The home movies of Watson Kintner (1890–1979), shot on 16mm film over several decades, were archived at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and have now made their way to archive.org. Kintner’s engineering-related globetrotting brought him to Nepal just a few years after its doors opened to the outside world. It was a place which had barely changed since Lévi, Sāṅkṛtyāyana and Tucci first set foot there earlier in the 20th century (Tucci continued to visit throughout the 1950s); and which even then was much as Hodgson, Oldfield and Bendall had known it. When these films were taken, Nepal was still relatively isolated, and had only recently begun to build an electricity and telecommunications infrastructure. David Snellgrove — who also shot movies during his visit (archived at the Institute for Buddhist Studies, Tring) — wrote in his book, published in the same year, that key trade routes in Nepal would “never” be resurfaced as “motorable roads”. (A few years later, they were.)
Kintner’s footage is remarkably evocative in spite of its amateur quality, capturing moments in the life of Newar Buddhism as it existed prior to the onslaught of modernity, missionaries and anthropology. Much has changed; nonetheless, those who know the terrain will see much that has not, and which is recognizable even now. In the list below, I’ve added preliminary notes on locations, events and so on, to help orient potential viewers:
1: Tibetan pilgrims at Bodhnāth (00:00); Chvaskāminī shrine (09:52); thangkas [with sub-legible inscriptions] (14:30); Svayambhū (15:33).
2: Hāritī pūjā, Svayambhū (00:00); cremation (02:13); Mheipī [??] (05:19); abhiṣeka of newly ordained monk (08:51) and simultaneous jñānāhuti homa (09:30); curtain (dagiṃ) over portal to tantric shrine; non-Buddhist īhi [mock marriage], Bhaktapur (13:50).
5: Southern Stupa, Lalitpur (16:08).
6: Kwā Bahā (00:38); Oku Bahā (02:23); Śaiva pilgrims (16:34).
17: Jana Bahā (02:28); Oku Bahā (02:23); Hanumān Ḍhokā (04:30); Śrīghaḥ (06:30); Paśupati (13:37).
18: Buddhist vrata, Lalitpur (00:36); Mahābuddha (02:48); Oku Bahā’s Tibetan shrine (gumba) [now almost defunct] (04:38); Prajñāpāramitā recitation, Kwā Bahā (06:06); Svayambhū caitya (09:00, 16:35); worship of dharmadhātu (13:20).
20: Balaju [back when it had running water] (03:48) ; Bodhnāth stupa, from the adjacent fields (15:45).
Also: 7 (Paśupati & Darjeeling); 8 (Kalimpong); 19 (Bhaktapur, with masked “devī” dancers).
Bonus: “Dr. Harry B. Wright’s Nepal Travelogue”: shamans (jhaṅkri) (10:10); Matayā [?] (19:50); lākhe dancers (28:41); Tibetan dancers, Bodhnāth (30:27).