"In thy kingdom may the Brahmans be intelligent and wise, the Kshatriyas brave and accomplished bowmen; may cows give large quantities of milk, the bulls carry great weight; may horses be fast and wives chaste ..."

In a Katmandu courtyard echoing with these priestly chants, TIME's New Delhi correspondent, James Shepherd, last week witnessed the coronation of Nepal's King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva (see THE WORLD). Shepherd first encountered the elaborate ceremonies of the Hindu kingdom in 1956 at the coronation of Birendra's father, Mahendra. The correspondent arrived for that occasion aboard a rickety DC-3 that "slithered low over the Himalayan foothills, searching for the gap in the mountains through which we slipped into the Katmandu Valley." He has since reported on coronations of two other Himalayan monarchs, the Kings of Bhutan and Sikkim. Over the years, the Shangri-la quality of the mountain kingdoms has been diminished by the encroachment of Western civilization. "The one-room thatch shack that was the airport building at Katmandu's Gauchar Airport is long gone," Shepherd reports, "and the red brick complex that replaced it even has a duty-free shop." Communications, too, have improved, and the remote monarchies have learned the uses of American-style public relations. On this visit Shepherd adds, "The royal press room snowed us with a small library of booklets, leaflets, and news releases."

qed

The recent theft of three masterworks from the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Italy (see ART), stirred the rage of TIME Critic Robert Hughes. Born in Australia, Hughes left home to study painting and sculpture in Italy. While living in the Tuscany region in 1964-65, Hughes learned firsthand the wanton nature of art thieves when they made off with the head of a statue of St. Paul in a church he often visited. Hughes traced the head as far as a "respectable" art dealer in Basel, Switzerland, but it was never returned to the church. Such theft, in his view, is an outgrowth of "the stupendous hyping of art as a blue-chip investment." Not only has promotion made art a prime target for razor-wielding burglars, Hughes argues: "It has also made it impossible for most people under 35 to have an aesthetic experience without considering the price of the works they are looking at."

For his story Hughes drew on reports from Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante, who provided details about the looting of Italian art. A "dedicated tourist," Bonfante has witnessed the "systematic defoliation of Italian art" for several years, and shares Hughes' view that art thieves "deteriorate our lives. What they are stealing is our collective memory. If it goes on, there will come a day when you will be fingerprinted before you can go into a museum and watched when you are inside by submachine-gun-toting goons."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.