Description of Dailekh Bazaar

Dailekh Bazaar, in the south-central part of the Dailekh district in West Nepal, was the administrative capital of the district and its commercial centre. In 1969 there were no roads for motor transport to or from the Bazaar; and the nearest dry-weather airfield was some 28 miles to the south in Surkhet. Although a number of small stone pillars attested to the earlier Malla influence in the area, the Bazaar's most prominent structure was a large hexagonal-shaped fort built in the late 18th century in the wake of the expansion of the Gorkha state. In its compact settlement pattern atop a 4500' ridge, the Bazaar contrasted with the surrounding countryside of widely dispersed houses and farms. Bazaar dwellings contained a resident population of just under a thousand persons, and a third as many temporarily-resident civil servants and military personnel from outside the area. The majority of permanent residents were from castes at the lower end of the ritual hierarchy; many were Newars originally from the Kathmandu Valley who predominated among the Bazaar's shopkeepers and traders. 

Lionel Caplan's study sought to trace the relationships over time between these different categories of bazaariya ("market people") and between them and peasants in the surrounding countryside. See his Administration and Politics in a Nepalese Town: the study of a district capital and its environs, 1975, for details.