history and culture is the great importance attributed to the care of the mind, concretized in the wide variety of meditative arts, also of religious origin, developed here. From yoga to meditation to ayurveda, the “science of life”, these attitudes, rather than practical, still mark the real difference between the East and the West of the world.
ARTS
Appendix of Indian civilization, the Nepalese artistic culture assimilated from this stylistic components (Maurya, Gupta and Pāla art) to feed its own traditions and to develop an irradiation activity towards the Tibetan area that configures it as a link between Indian art , the Tibetan one and the Chinese one from the Yüan period (XIII-XIV century). Fundamental vehicles of these complex encounters were Hinduism and above all Tantric Buddhism, which was introduced in Tibet around the century. VII-VIII, from which the most singular manifestations of genuine Nepalese art derive. Beyond the most striking and immediate figurative achievements of plastic and pictorial art originating from the iconographic suggestion of the pantheon Tantric with its crowded repertoire of terrifying images of multi-headed and multi-armed divinities, the originality of Nepalese art is documented above all by the architecture of its religious monuments and by the wooden sculpture that embellishes and integrates their structures through decoration of architraves, pediments and cornices inspired by stylized shapes and motifs from the Indian ornamental repertoire. The Nepalese plastic tradition was formed on the contributions of the classical art of India Gupta (5th-6th century), then fed by that of the Pāla-Sena tradition, which increased the development of bronzework, which sometimes exceeds the same stone sculpture, so much so that Nepalese bronzers are documented active in the century. XIII both in Mongolia and in China, as well as in Tibet. Nepalese painters were also active here, Moghūl and rājpūt (17th-18th centuries). The two most ancient, important and historically documented epochs of Nepalese art are those of the Licchavi dynasty (c. IV-VII century), during which a typically indigenous art and architecture originated and developed, and of the Malla dynasty, whose history and artistic documentation cover, after a parenthesis of over five centuries, the period from the century. XI to the century. XIV, according to the genealogy of the Malla kings handed down to us by the inscriptions of the time found by G. Tucci in Dullu in the western part of Nepal, rich in monuments and works of art of this dynasty. The civil architecture of ancient Nepal adopted the building typology of the sanctuaries and monastic complexes of Buddhism, with large proportions and a harmonious compositional scheme consisting of the main temple and a constellation of minor temples, stūpa and other small buildings (chapels, various monuments), as well as buildings intended for housing the monastic community. War destruction and natural disasters caused serious destruction of the Nepalese artistic heritage, especially in the century. XIV. Much of it was rebuilt in the following century after the period of great artistic flourishing that took place under the reign of the seventh ruler Malla Jayastithi (1382-95). Today the major existing artistic monuments are found in the cities that were the seat of distinct Nepalese kingdoms, namely those of Bhadgaon, Lalita-Pāttana (Lalitpur) and Kathmandu, in addition to the numerous shrines and reliquaries that arise in various other locations. The most characteristic (in Svayambhūnātha, Bodhinātha, Lalitpur, Kīrtipur) reproduce the ancient mound shapes of the examples of the Maurya periodand they show paintings on the cubic area, the so-called harmikā, four pairs of stylized eyes, oriented towards the four cardinal points, protective image of the Vairocana Buddha.
