An Unexpected Archive

Chapter 3 presents a literary and linguistic historiography of the Svasthānīvratakathā textual tradition from the earliest extant manuscript of 1573 CE to the present. The chapter maps out major shifts as the text navigates seismic movement in Nepal’s dynamic linguistic and literary landscape when the Sanskrit cosmopolis of South Asia in the first millennium became the stomping ground for the vernacular languages of Newar and later Nepali in the second millennium. It argues that the shift from Sanskrit to Newar to Nepali is not a uniformly linear, downward vernacularization. The chapter further demonstrates the degree to which the textual shifts in the Svasthānīvratakathā both gave expression to and challenged the policies of the ruling elite regarding language, literature, and religious identity for their Newar and high-caste hill subjects alike following the political upheaval of the Gorkha conquest of the historically Newar Nepal Valley in the late eighteenth century.