RELIGION

         Nepal is known for its diversity interm of culture and religion. the Aryan and the mongoloid people are living from ancient period carrying different characteristics distinct from one another and their overall norms and values are guided by religion.Scholars argue Aryans are from southern part of the country IE India and mongols from northern part IE Mongolia. but there are some scholars who have different opinion towards it. they presume mongols to be from southern part who ran away to be safe from the practice of human sacrifice which was prevalent ate that time in Hindu society.

According to E.B Tylor religion is belief in supernatural things.the ancient human beings were amazed by the unusual happenings going around them such as storm,flood,landslide,lightning,etc.these people  questioned themselves who may be behind all those or who may be the  cause factor but there was no appropriate answer.In the passage of time these people started believing something powerful force may have created such situation and thus the concept of believing in supernatural force came into practice.Actually it is not a slow process rather it took long time to form religion.There came different stages within it.while studying the Nepalese development of religion we can still find the accuracy of e b tylors mentioned stages.according to him the stages are-animism,polytheism and monotheism and they are inevitable in each society if we are to study from the evolutionist point of view.

     Dealing with the different stages first of all lets try to study about animism.According to him in this stage people worship nature .it is an ancient form of  religion. In this stage men thought every matter in the world contains a living soul in it. that is why they worshiped stone,soul,plants,water,nature and their ancestors as god.In Nepal mostly the tribal  mostly the tribal groups perform this behavior. Basically rai, limbu,and many more ethnic people believe in this practice.through which we can say that they are in animistic form of religious practice.

     Secondly, there comes the polytheism. this stage comes after animism aswell as we can consider it as developed form of animism . After people became aware that merely worshiping nature could not be sufficient so different types of gods concept started to derive in the mentality of people . They thought different  gods must be handling different tasks. mostly hindu community in Nepal is doing this practice.

    Thirdly,monotheism is the modern form of religion. in this form people start to worship one god and presume it to be the superpower. It is thought to be the developed form of polytheism .In Nepalese context there are Christians,Muslim,Sikh,etc.But one of the important changing factor in Nepalese society is the Hindu,religion which is polytheism and is developing rapidly in monotheism although it was limited in past.