Newars

The Newar or Newah are the indigenous group of Nepal's Kathmandu valley. Newars are a linguistic community with multiple ethnicity, race (Mongolian, Aryan, Austro-Dravidian) and faith, bound together by a common language¹. New genetic study of the Y Chromosome haplotypes amongst native Nepalese by Dr Bing Su, Dr Peter Underhill et al, has revealed that the Newar (and other native Kirat people / Sino-Tibetans) originated from the Yellow River basin around 10,000 years ago.^[1]

The term Newar applies roughly to the people who inhabited Kathmandu valley and its peripheries before the unification of Nepal and speaking Nepal Bhasa or the languages progenitor of Nepal Bhasa. According to Nepal’s 2001 census, the 1,245,232 Newar in the country are the nation's sixth largest ethnic group, representing 5.48% of the population. The main Newar language, Nepal Bhasa, is of Tibeto-Burman origin and 825,458 Nepalis speak Newarilanguages as their mother language.