The Western Himalayas have always remained a theatre for all human activities-social and cultural and the ideal of human aspirations-religious and spiritual from the very dawn. of civilization in the Indian sub-continent. It is from this perennial source that all the socio-religious currents have flown and spread to the rest of the sub-continent and beyond eastward where they subsequently developed into multiforms. The cultural strata of the Western Himalayas has, thus, been composed of the sedimentary layers of diverse ethnic influences and socio-religious systems which, in the course of time, got blended and crystallised into a distinct cultural entity.