Nepal as a Cultural Crossroads: A Historical Study Through the Movement of People, Language, Religion, Ritual, Trade, and Food Culture — English Working Paper

This English working paper examines Nepal as a space of historical movement, exchange, and rupture, rather than as a fixed cultural container defined primarily by dynasty and state. Drawing on existing scholarship in history, anthropology, linguistics, religious studies, trade history, and food-culture research, it proposes five analytical corridors — Karnali, Mustang, Newar, Southern, and Kirat — as heuristic frames for reading long-term patterns of movement and connection across the Himalayan, sub-Himalayan, and lowland zones that now constitute the territory of Nepal. Food culture is treated as a historical trace: a ground-level index through which past movements, ecological adaptations, trade relations, ritual forms, and institutional ruptures remain observable in present or remembered practice. This document does not treat food practice as proof of historical connection, nor does it romanticize cultural continuity. It reads food practices as an uneven field of continuation, adaptation, rupture, memory, and reconfiguration. This English Working Paper is an independent document for international academic circulation, based on the Japanese working paper version 1.3, which serves as the conceptual base of the FIELD TO TABLE research program. It is not a peer-reviewed article, not a definitive history of Nepal, and not a literal translation of the Japanese version.