ABSTRACT
Collaborative religious exertion is equally a way of reinforcing social identities , especially the identity of the local, neighbourhood community, which gains in prestige from maintaining its age-old dharmik traditions, thereby honouring the ancestors from whom dapha has been inherited. The individual, too, can forge his identity within the dapha guthi, growing through music into cultural knowledge, awareness of social etiquette and hence social acceptance and support. The performance depends on group interaction between members of a dapha guthi, and begins a lengthy performance of navadapha that both constitutes an encounter with the god of the festival, and very publicly proclaims the performers as members of the local community, in the presence of crowds from all over Bhaktapur.
