The Ford Foundation, through its Foreign Area Training Fellowship program, financed nearly three years of work which led to the dissertation, including 15 months in India during 1957-1958, and six months of analysis and writing following the research. Library re- search and substantial rewriting in the preparation of this book were supported by a University of California Summer Faculty Research Fellowship and by part-time research appointments with the Himalayas Border Countries Research Project and the South Asia Village Studies Project in the Center for South Asia Studies of the Institute of Inter- national Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Joan V. Bondurant, then chairman of the Center for South Asia Studies, Dr. Leo E. Rose, head of the Himalaya Border Countries Research Project, and Dr. William L. Rowe, my colleague in the South Asia Village Studies Project, have been encouraging and helpful in this research. The Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been cooperative in accommodating to my part-time research appointments. I wish to thank all of these individuals and institutions for their material and moral support.

He who thinks on Himachal, though he should not behold him, is greater than he who performs all worship in Kashi. In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell thee of the glories of Himalay. As the dew is dried up by the morning sun, so are the sins of mankind by the sight of Himalaya India.