well, didn't dor bahadur bista write that it was a certain sankaracharya from south india who introduced the Hindu caste system in Nepal? in return, the sankaracharya granted [religious] legitimacy to the ruler[s] of the time. well being endorsed by a high brahmin certainly amounted to something back then, as it does now. Could that have been the origin of the myth that the ruler is an incarnation of a Hindu God? This practice continues to this day...albeit in its much watered-down version. Somewhere i read that the Kanchi sankaracharya, who is now cooling his heels in a Tamilnadu prison, was also present at our our Late King Birendra's coronation. was it him who crowned Late King Birendra? -karmapa