The field research upon which this book is based was carried out between September 1966 and February 1968. It was made possible by a National Institutes of Mental Health Predoctoral Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Field Research Grant. To both NIMH and NSF I extend my appreciation and thanks, and my hope that their programs, so valuable to scholarship in anthropology, will soon again attain the scope they had at the time I was fortunate to be in graduate school.

The research was first written up as a dissertation for the Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago. For their encouragement and criticism of my work on the dissertation, I would like to thank the members of the department, particularly Professors Clifford Geertz (now at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey), Nur Yalman (now at Harvard University), McKim Marriott, David M. Schneider, and Melford E. Spiro (now at the University of California at San Diego).

But this book is not in any direct sense a revision of the dissertation. Basically, I went back to the field notes and started again from scratch. The dissertation contains important data not included here, and I have indicated some of it in notes to the present text. The overall thrust of the book, as well as most of the specific discussions and analyses, are not in the dissertation.

In Nepal, many people were helpful in facilitating my work.