The Newars of the Kathmandu valley are the only community anywhere that has carried an Indian style Vajrayana Buddhism forward without a break, and they have done it without monks. When celibate monasticism ended, the monastery courtyards became the hereditary property of two castes, the Vajracharyas who act as ritual masters and the Shakyas who form the congregation, and both marry. A Newar Buddhist and a Newar Hindu may attend the same festival, employ priests of both kinds for different rites within one household, and disagree about which tradition a given deity belongs to without anyone finding this a problem.
The clearest example is the Kumari. A girl is selected as the living presence of the goddess Taleju, a form of Durga, and she is chosen from Shakya families, that is to say from the Buddhist community. She is examined against a list of bodily marks, installed in a house near the old palace, carried rather than allowed to touch the ground in public, and gives audience and blessing; the king of Nepal once received his tika from her hand. Her tenure ends at her first menstruation or at any serious loss of blood, and she returns to her family.
There are Kumaris in several towns of the valley, of whom the Kathmandu one is the most prominent. The institution has been examined by Nepal's courts, which in 2008 required that her schooling and other rights be protected while the practice continued. At Indra Jatra she rides through the city in a wheeled chariot, and the festival remains one of the largest in the valley.