For hundreds of years the Sherpas existed in the Mount Everest region of the Himalayas, after having migrated there from Tibet in the 16th century. Until the 1950s it has been generally assumed that the Sherpas led a relatively stable existence based on agriculture and pastoralism. The crop and stock-raising lifestyle seen in the first half of the 20th century was presumed to be a traditional, static one. It is generally assumed that the potato-based agrarian economy and nak-based pastoralism had been static and the status-quo for many generations. However, even before the dynamic changes that affected the region and culture after 1950, the Sherpas were an adaptive people and their lifestyle had experienced dynamic changes. The Sherpas contend that they lived a ore “dynamic history of innovation and adaptation. Sherpas suggest that since the late nineteenth century few aspects of crop production or pastoralism have remained static. The crop repertoire, cropping patterns, total amount of land under cultivation, technology, agricultural knowledge and belief, and community regulation of agricultural practices have all changed significantly” (Stevens 213-214).
Nonetheless, whatever agriculture or pastoral orientation changes have been experienced by the Sherpas before the 1950s, their Buddhist nature remained in tact. Sherpa natives represent one of the few strongholds of traditional Vajrayana faith and have maintained Buddhism’s religious values for centuries. However, after since the 1950s two major events have affected the region and the culture in ways that mere adaptation may not be able to accommodate in terms of leaving the Sherpas’ cultural identity and Buddhist orientation in tact. One of these was the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the mid-1950s, an occupation that put an end to their thriving trade system based on barter and also severed their ability to have access to Tibetan Buddhist learning. While this...