External Influences on the Annual Cycle

There are many possible external cyclical features beside the rice agricultural cycle that might have influenced the content and forms of the year's various annual events. These are the various aspects of the yearly solar cycle, the monthly lunar cycle with its phases of the moon and its bright and dark fortnights, and the various yearly patterns of weather and agriculture. The annual solar cycle, with its solar year, its seasons, its equinoxes and solstices, its "ascending" and "descending" halves, is almost unreflected in Bhaktapur's annual calendar. The great exception is Biska:, the focal solar New Year sequence centering on the vernal equinox.^[11] In Biska:'s symbolism, as we have discussed, the possible references to the sun's behavior and to the solar year are minimal or equivocal.^[12] There is only one other annual festival in the solar cycle—Ghya: Caku Sa(n)lhu [10]. It comes at a time which once elsewhere in South Asia traditionally marked the winter solstice and the beginning of the ascending half of the year, but such connections are entirely lost in the events of the day. Aside from a reference to "spring music" in anticipation of a spring still several weeks away in the course of the lunar event Sri Pa(n)cami [13] there are no other annual events which respond to, symbolize or express the solar year.

The lunar cycle provides, of course, the basic month and the basic structure of Bhaktapur's calendar. For the most part the days of the lunar month simply provide a counting device with no further meaning. Within each month the phases of the moon provide additional materials for possible symbolic elaboration. The full moon and the new moon (to a much lesser degree) are occasions for differentiated events as well as

regular monthly ones. Yet, once again these differentiated events seem to have no salient present symbolic reference to the light or the dark of the fortnight's culminating phase of the moon.

The phases of the moon allow, however, for a further differentiation of each month into waxing (or bright) and waning (or dark) fortnights. There is a marked difference in the quantity of events in the two kinds of fortnights. Thwa , the waxing fortnights, have throughout the year twice as many annual events as ga , the waning fortnights. The waning fortnights all contain a special day, the fourteenth or ca:re dedicated to Devi. This and the difference in quantities of events would suggest the possibility of some contrast of ordinary versus dangerous, or auspicious versus inauspicious between the two types of fortnights. Ancient Hindu South Asia was explicit regarding differences in the two half-months (paksa^[*] ). . "The general rule is that the sukla paksa^[*] [bright half] is recommended for rites in honor of gods and rites for prosperity; while the dark half is recommended for rites for deceased ancestors and for magic rites meant for a malevolent purpose" (Kane 1968-1977, vol. 5, p. 335). Bhaktapur's festivals do not sort neatly in such a way. There are festivals of the benign deities, of the dangerous deities and twa:s , and melas in both. Worship of living mothers and fathers is in the dark half, the Biska: sequence spans light and dark fortnights, and so does the Swanti sequence. Yet, the major festivals with reference to death, to the loss of order, and to "antistructure" are, in fact, found in dark fortnights, where they represent a large segment of those fortnights' relatively few events. These include Bala Ca:re [7], Sila Ca:re [15], Pasa Ca:re [18], Bhagasti [4], Gatha Muga: Ca:re [45], Saparu [52], Smasana^[*] Bhailadya: Jatra [64], Pulu Kisi Haigu [65], Dhala(n) Sala(n) [66], Kwa Puja [77], and Kica Puja [78]. The events with reference to death in the bright fortnights are either secondary to the celebration of the household (as on the fifth day of Swanti),^[13] or very minor (as in Yama: Dya: Thaigu [59] and Yau Dya: Punhi [62]).

The patterning of festival events by light and dark fortnights is not discursively salient. That is, although this patterning presumably gives a sense of meaningful order to the year, can be recognized by people when pointed out, and is probably known to some scholarly citizens, it must be pried out for the most part by an inspection of the distribution of annual events. The rice agricultural cycle and its enabling conditions, in contrast, is a salient and overt influence on the annual cycle. It not

only influences the distribution and sequence of various events (as the bright and dark fortnights do) but also enters into the content, stories, and symbolism of those events in direct and obvious way. Images of fertility and generation, of cyclical appearance and disappearance, of protection and destruction in an equivocal balance, and of capricious vital forces just beyond the urban order and just beyond the social selves of its citizens—all this expresses, responds to, and builds on the implications of the rice and monsoon cycle and their phases.

The annual rice agricultural cycle has reflections elsewhere in the calendar beside in the Devi cycle itself. One event, Ya: Marhi Punhi [9], comes when the annual consumption of the newly gathered rice harvest is about to begin. The benign goddess Laksmi is asked on this day to ensure that the rice consumed by the household will eventually be replaced. With the successful gathering in of the harvest, the emphasis has moved from the dangerous goddess of fertility to the benign goddess of the household stores. A major reflection of the agricultural cycle is in the shift that we have discussed at length in the kinds of events that occur in the segment of the year between the beginning of the rains at Bhagasti [40] and the symbolic end of the harvest at Mohani. The concentration of all kinds of events during this period in a sort of crescendo of symbolic effort and the large number of events related to death and antistructure are congruent with the problematic nature of this period of the year.