The selection of articles presented here offers a representative cross-section of the remarkable range of interests and abilities of one of the founding figures in the anthropological study of the Himalayas. Alexander Macdonald, who passed away in 2018, discovered Asia through his service in Burma with the Tenth Gurkha Rifles during the Second World War. On his return to Europe with the rank of major at the exceptionally young age of 23, he settled in France where he joined the CNRS and benefited from the teaching of some of the greatest scholars in Europe, including Rolf Stein and Claude Levi- Strauss.