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Vajrayana Buddhism |
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Newar Buddhism | |
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![]() Dīpankara Buddha (Bahi-dyah) on display during Gunla. Gunla is a holy month for Newar Buddhists. | |
Type | Vajrayana |
Scripture | Various Mahayana Sutras and Tantras |
Language | Sanskrit, Nepal Bhasa |
Separated from | Mainstream Nepalese Buddhism |
Members | Newar people |
Ministers | Vajracharya priests |
Newar Buddhism is a form of Vajrayana Buddhism practiced by the Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.[1][2] It has developed unique socio-religious elements, which include a non-monastic Buddhist society based on the Newar caste system and patrilineality. Its caste system has a non-celibate religious clergy caste formed of vajracharya (who perform rituals for others) and shakya (who perform rituals mostly within their own families). Other Buddhist Newar castes like the Urāy act as patrons. Urāy also patronise Tibetan Vajrayana, Theravadin, and even Japanese clerics.[3]
Although there was a vibrant regional tradition of Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley during the first millennium, the transformation into a distinctive cultural and linguistic form of Buddhism appears to have taken place in the fifteenth century, at about the same time that similar regional forms of Indic Buddhism such as those of Kashmir and Indonesia were on the wane.
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