Following the Himalayan range from Ladakh in India through Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet , Sikkim, the Darjeeling region of West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh and then Westward through Mongolia into Siberia, one finds a mask culture based on a fusion of shamanic practices and animism (sometimes referred to as Bonpo) with the Vajrayana strand of Tantric Buddhism first developed in this area in encounters with the remarkable Buddhist monk Padmasambhava in the early 9th Century AD and carried into the outer reaches of Mongolia by the early 19th Century AD. Variants of the Cham ceremony that celebrates the arrival of Padmasambhava are to found throughout this region and have provided rich arenas for masking. Thus, in Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, and the Darjeeling region of West Bengal (as well as in related traditions now found in Mongolia and parts of Siberia) seasonal performances by the lamas of Buddhist monasteries feature horrific masks of Yama and his deathly cohorts, ferocious Bodhisattvas with the power of conquering or containing the forces of death and disease, and comic old monks. Used in ceremonies that bring together lamas and the laity, these masks both embody and serve as a means of transcending projections of human fear, hatred, anger, and desire.

Other masked traditions coexist with the Cham thruought the region. In Tibet, the more secular operatic form of Lamho is introduced by the black masks of “hunters” that seem to harken back to an earlier hunting and gathering culture and features the chthonic mask of the ferocious queen Lamho herself: an ogress turned protector. Though many of the local masking traditions associated with rituals of exorcism and fertility have been absorbed and supplanted by the regional Buddhist iconography, pockets of local mask traditions still survive. In rural Nepal, for example, masks of striking and powerful simplicity related to local religious practices are still made such groups such as the Tharu, Magar, Gurung and Terai, while in Central Asia some shamans still use masks to represent there animal familiars or as signs of their acquired powers and in Arunachal Pradesh the Monpa people maintain a local tradition of exorcistic masking. In addition to these traditions, masking linked to the practice of Tantric Shaivism and Shaktism persists in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, including representations of Bhairav and the “eight mother goddesses,” danced yearly under court sponsorship in Patan.