ABSTRACT
Of all his multifarious activities undertaken to keep himself amused in the idleness more or less enforced by the situation of the British Residency in Kathmandu in the 1820s, it is Hodgson’s work on the discovery of the texts of Indian Buddhism which is perhaps his most enduring legacy. His distribution of manuscripts to Indian and European libraries enabled other scholars to build upon the edifice which he first created in his own writings. Barred from close analysis of the contents of the manuscripts and a textual exposition of Buddhism through his apparently weak knowledge of Sanskrit,1 his early papers on the nature of Buddhism are based on the interlocutory sessions which he conducted with his pundit Amritananda.2 A more visible means of getting to grips with other aspects of Buddhism was afforded by the monuments of the Kathmandu Valley scattered all around him. The stupa (or caitya as they were called in Nepal) of Svayambhunath crowned a hill to the northwest of Kathmandu. Its history embodied that of the Valley itself. The huge caitya of Bodhnath lay to the north-east, that of Kirtipur to the south-west, while Patan to the south-east had a whole series of ancient stupas and caityas.3
Every town in the valley had its own series of monasteries (vihara), courtyard buildings enclosing a shrine or a caitya, although the monasteries were then inhabited by families of Buddhists rather than by celibate monks.4
Hodgson wrote to his sister in 1833:
