Includes articles on issues of worldwide anthropological interest.

The Present Study Describes The Land And People Of Lahaul-Spiti, A Remote District Of Himachal Pradesh. It Is A Multi-Disciplinary Study And The Subject Has Been Dealt With Chronologically, In Order To Present An Overall Picture Of This Beautiful And Unique Region Of The Himalayas.

A rare look at the history of Himalayan peasant society and the relationship between culture and environment in the Himalayas. Himalayan Histories, by one of India’s most reputed historians of the Himalaya, is essential for a more complete understanding of Indian history. Because Indian historians have mainly studied riverine belts and life in the plains, sophisticated mountain histories are relatively rare. In this book, Chetan Singh identifies essential aspects of the material, mental, and spiritual world of western Himalayan peasant society. Human enterprise and mountainous terrain long existed in a precarious balance, occasionally disrupted by natural adversity, in this large and difficult region. Small peasant communities lived in scattered environmental niches and tenaciously extracted from their harsh surroundings a rudimentary but sustainable livelihood. These communities were integral constituents of larger political economies that asserted themselves through institutions of hegemonic control, the state being one such institution. This laboriously created life-world was enlivened by myth, folklore, legend, and religious tradition. When colonial rule was established in the region during the nineteenth century, it transformed the peasants’ relationship with their natural surroundings. While old political allegiances were weakened, resilient customary hierarchies retained their influence through religio-cultural practices.

With 16 black and white and 8 colour illustrations In the summer of 1962, a restless young Indian administrator, Manohar Singh Gill, made an arduous journey from the north Indian plains to the farthest reaches of the Indian Himalayas- the Lahaul and Spiti valleys- and spent a year there, living and working amongst the people. Gill went on to a distinguished career in the civil services and government, but his experience of the relentless beauty of these spectacular Himalayan deserts and the generosity of the people of this land changed him for life. Part memoir, part travel book and part anthropology, Himalayan Wonderland is a witty, opinionated account of Gill's lifelong affair with this extraordinary region. The book, however, is much more than one man's account of a place - it is a hopeful and enlightening view of the practice of administration and the joy of working with people. Illustrated with more than forty photographs taken by Gill himself, and including detailed contour maps and information on trekking routes in Lahaul and Spiti, this is a remarkably illuminating and accessible account of this faraway land- from the 1960s, when few knew about the place, to today's unpredictable world of receding glaciers and lost cultures.