Nepal, Nov. 7 -- Nepal's rulers banned gambling, permitted it during Tihar, and taxed it, often all at once

When the cowrie shells come out in Kathmandu's courtyards during Tihar, few players know that more than 170 years ago, rulers of the day codified gambling into law. Today, engaging in games of kauda and langur burja during festivals is not legal, merely tolerated.

Foreign visitors loved to moralise about Nepal's gambling culture. William Brook Northey, in his 1937 book The Land of the Gurkhas, called Nepalis 'certainly inordinately addicted' to gambling, and wrote that 'upon the beat of a drum...the whole population gives itself up forthwith to its one all-absorbing passion'. His book has accounts of men who staked 'their wives a...