Daya R. Shakya (Portland Community College)

submitted: 6/1/95 (by mail)

Daya R. Shakya
Instructor, Nepali Language and Culture
Portland Community College

mailing address:
3609 SE 42nd Street #017
Portland, Oregon  97206  USA

in Nepal:
P.O. Box 571
Kathmandu, NEPAL

phone: 503-777-4593
fax:   503-224-6570
email: drasha@aol.com

description of work:
Since 1981 I have been involved with many projects related to Newars and 
their language (Newari), religion and culture. I worked with many 
scholars from USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Japan. I have 
written many papers and books in Newari, Nepali and English. I traveled 
almost all Newar towns and villages in Nepal. My current major area of 
research is dialects of Newari. Until now I have surveyed ten dialects 
around the Kathmandu Valley and the Newar towns in the eastern and 
western region of Nepal. More papers and books on the dialects are on way 
to come out. Currently, I teach Nepali language and culture at the 
Portland Community College (PCC) at Portland, Oregon. I graduated from 
University of Oregon with the second master's degree majoring in 
Linguistics. I wrote a mster's thesis on morphological analysis of six 
dialects of Newari (1992). My first master's was on Nepali language and 
literature from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu. For this degree I 
traveled the entire villages of Kalimpong region of Darjeeling District 
in India, in survey of development of Nepali language. A result of this 
survey is the book Sandarbha Sahitya Kalimpong (1984). I edited the 
autobiography of the First Theravada Buddhist Monk of Nepal in three 
volumes (1985-1995). I studies Newari language and literature 
extensively. I assisted the chief editors in compiling and editing the 
Contemporary Newari-English Dictionary (1994), recently published by VGH 
Wissenschaftsverlag, Bonn. I am looking forward to going back to school 
for a further study of linguistics and cultural anthropology.