Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and Its Hierarchy of Ritual

David N. Gellner is an anthropologist, and this Cambridge University Press book is his scholarly study of Newar Buddhism's hierarchy of ritual specialists, examining how monastic, householder and tantric priestly roles are organized within this distinctive Buddhist tradition of the Kathmandu Valley. Its strength is that Gellner combines textual and ethnographic method to document a ritual hierarchy that differs substantially from the monastic-only model often assumed to be standard Buddhism, correcting that assumption with direct evidence. Its limit is that it centers on Newar Buddhism specifically, so a claim generalizing to Tibetan or Theravada monastic and priestly structures needs a source addressing those separate traditions.