PART TWO
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE MESOCOSM

Chapter Seven
The Symbolic Organization of Space

There is no world without Verona walls, But purgatory, torture, bell itself. Hence "banished" is banish'd from the world, And world's exile is death.
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Introduction

Frank Kermode wrote of the London portrayed by Joseph Conrad in the Secret Agent that it "is the raw, dark, dirty middle of the world, where there is not structure in space or m time that enables men to know one another, or even to familiarize themselves with inanimate objects" (1983, 48). Bhaktapur is also at the middle of the world, but a polar world to Conrad's structureless turn-of-the-century London. In Bhaktapur space is created and made use of to enable the city's inhabitants to know one another and to know—in fact, to animate—objects.

In the 1850s Ambrose Oldfield ([1880] 1974, vol. I, p. 98) found some confusion in the spatial arrangements of Newar cities:

The streets through the different cities are mostly narrow, crooked and dirty. . .. The streets do not appear to have been laid out on any particular system. Two or three of the principal streets radiate from some of the gateways on the circumference of the city towards the darbar [the royal palace], which is usually situated near its center, and m their course they pass through some of the small squares (or toles ) with which each capital abounds. Other smaller streets connect the different squares and leading thoroughfares together, and these again are intersected by numerous narrow lanes, which ramify about the city in all directions.

But there was also order, (ibid., vol. l, p. 95f. [original parentheses]):

During the time of the Niwar [sic] Rajas each city was surrounded by a high wall, in different parts of which were large gateways, which gener-

ally remained open, but in times of danger or disturbance could be closed and defended. Since the Gorkha conquest of the valley the walls have been allowed to decay. . .. The limits of each city are, however, still strictly marked along the line where the ancient walls stood, and no Hindu but those of good caste are allowed to dwell within its precincts. . .. The number of gateways corresponded exactly with the number of squares (toles ) within the city, each gateway being associated with a particular square, and placed under the municipal control of the same local authorities, who were as much responsible for the repairs and defense of the gateway as they were for the general management of the square. In each city the largest and most important building is the royal palace. . .. It is situated in a central part of the city, and opposite to its principal front there is an open irregular square . . . round which temples of various kinds are clustered together

Oldfield was glimpsing something of the spatial order of the later Malla cities after seventy years of decay. The construction of villages, towns, and cities as symbolic structures is ancient and ubiquitous in South Asia, and Bhaktapur, like the other Malla centers, had borrowed and developed for purposes of such an order a widespread and ancient areal vocabulary of significant spatial forms.

In this chapter we will present what we consider to be the most significant aspects of the organization of space for the organization of the life of Bhaktapur—"significant," that is, for the creation of order through the organization of symbolic form. Obviously, much of the city's urban order is significant in other ways, but such matters as the urban location of various kinds of craftsmen, the channels of transportation and communication in the city, and the spatial residues of (and potential clues for) earlier urban arrangements are of secondary interest for this study.^[1]

One of our first approaches to the study of Bhaktapur was a mapping of various aspects of city life—residence areas of thar s, location of temples and shrines, and festival routes—onto maps derived from aerial photographs of the city. During the course of the field research we learned that the urbanologist Niels Gutschow had been doing similar mapping. Gutschow has freely shared with us his maps of Bhaktapur's "ordered space" as he has called it (Gutschow and Kölver 1975), and we have made use of his maps and published writings as a major supplement and extension to our own mappings.

We start, then, with those spatial divisions—areas, lines, and points, that are sources and receptacles for meaning in themselves, that provide meaningful locations for the placement of other symbolic forms and

that set out the stage for what once seemed to be the city's endlessly repeated civic dance.

The City As An Icon of A God

Bhaktapur, as we have noted in our discussion of its history, grew through time in conformance with the limits of early settlements and of topographic constraints. As attempts were made to organize its space as a symbolic resource, it was necessary to deal with hard and resistant forms and forces. The forms that resulted from the interactions of planning and what was—from the viewpoint of an ideal symbolic order—accident or constraint could be coerced into that order in various ways. An existent form might be discovered to have a direct, iconic resemblance to something of transcendent significance; approximate relationships could be abstracted and transformed imaginatively into ideal geometric forms or iconic representations.

The inhabitants of Bhaktapur were thus able to imagine its irregularly ovoid shape as a direct representation of something significant, while at the same time, as we shall see, for other and more important purposes they conceived that shape as a perfect circle. In the eighteenth century Kirkpatrick wrote that Newars described Bhaktapur as resembling "the Dumbroo, or guitar, of Mahadeo" ([1811] 1969, 163). The "dumbroo" was undoubtedly the damaru^[*] , the hourglass-shaped drum of Siva. Oldfield, writing of the Nepal Valley m the 1850s, said that Kathmandu, according to Buddhist Newars, was built to resemble the sword of its founder in Buddhist legend, Manjusri, while according to Hindus it resembled the sword of Devi ([1880] 1974, vol. 1, p. 101). Patan, a largely Buddhist city, was said to resemble the wheel of Buddha (vol. I, p. 117), while Bhaktapur (vol. I, p. 131) was said now to represent the conch of Visnu^[*] , which is what many present inhabitants still say.

In the case of Bhaktapur (and as far as we know the same is true for the other Newar cities), such iconic images that connect the cities to gods have no ritual or doctrinal significance at all. In contrast to the geometrically regular idealized spaces of the city, they are not used in any way in the actions and elaborations of meanings that constitute the symbolic order of the city. The identification of Bhaktapur's shape with Visnu^[*] has no present significance. The city is sometimes thought of as Siva's, sometimes Parvati's, sometimes the Tantric Goddess's, but never Visnu's^[*] city.

Figure 6.
Ceremonial bathing m the Hanumante River.

A Note on Hill and River

Bhaktapur, like very many cities, makes use of a hill—on which it is built—and a bordering river (see fig. 6), but characteristically elaborates and adds to their elementary "practical" significance—the hill as potential citadel, or as a residential center for the exploitation of the surrounding arable farmland, the river as a source of water (but not, in the Kathmandu Valley, for navigation). The hill, with its higher-status temples, palaces, and residential areas located toward its crest, adds to the more significant orientation of central-peripheral (discussed below) an additional dimension of higher-lower. Bhaktapur is situated in accordance with the traditional ideals of South Asian town planning on the right bank of its river (Dut [1925] 1977, 24), the Hanumante. As is the case for all Newar royal cities and for those secondary Newar towns situated on rivers, the direction of the flow of the river is one basis for the discrimination of an important division of the city or town into two halves, an upper half (upstream), and a lower half (downstream). The river, a locus for dying, cremation, and purification, is outside the traditional boundaries of the city and takes much of its meaning (which it shares with the ideal symbolic Indian river, the Ganges) from its transitional position at a boundary to another world and its flow toward still another, whose orders are other than that of the city.

The Idealization of Space: Bhaktapur As A Yantra

In map 1, a schematic illustration of the location of the shrines of the nine guardian goddesses of Bhaktapur (those who protect its boundaries and what we shall refer to as its "mandalic^[*] sections"), one of the city's Rajopadhyaya Brahmans represented the goddesses' locations as points in a symmetrical diagrammatic city. The drawing is labeled "Yantrakara khwapa dey'"—"Khwapa dey'," "the city of Bhaktapur," portrayed as a "yantra ." The diagram shows Bhaktapur's boundary as a circle, a mandala^[*] , a pervasive South Asian representation of a boundary and its contained area within which "ritual" power and order is held and concentrated.^[2] The circumference of the mandala^[*] separates two very different worlds, an inside order and an outside order, and suggests the possibility of various kinds of relations and transactions between them. Within the mandala^[*] in the drawing is the yantra , "a mystical diagram believed to possess magical or occult powers" (Stutley

Map 1.
Idealized symbolic form. A drawing by a Bhaktapur Brahman of Bhak-
tapur as a yantra with the nine Mandalic^[*] Goddesses represented at the eight
compass points and at the center. The actual spatial location of the nine god-
desses is given in map 2.

and Stutley 1977, 347), typical of Bhaktapur's imagery (chap. 9), here made up of two overlapping triangles, representing the relation of opposites, of male and female principles, unified in a point at the center of the diagram. At that central point is written the name of one of Bhaktapur's nine protective goddesses, Tripurasundari. Toward the periphery, at the circular boundary are the names of the eight other protective goddesses. They are exactly arranged at the eight points of the compass, with the top of the diagram conceived as representing the north.

These goddesses exist in the actual space of Bhaktapur (map 2), but

Map 2.
The spatial positions of the pithas of the nine Mandalic^[*] Goddesses. These are the actual spatial locations of the idealized
points of the symbolic yantra and mandala^[*] in map 1. The numbers designate the deities in the sequence in which they are worshiped
when treated as a united collection of deities: (1) Brahmani, (2) Mahesvari, (3) Kumari, (4)Vaisnavi^[*] , (5) Varahi, (6) Indrani^[*] , (7)
Mahakaili, (8) Mahalaksmi^[*] , and (9) Tripurasundari. The dense band of dots in this map and the following maps indicating the extent
of the city represents the edge of the presently built-up area of the city, the "physical city," and does not necessarily correspond to the
city's symbolic boundaries. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

the central shrine and the ones at the boundaries are only approximately at the eight points of the compass and at the city center (cf. Auer and Gutschow n.d., 22). One of them is even further displaced from where it is "supposed" to be, being physically within the symbolic boundary of the city instead of at or beyond its outer border as are the other boundary protecting shrines. As Mary Slusser speculates of that shrine, that of Mahalaksmi^[*] , in the course of the construction of a boundary-marking city wall "the sanctity of the [preexisting] old shrine forbade moving it to an optimal location outside the wall; engineering or other considerations dictated the latter's course, thus enclosing the . . . [shrine] within the city walls" (1982, vol. I, p. 346). In accordance with the struggle and the dialogue between the given on the one hand and the ideal symbolic form on the other, Bhaktapur had to construct and imagine a yantra and its encompassing mandala^[*] as best it could.

This imaginative process takes features of real space, many of them constructed under the impetus of that imagination, and perfects them—the city becomes a bounded circle instead of a flattened irregular oval. Simultaneously in a dialogue of imaginative and actual space city halves, "mandalic sections"—various axes and centers—have been constructed. Those imaginatively perfected forms exist in real space like a geometric image reflected in a distorting mirror. But people have no trouble finding their ways about in one or the other kind of space or, for that matter, in both at the same time.

The City Boundaries and the Bordering Outside

Bhaktapur, like the other Newar royal cities, was, as we have noted in chapter 3, once more or less surrounded by a wall that was pierced by gates. The wall had a defensive use, as descriptions of Bhaktapur's resistance to the siege of the Gorkhalis in 1769 vividly attested. However, the defensive uses of city walls, Paul Wheatley has argued, "in both Nuclear America and Asia [he is writing of early traditional cities] . . . were often much less important than in the West European city. In fact, not infrequently those constructions which the modern mind is predisposed to interpret as fortifications, and which may indeed have been pressed into service as such during emergencies, were in reality symbolic representations of the bounds of the cosmos" (1971, 372). Bhaktapur's wall (whatever other functions it had) and the boundaries it once marked were of enormous "symbolic" importance, as those

boundaries still are. Those boundaries may not represent the boundaries of the cosmos, for there is some sort of world beyond them, but they represent the boundaries of its central order, the order that is congenial to human beings and to what we will call (chap. 8) the "ordinary deities."

The various spatial features of importance of the city's symbolic organization, which we will be concerned with in the remainder of this chapter, are anchored in real city space by physical features—particular stones, shrines, temples, roads, and pathways. In the course of the "symbolic enactments" that take place in relation to these markers, significant points, boundaries, axes, and areas are clearly designated. In most cases these significant spatial features can be precisely mapped. When the city walls and their gates were still intact, the boundary of the city as a whole was, of course, clear. At that time it was, in fact, the only one of the spatial boundaries we are concerned with that was entirely represented in a physical, material form. Now in Bhaktapur the wall has disappeared except for a few gateways placed at the old ceremonial entrances into the city, and the problem for the people of Bhaktapur in knowing exactly where the city's boundaries are at all points is greater, often considerably greater, than it is for locating the boundaries of smaller units. Kathmandu still has a processional route annually followed by members of families bereaved during the previous year that follows and thus traces and retains in civic memory the ancient and now leveled walls of that city (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, 93). Bhaktapur does not have any such ceremonial tracing of its boundaries (although there is something like it in orderly sequential visits to the shrines of the boundary-making goddesses during the autumnal harvest festival, Mohani; see chap. 15), but rather marks and infers the boundary by the contrast of certain events and conditions held to take place properly outside of it but not inside. The city boundary is a dimensionless line producing an instant transformation between the inside of the city and the outside. The symbolic emphasis is on the outside of this line, what happens to citizens at home in Bhaktapur when they cross this line, and what kind of a contrasting world they find there. The inside and the outside help define each other. Not only is the emphasis on the outside of the line in its contrasts to the inside (and not on the line itself), but the emphasis is for the most part on a special aspect of the outside, the immediate outside, the bordering outside. The distant outside—where in Malla days one would eventually reach the other Newar cities, and beyond them Lhasa and India—is something else.

We will note some of the things and events that exist or take place just beyond the boundaries. This, like much of this chapter, will serve to introduce subjects dealt with in more detail and in different contexts later in the book.

City Boundaries: The Boundary-Protecting Goddesses

As we noted in the discussion of the drawing (map 1) of Bhaktapur as an ideal mandala^[*] or yantra , there are the shrines of eight goddesses placed at the eight points of the compass at the boundary, and a ninth at the center.^[3] The nine goddesses as a set are related to the internal division of the city's space into nine "mandalic^[*] areas," and we will discuss this division below. The eight external goddesses preside each over her own area of the city, but together they protect the boundary itself. As a group of eight, they are the Astamatrkas^[*] , the "Eight Mothers," whose positions, marked by open, aniconic shrines called pitha s, are conceived to be (although as we have noted, one of them is, "in fact," not) not only exactly at the eight points of the compass (which again they are not "in fact") but just outside the boundary of the city (see map 2). The Astamatrkas^[*] are important members of a special class of deities, the "dangerous" deities, and represent a major component of that class, the manifestations of the "dangerous goddess," "the Goddess," Devi. We will return to Devi as a deity in chapter 8, in relation to the specific worship of the dangerous deities and Tantra (chap. 9), and again in that portion of the annual calendrical cycle devoted to her (chap. 15). The group of dangerous deities (who are ritually specified in that they—in contrast to the "benign deities"—receive blood sacrifices and offerings of alcoholic spirits) represent dangerous and at the same time vital forces that lie beyond the city's inner moral organization and also represent the defenses against those dangerous forces through a transformation in which those forces have been tenuously captured and controlled and placed at the service of the city. These particular goddesses ring the entire city and protect it from specific kinds of danger, such as earthquake, disease, and invasion. It is proper for them to be placed to the exterior of a boundary because they are the kinds of deities who are, as we will see, "semantically" proper for their particular job. Their position at the city's boundaries is not only a defense but a reminder of the kind of a world to be encountered there and of the contrast of that world with the interior where—within small protective perimeters of

various kinds also defended by the dangerous deities—a quieter moral order can proceed under the tutelage of other kinds of deities.

As is the case with most of the significant symbolic markers of Bhaktapur's mesocosm, an encounter with the Eight Mothers and the boundary they represent, protect, and characterize is ineluctably brought about in the course of certain necessary symbolic enactments. The protective goddess of a person's particular residential area of the city must be worshiped during the course of certain major rites of passage by the male members of the extended patrilineal family unit, the phuki . Almost all of Bhaktapur's people also visit the boundary shrines (and their central focus), over the course of nine days of the major autumnal harvest festival, Mohani (chap. 15). People visit each one on its particular designated day, proceeding in the course of the nine days in the auspicious clockwise direction from one shrine to the next, finally, in effect, circumambulating the city's borders.^[4]

City Boundaries: The External Seat of the Lineage God, The Digu God

The people of Bhaktapur must cross to the outside of the city's boundaries (see map 3) to worship their phuki 's lineage deity, represented usually by a "natural" stone and worshiped through the rituals proper to dangerous deities (chaps. 8 and 9). This god is the Digu God (or sometimes and popularly, the Dugu God), the lineage deity of a phuki . The Digu God worship is for the highest thar s, (Pa[n]cthariya and above)—that is, those who have upper-class Tantric practices—only one of two major components of lineage god worship (chap. 9), but for the middle-level and lower-level thar s it is the only form. The location of shrines for the worship of lineage gods on the outside of a settlement or village is also the practice of Nepalese Chetri communities (K. B. Bista 1972, 66) and has been described in other Newar communities (e.g., Toffin 1977, 31). Informants in Bhaktapur cannot explain why the shrines of the Digu God are outside of the city; explanatory stories are vague, and it is unclear to what possible historical reality they might refer. One story is that in the days of the Malla kings all families of Newars went to the same town (Hadigaon)^[5] for their lineage god worship, with each lineage presumably having its own shrine there. But, the story goes, as this was too far away the shrines were moved to the outskirts of each of the Valley cities. Some others say that the place

Map 3.
The symbolic boundaries of the city. The external placement of the Digu lineage gods. The physical city is represented as a
bounded shaded area. Each peripheral dot represents the placement of the external lineage deity of a particular phuki or of a group of
split phukis. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

where the shrines are located is the place where the original founders of each family lineage entered the city. This comment on the exterior position of the Digu God shrines suggests an actual or fantasized connection of their locations in the past to the historical origins of the city's ancient patrilineages.^[6] If this connection (if it ever really existed) is now mostly lost, the Digu Gods must nevertheless be worshiped just to the outside of the city's boundaries, and it is the kind of worship and they are the kinds of gods that point outward beyond the organized interior life of the city.

City Boundaries: Cremation, Dying, And Purification

The river is considered to he outside of the city's boundaries to the south, as are the ghat^[*] s (Bhaktapur Newari, ga :) or steps leading down to the river on its city side. At the river clothes are washed and people bathe as a phase of major purification procedures (chap. 11). People approaching death are sometimes brought to the river ghat^[*] s so that their feet and legs may be immersed in the river at the actual moment of death (app. 6). The city's three cremation grounds (Newari dip , from Sanskrit dipa , burning, blazing) are also outside the city, as they are in all South Asian Hindu communities. Two of the major cremation grounds are beyond the river and, as they should be ideally, to the south of the city. These two cremation grounds (Khware Dip and Mu ["main"] Dip) are each associated with one of the ghat^[*] s on the city side of the river, and are connected to them by bridges spanning the river. There is a third major dip , Bramhayani (Sanskrit Brahmani),^[7] to the east of the city, named after the protective boundary goddess of the eastern pole of the city.

Although we are concerned here with city boundaries and inside/ outside contrasts and relations, it is convenient at this point to introduce some other aspects of the cremation grounds in their relation to city space and to its status system. The three dip s are for the "clean" thar s, the "unclean" ones use various fields outside the city (although on the city side of the river) away from the three main dip s. Various Newar chronicles suggest that the cremation areas of most of the significant macrostatus groups were, or at least were held ideally to be, separated. Thus, according to Hasrat's chronicle, Jayasthiti Malla "distinguished and classified thirty-six tribes according to their trades and professions . . . [and] constituted for each of the thirty-six a separate masan [cremation ground] or place for burning their dead" (Hasrat

1970, 55ff.). There are now traditional places within the grounds for some thar s, but as a whole the cremation grounds are related to areas of the city, rather than to social status. People who have been brought to die at Hanuman ga : are cremated at the Khware Dip. Those who had been brought to die at Cupi(n) ga : are cremated at the Mu Dip. It is a matter of family custom and choice which ga : they are brought to. Most people die at home, within the city, and these people are usually cremated at Brahmani Dip if they live in the upper half of the city, and Mu Dip if they live in the lower hall

Gutschow and Kölver (1975) called attention to the fact that funeral processions to the dip s were determined by residence in a particular twa: (a village-like division of the city; see below). "Now there are exact prescriptions regulating not only who has to use which [cremation ground], but also the way a corpse has to be borne to his proper place of burning. The decisive feature in this is geographical. The body of a man who belonged to a particular ward [twa: ] has to be carried along the way prescribed to all the members of his ward" (Gutschow and Kölver 1975, 27). These differentiated routes, based on twa: residency, recall Oldfieid's statement, previously quoted, that the number of gateways in the old city walls exactly corresponded to the number of toles (twa: s) in the city, and that the maintenance of the gates was the responsibility of the local twa: authorities (Oldfield [1880] 1974, vol. I, p. 95f.). Because of the mixed collection of thar s in many twa: s, this arrangement, as Gutschow and Kölver point out, tends to neutralize the distinctions of caste (1975, 27).

This "communitas, " represented by a collapse of status distinctions in funeral procession and place of cremation, is typical of many activities that are outside and beyond the ordinary civic structuring of Bhaktapur; for example carnival and Tantric rituals. In all of these, however, there is always a residue that is excluded from the egalitarian community, in this case the lowest thar s, who are refused even the common cremation grounds.^[8]

City Boundaries: The Untouchables' Proper Place

In all traditional South Asian cities the lowest segment of the social hierarchy had to live outside the city, and was thus designated as being in opposition to the pure inhabitants of the inside of the city.^[9] The ancient classical Indian treatise on applied politics, the Arthasastra of Kautila^[*] , states that "heretics and candalas shall live beyond the burial

grounds" (quoted in Dutt [1925, p. 151]), which themselves were to be outside the city.

Various chronicles or vamsavali presenting Jayasthiti Malla's formalization of Bhaktapur's religious, social, and economic organization, note that Poriya (Bh. Po[n] or Pore), had to live outside the city (see map 4), and could not enter the city after sundown (Hodgson manuscripts, n.d, vol. 11, p. 114; Basnet [1878] 1981). Oldfield, in the sequel to some remarks that we have already quoted, wrote of the Newar old "capital cities" (in which he included the large secondary town of Kirtipur) that, "The limits of each city are . . . still strictly marked along the line where the ancient walls stood, and no Hindus but those of good caste are allowed to dwell within its precincts. This rule does not apply to Mussalmen, several of whom reside within the city of Kathmandu, but it is strictly enforced against Hindu outcasts, such as sweepers, butchers, executioners, etc., all of whom are obliged to live in the suburbs of the city" ([1880] 1974, vol. I, p. 95).

The sweepers and executioners are the Po(n)s, whose symbolic functions are, as we will see, of great persisting importance in Bhaktapur. The inclusion in this quotation of "butchers," the Nae, introduces a problem, and almost surely an error into the literature on thar residence patterns.^[10] Nae at present live within the boundaries of the city, although they are located at its periphery, at the farthest from its high-status center (map 9, below). There are other low thar s, some of which are even lower and more impure than the Nae who live within the city, and to all evidence always have, for example, the Jugi (map 10, below).

The question of the position of the Nae in relation to Bhaktapur's boundaries is connected with another question, one concerning the position of the city's main city-wide processional route, the pradaksinapatha^[*] . In ideal ancient Indian tradition the pradaksinapatha^[*] surrounded the village or city (Dutt 1925, 33), and Mary Slusser has argued that this was the case in Kathmandu (1982, vol. 1, p. 93). The Bhaktapur pradaksinapatha^[*] (map 12, below) moves within the city as a flattened meandering oval, roughly paralleling the city's boundary, running through and thus tying together all except one outlying twa: (below) as well as the upper and lower cities. Bhaktapur's internal pradaksinapatha^[*] position within the city also is found in the Newar town of Panauti. Barré et al. argue that in the town of Panauti the processional route acts as a "boundary of purity," as the butchers and sweepers live in its exterior (1981, 40f.). Such a tempting distinction does not work for the distribution of thar s in Bhaktapur (and even in

Map 4.
Space, status, and the symbolic boundaries of the city. The settlement of the Po(n) untouchables at the southern edge of the
city. The settlement is considered to be lust beyond the symbolic boundaries of the city. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

the cited account of Panauti there are admitted exceptions, like the dwellings of the very low Jugis within the central area). As we have noted, the interior position of the pradaksinapatha^[*] in Bhaktapur, and the fact that both the sweepers and the butchers live peripheral to it, led Gutschow and Kö1ver (1975, p. 21) to speculate that it follows the external boundary of some earlier city of Bhaktapur, but there is no apparent collaboration for this in other historical, archaeological, or persisting social forms.

It is unequivocally the Po(n)s, the sweepers, however, who have the special symbolic function of being intimately joined to the city to represent its most salient and necessary outsiders—they are the ones who must live just beyond the boundaries, and who in their conditions of life and in their powerful embedded meanings represent the transforming significance of that boundary to those privileged to live within it.

On Boundaries

The city walls and most of its gateways are long gone, but everyone in Bhaktapur knows that they exist, that the city is a clearly bounded entity, surrounded by an outside of contrasting nature, and they know approximately where the boundaries must be. They cannot ignore the boundary as they must cross it to the outside for worship of lineage gods, for worship of the "Eight Mothers," often to die and always to cremate others and be cremated themselves, and they must be sure that the untouchables, with whom they are deeply concerned, are fixed in their right place. The outside with which they are necessarily engaged is not everything outside of Bhaktapur, but a highly symbolized zone of encirclement. The far outside, which may be contrasted with this encircling, bordering near outside, includes areas of very mixed meaning—other Newar cities, pilgrimage sites, non-Hindu countries, and so on. But the near outside represents the anticity. The relation of bordering outside to inside characterizes not only the city as a whole but also the relations of many of its nested units to their particular outsides, and is reflected in many ways, in kinds of gods, kinds of worship, and the interplay between power and morality, kings and Brahmans. We will be concerned with these relations throughout the following chapters.

The relations of outside and inside are not a simple opposition. The outside has its special values—it has something to do with fertility and useful power as well as danger. As the kinds of deities who character the two realms suggest (chap. 8), outside and inside have different logics,

different relations to moral order. But all this is complementary. The major supernatural creatures at the outside are gods themselves, not antigods like Satan. The ordinary deities, like the ordinary people, need those outside gods, even if they are not comfortable with them.

In the symbolic representation and symbolic enactments concerning the city boundaries, it is the bordering outside and its nature that is emphasized. That outside is of such a nature that after a brief, lively, and instructive encounter with it, people are moved to reenter ordinary civic space with some relief. From the point of view of its impact on citizens for the purposes of social order the smbolization of the outside tends to push people back within the civic boundary.^[11]

When the public space of the city as a whole is the focus of attention, as it is generally in this book, the external outside beyond the encircling borders is only one way out of the public city. Insofar as the behavior of an individual, a family, or whatever unit is out of the general public sight and of the direct influence of the city system, they are, from the point of view of that system also "outside," and thus households, thar s, guthi s, and so on, as well as the private "inside" part of a person's thoughts are outside the public moral world of the urban mesocosm. The inside of the city as a public moral civic space can be escaped in various directions, and the outside beyond the civic boundaries often joins in meaning with the small private realms hidden within the city.

Bhaktapur As A Mandala^[*] : The Nine Mandalic^[*] Section

When Bhaktapur is conceived of as a yantra placed within a bounding mandala^[*] , the segmentation of its interior space is now at issue. Now the Eight Mothers, the Astamatrkas^[*] , not only protect the external boundaries of the city at the eight points of the compass but also individually protect the particular octant of the city lying in their general direction and, thus, under their influence. The protective goddesses for the octants are Brahmani to the east; Mahesvari to the southeast, Kumari to the south; Bhadrakali^[*] (sometimes represented as another goddess, Vaisnavi^[*] ) to the southwest; Varahi to the west; Indrani^[*] to the northwest, Mahakali to the north, and Mahalaksmi^[*] to the northeast (map 2).^[12]

Each goddess has a "god-house" in her city segment, where her portable images is kept (map 2). During one of the year's major festiv-

als, Biska: (chap. 14), the images are brought from the interior of the city each to its boundary shrine, and the internal image and the external aniconic shrine are united. The emphasis has shifted from the protection of the boundary to an internal radiation of the power of the goddesses. That power not only plays over the eight peripheral octants into which the city is divided but is also focused and concentrated at the center of the mandala^[*] , in the shrine or pitha of still another, a ninth goddess, Tripurasundari. This Goddess protects the city's central area in a circle around her. The city is thus divided into nine areas—a circular center and eight peripheral sectors. We may call these nine segments "mandalic^[*] sections." These nine divisions are also conceived by Bhaktapur theorists as a lotus, with a center and eight petals, a very common Hindu form, corresponding to one classical Indian ideal village form (Dutt 1925, 29).

Each mandalic^[*] segment is designated by its protective goddess plus any term for area or place, for example, Mahakali ya ilaka , signifying the territory under Mahakali's protection. People are thought to belong to the mandalic^[*] section in which their father's patriline had been "established." That is, if they move to another part of the city, their protective goddess and that of their descendants born in the new section is the goddess of the mandalic^[*] section where they had previously, and presumably "always," lived. After marriage, a wife is considered to belong to her husband's mandalic^[*] section and ordinarily prays to that section's goddess, although she is still related to her natal goddess in those rituals of her natal family in which she continues to be involved.

The mandalic^[*] segment that one belongs to determines which specific Astamatrka^[*] shrine or pitha one must visit during certain important rituals, particularly during those associated with the samskara s, or rites of passage. During the annual harvest festival, Mohani, in which the whole city is supposed to visit each of the nine pitha s in daily turn over nine days, the people in each goddess's section are responsible for decorating her pitha and god-house on her particular day. In some Tantric initiations for higher-level thar s, the particular mantra used and the tutelary god assigned to the person being initiated is based on his particular mandalic^[*] segment (chap. 9).

The central goddess Tripurasundari is, as we will discuss in the next chapter, the proper kind of dangerous goddess to be at the center of the mandala^[*] 's power. She is a "full" goddess, and the peripheral forms are partial and more specialized. She is represented at the center of the lotus or mandala^[*] where power is concentrated and at its maximum, and

sometimes to similar effect as a point sending out rays of power in each of the eight directions of the compass to each of the eight pitha s at the boundaries. In contradistinction to the way the city uses other "full," maximally powerful forms of the Goddess (such as Taleju and Bhagavati), however, and in spite of this schematic superiority to the eight peripheral goddesses, there is no special emphasis of any kind now on Tripurasundari's central shrine, nor on the central mandalic^[*] section that she protects. In action and interpretation, Tripurasundari (in her function as a central pitha goddess) is the exact equal of the other Mandalic^[*] Goddesses. Some local diagrams of Bhaktapur as a mandala^[*] have the Newari word for king, juju , written next to Tripurasundari. Some Bhaktapur informants speculate that the shrine's centrality may have reflected a possible ancient relationship to the twelfth-century royal palace, Tripura, which they believe to have been near the present pitha , and they assume that the Tripurasundari pitha may have then been the special shrine for the king and his court (cf. Slusser, 1982, vol. I, p. 345ff.). In the seventeenth century the court and its associated temple of Taleju was moved to its present western site.^[13] Tripurasundari lost her central political importance. This suggests that she remains as a striking example of a once powerful symbolic statement that later lost much of its social, ritual, and personal meaning in a transformed Bhaktapur, where now the curious thing about her is the absence of what she once was.

City Halves: Ritually Organized Antagonism

The bounded units we are considering are in part defined by their contrasts with their adjoining units, in a contrast where that adjoining unit is often an encompassing one (the city and its environment, the house in its twa: or neighborhood), although it may be, as in the case of adjoining mandalic^[*] sements, a contrast of units at the same level. For the most part any antagonistic implications of these contrasts are mitigated by a pervasive Hindu metaphorical move, an emphasis on the organic unity and interdependence of the contrasting units to form some higher vital synthesis, the various units being metaphorically related (like the ancient four Varnas^[*] ) as being like the parts or organs of the body. Neither the high head nor the lowly feet, although different and of different status, can live without the other; they are joined into something superior on which they are dependent, on which their very lives depend.

However, there is one symbolically marked division of the city, its halves, where the major emphasis is precisely on conflict, albeit a conflict periodically and tenuously resolved in symbolic acts. This emphasis on the antagonism of the halves seems to deflect other more dangerous antagonisms within and among smaller city units.

Bhaktapur is divided into halves, an upper half (cwe , or up, or tha:ne , above, upward) and a lower half (kwe , down, or kwane , below, downward) (map 5). As D. R. Regmi wrote, the division may have been a general feature of all Newar settlements and "obtained in every case whether it was a town or townlet" (1965-1966, part I, p. 554). The division has been described for Kathmandu (Regmi 1965-1966, part I, p. 554; Slusser 1982, 90-91), for the Newar village of Theco (Toffin 1984, 186ff.), and for the large Newar town of Panauti (Barré et al. 1981, 46). As Barré writes, the division into upper and lower city is "a characteristic common to Newar settlements whether urban or rural."

It is often stated that the upper and lower segments are designated in relation to the flow of neighboring rivers (e.g., Toffin 1984, 200) with upstream locating the direction of cwe , downstream of kwe . Inhabitants of Bhaktapur attempt various explanations of the designations "up" and "down." Bhaktapur's "upper half" for some is upper because it is more northerly, for others because it is in the direction of the high Himalayas, in contrast to the progressively lower, that is, less elevated southern regions. This north-south interpretation of "upper" and "lower" is reflected in a use of "kwane " among Valley Newars, at least until the last generation, to indicate India. Other speculations are that the upper half, cwe , was the earliest part of the city settled (as was, in fact, true for Bhaktapur), followed by a later settlement, kwe . (Here the usage corresponds to the temporal terminology for ancestors [cwe , up] and descendants [kwe , down].) Still other people give the upstream/ downstream, explanation. It is possible, at least, that the upper/lower contrast is basic to the social organization of all Newar settlements, and that a variety of relations to physical space and settlement history can be used to choose between the terms of the distinction or to justify them. Bhaktapur's upper and lower cities are divided by a line perpendicular to the long (the southwest-northeast) axis of the city, and thus consist of a somewhat northerly eastern portion, and a somewhat southerly western portion, which are respectively upstream and downstream in respect to the Hanumante River (see maps S and 11 [below]).^[14] As D. R. Regmi writes, in contrast to Kathmandu, where the royal palace was at the central position in the city and provided a locus

for the division of the city into upper and lower halves, "the [Bhaktapur] Royal palace was situated at the western extremity of the town and the center dividing the city was the courtyard surrounded by the Nyatapola [Natapwa(n)la] and Bhairava temples" (1965-1966, part II, p. 554). This square, Ta:marhi (also pronounced or written Tamari, Taumadhi^[*] , Taumarhi, etc.), is conceived as at the center of the city division in one of its most important ritual expressions, the struggle between members of the two halves of the city to pull a huge chariot positioned there into their respective halves of the city during the Biska: festival at the time of the solar New Year, a struggle sometimes marked with considerable violence (chap. 14). At that time the square is considered the neutral center between the halves, but ordinarily it is considered as belonging to the lower city and the people living around it consider themselves at all times to be members of the lower city. Guts-chow and Kö1ver note that the Ta:marhi Square has a "profuse endowment" of religious buildings and is the site of the highest temple (and building) in Bhaktapur, the Natapwa(n)la temple (fig. 10). They argue that this profusion of monuments may be understood as a device for unifying the town by installing a mediating center and affirming the unity of the city (1975, 50). Although the old Malla Royal Palace, the square in front of it, and the adjacent residential area of the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans (maps 5 and 6) is, like Ta:marhi, in the lower half of the city, during the struggles of the city halves in the course of the Biska: festival that area is also said to belong to neither the upper nor lower city. It is often said that the Malla kings encouraged the division and conflict between the two city halves, which they transcended, to strengthen their power and divide any potential opposition. Thus, if Ta:marhi Square acts as a neutral ritual center between the upper and lower cities, the royal central area, in spite of its peripheral western positions, is in its own way also a neutral point.

In recent years conflict between members of city halves has also sometimes broken out at certain other festivals, but these rare and recent struggles are considered to be accidental and unintended disorder and breakdown. The peculiarity of the Biska: festival is that it includes as one element in its complex dramatic structure a prolonged struggle between the two city halves, a struggle that eventually comes to a resolution.

Ritualized struggles (that is, struggles induced and regulated by traditional forms and conventions—which does not prevent them from having, sometimes, serious consequences) between socially organized

Map 5.
The struggle of the upper and lower halves of the city and its resolution. The routes into the upper and lower halves of the city
contested in the struggle to pull the Bhairava chariot during the Biska: festival (chap. 14). The arrows in the upper and lower segment
of the city show the ideal termini of the chariot and the acceptable shorter termini if there is not time to reach the ideal ones. The
southerly arrow shows the chariot's ultimate "central" route into Yasi(n) Field, where it must witness the raising of the Yasi(n) God to
mark the solar New Year. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

Map 6.
Space and status. Households of Rajopadhyaya Brahmans. The greatest concentration is just south of the Taleju temple and
the Royal Palace and represents a center of the city. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

halves or moieties of a community—are reported for traditional South Asian communities as they are elsewhere in the world. Dubois, for example, remarked on the struggles between the "left-handed" and the "right-handed" factions in the Deccan and Madras areas in the early nineteenth century, factions to which "most castes" belong, which "proved a perpetual source of riots, and the cause of endless animosity amongst the natives" (1968, 24f.). He also remarks on something that has a bearing on the conflict in Bhaktapur, that "in the disputes and conflicts which so often take place between the two factions it is always the Pariahs [the untouchables] who make the most disturbance and do the most damage" (ibid., 25). And, he states, also in an echo of Malla Bhaktapur, "the Brahmans, [and] Rajahs. . .are content to remain neutral, and take no part in these quarrels. They are often chosen as arbiters in the differences which the two factions have to settle between themselves" (ibid., 25).

Hamilton cites a report for the turn of the nineteenth century by a Colonel Crawford, which describes a "vile custom" of the Newars of Kathmandu, who had previously been described by Hamilton as being an otherwise peaceable people ([1819] 1971, 43f.):

About the end of May, and beginning of June, for fifteen days, a skirmish takes place between the young men and boys of the north and south ends of the city. During the first fourteen days it is chiefly confined to the boys or lads; but on the evening of the fifteenth day it becomes more serious. . . . [A fight then takes place which] begins about an hour before sunset, and continues until darkness separates the combatants. In the one which we saw, four people were carried off much wounded, and almost every other year one or two men are killed: yet the combat is not instigated by hatred, nor do the accidents that happen occasion any rancor. Formerly, however, a most cruel practice existed. If any unfortunate fellow was taken prisoner, he was immediately dragged to the top of a particular eminence in the rear of his conquerors, who put him to death with buffalo bones. . . . The prisoners are now kept until the end of the combat, are carried home in triumph by the victors, and confined until morning, when they are liberated.

There has been speculation, deriving from a further remark of Hamilton's (1971, 44) that some people alleged that the Kathmandu battle reflected some old division of the city into two towns under two Rajas and first arose as skirmishing among their respective followers, and that the division in Kathmandu, at least, and perhaps in other Newar towns may have reflected some earlier antagonistic political segments later merged into the towns (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 91; Toffin

1984, 201f.). Yet, the ubiquitousness, persistence, and evident usefulness of the division in Newar communities would suggest that such historical explanations would only apply to some towns, and would only help explain the location of the halves, not their existence and persistence.

In some ways the upper and lower cities in Bhaktapur are two different cities. it is said that people usually marry within their own half of the city. In many contexts, they identify themselves as belonging to one or another hall Significantly, when there are crimes or disturbances in the city whose perpetrators are unknown, it is common to hear remarks by people from the lower city that it must have been someone from the upper city, and vice versa. Although the lower city has the main concentration of Brahmans and high-status Chathariya, and the upper city the main concentration of upper-status Buddhists, for the most part each city half has a full representation of important social and occupational units.

For ordinary considerations of residence (where we can ignore the mandalic^[*] sections), the city halves are the next largest segment after the village-like twa: s (see discussion below). It is our impression that the antagonism directed toward the relatively distant other city half, out of and away from one's own closely interdependent area, deflects intra-twa: resentments that would affect relations between families, phuki s, thar s, and macrostatus levels—relations whose disturbance would be disruptive to the basic integration of the social system—to the other city within the city where they can be expressed in comparatively very much less disruptive and dangerous ways. Members of lower thar s who are annoyed and resentful of their treatment by higher groups find it easier, like the pariahs in the quotation from Dubois, to help precipitate a fight against members of a disliked group in the other half of the city, where it would be interpreted as a spatial struggle rather than one within the social system.

Status and Space: Concentric Circles

It is convenient to introduce in this chapter aspects of the urban spatial distribution of some of the thar s and status levels (see fig. 7). Only a portion of this distribution is directly related to the urban symbolic order in our present sense, the greatest part being closely related to aspects of economic function, to communication and transportation, to

Figure 7.
The Royal center. Statue of King Bhupatindra^[*] Malla in Laeku Square.

relations of power, to the special needs of the old court, and to historical "accident," thus reflecting other kinds of meaning.

In his study of the classic Indian treatises on town planning, Dutt (1925) notes the planned "segregation of the classes following different pursuits. . . . Every ward was set apart for a caste or trade guild . . . which enjoyed an autonomy of its own" (1923, 147). In some classic texts, such as Kautilya's^[*] , detailed prescriptions are set out for the location of many occupational specialites and castes, as well as the location of royal kitchens, elephant stables, water reservoirs, camel stables, and so on (Dutt 1925, 149f.).^[15] But, as Dutt points out, in cities, because of the larger scale and because "corporate life connotes manifold needs and responsibilities and consequently necessitates interdependence and inter-communication," various areas or sites were subdivided to have a representation of occupations, and became "a prototype of the whole city on a smaller scale." And, he adds, in a suggestion connected with our interpretation (above) of the city's halves, "This admixture and congregation of classes came as a remedial measure against possible accentuation of class differences" (1925, 148). We have argued that the city halves are such city prototypes in Bhaktapur, as are, to some degree, the twa: s, which we will discuss in the next section.

Although many of the thars are widely distributed through the city according to the kinds of functional principles suggested above, the arrangement of certain symbolically important groups has the kind of idealized mythic arrangement characteristic of marked symbolic space. When these thars are considered—the king and his associates, Brahmans, farmers as a group, butchers, and untouchables—a geometrically idealized Bhaktapur is organized in a series of concentric circles from a center out, and at the same time, as it is built on a hill, from top down. At the center of high status is the palace of the Malla kings, and the temple of the Malla kings' lineage deity, the supreme political goddess of Bhaktapur, Taleju. Just to the south of the palace, but also centrally located is a major concentration of Rajopadhyaya Brahmans (map 6), including those families who were the king's and his goddess' special priests. Intermingled in central residence with the Brahmans, but filling a still larger segment of the city are the Chathar and Pa(n)cthar groups of thar s (map 7), formerly royal officials and suppliers. Still more peripheral from the center are the various farming thar s, the Jyapus (map 8), who fill most of the city's area except for the Brahmans' area and those portions of the Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya area adjoining the east-west road, the city's bazaar, where the Chathariya and Pa(n)c-

Map 7.
Space and status. The area of settlement of Chathar and Pa(n)cthar households. They occupy the city's central sector. Com-
pare the distribution of Jyapus in map 8. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

Map 8.
Space and status. Jyapu household. These households overlap the Chathar and Pa(n)cthar areas to some degree but are most
densely situated in the areas of the city peripheral to those settlements. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

Map 9.
Space and status. Butcher households. The households of the Naes (butchers) are located along the edges of the built-up area
of the city. They are conceived to be within the symbolic boundaries of the city. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

thariya have their shops and, often, adjoining houses. At the very periphery of the farmers' area, and forming a ring around the outer extremes of the city, are the houses of the butchers (map 9). Finally, outside the city to the inauspicious south, live the untouchable sweepers, the Po(n)s (map 4, above).

The hill on which Bhaktapur is built has a broad plateau at its summit with no visible distinctly highest spot. The Malla palace and Taleju temple are situated on a plateau that is bordered by slopes that gradually descend some twenty meters to meet the fields outside the boundaries. This slope adds a dimension of top-down to the imagery of central to peripheral. The highest spot of the plateau at 1,339.8 meters (slightly higher than the site of the palace at 1,335 meters) lies just to the west of the Tripurasundari pitha , the central mandalic^[*] shrine, and during the twelfth to sixteenth centuries was apparently part of the site of the large Newar Royal Palace compound of the day, Tripura (Slusser 1982, vol. I, p. 204). At that time the highest point in the city was, in fact, within the royal precincts.^[16]

Detailed maps of the location of the various craft thar s, which are ranked in the lower segments of the Jyapu and below, made by Guts-chow and his associates (Gutschow 1975; Gutschow and Kölver 1975), show the occupational castes distributed in various ways, generally throughout the city, except for the central area, the area of the palace, the main Brahman cluster, and the central portion of the Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya settlements. The craftsman areas are in the outer portions of the Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya areas and throughout the area of Jyapu settlement. The number of settlements of any one thar vary. The Chipas or dyers, for example, have only one settlement, but other professional thar groups have several. The Kumha:s, potters, for example, have one large settlement in the south, and two in the northeast of the city. The oil pressers, or Sa:mis, have four dusters, two toward the east, and two toward the west. The barbers, or Naus, live in six clusters throughout the city. The house masons, the Awa:s, have three settlements, one to the west, and two to the northeast. The Jugis live (map 10) in an irregular pattern with some central clustering within the city, cutting into and intermingling with the Chathariya, Pa(n)cthariya, and farmers' areas. This inner location of the Jugis is in striking contrast with what might have been expected in the status gradient from center to periphery signaled and created by the arrangement of the most centrally important thar s in the city hierarchy, and in marked contrast to the external position of the Po(n)s, who along with the Jugis are

Map 10.
Space and status. Jugi households. In marked contrast to the Naes and the Po(n)s, the Jugis are distributed throughout the
city. They are the city's internal absorbers of pollution (chap. 10). Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

the central foci of ideas regarding pollution (chaps. 5 and 11). The position of the Jugis, as we will see, seems closely related to aspects of their significance in the city order.

In contrast with the other spatial features discussed in this chapter, the center-to-periphery, top-to-bottom, arrangements of status are not used or emphasized in the course of the city's symbolic enactments. The royal center is a focus in the city's two major festival sequences (Mohani and Biska:) and the untouchables' quarter has occasional symbolic representations, but the overall spatial status arrangements, insofar as they do reflect a symbolic order, are not given further representation.

The Village in the City, The Twa:

Binode Dutt ([1925] 1977, 147) wrote that in traditional Hindu city planning the main streets or Rajapathas of the city divided it into a set of "wards," called grama s. In some traditional towns "the same caste or people of the same profession were congregated in the same ward. . . . Every ward was set apart for a caste or trade guild of note which enjoyed an autonomy of its own" (ibid., 147). In other (according to Dutt, larger) towns or cities, as we have noted, these "wards" were the sites that contained a mixed, and, in part, functionally integrated, selection of "castes" and occupational groups, and which were "prototype[s] of the whole city on a smaller scale." "Grama " is a common Sanskrit term for village^[17] and is the term for village in Nepali. In some traditional town plans the grama s were assigned to, and named after, different presiding deities (ibid., 143). These urban grama units are called twa: in Bhaktapur Newari (twa: in Kathmandu Newari and tol^[*] in Nepali).^[18]

Gutschow and Kölver (1975), like Dutt, call these units "wards." As they note, this is a somewhat ambiguous terminology as Bhaktapur has recently been divided into seventeen "wards" for modern administrative purposes by the central government. These wards do not correspond to the twa: divisions. The problem of English nomenclature comes in part from a problem in using the tempting gloss "neighborhood," in that some of the major twa:s are further subdivided into smaller areas, also called "twa:s " (when the context is clear) which are clearly neighborhoods. When a contrast with these smaller units is needed in Newari discourse the term matwa: is used for the large and major twa: s, the

prefix ma deriving from the trunk of a tree of which the smaller neighborhood twa: s are branches.

Bhaktapur is always said to have twenty-four major twa: s,^[19] and these have various ritual representations. These have probably shifted somewhat over time through splitting and coalescing, but our map (map 11) is a close approximation to the traditional matwa: s. Accepting the traditional number of twenty-four matwa: s, an average twa: would consist of about 270 households and about 1,600 people. It is perhaps significant that these numbers are equal to the median population of Kathmandu Valley Newar towns or "compact settlements" (His Majesty's Government, Nepal 1969, 81). The average number of houses in a twa: also happens to fall within the range given in classical definitions of a grama . Kautilya^[*] gave a range of between 100 and 500 houses as defining a grama (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 84). However, in comparison with classical grama s, which were distributed over a large area, the Mauryan grama , having an area of from two to four square miles,^[20] the otherwise analogous twa: s of the Newar cities are compressed into densities more than ten times more compact.

As Auer and Gutschow have pointed out, if one asks a Bhaktapur Newar where he lives he often answers with the name of his twa: . This is one of the important loci of his identification. There is a well-known Newar saying: "If the household is in proper order, the twa: can be 'frightened off' (khyaegu ); if the city is in proper order, the country can be 'frightened off.'" "Khyaegu ," "frighten off," has the sense of chasing away a cow that enters a field, or an intruder into a courtyard. In these successively inclusive units, whose boundaries must be protected at each level, the twa: takes its important place between the household and the city.

Gutschow and Kölver (1975, 26) described some of the general characteristics of Bhaktapur's twa: s:

As a rule, a . . . [twa: ] will be centered around a spacious square. This is usually paved and serves various agricultural and commercial purposes: during and after harvest, it is a threshing floor, a space for winnowing grain, for drying rice and certain other vegetables. . . . In potters' wards, unbaked jars or pots are placed there for drying. Women will here prepare the warp before weaving. Almost all squares are hemmed in by arcades, where people will congregate in the evening for various social purposes. . . . In most wards, the central square has a well. A temple or shrine to Ganesa^[*] [is] found in every ward.

Map 11.
The village in the city. The major twa:s. Note that the boundary between the upper and lower cities follows twa: boundaries.
The main east-west thoroughfare and bazaar street bisects the city. The city's festival route (see map 12) runs through all of these twa:s
except the most westerly one, Bharbaco. The numbers on the maps refer to the following twa:s: (1) Bharbaco, (2) Itache(n), (3)
Tekhaco, (4) Khauma, (5) Ma(n)galache(n), (6) Laskudoka^[*] , (7) Bolache(n), (8) Lakulache(n), (9) Ta:marhi , (10) Kwache(n), (11)
Yalache(n), (12) Tulache(n), (13) Tibukche(n), (14) Coche(n), (15) Yache(n), (16) Gwa:mharhi, (17) Bholache(n), (18) Thalache(n),
(19) Tachapal, (20) Inaco, (21) Kwathandu^[*] , (22) Gache(n), (23) Taulache(n), and (24) Je(n)la. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

They note that the "wards" usually have their own shrine of the deity Nasadya: (chap. 8) and often one of Visnu^[*] , but these are secondary in their specific importance to the twa: to its Ganesa^[*] shrine. Gutschow and Kölver's mention of the "potter's ward" reflects the fact that although all twa: s have at least some mixed occupational and status membership, one group may dominate the twa: numerically, and may sometimes give it a local flavor and identity.

Twa: s vary not only in the details of their membership, but sometimes in identifiable aspects of their spoken language, and, in popular conception at least, in the behavioral style of their members, their "manners" (cf. D. R. Regmi, 1965, part II, p. 554). Twa: s, or their major segments, are the face-to-face communities beyond the extended family where people know each other personally and where mutual observation and gossip are important sanctions. It is here that children's play with nonfamily children and adult associations with non-phuki members provide the ground for the considerations of mutuality and equality and for judgments on personal qualities that compete with or influence hierarchical orientations. The reason that the household must be organized to chase off the twa: , as the saying puts it, is that the twa: , or one of its neighborhood subdivisions, is the place where individual or family misbehaviors are likely to be first known and of considerable interest and where family reputation, or "face," ijjat , is at risk.

The twa: is continuously represented for its inhabitants in symbolic actions. Like most units in the city (as we will discuss in the chapters on calendrical events), the twa: is sometimes represented as a significant locus for action, as a maximal unit in itself, and sometimes in a kind of "parallel" representation as one of a set of similar units that are all doing the same thing at the same time or in sequence, and thus indicate their equivalence as categories and, at the same time, their significance as units constituting the city. The most salient inner representation is the twa: 's central shrine of Ganesa^[*] . Ganesa^[*] must be worshiped as a preliminary to all important household ceremonies and all rites of passage. Some twa: s also have a special protective deity in addition to their central Ganesa^[*] . This may be Bhairava or a form of the Dangerous Goddess. In some twa: s the protective goddess is worshiped once a year, and carried on the processional route of the twa: (chap. 13).

Twa: s have some ordered relationships to the larger city. We may recall Oldfield's report that the number of gates in the old Newar city walls "corresponded exactly with the number of squares (toles) within

the city, . . . each gateway being associated with a particular square, and placed under the municipal control of the same local authorities, who were as much responsible for the repairs and defense of the gateway as they were for the general management of the square" (Oldfield [1880] 1974, vol. 1, p. 95f., original parenthesis). We have also noted Guts-chow and Kölver's observation that each twa: has its prescribed route for carrying corpses to the cremation ground (1975, p. 27).

The twenty-four twa: s are represented together as constituative elements of the city in one of the climactic events of the annual festival cycle—the sacrifice of twenty-four male buffaloes to the Goddess at the Taleju temple during the autumn harvest festival of Mohani. Most of the central twa: squares are also in their proper annual turn the site for the ritual dance-drama of the Nine Durgas, the possessed dancers, whose movements during nine months through Bhaktapur each year are considered by many to be Bhaktapur's most important symbolic performances (chap. 15). These twa: -based dramas deliver, as we will argue, some of the city's most powerful messages about the proper moral integration of individuals into the ordered life of the city.

Some Notes on the Symbolic Construction of the House

We have so far been moving into successively smaller spatial units. When we reach the house, we are at the boundary of one of the city's (here, literally) walled-off units, whose internal organization is hidden as far as possible from larger units, whose integrations and controls are largely internal, and whose concern to the larger city is in their public outputs. Although the symbolic organization of the house, like the life of the households within it, is, of course, elaborately influenced by Newar culture and tradition, it is for our purposes here, "below" or "outside" the level of public city life, and is part of the host of smaller private forms that are sometimes consonant with, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes irrelevant to the integrating forms of the public city. The interiors of these units—and above all the life within the house—reflect larger public institutions and arrangements, stand against them, prepare members for them, defend members and console them against them, and punish and reward members in their own ways and for their internal needs as well as the needs of the larger system.

This chapter is a convenient place for a summary description, making much use of others' studies,^[21] of some spatial characteristics of the

Figure 8.
Farmers' houses. Adjoining houses of families of one Jyapu phuki.

Bhaktapur Newar house (see fig. 8), sharply bounded from outer city space by a precisely marked symbolic boundary. The ideal Newar urban house is built, repaired, and lived in by the middle and upper thar s, and those members of the lower thar s who can now find the money for it. The poor, notably the Po(n), live in much simpler ones, often single-story thatched houses. The ideal traditional Newar house consists of four, and occasionally five, stories. It is constructed by means of a wood frame and beams and thick supporting walls of fire baked bricks made of valley clay held together by a mud-based mortar.^[22] The roofs, traditionally of tile and now sometimes of metal sheets or wheat straw thatching, slope from a peak towards the front and back, the peak, being at the long axis of the rectangular (as viewed from above) houses. The eves are supported by external struts that buttress the roof against the walls of the house; on a few houses these struts are elaborately carved. The upper story opens out into a porch, the ka:si , of occasional important ritual use, including the worship of the sun (chap. 8).

The house is internally divided longitudinally into two equal halves, front and back, by a division that runs parallel to the front of the house and consists of a wall in the lower stories and columns in the upper ones. The sections formed by this middle division are called dya , and are designed as "outer" (pine ) or "inner" (dune ), with "outer" being the half on the street side. The inner half often faces on a central courtyard, which is ideally surrounded on all sides by houses of members of the phuki , or at least of the thar , although this pattern is often disrupted in recent building.

The house is symbolically set off at its boundary with the outer city, and its vertical space and horizontal space are used as resources for symbolic meanings. In its vertical dimension the house becomes progressively more sacred, differentiated, and vulnerable to pollution at progressively higher levels. The lowest floor of the house, the cheli , is, in fact, in some contexts "outside" of the house, a kind of bordering outside, like the zone just outside of the city's boundaries. The origin of the word "cheli " is uncertain. Manandhar (1976) proposes that it may come from "che (n )," "house," plus "di ," support. Some Bhaktapur scholars surmise, in what is perhaps a folk etymology but is suggestive of their sense of the connotations of the term, that it may be derived from "che (n )," "house," plus "li ," an "old term" said to mean the lower and impure part of the body below the umbilicus. Middle-status and lower-status families sometimes keep livestock on the cheli , but even

upper-status families often keep animals such as goats who are being kept for sacrifice, and sometimes pet animals, such as rabbits and turtles in this out-of-the-house space. It is sometimes said that animals kept on the cheli will absorb diseases and the malevolent influence of dangerous spirits trying to enter the house and will thus protect people in the upper part of the house.^[23]

The "outside" status of the cheli is further shown in that people from polluting thar s were—and for the Po(n) this is still true—allowed to enter the cheli , but were forbidden to go any higher into the house, which would have been polluted by them. Work areas for occupational castes and shops are often located on the cheli level of houses and are adapted in various ways. The cheli is also often used for the storage of materials that are said to be "not worth stealing," such as firewood, straw, hay, bricks, and old furniture.

The next floor (the second floor in the American system of designation, which will be used here), is the "floor of the mata (n ) (or mata [n ])," the mata (n ) tala . This second story is the entrance to the first of the house's internal and progressively more inward areas. It is reached from the cheli by an interior stairway, which must be placed so that persons using it do not face the inauspicious direction south. On the mata (n ) ordinary visitors (those who are not family members or of higher status than the family) and friends of junior members of the household are received. The mata (n ) story is divided by a longitudinal partitioning wall, producing a large front room running the length of the house and facing on the street. This is the mata (n ) proper, although in other contexts the entire floor may be referred to as the mata (n ). The back half is divided by perpendicular secondary walls or partitions into small rooms that serve as sleeping quarters and storerooms for valuable goods.

The next higher story is the "floor of the cwata ." The longitudinal dividing wall is represented here by columns, so that the entire floor is open, and constitutes a large "hall," the cwata . Traditionally in high-status houses, and still remaining in many old houses, large carved ornate trellis windows (one of the representative forms of Newar art [S. P. Deo 1968-1969]) were located here, allowing people to look out on the streets without being seen. It is on this floor that the formal feasts associated with many family ceremonies, particularly for auspicious rites of passage, are held and high-status guests are received. In Brahman, Chathariya, and some Pa(n)cthariya houses this floor (or sometimes the floor above it) is the site of a shrine of the Tantric lineage goddess, the Aga(n) God (hidden in a room of its own), in accordance

with the ideal that that shrine should be located toward the physical center of the house. The cwata is also the place where important Brahman-assisted family worship is usually held. Such worship is associated with rites of passage, and with some major festivals and other ad hoc special occasions (app. 4). Some members of the household, often the older ones, sleep here and there on bedding on the unpartitioned cwata .

The household shrine and images of household gods, in contrast to the Aga(n) God, are placed at one of the highest levels in the house. This is usually on the next highest floor, which is often the top floor, the "floor of the baiga ." This is usully under the overhanging eaves of the house and is the location of the cooking and family eating area as well as the household shrine and its associated equipment. Daily household worship is held here and, occasionally, Brahman-assisted rituals if the group involved is small and does not include people from outside of the household or phuki group. Many houses have a fifth story. In this case the floor above the cwata is called a "fourth floor," and the top floor is still called the baiga (Korn 1976, 23).

Korn (1976, 3) provides a useful sketch of the typical furnishing of a Newar house:

The interior furnishings and decorations are very simple in contrast to the often extravagant facades. After the clay and tile oven, the most important is the all-purpose straw-mat which serves as a carpet during the day and for sleeping on during night. Other carpets and blankets may decorate the floor, but these are reserved only for eating on special occasions. In the morning the bedding of blankets and cotton rugs is rolled up and stored away. Clothing and valuables are kept in wall recesses and wooden chests. A stove as a heating apparatus is unknown, and in its place portable clay bowls of various size are filled with burning charcoal. The kitchen is seldom used as a meeting place. Clay or metal oil lamps, available in many different shapes and sizes, stand in wall recesses to give light during the dark hours. Stocks of rice and other grain are stored in wooden chests or clay pots, while potatoes and vegetables are kept in bamboo baskets hanging below the overhanging roof. Clay and brass pitchers are used as water utensils. Wood, carried into the town from hills by porters, is the usual heating fuel although the poorer people burn dried cow dung. Foreign influences, however, have recently introduced Western-style furnishings. Electricity and kerosene have simplified the tasks of cooking and lighting.

In horizontal space the house's boundary with an exterior encircling space is indicated by a stone placed about two to three feet before the front door, under the forward edge of the front overhanging eaves. The

stone, the pikha lakhu (which is also the term for the area it covers), is considered to be the seat of a protective divinity (chap. 8). The pikha lakhu is used in many rites of passage as the division between the inner world of the household and the outer world. It is here that a bride is greeted by the chief woman of the household to be purified of spirits and malevolent influences before being conducted into the house. It is at the pikha lakhu that the corpse of a household member is left for a moment and then is picked up by the members of a funeral guthi to be carried to the cremation grounds. The pikha lakhu is cleansed and purified each morning, as other god images in the house are, and it is also purified before major household worship.

Houses are ideally supposed to be oriented to one of the cardinal points of the compass other than the inauspicious south, with the most auspicious direction being east. In fact, the available spaces for city building, the meandering direction of many of the roads and alleys, the attempt by middle-level and upper-level families to build adjacent family houses in a rectangle around a central courtyard, all require violations of these orientations, which are largely ignored.^[24] Within the horizontal space of the house, however, there are some arrangements following compass orientations. Thus the cooking area is generally toward the east, as is the household shrine.^[25] As we have noted, stairways must be placed so that people using them do not face the inauspicious south. Similarly people avoid sleeping with their body in a north-south axis. They do not want to have their heads facing south. But if they were facing north, then their faces would face south when they sat up. Therefore, the entire north-south axis is inauspicious.

Because the front of the house faces on the street, and the back faces on the inner courtyard, the front/back contrast is equivalent to outer/ inner. What are considered the private parts of the house—the bedrooms, the treasury, and the position of the Tantric shrine are at the back or inner section of the house.

At the time of the construction of a house, there are very elaborate additional symbolic spatial characterizations. The detailed symbolism of the construction of a Newar house would require a full study in itself. A significant beginning has been made by Vogt (1977) on which the following description is based. The choosing of the site for a new house, the setting of the proper date to commence construction, the construction itself (by masons and carpenters), the completion of the building of the house, and the purification of it after its physical completion, all entail a vast collection of symbolic references and practices. The new

house and its foundations are being carved out of a "natural" area, disturbing the deified earth, Prthivi^[*] , and the supernatural serpents, naga s, beneath its surface, as well as the spirits who may have clustered there. The disturbance of the natural space is dangerous, and powerful Tantric rites, including blood sacrifice, must be performed at key points. Sacrifices are made to the dangerous gods who protect civic space against external chaos and who—along with the dangerous god Bhairava who inhabits the wood block forming the base of the threshold of the main door of houses—exist protectively at the boundaries of these spaces. The house is considered, by the ritual experts responsible for its proper symbolic construction as a body and some of the successive rituals performed during its construction, as something like human rites of passage. The house, if improperly sited (in space and time), improperly constructed, or improperly purified, is dangerous. Without the proper ceremonies people may die, not only the construction workers (who have their own protective rituals, and rituals for effectiveness) but also members of the immediate or even the extended family. But, as we emphasize in many analogous situations (e.g., the symbolic procedures during the construction of masks or icons), most of this symbolism concerns the activities and special understandings of the experts involved in the physical and symbolic construction of the house—the carpenters, masons, astrologer, and Tantric priest. Most people live in houses that were constructed before their birth. They have to think about its setting or construction only if some family illness or disaster is attributed by some diagnostican of the supernatural to a disturbance in the house's relation to its environment, whereupon they must attempt the proper ritual readjustment or placation. Those who have a new house built or live in an old one need only to know that it is, or has been, properly done.

Collapsed Structure Inside the City: Crossroads

The space beyond Bhaktapur's boundaries with its associated deities and symbolic enactments takes much of its meaning from its contrast with the moral and logical orders that are represented in the differentiated internal space of the public city. The outside represents a radically different kind of order. Some of this inside/outside contrast is, as we have noted, also found as part of the representation of the cellular com-

ponents of city life in their contrast with their immediate outside environments, which are in weaker form something like the relation of the city as a whole to its outside. There are other kinds of locations where differentiated order is collapsed and transformed and that are loci for symbolic representations and actions with connection to the symbolic aspects of the encircling outside of the city. The city's central points—the royal center and the Taleju temple, the Tripurasundari pitha , the central point between the two city halves, the point at which a pole, the Yasi(n), is erected to signify the start of the solar New Year (chap. 14)—all take some of their meanings from the transcendence of ordinary differentiated order. Another important example is the major crossroads in each twa: . At such crossings paths and roads radiate off to distant parts of the city. Each twa: has at least one of these crossings and more than one if it is a large twa: and divided into major neighborhoods. The major crossroads are the loci for uncarved stones (usually buried partly in the ground). The stone and the crossing point and the divinity thought to be located there are called the chwasa .^[26] (The general term for crossroad is dwaka .) The chwasa is sometimes considered as a divinity in itself, sometimes among the more erudite as the seat of the Tantric goddess, Matangi^[*] .

The chwasa is one of the places where polluting materials are deposited so that they will no longer be dangerous or problematic. It is there that the clothes a person has been wearing at the time of death are brought to be gathered up by a Jugi as part of his thar duty. Certain remains of formal feasts—particularly the portions of the head of a sacrificial animal that are distributed in a particular order to reflect the hierarchy of the leading men at the feast (chap. 9)—must be discarded there. The chwasa not only can absorb the polluted materials placed on it, materials that would be strongly contaminating if placed in any ordinary space within the city,^[27] but is also said to protect the area around it. The main chwasa s are said to protect the entire twa: . This combination of the power to absorb problematic ("polluting") material and to "protect" through power is generally characteristic of a class of deities, the "dangerous" deities, of which the chwasa (and Matangi^[*] ) is a member (chap. 8).

In his study of a Newar village, Pyangaon, Toffin notes that it has only one chwasa , which is at the northwest entrance to the village rather than inside it (1977, 33). That chwasa lies at a crossroad (personal communication)^[28] and is thought to be a gathering place for potentially

harmful spirits. It is also the place where people discard cloths soiled by menstruation, the umbilical cords of newborn infants, clothes of the dead, and food as offerings to potentially harmful spirits.

The association of crossroads with the unpropitious, the uncanny, and the "liminal" is widespread in South Asia and elsewhere in the world.^[29] Elsewhere in South Asia the inauspicious crossroads are sometimes associated with some form of the Tantric goddess. According to D. D. Kosambi, crossroads were "from the stone age, places where the Mothers were normally worshiped by savages whose nomad tracks met there" (1960, 144). He also quotes the classical writer Varahamihira that crossroads bring evil repute upon any house near their junction, and are to be included among inauspicious places (1960, 18).

Asked why the seat of the chwasa within the city is always a crossroads, a Newar Brahman said that perhaps it was because these crossroads are places where all sorts of people meet—clean and unclean, kings and humble people. The chwasa reminds people, he continued, that they are approaching a crossroad and they should proceed carefully. His speculation suggests the significance of these crossroads as deriving from the collapse of ordinary spatial order.

Not all crossroads are chwasa nor have uncanny significance. It is not clear which factors determine that a crossroads should become the seat of a chwasa . They must represent the tying together of important out-reaching routes for one thing. In an interesting variation of this theme, royal palaces are often in close approximation to major crossroads. In the town of Panauti, "The palace is placed so that all the routes coming from the exterior and all the main arteries of the city converge on it" (Barré, Berger, Feveile, and Toffin 1981, 43 [our translation]). Similarly, in both Kathmandu and Patan the Malla Palace was placed at major crossroads defining the axes of the old city. Mary Slusser, commenting on those cities, remarks that "given the traditional attitude in Hindu culture toward the inauspiciousness of crossroads, it seems surprising that such a site would have been conceived proper for the palace" (1982, 200). But the chwasa has the power to protect the twa: , and the dangerous goddess it represents has the power to protect the city, and, indeed, the cosmos. The alliance of royalty and Tantric deities and ideas in a common concern with power and with the transcendence of the ordinary civic categories and restraints—here suggested by this double use of crossroads—is, as we will see, widely represented in Bhaktapur's symbolism and symbolic action.

The Undercity

The chwasa is a stone embedded in the ground. In some places it is below the surface. It belongs to a class of "stone gods" to be considered in the next chapter which share among themselves a number of features. They require blood sacrifice, and many of them in one sense or another absorb polluting materials, often by "eating" them. In some cases the deity whose position is indicated by such stones is conceived as being beneath the surface of the ground. This subterranean realm is also the territory of the naga s, the supernatural serpents that may be disturbed as we have noted, by excavations for buildings. We note these fragments here as a reminder that one of the boundaries of the city in its relation to what is outside itself is the boundary with the underneath, the earth. This realm for Bhaktapur does not have developed and clearly characterized chthonic gods (with the possible exception of Yama, the king of the realm where the dead are judged, who is of negligible cultic significance for the city in itself), and is thus in strong contrast to the developed representations of other aspects of the "outside" and "beyond" of the city. It is outside of the city's circumferential boundaries—where the city's farmlands are—that the earth as a basis for fertility is assimilated to the symbolism of the Tantric goddess and to that sustaining and problematic outside beyond ordinary civic controls.

Symbolized Space Beyond the City

The symbolically marked spaces we have been considering have as their maximal area the bounded city, placed in contrast and relationship to a "dangerous" outside. The great majority of symbolic enactments during the course of the year concern the city and its bordering outside and its subunits. But the hinterland of Bhaktapur (once part of the kingdom of Bhaktapur), the Kathmandu Valley itself as the ancient seat of the Newars, the larger modern Nepal, and the Hindu homeland of India, are all full of significant shrines and sacred spots and mark out significant space beyong the boundaries of the city. Many of these have little contemporary use, but some of them still concern the people of Bhaktapur in visits, pilgrimages (see fig. 9), and attendance at great religious fairs or mela s. In these encounters the Newars of Bhaktapur join with Newars of other cities, with non-Newar Nepalis, or with Indian Hindus

Figure 9.
Outside the city. A group of Nepalis on a pilgrimage to a mountain shrine.

to celebrate solidarities beyond that of the city. We will return to these in our discussion of symbolic enactments in later chapters.

Gutschow (1979a , 27-65 passim), Slusser (1982), and others have argued that some of the shrines and temples in the Kathmandu Valley trace mandalic^[*] patterns characterizing the larger Valley. Gutschow and his associates have also found what they believe to be evidence for a mandalic^[*] structure extending beyond its boundaries within which Bhaktapur is centered, as suggested by certain schematic paintings of the city as a manda^[*] (Kölver 1976; Auer and Gutschow n.d., 38; Slusser 1982, 346). These structures may possibly have had general or much more likely esoteric speculative meaning in the past but have now lost contemporary popular or esoteric significance.

Integration of Spaces

We have begun our survey of Bhaktapur's symbolic civic organization with a discussion of its space. The meaningful spaces we have been considering in this chapter are related to many ideas and actions in Bhaktapur's civic life that will be elaborated on in later chapters.

We have presented nested, bounded spaces, each representing some kind of "solidarity" in contrast to an outside. In all societies individuals find themselves belonging to different groups depending on the context, and thus in opposition to some contrasting group. Bhaktapur, however, not only organizes these oppositions, most generally, by successively inclusive levels—nuclear family, household, phuki , people of the twa: as neighborhood or village, people of the mandalic^[*] section, people of the antagonistic mirror cities of the city halves, the citizens of the total city, and finally the people, creatures, and forces of the city plus its environment—but also gives most of these a spatial definition and anchoring. It is this anchoring that is one of Bhaktapur's significant "typological" characteristics.

There are two general ways that Bhaktapur's spatial units and levels are realized in symbolic action. First, they are the places where certain kinds of actions are typically and repeatedly performed during the course of the year (chap. 16), or of a lifetime (app. 6). The house, twa: , crossroads, and so on, emerge as meaningful areas in the course of these repeated actions. However, people are also aware that all or most other houses, or twa: s, or mandalic^[*] sections, or whatever unit, are doing the same thing at the same time or in some fixed sequence. The spatial unit becomes significant in its identity and contrast with similar units; it

Map 12.
The integration of space. The pradaksinapatha^[*] , the city's festival route, is marked by a dotted line.
It ties together the upper "Bad Text" the extreme western one). Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

becomes a member of a class of like spaces. In the first kind of representation, the same person is, in various contexts, a member of different kinds of spaces, and there are systematic ways in which he or she moves or is moved from one kind to another. That movement tells some kind of a story. The second kind of representation, a static one, is that of different persons doing the same thing . These are two different ways of using and marking space. We will consider them again in the chapters on annual events.

One way of tieing together different units in space is through traditional processional routes. These exist in each twa: , each mandalic^[*] section, and for the city as a whole. We have discussed the major city-wide processional route, the pradaksinapatha^[*] , in connection with the relation of low-status groups and the boundary of the city, and noted that in contrast to the situation in some other Hindu communities it is within the city (map 12) where it binds all but the most westerly and probably most recently settled of the city's twenty-four major twa: s together.^[30]

Bhaktapur's spatial divisions both give meaning to and take meaning from their special divinities, symbolic enactments and their associated legends and myths. Some of the meaning they contribute to this dialogue of forms derives from some of the universal potentials of spatial meaning, widely exploited throughout the world. The meanings of the face-to-face neighborhood, the uncanny nature of thresholds, borders and crossroads, the danger of the beyond-the-borders, the antagonisms of balanced and opposing civic units, and the primacy of the center and the hilltop are all very general semantic possibilities for space, aspects that can be understood in a fairly direct way. Yet others of the meanings contributed by the spatial units are, of course, local matters, local histories, legends, and forms and require special knowledge to be grasped.

We will trace these dialogues of meaning throughout the following chapters.^[31]

Chapter Eight
Bhaktapur's Pantheon

Introduction

The city of Bhaktapur contains many material representations of gods, a witness to its long history and to close contacts since its earliest days with India, that great incubator of forms of divinity. The multitude of gods whose representations have persisted in Bhaktapur and the Kathmandu Valley are of great importance to the historian of South Asian religion and of art,^[1] but only some of them are alive at present, foci of action, meaning, and emotion. The others are dormant, perhaps to be revived for some future fashion or need.^[2]

It is precisely because Hindu deities can be induced into material objects, the "idols" of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic iconoclasts, that they are able to serve the purposes they do in the construction of Bhaktapur's mesocosm. Those objects can be anchored in space or moved through it. They are constructed of meaningful elements and emerge as units of meaning in themselves. They have their own semantic import, their direct implications for meaning, but they are so constructed that their various similarities and contrasts can be used to build a structure of meaning within an overall civic pantheon, the coherent total domain of the gods. That structure helps map the city's symbolic space and its conceptual universe. The crafted gods, the "idols," are joined by more shadowy supernatural figures, some vaguely represented in astral bodies, some in natural stones, and some m the shifting and vague form of ghosts and spirits. These latter figures have their own uses—the

various kinds of embodiment that the members of the large realm of divine and spooky beings have, considerably influencing their meanings and uses.

As usual, we are primarily interested in the level of civic order; hence we are concerned here in the way the deities are used by the public city. Many of Bhaktapur's component units have their own internal deities; most, but not all, of them (an exception, for example, is the deified figure Gorakhnath, the tutelary deity of the Jugis) are versions of the same deities used as the city's public deities. We will comment on some of these component units, on the interior deities of the household and the phuki , and have included some remarks on the special deities of the Brahmans and of the "royal center" and on the ghosts and spirits of importance to individuals.

We will begin by presenting the city's urban divinities in considerable detail. This will give us a basis for considering exactly what it is they contribute to Bhaktapur's mesocosmic organization and how they are able to do it.

Approaches

In the course of the field study we began our investigation of Bhaktapur's divinities with attempts to locate and list as many of the city's active shrines and temples as we could. By "active" we mean those locations that are regularly used by some group of people in Bhaktapur, and that may have some attendant priest. (Some shrines with a priestly attendant have no significant public use or meaning.) Any of the many "inactive" shrines and temples, relics of some past period, may be loci of casual or private devotion by passersby, but they are not important to the city in the same way as the active ones that concern us. The active shrines and temples were mapped on detailed aerial maps of Bhaktapur, which gave us a first basis for approaching the spatial location and implications of groups or categories of divinities. Subsequently, Niels Gutschow put at our disposal maps that he and his associates prepared of temples and shrines, and we have used them, when noted, to amplify, supplement, and correct our own materials. These surveys were supplemented by discussions with religious experts on various aspects of the divinities and by materials on their use (presented in later chapters and appendixes) and on their personal meanings to various individuals.

In this chapter, and throughout the book, we have chosen to give divinities their Sanskrit names, rather than either the Newari approximation of that name or the popular Western equivalents. We use the Newari form in a few special cases where it has only an attenuated connection or no connection with a Sanskrit form.

Divinities: Housing and Setting

We have used "temples and shrines" as a covering phrase for the various settings in which the divinities are found, but that setting is more complex. Local usage differentiates "temples" (dega :, from Sanskrit, devagrha^[*] ); "god-houses" (dya: che[n] ); pith (Sanskrit, pitha ) "hypaethral shrines"; and an otherwise nonspecified residual of "gods' places"—stones, fountains, trees, and so on. There is also a class of supernatural beings, ghosts, and spirits who have no anchored setting, airy nothings lacking a local habitation, if not a name. This lack of a home, like the vagueness of their form, is an essential aspect of this latter group's meaning and use.

1. Temples, dega:s.

These are buildings of various degrees of elaborateness (see fig. 10), acting as foci for the worship and the spatial influence of the particular god (or gods) they contain. They add to the meaning of their contained god their own symbolic meanings (Kramrish 1946). The historical connections and stylistic and structural features of Newar (and Nepalese) temples have been treated in monographs by Weisner (1978) and Bernier (1970) and as part of larger studies by Korn (1976) and Slusser (1982). Bhaktapur has two kinds of temple buildings with very different external appearances: the traditional Indian form and the tiered-roof "Nepalese" temple, which somewhat resembles the "pagoda" temples of China and Japan. These two local styles are not differentially named, and they do not differ in function.^[3]

Mary Slusser (1982, 128) writes of the Newar temple (her remarks applying to Hindu temples in general):

The dwellings of the gods of Nepal are quite unlike those in many other parts of the world that are designed to house both the divinity and a congregation assembled to worship. Despite many collective sacred rituals, Nepali worship is fundamentally an individual matter. The temple, therefore needs to make no provision for a congregation. With notable exceptions, the worshiper ordinarily does not penetrate the temple at all. He tenders his offerings

Figure 10.
A Newar-style temple. The Natapwa(n)la temple m Ta:marhi
Square.

through a priestly intermediary from whom, in return, he receives the physical sign of the god's blessings (prasada ). Further, not only is the god within the temple an object of worship so is the temple itself.

The "notable exception" for Bhaktapur includes some of the events at the royal temple complex, Taleju, where large numbers of people are involved as actors and congregation. But Slusser's remarks generally characterize Bhaktapur's other dega: s. In Bhaktapur, as we shall see, the proper loci for "congregations" are in other spaces.

2. God-houses, dya: che(n)s.

Although dega: , "temple," is ultimately also derived from a Sanskrit phrase for "god's house," the dya: che(n) (literally in Newari "God's house," dya: , god, plus che[n] , house) is where portable images of divinities are kept. These images are carried outside for various rituals, processions, or festivals, and then returned to the house. Some of these buildings are quite elaborate in themselves. Although many important portable gods have their own god-house, many portable images are kept within a temple, where they are separate and distinguished from the fixed temple image of the divinity.

3. Shrines.

There are many figures representing divinities in Bhaktapur that are not enclosed by buildings. These may be free standing statues or simply carved or natural stones. The latter shrines are "aniconic." Often arches or canopies are placed behind or over these representations. Included here are the "hypaethral" or open-to-the-skies shrines of the nine Mandalic^[*] Goddesses. These shrines are pith (Sanskrit pitha ), a class of shrines of certain Tantric goddesses in the classic Hindu tradition marking places where pieces of the goddess Sati's dismembered body fell from the sky (see below). Slusser (1982, 325) claims that some temples of the Newar Tantric goddesses reflect such hypaethral origins:

Many [goddesses] have only hypaethral shrines. Still others have had temples built over what were obviously once typical hypaethral shrines. Characteristically, the sanctums of such later-day enclosures are very open, the temple's multiple doorways or colonnades permitting an unobstructed view, and the sanctum itself often sunken well below the present ground level. These sunken and airy sanctums have much to say about the antiquity of many of these goddesses and their ultimate chthonic origins. Symbols of such divinities should be open to the skies and woe to the misguided votary who closes them in.

4. Non-Newar Hindu structures.

Bhaktapur has many Buddhist religious structures—stupas, vihara s (religious centers derived from monastic precursors), and god-houses, as well as non-Newar Hindu centers (matha^[*] s) for holy men, which are peripheral to our present concerns.

Gods With Temples and Shrines—Some Numbers

Shrines and temples are the seats of one segment of Bhaktapur's super-naturals, the "Puranic^[*] deities" of classical, post-Vedic Hinduism. By our count and criteria there are about 120 active shrines and temples within or just outside the boundaries of Bhaktapur. They are one of the two sets of spatially fixed representations in the public city; the other is a numerous and heterogenous class of "deified stones." The shrines and temples are distributed among these deities as follows, with the number of shrines and temples given in parentheses: Visnu^[*] (29), Siva (28), Ganesa^[*] (24), Sarasvati (3), Bhimasena (3), Nataraja (2), Hanuman (2), Krsna^[*] (2), Rama with his consort Sita (3), Bhairava (1), Jagannatha (2), Dattatreya (now regarded primarily as a combination of Siva and Visnu^[*] ) (1), and the group of dangerous or Tantric goddesses that includes some fourteen major named forms (26). We thus have some twenty-six classical Hindu divinities represented in public urban space. Eighty-two of these shrines and temples have various kinds of temple priests, pujari (see chap. 10). The other structures do not have pujari. s We will discuss the spatial locations and the uses of the various temples and shrines later in this chapter and elsewhere in this book, but we may note here that about one-quarter of the temples and shrines are primarily related to the city as a whole, while the rest are related to one or another of the city's major constitutive spatial divisions.

Sorting Supernaturals—Some Preliminary Remarks

To consider a particular divinity as a member of a pantheon or of some larger domain of supernaturals in a certain community during a certain segment of that community's history is radically different from considering that divinity throughout its long history and its South Asian (and beyond) areal variations. Siva as a member of Bhaktapur's pantheon is not the same as the Siva considered in a general and unrooted

sense, through, say, a compendium of his various mythological accounts and his historical usages and forms throughout South Asia.

When Hindu divinities are considered from an historical or South Asian areal viewpoint, they have a very great number of accumulated forms, names, meanings, myths, aspects, philosophical implications, and contradictions. Several attempts have been made at encyclopedic approaches to the whole Hindu pantheon (e.g., Banerjea 19.56; Mani 1975; Rao 1971; Daniélou 1964) and to individual divinities or to some of their aspects (such as O'Flaherty's exhaustive survey of materials on asceticism and eroticism in the mythology of Siva [1973]). Bhaktapur has selected only certain deities from the Hindu tradition for emphasis. For the particular deities it has selected, it further selects and emphasizes only certain aspects of their potential—variously realized elsewhere—for meaning, form, and use. For some of them Bhaktapur sometimes even adds its own attributes, perhaps borrowed from other deities, sometimes ancient local ones.

It is possible for some purposes to consider Bhaktapur's pantheon as a sort of museum, a collection of divine South Asian flotsam that has drifted into the Valley. We cannot avoid our general knowledge of important aspects of the meaning of the divinities in space and time beyond the city, a knowledge shared by the people in Bhaktapur who introduced these figures and who continue to use them, but what is important for us is what is done with the deities in Bhaktapur, their local uses and relations.

The sorting of Bhaktapur's divinities and other assorted "supernatural" figures that follow in this chapter is a sorting, then, for that purpose. We will sort the supernatural beings into several large groups that have morphological and functional contrasts. The groups are:

1. "Major city gods."

These are familiar major gods of Puranic^[*] , post-Vedic, Hinduism. They have, at least in some of their important city forms, anthropomorphic or creatural forms, and are located in named temples and shrines known to the city as a whole. These "major city gods" are divided into two contrasting groups, "ordinary gods" and "dangerous gods." The latter require blood sacrifice, are attended by a special class of priests, and are the loci of a special set of ideas and procedures (chap. 9).

2. "Stone gods."

This is a group of deities represented by natural stones. They are related to other natural objects (as opposed to objects created through human craft, like statues) that have divine properties

(springs, lakes, ponds, trees, etc.) but, in contrast to such other natural divinities, have systematic placements and usages.

3. "Astral divinities."

These are associated with the sun, moon, and various heavenly objects and events; are associated mostly with astrological ideas and practices; and have their own special priests.

4. "Ghosts and spirits."

These are a miscellaneous group of vague entities that may be usefully introduced here, and that have some significant contrasts with the other supernaturals.

Major Gods: The "Ordinary" Deities

We have characterized the "major gods" of Bhaktapur as being derived from the most salient and important gods of the early Hindu Puranic^[*] tradition, of being situated in temples and shrines of city-wide importance, and of having anthropomorphic forms (some having a mixture of anthropomorphic and animal features). These gods are foci of ideas and symbolic enactments concerning the representation and integration of the city as a whole and of its larger constituent units.

Within this group of "major gods" there is an essential and sharp contrast of two subgroups. One of these is a group of gods who are (when necessary) attended by Brahmans or "Brahman-like" priests (chap. 10). These gods are never offered blood sacrifice or alcoholic spirits. Their icons are in the form of idealized human types, or humanized animal forms. The central divinities in this group are male. The other group of major gods are (when necessary) publicly attended by a special class of priests, the Acariya. These gods are offered blood sacrifice, meat, and alcoholic offerings. Their icons are often in the form of demonic, bestialized human forms, marked by bulging eyes, fangs, and sometimes extreme emaciation. They are sometimes represented gar-landed with necklaces of human heads or skulls, and carrying a human skull cup for drinking blood in one of their many hands. Sometimes these gods are represented as exaggeratedly erotic forms with the faces of beautiful young women and with full breasts. These kinds of gods are predominantly female. When it is necessary to distinguish these two groups in speech, the first are sometimes called "ordinary" gods, and by some Brahmans (mistakenly in historical perspective) "Vedic" gods. The second group are sometimes called "dangerous" gods (in contrast to "ordinary") or "Tantric" gods (in contrast to "Vedic"). There are other significant contrasts in the nature, internal relations, uses, and

significance of these two groups of major divinities, but these remarks will serve to introduce them.

Within the two groups of major gods (as within the other groups of divinities) each particular divinity has his (or her) own personality and significance derived in part from his history, from his present relations with others of Bhaktapur's divinities, and from the uses to which Bhaktapur puts them.

Siva

When people in Bhaktapur are asked which of the Newars' two "religions" they adhere to, a question that is usually phrased as which path, or marga they follow, those whom we have been designating as "Hindus" in contrast to Newar "Buddhists," answer by saying they are Sivamargi, followers of the path of Siva ("Siba" in local pronunciation). Siva (see fig. 11) is most commonly referred to in Bhaktapur as Mahadya :, the Newari version of the Sanskrit Mahadeva , the great god. He is represented in a variety of anthropomorphic images, and as the abstract phallic linga^[*] . Siva's status in Bhaktapur is considerably more complex than that of the other benign gods in that he has several levels of meaning. His most striking aspect is that while he is pervasively present as an "idea," as one of the central references helping to locate and explain in various ways the other city gods, he is in comparison to them distant, relatively absent from the concrete arrangements and actions of city religion. Siva's meanings may be distinguished approximately as follows.

1. Siva as the creative principle.

For some more theoretically inclined people in Bhaktapur Siva is the creator god, out of which all the forms of gods (including a particular concrete divinity also called "Siva") are generated. This is a theoretical and philosophical position. In other contexts, as we will see, Devi, the "Goddess," is thought of and praised (by the same people) as the supreme creative force. For the most part the basic, divine, creative principle, called the brahman or paramatman in sophisticated theological discussion, is amalgamated to a general featureless deity, neither male nor female, neither Siva nor Goddess, vaguely conceived as a combination of all gods. This condensed divinity is what some, at least, people have in mind when they think of "god" in some general way, often in such thoughts or phrases as "god help me," in the face of some problem. This generalized deity is called

Figure 11.
Siva as a fertility god.

simply dya:: , or sometimes addressed with some honorific Sanskrit appellation, as Paramesvara, Isvara, Bhagavan, and the like. This generalized deity—unlike the traditional idea of the brahman —is aware of the individuals who call on it, and may help. It is not represented in civic symbols or ritual enactments, and represents a "monotheistic" potentiality that must in all likelihood wait for the breakdown of Bhaktapur's present religious system and its eventual "modernization" to realize its social potential.

2. Siva, first among the gods.

A more common phrasing of Siva's greatness is that he is the most important of the gods, the one whom the others respect. This importance is not based on his power, however, nor on his concrete uses in Bhaktapur. He is not like Indra had been in an earlier stage of Hindu belief, the "king" of the gods. His importance, like that of the central, "full" form of the Tantric goddess seems to have something to do with his centrality as a generator of or container of the contrasting meanings of the lesser divinities.

3. Siva as the generator of the dangerous gods.

Siva is, in ways that we will note below, one of the "ordinary" gods. However, he is the agent by which in one context and conception the "dangerous" gods are generated. Many prominent symbolic forms in Bhaktapur concern this generation. They include the idea of Siva's emanation Sakti (below) as well as other types of transformation. Much, but not all, of the symbolism of the linga^[*] is related to this transformation, as is much of the symbolism of Tantra. We will return to this in our consideration of Sakti, the dangerous divinities and Tantra (chap. 9). In other contexts, as we shall see, the "dangerous gods," particularly the central, generating forms of the goddess, are conceived as existing independently of Siva. In such contexts Siva becomes quite peripheral, the goddess becomes the central creative force, and Siva's importance or presence becomes greatly attenuated.

4. Siva as one of the group of ordinary gods.

At this level Siva is one of a community of divinities related by the ordinary social ties of family and friendship. The central group of ordinary gods are Parvati, Ganesa^[*] , Visnu^[*] , Laksmi, Sarasvati, and some secondary divinities associated with Visnu^[*] . Parvati is Siva's wife or consort, Ganesa^[*] is his son, Visnu^[*] is Siva's essential friend, and Laksmi is Visnu's^[*] wife. Sarasvati

stands outside these relations. Siva is sometimes represented as a young man with a moustache (see color illustrations). In this form he is thought of as an unattached and dreamy young bachelor. Sometimes he is shown with his consort Parvati to his left, his arm tenderly around her shoulder. He is absent-minded, a dreamer, stumbling in his abstraction into socially dangerous errors from which his friend Visnu^[*] must extricate him. He dresses improperly, like a jungle dweller, and sometimes goes naked. He moves at whim from place to place. He is usually gentle and benign in his abstracted way unless roused to fury, and that fury is elemental and potentially randomly destructive. Sometimes he incarnates his vehicle, the bull Nandi. Sometimes he is found in deep meditation on Mount Kailash in the mountains to the north of Bhaktapur. Sometimes he is found in the cremation grounds, or even in the refuse dump in the inner courtyard of the house. His destructive power can be focused and put to use against impersonal and external dangers to the city, but in this transformation we are soon no longer dealing with Siva, something new arises.

Siva represents the human tension between self-absorption and asocial sexuality on the one hand and social involvement taming such problematic states and passions on the other. As Parvati's consort and Visnu's^[*] friend, he is under the socializing restraint of those social relations, he needs them. Siva alone—adolescent, yogi-like, alternating between sexual passion and ascetic self absorption—is recognizable both as forest dweller who has escaped from the city and as one important aspect of the man of the city. As the Mahabharata says of this Siva (quoted in Atkinson 1974, 721) [from the Mahabharata , Anusasana Parva, chap. 14]; cf. Mani 1974, 808).

He assumes many forms of gods, men, goblins, demons, barbarians, tame and wild beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. He carries a discus, trident, club, sword and axe. He has a girdle of serpents, earrings of serpents, a sacrificial cord of serpents and an outer garment of serpents' skins. He laughs, stags, dances and plays various musical instruments. He leaps, gapes, weeps, causes others to weep, speaks like a madman or a drunkard as well as in sweet tones. With an erect penis he dallies with the wives and daughters of the Rishis.

Siva's essence is in his transformations, which make him both elusively shifting and generative. As O'Flaherty (1973, 36) notes, he is both a yogi and its antithesis, the lover of Parvati. She adds, however, in regard to this and other apparent oppositions in his mythology:

The mediating principle that tends to resolve the oppositions is in most cases Siva himself. Among ascetics he is a libertine and among libertines an ascetic; conflicts which they cannot resolve, or can attempt to resolve only by compromise, he simply absorbs into himself and expresses in terms of other conflicts. . . . He emphasizes that aspect of himself which is unexpected, inappropriate, shattering any attempt to achieve a superficial reconciliation of the conflict through mere logical compromise. . . . Siva is particularly able to mediate in this way because of his protean character; he is all things to all men.

But this protean character in itself limits the semantic possibilities of Siva in Bhaktapur. There is one thing he cannot be to all men, that is a fixed character, and that provides his major contrast to Visnu^[*] , who is fixed in his purposes and his conventional forms.

Yogi , bachelor, friend, and husband are all Siva, but Siva disappears in his supernatural transformations. When he has been transformed into his dangerous form, Bhairava, when he emits his sakti ("power"; see chap. 9) or the goddess Devi, these dangerous forms are immediately thought of as independent actors. They have their own myths, legends, and histories. In thought and action they are for the most part disconnected from Siva, except for vestigial traces and markings—a Siva mask carried but not worn, Siva's vertically rotated third eye sometimes, but not always, placed on their foreheads (see color illustrations). And in a further limiting and bounding of the protean Siva to his proper human-like area, it is the "goddess" herself—although in some contexts thought of as generated by Siva—who becomes the shifting, generative force. While Siva's generative activities, the center from which he moves are in the social world, and are related to recognizably human activities and modes of a certain sort—the lover, the adolescent, and ascetic, intoxicated or ecstatic states—it is another figure, the "goddess," who is the center of generation in a much more radically extrasocial world, the world outside the city and its order. Thus, although Siva represents a bridge to the world beyond the city, and beyond all cities, those bridges become burnt for the most part once crossed, and as his transformations come to life, Siva, overtly in Tantric imagery, becomes a corpse. His ongoing and continuing life in Bhaktapur is as a representative of that dimension of the social person which is valued, although in tension with social and moral order. In his transformations to representations of the extrasocial world, Siva becomes almost forgotten. Similarly, when thought of as a creator God, this cosmic Siva is also lost from view when his creation is being considered. In his own anthropomor-

phic right, however, he represents a complex of traits which are unified in being thoroughly human, but in one way or another problematic for social order. This Siva provides problems which must be dealt with by his friend Visnu^[*] at the service of the moral community. It is important to emphasize that from the point of view of the corpus of South Asian myths about the relations of Siva and Visnu^[*] this is a local choice of emphasis. There are, for example, South Asian stories where it is Siva who must free Visnu^[*] from some passionate bondage (e.g., O'Flaherty 1973, 41). Bhaktapur, in fact, develops selected meanings suggested by the major persisting myths and representations of the two gods. Their relation is epitomized in one of the local interpretations of the complex symbol of Siva's power, the linga^[*] , whose more central meanings are related to the idea of Sakti (below here, and chap. 9). The linga^[*] consists of a column at whose base is an encircling band. In this interpretation of Siva as a component of civic order (rather than as the generator of cosmic forces), the upright column represents Siva and his explosive and expanding energies and the encircling band at the base represents a restraint placed by Visnu^[*] around that column of energy to protect, control, and channel it.

There are about thirty active Siva shrines and temples in Bhaktapur. Of these, fourteen are found m four clusters outside the traditional boundaries of the city to the south near each of the bridges to which the city's southern and southeastern roads and paths lead. Another nine are grouped in the two central squares of the town, the Laeku Square in front of the palace and the Ta:marhi Square, both of which, it may be recalled, are (in different contexts) centers of the city. These central shrines and temples were built by the Malla kings and by wealthy families and thar s (such as one group of shrines built by the Kumha:, the potters) as variously motivated acts of private devotion to Siva. Many of the structures outside of the city are of relatively recent post-Malla origin, and it is said they were built there because there was more available space on which to build. Some of these shrines and temples have attendant priests whose stipend is funded by grants of land that were set aside for this purpose at the time of the building of the structure, but may have no other worshipers. Others are the object of worship of descendants of the founding group, or sometimes by people who have made a pledge to worship Siva, perhaps at that particular shrine, in exchange for the fulfillment of some wish. One of the largest and most visually impressive temples in the northern half of the city is devoted to the divinity Dattatreya (Newari, Dattatri), who is thought of as a corn-

bined incarnation of Visnu^[*] , Brahma,^[4] and Siva. In the Dattatreya temple Visnu^[*] is iconographically dominant, but Siva is thought of as the main power embodied in the temple. The temple priests are non-Newars (Jha Brahmans), and the inner sanctum is closed to Newar Brahmans. The temple's main function is as a pilgrimage center for non-Newar Shaivite devotees from India and other parts of Nepal.

For the Newars of Bhaktapur, the Siva shrines and temples, in marked contrast to those of certain other major divinities, are not used to designate any of the internal structural features of city organization. Correlated with this is that there is only one minor annual festival (Madya: Jatra; see chap. 13), specifically devoted to Siva. The great Siva festival for the Newars of Bhaktapur and elsewhere, as well as for Nepalis and for many Indians, has its center out of Bhaktapur (and of the other major Newar cities) at the great Valley shrine complex of Pasupatinatha devoted to Siva as the "Lord of the Beasts," during the major South Asian Shaivite festival, Sivaratri, in the late winter. Bhaktapur itself on that day is a secondary focus for some Shaivite pilgrims, and some of the city's men perform an unusual—in contrast to other forms of local worship—type of devotion to Siva spending the night by fires along the city's public streets, sometimes smoking cannabis, in an enactment that, with its associated legends (see chap. 13, "Sila Ca:re" and our discussion there) illuminate Siva's meaning as a bridge to a transcendent realm.

In Bhaktapur there are several divinities with limited functions, and with names and attributes of their own sometimes said to be "forms" of Siva. There are some statues in stone of a figure with an erect penis locally identified as Siva which are worshiped by families who wish children or specifically a son (fig. 11). Siva is worshiped in the rite of passage of people in their seventy-seventh year as Mrtyum^[*] Jaya, the god who conquers time and prolongs life. He is sometimes said to be Nataraja, the god of the dance, who is worshiped by musicians and actors. (Nataraja as the Newar god Nasa Dya: has accumulated, as we will note, other meanings and uses.) Siva is the god buried in the inner courtyard of houses who destroys the wastes thrown there. He is Visvakarma (Newari, Biswarkarma), the god of crafts and trades, who gives power to the tools and implements of the various traditional and modern crafts: the barber's razor, the driver's truck, the farmer's tools.

Siva's meaning in Bhaktapur's supernatural domain is deeply affected by his position in the larger system. We have introduced some

of this, but we must turn to the other members of the domain, each of whom provides context for the others.

Visnu-Narayana^[*] And His Avatars

Visnu^[*] is usually referred to in Bhaktapur by one of the names historically associated with Visnu^[*] , Narayana^[*] (Newari, Narayan). Visnu^[*] (as we will here refer to this divinity for comparative convenience) belongs centrally to what we will call the "moral interior" of Bhaktapur. Although other gods may be addressed on their special days or for particular unusual problems, Visnu^[*] and Laksmi, his consort, are at the loci of ordinary household prayer. Visnu^[*] is that fragment of divinity that dwells in individuals as their soul or atma , in the Newar version of the ancient South Asian correspondence of soul and cosmic divinity.

Although there are several and conflicting ideas about the possible fates of the soul after death and about various heavens, and a number of theories as to what determines a person's postdeath state, the focus of most belief and action in regard to personal fate after death centers on Visnu^[*] . In the ceremonies devoted to dying, attention is focused on Visnu^[*] , and the dying person must pray to Visnu^[*] , meditate on him, and address his or her last words to him. In the kingdom of the Lord of the Dead, Yama Raj, it is Visnu's^[*] representative who argues the case for the deceased in front of King Yama. This case is based on the individual's merits and sins, virtues and vices, in relation to his following or violating the moral law, the Dharma. Those who follow the Dharma can expect to go to Visnu's^[*] heaven. To get to Siva's heaven one must make Siva a focus of meditation, another and radically different path to salvation from the moral path of following the social Dharma. In Visnu's^[*] heaven one keeps one's social identity and is joined with one's family in reward for one's social virtue. The salvation associated with Siva and the Tantric gods, moksa^[*] , has, in contrast, a problematic and uncanny relation to the social self.

Visnu^[*] is represented in Bhaktapur by idealized, princely human forms. Occasionally he is represented in the forms of one of his incarnations, or avatars . He is also represented occasionally by small, rounded stones, locally called salagrams.^[5] In contrast to other places in South Asia, Visnu's^[*]avatars (Sanskrit, avatara ) in Bhaktapur have minimal cultic significance in themselves and are of major importance only as aspects of Visnu^[*] .^[6] In contrast to Visnu's^[*] twenty-nine active temples and shrines in Bhaktapur, only two temples are actively devoted to Krsna^[*]

and three to Rama and his consort Sita (see fig. 12). One of the two Krsna^[*] temples is in Laeku Square, and was one of the temples built by the Malla kings for their personal merit. It is attended by a Rajopadhyaya Brahman and contains a portable god image, which is carried around the city once a year. The other temple, in the northern part of the city, has no priest and is used in a casual way by some local people or passersby. Both of the active Rama temples are outside the city boundaries at places where roads meet the river. One of them is part of a complex of temples built by the potter thar , the Kumha:s, living in the southern half of the city, and is attended by Kumha:s and people living in nearby areas. The other, to the southwest, is of some general importance once a year, in connection with the worship of one of the Eight Astamatrkas^[*] , Varahi.^[7] There are two Hanuman temples associated with the southwestern Rama temple that are visited by many people on the same day of the annual festival calendar as that temple. Hanuman, a divinity in monkey form associated with Rama in the Hindu epics, is also represented in other Visnu^[*] temples. Newari art represents still other of Visnu's^[*] avatars (particularly Vamana, and Narasimha^[*] ), as it also represents Visnu^[*] in relation to his cosmogenic aspect,^[8] but these representations have no contemporary uses.

The conception of Visnu's^[*] avatars is closely related to the idea of Visnu^[*] as the divine portion, the atma , of each individual. The avatars represent the incarnation of a portion of Visnu^[*] into the ordinary world, as part of a mixture that is in part human (or animal) and part divine.^[9] Visnu's^[*]avatars are not only incarnated in human or animal forms, but by and large they lead recognizable social lives, albeit with legendary heroic powers.^[10] The lives of the incarnations were furthermore located in real space and historical time. These lives were lived for the purpose of reestablishing some desirable social order for humans or for the gods after that order's derangement through some antisocial force usually personified as a "demon" or antigod, an Asura . This is in marked contrast to the case of Siva, whose transformations, such as Bhairava and the Goddess, are emanations in which Siva's identity is transformed and lost, and which are themselves "demonic" forms of the same sort as Asuras . Rather than exist through a unique lifetime, as Visnu's^[*]avatars do, Siva's transformations appear and are "reabsorbed" in some contexts or, in others, are as eternal as Siva himself. Although they can defeat the Asuras and other forces of disorder, they are, in themselves, dangerous and problematic to the orderly social world, and must be controlled in turn. In another significant contrast, while Siva's emana-

Figure 12.
Rama and his consort Sita. Note the difference in size.

tions (or in some versions the emanations of Parvati herself) defeat other demons through brute magical force, Visnu's^[*]avatars characteristically restore order through cunning and other social skills allied to their divine power.

In Bhaktapur's stories it is Siva in his wanderings and absent-mindedness who is either sometimes dangerous himself, or who allows some devotee to accumulate through meditation and austerities some god-like power, which he then uses in defiance of the gods' order for his own selfish purposes. Visnu^[*] must undo the damage, calm Siva, overcome the magic power of Siva's devotee, and restore order. In this contrast Siva is the passionate, romantic dreamer for whom social propriety is a burden. Visnu^[*] represents sobriety, decency, and order. The pair represent a familiar universal tension within societies and within individuals.

The twenty-nine Visnu^[*] temples and shrines are distributed around the city in close proximity, for the most part, to the city's main processional route. Of these, two are large temple complexes—one immediately south of the upper-lower city axis, and the other in the eastern part of the upper city. Although these two largest temples are located in the lower city and upper city, respectively, they are not considered representative of these city halves in the way that other space-marking deities represent spatial units, and there is no special religious activities that tie them to the halves as such. All these temples are attended optionally by people in their vicinities, sometimes for casual prayer, sometimes in quest of support in some undertaking. Usually Visnu^[*] is worshiped not in a temple or shrine but at home. Visnu^[*] , along with his consort Laksmi, is, as we have noted, the usual focal god of the household, the focus of most of the ordinary household puja s. They represent the ordinary relations, the moral life of the household, in its inner life. As we will see, for the family Visnu^[*] contrasts with another quite different kind of deity, the lineage deity, most often a form of the Dangerous Goddess, which binds the households of the phuki group into a unity and protects them against the dangers of the outside (chap. 9).

Visnu^[*] resembles Siva in not being used, in contrast to certain other gods, to mark off the city's important spatial units. He is, as we shall argue, not the proper kind of a divinity for this for Bhaktapur's purposes. Visnu^[*] has no major festival in the public city space. He is a major focus of household worship throughout the year, and of special household and temple worship and of out-of-the-city pilgrimages on some

annual occasions, particularly during the lunar month of Kartika (Newari, Kachala, October/November) as he is elsewhere in South Asia at this time.

In recent decades the worship of Visnu-Narayana^[*] at the two major temples with music and dancing and without the mediation of a priest in expression of an individual direct devotion to the god free from the spatial, temporal, and social orderings of Bhaktapur as a city, has been growing. Visnu^[*] and his avatars have become the object of bhakti , loving devotion, a focus for private salvation and private emotion. Here he is not functioning as a component in a complex system of urban order, but as the kind of personal god who arises when such a city-based system begins to break down. This is no longer the Visnu^[*] who is Siva's complement. This is, to recall our conceits of chapter 2, a transcendent "postaxial" Visnu^[*] .

Ganesa^[*]

Siva in Bhaktapur is a bridge joining different forms of divinity. Ganesa^[*] (Newari, Gandya:), an elephant-headed god, is a bridging and transitional figure of a different kind; he provides in several ways for human entrance into the area of the divine. As such, we may contrast him with other divinities, dangerous and uncanny, who are at the threshold of the human moral world and the orderly divine world into areas of chaos and danger. Properly for such uses, he is as attractive in his person as they are horrifying.

Let us consider some aspects of Ganesa^[*] as an entrance. As is generally the case in South Asia, one prays first to Ganesa^[*] before praying to any other god or before undertaking any important religious activity. The worship of Ganesa^[*] is necessary for effectiveness, siddhi , in the worship and manipulation of other divinities. This is an aspect of a more general attribute of Ganesa^[*] as "the overcomer of obstacles" (Mani 1975, 273):

Ganapati^[*] [Ganesa^[*] ] has the power to get anything done without any obstructions [and has] also the power to put obstacles in the path of anything being done. Therefore, the custom came into vogue of worshiping Ganapati^[*] at the very commencement of any action for its completion . . . without any hindrance. Actions begun with such worship would be duly completed.

It is necessary to worship Ganesa^[*] before both ordinary and Tantric puja s. This is connected with one of his unique features in Bhaktapur,

specifically, that he can be either a dangerous or an ordinary god.^[11] Any image of Ganesa^[*][12] may receive either the worship and offerings that are proper for the ordinary divinities (e.g., grain, yogurt, cakes) or the blood sacrifices and alcoholic offerings that are proper for the dangerous divinities. (He has, however, a particular animal that is uniquely proper for sacrifice to him: the khasi , or castrated male goat, another image, perhaps, of his marginality.) He is the entrance to these two different realms, otherwise often placed in opposition.

In some settings his image^[13] may indicate, represent, or suggest a Tantric emphasis. It may show Ganesa^[*] with many arms, and he may be seated next to his Sakti, variously identified as Siddhi (the personification of his power for effectiveness) or Rddhi^[*] , "prosperity, wealth, good fortune." In his dangerous form he is sometimes called "Heramba," and thought of as a guru who instructs and therefore introduces students in Tantric knowledge.

There is still another sense in which Ganesa^[*] is the entrance into the religious realm. As a benign, humanized animal, a sweets-loving child, the child of Siva and Parvati in their domestic imagery, he is a favorite of children, and in the memory of some respondents was the first god form to whom they became attached—in contrast to others whom they feared as children—and it is Ganesa^[*] who (at certain specific temples) is prayed to for help to children who are slow in learning to walk or talk.

As he is elsewhere in South Asia,^[14] Ganesa^[*] is the divinity of entrances in space as well as in temporal sequences. He is conceived to reside on one side of gates and arches (usually on the right side) while his "brother," Kumara (who has little other significance in Bhaktapur, except in connection with the Ihi , the mock-marriage ceremony) is imagined to be on the other.

Ganesa's^[*] shrines and temples are the main fixed divine markers of the twa:s , the village-like units in the city and of some of their component neighborboods (map 13). This local areal Ganesa^[*] , or sthan Ganesa^[*] (from sanskrit sthana , place, locality), is considered common to the twa: . Although, as we have noted, a particular twa: may have one or more other divinities that in some sense "belong" to it and are its particular responsibility and that may be celebrated in some annual twa: festival, every twa: has its sthan Ganesa^[*] . Everyone in the twa: worships here before important out-of-the-house ceremonies and during all rites of passage for members of the household. Thus Ganesa^[*] is one of those divinities who have an important relationship to a significant component of urban space, as Visnu^[*] and Siva do not. The great majority of

Map 13.
The distribution of Ganesa^[*] shrines in the city. The shrines are distributed throughout the city, with most of them on or near
the pradaksinapatha^[*] . Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

these twa: shrines are located on the city processional route (see map 12) which connects the twa: s, and thus these individual centers are tied into the larger city.

There are a number of Ganesa^[*] temples and shrines, some within the city boundaries and some without, which have specific purposes that can be accomplished only at that particular location with its particular Ganesa^[*] . People go to Balakhu Ganesa^[*] if they have lost something and wish help in finding it. Children who are slow in learning to talk are taken to a temple just outside of the city to the northeast, Yatu (Nepali, Kamala) Ganesa^[*] . One shrine, that of Chuma(n) Ganadya:, is worshiped by the entire city during the solar New Year festival, Biska: (chap 14). All these shrines are also worshiped by local neighborhood people.

The most important Ganesa^[*] shrine outside of the city for the people of Bhaktapur is Inara Dya: (Inara God),^[15] known in Nepali as "Surya Vinayaka." This shrine, set on a forested hillside south of Bhaktapur, is visited regularly once a week by many people on one of Ganesa's^[*] special days of the week, Tuesdays or Saturdays. These trips are considered as both a religious undertaking and an outing. Family members or a group of young friends will go to the shrine taking food with them. In addition to his general function as an overcomer of obstacles ("Vinayaka"), and a first object of worship before approaches to other gods, Inar Dya: can also help children who are slow in learning to walk. According to Slusser, Surya Vinayaka is also "widely consulted as a curing god by the deaf and dumb" (1982, 263). This shrine is not only attended by people of Bhaktapur but also is an important shrine for the Kathmandu Valley both for Newars of other places and for non-Newar Hindus. It is sometimes considered one of four Ganesa^[*] temples forming a kind of mandala^[*] in the Kathmandu Valley, and which are sometimes visited in sequence (Auer and Gutschow n.d., 17; Slusser 1982, 263).^[16]

A Note on Yama

Yama Raja, the ruler of the "kingdom" where in some versions of the adventures of people after death they go to await the fate that the results of their moral behavior, their karma , and/or the proper performance of death rituals secures for them, and who presides over the hell where the perpetrators of some enormous sin must remain for some equitable period, is not properly a member of the urban pantheon in the same way as the other figures we are considering here. He is the personification of death, but a certain kind of death or of death viewed

in a certain way. As such, he belongs among the "ordinary" deities, is in contrast to the dangerous deities, and should be noted here. The dangerous deities can kill, but that is not associated with the sort of dying that Yama is concerned with. Yama, or his messengers, come to collect people in "ordinary" dying. He is a moral agent, part of the ordinary religion of Bhaktapur and is related to the worship and meanings of the ordinary deities (some of whom preside over the heavens where Yama will most likely send the dead individual if he or she is not to be reincarnated back into this world). In either one of the various heavens or the usually foreseen rebirth, the individual will live a pleasant social life, in consort with his or her loved ones (if in heaven) or perhaps with their transformations (in a rebirth). There are other "religious" representations of death—or, more precisely, of being killed—in Bhaktapur that are not within the moral realm. These are within the realm of the dangerous deities or the malignant spirits, within realms where accident and power, not moral behavior, prevail. Against them only avoidance or powerful "magical" devices (chap. 9) might prevail. Yama's judgment and the timing of his visit can, however, be affected not only by good behavior, but also by affection and solidarity in the family, and various kinds of distractions and social deceits can be used to confuse or distract him or his messengers and deflect him.

Yama is variously represented in the annual calendrical sequence, most centrally in the course of the lunar New Year's sequence (chap. 13). He is there representative of what we will call the "moral beyond" of the household, not the "amoral outside," which is vividly represented in other annual symbolic enactments in relation to other deities.

The Ordinary Female Divinities: Laksmi, Sarasvati, And Parvati

In a later section we will be concerned with a cluster of ideas about "the goddess," a form sometimes conceived of as an emanation of Siva, as his "Sakti," and sometimes as an independent divinity having many names and forms. The word "Sakti" is often also used in Bhaktapur to refer to the consort, the female companion, of a male god. In this sense it means little more than wife, constant companion, or lover. There is a sharp distinction in cultural definition, personal meaning, and associated religious action between those ordinary goddesses who are the consorts of ordinary gods and important foci of ordinary religion, and those other goddesses, emanations of Siva or aspects of some form of

the Tantric goddess, the Saktis par excellence , the objects of Tantric worship.

The three ordinary goddesses are Laksmi, Sarasvati, and Parvati. Of these, only Sarasvati has her own temples. Laksmi and Parvati are respectively represented m the temples of Visnu^[*] and his avatar s (with the consort of the particular avatar being sometimes considered an incarnation of Laksmi) and of Siva in his anthropomorphic forms. In contradistinction to Sarasvati and to the Tantric goddesses, they are secondary figures in the external city religion. Their abode and realm is in the household.

Sarasvati (Sasu Dya: Sasu God, in Newari) has four major shrines in Bhaktapur. These shrines may be worshiped as a personal act of devotion by local people and passersby, but her main special meaning is as the goddess of learning, to whom all people who are engaged in studies of one kind or another (in recent times particularly modern school studies) come to pray. Sarasvati can grant them effectiveness or siddhi in learning, as Ganesa^[*] does to children for walking or talking. Her main temple is just to the south of the city across the river. All school children go to this shrine, the Nila (Blue) Sarasvati on the same day, or Sri Pa(n)cami, once a year (chap. 14). Sarasvati is usually represented in an ordinary, if idealized, human form, like the other ordinary goddesses (identifiable by her swan vehicle and her "lute," the vina^[*] ). She was formerly embodied in all books, and now still in those that are not specifically modern and secular. In a major Puranic^[*] tradition Sarasvati is considered as the daughter and sometimes the consort of the god Brahma. In Bhaktapur she is conceived of as an independent goddess.^[17]

Laksmi (Newari, Lachimi) is a major household divinity, but she has no public shrine or temple, although she is understood to be present in Visnu's^[*] temples as his consort, or as incarnated as Radha or Sita, the consorts of his major avatar s. She is understood to be nevertheless a goddess in herself, although she has in Tantrism some theoretical and cultic connections with goddesses such as Vaisnavi^[*] and Varahi through shared associations with Visnu^[*] . As everywhere in South Asia, as a household goddess, Laksmi is the promoter of the proper ends of the household—fertility, success in the household's economic activities, accumulation of food and wealth. She is the object of daily prayer and must never be neglected. She, like Visnu^[*] , is a protector of ordinary life. She has one annual festival in Bhaktapur, which is during one day in the course of the five-day lunar New Year festival (chap. 13).

With Parvati (Newari, Parvati or Parbati) we approach the complex

web of ideas joining Siva, Sakti, and Newar Tantrism. Although Parvati is, as we shall see, one bridge to these ideas, she is for the most part an independent Goddess in her own right, one who belongs firmly to the ordinary realm. Parvati as a household figure is Siva's loving bride—the ideal wife—and the daughter of Himalaya, the personified mountain range. As Himalaya's daughter, the Kathmandu Valley, that is, the traditional Nepal of the Newars, is her paternal homeland, and she has special concerns with it, particularly with its Newar women. Like Laksmi, Parvati has no independent external representation in her own shrine, nor any external ritual significance for the public city.^[18] She is a focus of some romantic fantasy (as is Krsna's^[*] consort Radha in other parts of South Asia), represents married romantic love for the household, and is prayed to by women for the welfare of the household (with perhaps a less material emphasis than Laksmi) and for the birth of sons. Although she may change into dangerous forms in the legends of the Goddess she, like Siva when he emits his Sakti, is lost in the form, and (as we shall see below, as the Devi Mahatmya , one of the main sources of Bhaktapur's ideas and imagery about the Goddess suggests) is unaware that she has an alternate wild and demonic state.

The Transition to the Dangerous Divinities

The dangerous deities, which we are now ready to discuss, are in many contexts and for many purposes considered as independent deities. The "Goddess" who in some contexts is thought to derive from Siva, in others is not only independent and self-created but also usurps his role as the creator deity. For certain purposes in Shaivite and Tantric Bhaktapur, however, Siva is considered as their source. One aspect of this idea is related to the conception of Siva/Sakti, which is of basic importance in Tantric theory (chap. 9). Sometimes Siva is thought to transform himself into another god, such as Bhimasena. Sometimes Siva is thought to be first transformed into his dangerous form Bhairava, who may then, in turn, generate other dangerous gods. Siva's transformation into Bhairava is described as not a transformation of himself, but rather as a sending out of a force or power from within himself, an emanation, a ni:saran . Emanation is also the way in which the dangerous goddesses are said to be generated, as Siva is conceived as generating a powerful form of the goddess, who then, in turn, generates or is transformed into subsidiary forms.

We are now concerned with relations of a different kind than those that obtain between the "ordinary" gods. Those were familiar and relatively fixed social relations: spouse, child, friend. These relations are relations of metamorphosis and emanation and are often shadowy and uncanny. Their proper worship, uses, and meanings differ from those of the ordinary deities. They belong to a different realm of the world and of the mind.

Major Gods: The "Dangerous" Deities

The major divinities that we are categorizing as "dangerous" have many features of representation, conception, and usage, that separate them from the residue of "ordinary" gods. We have borrowed a salient Newari verbal distinction where when it is necessary to refer to the set as a whole they are refered to as gya(n)pugu , "dangerous." When such distinctions are necessary, the "nondangerous" divinities are often distinguished from the gya(n)pugu ones by one or another term for "ordinary," such as the Sanskritic term sadharan .^[19] The contrast between the two sets, "ordinary" and "dangerous," responds to, reflects, and helps create important distinctions and complementarities. As we will see throughout this study, the two sets of deities are related to distinctions of inside and outside, of morality and power, of Brahmans and kings, of civil logic and dream logic, and of realms in which purity and pollution create distinctions and those within which they are irrelevant—in short, to some of the fundamental distinctions in Bhaktapur's conceptual world. The two sets not only represent these tensions and contrasts, they can be used to show relations of various sorts among them.

There are many more or less concrete markers of the contrast between the two sets of deities, their appearance, positions in the city, associated myths and legends. Some of these markers might (extremely rarely) be ambiguous; a benign deity may, for example, have a horrible form (such as Visnu's^[*]avatar Narasimha^[*] ). But there is one differentiating sign that people are forced to pay attention to, and that ensures the proper classification of any of these deities that they may have to encounter. This is what they are to be offered in proper worship. The dangerous gods should be given animal flesh and alcoholic spirits,^[20] the ordinary gods, (including Ganesa^[*] in his non-Tantric aspect) must never be given such foods. In ordinary speech the emphasis is on the "deities who drink alcoholic spirits," rather than on their acceptance of meat.

Alcoholic spirits in this context are specially named, nya (n ) rather than the usual term aela .

We will begin our discussion with the dangerous female divinities. Among the ordinary gods, the male gods are central and predominant and the female goddesses are peripheral to them; among the dangerous gods, the female divinities are predominant in quantity, complexity, and centrality in symbolic action.

The Dangerous Goddess and Her Transformations

Among the community of ordinary divinities are female divinities, various "ordinary goddesses" including Siva's consort Parvati. However, South Asia has had goddesses of a different sort who separate and coalesce in the course of history, in the course of individual mythic accounts, and in the conception and action of Bhaktapur. The coalesced figure is the Goddess, whose names, aspects, forms, and allies in Bhaktapur we will sketch in the following sections. In her most powerful and dangerous form as depicted in the Markandeya Purana^[*] , a scripture that contains one of the major sources of Bhaktapur's imagery of the Goddess (P. K. Sharma 1974, 46 [emphasis added]):

She is a goddess warrior, incarnating herself on earth by using various devices at various crucial moments m order to destory the demons who were formidable challenges to the denizens of heaven. Indeed, in her perfect nature, she has been described as the most beneficent; but her fierceness as a martial goddess, equipped with the sharpest weapons and reveling in her terror-striking war-cries, is definitely a different tradition from that of Parvati-Uma, whom we always find fir an altogether different setting .

The goddesses whom this goddess spawns or is ready to absorb are often represented as similar to the "formidable" demonic forms that they oppose, a similarity that helps explain their effectiveness in combating them. In some conceptions, such as the legends associated with the Nine Durgas (chap. 15), it is clear that the dangerous deities are sometimes, in fact, demonic entities that have been captured by "magical" power, often by some expert in Tantric spells, and then eventually forced into the service of the human community. As such, they may have fangs, cadaverous sunken cheeks and bodies, garlands of skulls or decapitated human heads around their necks, or cloaks of flayed animal or human skins over their shoulders. They have multiple arms, bearing weapons and carrying a human calvarium as a drinking cup, understood to be full of blood. Sometimes they are represented as beautiful, full-

breasted figures of an almost hallucinatory sexual desirability, but the many arms of these representations bear the same murderous weapons as the frankly horrible forms, and like those forms, they, too, demand blood sacrifice. The beautiful forms are simply another manifestation of the same dangerous kind of goddess.

There are at least twenty-five major temples and shrines devoted to these goddesses, who have eleven major forms and a number of minor ones, all systematically related in a number of conceptual schemes activated in various contexts. Classification is complicated in that the same manifest goddess may have different names (as do most important Hindu gods), and conversely by the fact that the same name (Mahakali, for example) may represent different aspects of the Goddess in different contexts. The goddesses' main usages in Bhaktapur's civic religion may be divided into four interrelated emphases, each with its centers, members, and ritual forms and each with its particular major implications for Bhaktapur's civic organization. We will designate them as (1) the goddesses of the mandalic^[*] system, (2) the goddesses of the Nine Durgas' annual dance cycle, (3) the generalized protective goddess usually referred to as Bhagavati, and (4) the political goddess Taleju and her related goddesses. Some individual goddesses, or at least some individual names of goddesses, may belong to more than one set, but much of their significance is largely determined by their membership in the particular set under consideration.

Each group of goddesses has a central member who represents a maximum concentration of what we may term "potential power." This goddess form is most general, full, and abstract. When there are other goddesses around her, they are more limited. Their manifestations, functions, and power are more shaped to the concrete needs of a particular event, a subsection of space, a particular set of ritual and symbolic functions. They are less omnipotential; they do some specific work in the world.

The Mandalic^[*] Goddesses

In the previous chapter we introduced the eight goddesses who protect the boundaries of Bhaktapur while also each one having a special segment of the city under her protection—the city being divided for this purpose into eight peripheral octants and a central circle with its own, a ninth, protective goddess (see maps 1 and 2 above). These goddesses protect the city, in the words of one humble citizen, from "ghosts, evil

spirits and diseases like cholera." Others add earthquakes, invasions, destructive weather, and other disasters. As do all the dangerous gods, these goddesses protect the city against those external disorders that threaten the ongoing life of the city. That ongoing life has within itself its own protective resources, resources that may most generally be thought of as "moral." We have discussed these goddesses in relation to space, here we will, with some overlap, consider them as members of the pantheon.

The eight peripheral goddesses are often referred to in Bhaktapur as the Astamatrkas^[*] , the "Eight Mothers."^[21] In less elegant Newari they are sometimes called the pigandya: ,^[22] the group (gana^[*] ) of gods (dya: ) living in the pitha , a special sort of open shrine. The ninth goddess at the center of the city when it is conceived as a mandala^[*] , is included or not in the set, depending on whether the emphais is on the outer protective boundary or on the internal space that is being protected.

The eight goddesses at the periphery have each the same basic function in her proper space, although some have additional specialized functions. They are, to introduce an important classificatory principle for the dangerous gods, all at the same level. The goddess at the center has the same protective function as the peripheral goddesses for her central mandalic^[*] section, but in addition, as we have noted in chapter 7, she concentrates their individual powers in an eightfold increase at the center of the mandala^[*] . She is thus, in this way, something more than any of them separately, she is at a higher level. This contrast is reflected in the traditional characteristics of the particular goddesses chosen for placement at the center and at the periphery. The central goddess, Tripurasundari, is (in contrast to the peripheral goddesses) not one of those goddesses designated as "mothers," matrka^[*] s, in the Hindu Puranic^[*] tradition. As we will see (below here and chap. 15), the legends and scriptural accounts of the Matrkas that are significant in Bhaktapur (and elsewhere in South Asia) treat the Matrkas as components or limited or lesser aspects of some complete, full, maximal form of the goddess, often called "Devi." Tripurasundari is a version of that complete, omnipotential goddess, characterized in some of the Upanisads^[*] (the Tripura Upanisad^[*] and the Tripura Tapini Upanisad^[*] ) as the "primeval embodiment of Sakti that gives birth to the world" (P. K. Sharma 1974, 21).

We will introduce the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses in the order in which they are worshiped during the succeeding days of the autumn harvest festival of the Goddess, Mohani, an order that begins with the eastern goddess

(map 2), follows the boundary of the city in the auspicious clockwise processional direction, and proceeds on the ninth day to the central summating central shrine of Tripurasundari.^[23] The goddess to the east, the first in the sequence, is Brahmani (Newari, Brahmayani); to the southeast, Mahesvari (Newari, Mahesvari); to the south, Kumari;^[24] and to the southwest, Vaisnavi^[*] (Newari Vaisnavi^[*] , often written and pronounced "Baisnabi"). The goddess of this particular location is on one occasion during the year—the complex spring solar New Year festival, Biska:—taken to be a quite different goddess, Bhadrakali^[*] . To the west is Varahi (Newari, Barahi:), to the northwest is Indrani^[*] (Newari Indrayani:), to the north is Mahakali, and to the northeast is Mahalaksmi^[*] (Newari Mahalachimi).

These peripheral goddesses are, with one only apparent substitution, familiar representatives of the various Puranic^[*] sets of "mothers" (P. K. Sharma 1974, 234), but are for the most part connected in their membership and in the exact order in which they are arranged to a particular traditional Hindu text, which is the basis for much of Bhaktapur's imagery of the Goddess, the Devi Mahatmya . In the account of the Devi Mahatmya the Saktis, goddesses emitted from the various gods of the pantheon, either fight as assistants to the goddess Candika^[*] , considered a transformation of Parvati, or become absorbed into her to augment her power.

In one passage of the Devi Mahatmya (VIII, 12-20), which we will discuss at some length below, the Saktis of various gods who come to join the full goddess, Devi, are listed in sequence. The first five goddesses in the protective ring formed by Bhaktapur's Astamatrkas^[*] (starting with Brahmani to the east and proceeding in a clockwise direction), are arranged in the same sequence: Brahmani, Mahesvari, Kumari, Vaisnavi^[*] , and Varahi. Bhaktapur leaves out the Devi Mahatmya 's sixth goddess (Narasimhi^[*] ) and proceeds to its seventh, Indrani^[*] . The Devi Mahatmya , like many of the Hindu sources, lists only seven mothers. Bhaktapur uses six of them and adds at the end two more, Mahakali and Mahalaksmi^[*] , commonly listed members of the Matrkas as given in other Puranas^[*] . Mahakali is also known in Bhaktapur as Camunda^[*] , a form of the goddess in her most terrifying aspect who also appears in the Devi Mahatmya as an honorific title given to the goddess form Kali as the slayer of two powerful Asuras Chanda^[*] and Munda^[*] (Devi Mahatmya , VII, 25; Agrawala 1963, 101). Mahakali and Mahalaksmi^[*] , among the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, are just two ordinary Matrka^[*] , although in other uses of the Goddesses in Bhaktapur, Mahakali's asso-

ciation with Kali-Camunda^[*] and some of the legendary attributes of Mahalaksmi^[*] are given some special significance.^[25]

Like several other divinities in Bhaktapur, the nine Mandalic^[*] Goddesses have "houses," literally, dya che(n) or "god-houses" situated within the city (map 2). Portable images of the goddess are kept at these buildings, and daily puja s are held there, conducted by a Tantric temple priest, an acaju . These dya che(n) images are carried in various processions during the year, particularly during the course of the solar New Year festival, Biska: (see chap. 14). Sometimes there is worship by a group of worshipers in the god-house rather than the pitha shrine, if the participants wish to keep the ceremonies secret, as is often the case in Tantric worship.

However, the proper and usual seats of the worship of the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses are their pitha s, open, roofless, imageless shrines, which are the mandalic^[*] markers. The nine mandalic^[*]pitha s are very vaguely associated with the idea of the Devi pitha s, the 108 places in South Asia where pieces of Siva's wife Sati fell to earth (cf. Banerjea 1956, 495n.; Mani 1975, 219). These places became sacred to the Goddess. While the mandalic^[*]pitha s are associated only by some metaphorical extension with the Devi pitha s, for the Newars the important "true" Devi pitha is that of Guhyesvari^[26] in the major Valley cult center Pasupatinatha, where in esoteric doctrine Sati's vagina fell to earth.^[27] There is no esoteric connection between the Guhyesvsari Devi pitha and the mandalic^[*]pitha s.

The mandalic^[*]pitha , as we have noted, are the required foci of attention and worship for families during important rites of passage, and for the city as a whole during the course of the Mohani festival sequence.

The Nine Durgas

Historically in South Asia, various groups of dangerous goddesses have been grouped together as the Navadurga, the Nine Durgas (Banerjea 1974, 500n.; P. K. Sharma 1974, 231-233). Slusser has written that, "in practice . . . the Nepalese Naudurga [Navadurga] are synonymous with the Astamatrkas^[*] , to which a variable ninth manifestation is joined to complete the set. Thus, when the Nepalese speak of the Naudurga, they in fact refer to the Astamatrkas^[*] " (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 322). This is not true for Bhaktapur, where the distinction is essential. There the Nine Durgas refer to a group of divinities, represented primarily as masks (see color illustrations) who possess the bodies of a group of

dancers during an annual sequence that each year begins at the harvest festival of Mohani and lasts for the following nine months. We will be concerned with this sequence at length in chapter 15. The Nine Durgas have close relations with the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, as they do with the other major forms of the goddess in Bhaktapur, but they have, as we will see, their own legends, meanings, membership, and iconography. Although they share some of the same names with the Astamatrkas^[*] and some of their reference to the Devi Mahatmya they differ in the meanings of the deities common to both sets, in other of their members, in their legends, and in their uses.

The Nine Durgas group share seven members with the Astamatrkas^[*] : Mahakali, Kumari, Varahi, Brahmani, Vaisnavi^[*] , Indrani^[*] , and Mahesvari.^[28] Of these the last five have very subsidiary roles, and are peripheral to the main actions of the cycle. The group also includes the male divinities Ganesa^[*] , Bhairava, and Seto Bhairava and the goddesses (often thought of, however, as a male and a female) Sima and Duma.^[29]

These twelve deities are represented as masks, and are worn by the dancers who through possession become the gods they represent. There are also two other gods associated with the group of the Nine Durgas. One is Siva, who is represented as a small mask without eyeholes that is carried by one of the dancers. He is not present as a possessed dancer nor as a performing god. Finally the entire group of gods have their own god, whose portable image they worship. She is generally known as the Sipha goddess, after the red leaves of oleander (sipha ) placed as a garland around her metal image. She is known to religious specialists as Mahalaksmi^[*] . Mahalaksmi^[*] is one of the equally ranked peripheral goddesses of the Asttamatrkas^[*] —although, as we have noted, she is not one of the Devi Mahatmya s "seven mothers"—and is placed in the eighth and last peripheral position. As the Nine Durgas' own goddess she is in a superior position to them, as Tripurasundari is to the Astamatrkas^[*] represents the "full goddess"; the other performing members of the group are special manifestations. There is another important hierarchical distinction within the Nine Durgas. As we will see when we discuss them in detail, the predominant form In the group of mask-gods is Mahakali, the "Goddess" in her most frightening form. We will return to these hierarchical relations later.

The Nine Durgas, in contrast to the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, are characterized by movement (map 14 [below, chap. 15]). Their original home (chap. 15) was, in legend, a forest outside Bhaktapur. They have now, however, an elaborate temple-like god-house in the city. During

Map 14.
The sites for the sequential Nine Durgas dances dramas or pyakha(n)s within Bhaktapur throughout the year. The numbers
show the sequence in which the dances take place. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

the nine months of their annual existence, the masks of the dancers and other ritual equipment are kept there when not in use in their sequential visits to the city's neighborhoods.

Taleju, Bhaktapur's Political Goddess

An integral part of Bhaktapur's Malla palace complex of buildings and courtyards^[30] is the temple of the goddess Taleju. The temple is approached through an elaborately decorated outer "golden gate" leading from Laeku Square, and is built around a set of inner courtyards which are closed to non-Hindus.^[31] Taleju was the lineage goddess of the Malla kings. As such, she was one of the many tutelary divinities of the bounded and nested units of which Bhaktapur is constructed, divinities chosen by individuals or "given them" by their guru s, lineage divinities, divinities of guthi and associations of various sorts, special thar deities, and so forth.

As the Malla king's lineage deity and located in his palace compound, Taleju became a dominant city deity as manifest in the various symbolic enactments centering on her temple, reaching a dramatic climax during the festival that most clearly and dramatically portrays the various aspects of the Goddess and their relations, the harvest festival Mohani. Taleju is the dominant goddess and, in fact, deity, of Bhaktapur in those contexts where the centrality of royal power is being emphasized. She has survived the replacement of the Malla dynasty by the Gorkhali Saha dynasty as, for Bhaktapur, a powerful symbolic representation of traditional Newar political forms and forces, one that persists alongside of the new symbols and realities of modern politics.

There are extensive legends about the introduction of Taleju into Bhaktapur combining aspects of history, myth, and explanatory speculation about local topography and about aspects of the symbolic enactments that are associated with Taleju. The sketch of a version of the story that follows is derived from a lengthy written version provided by a Bhaktapur Brahman who works as a public storyteller, and is based on his public stories. His account begins with a short summary statement situated within the secular realm, and having to do with power and politics. "The Sultan Gayasudin Tugalak," the account begins, "having gained power in Bengal, attacked the town of Simraun Gadh^[*] . The king of Karnataka^[*] , Harisimhadeva^[*] , having been defeated by Gayasudin, ran away to Nepal with his soldiers and captured Bhaktapur from King Ananda Malla, who had been its ruler. Then Hari-

simhadeva^[*] established the goddess Taleju in her [supernaturally determined] proper place in Bhaktapur. The place where the Goddess was ritually established is called the Mu Cuka [the main courtyard of the Taleju temple]. The goddess Taleju was brought by King Harisimhadeva^[*] from Simraun Gadh^[*] ."

Now the account abruptly shifts from legendary history to the mythic and epic realm of Hindu tradition. "Once the Yantra of Taleju had been kept in Indra's heaven. [The Yantra is the powerful mystic diagram that embodies the goddess in this account, and is the only way she is represented in this account aside from her appearance as an anthropomorphic form in dreams]. There the god Indra worshiped her properly [her proper worship is an issue in the account]." Now (to continue in a paraphrase of the account) Taleju was stolen from Indra by Meghanada, the son of Ravana^[*] , the demon king of Lanka, in the course of Ravana's^[*] attack on heaven. Taleju was taken to Lanka and worshiped there. When Ravana^[*] was defeated in Lanka by Rama, the hero of the Ramayana , Rama took Taleju, in the form of her yantra , to Ayodhya, his capital in India. In time the goddess Taleju appeared to Rama in a dream and told him that be must throw the yantra in the river Sarayu, which flowed past Ayodhya because no one would worship and sacrifice properly to her after his approaching death. After five or six generations a descendant of Rama, King Nala, found Taleju's yantra in the water, and brought it to his palace, but he did not worship her properly (which would have been with blood sacrifice), and had to return her to the river. Subsequent kings of Ayodhya, Nala, Pururava, and Alarka, had the same experience, each finally returning her to the river. The kings of this dynasty, the Solar Dynasty, were finally defeated by the Mlechhas (non-Indo-Aryan barbarians).

Now the story's mode shifts into a sort of fairy tale, as it is recounted how through wondrous signs the goddess comes into Harisimhadeva's^[*] possession, in a turn of events that will lead to Bhaktapur. Now, according to the story, King Nanyadeva, a king of the Solar Dynasty, had "lost his country" and become a servant of the Mlechhas. One day wandering restlessly here and there he happened to stop to rest at the bank of the Sarayu river. He dreamt there of a beautiful girl who said to him, "Oh, King Nanyadeva, your lineage god is in the Sarayu river. You must find her in order to worship her. I am she, your lineage goddess. Black insects will be flying around the surface of the river where I am hidden." The king awoke immediately and went to search for the goddess in the early morning. He found her by means of the black insects.

He found a copper casket. Inside it was a smaller box of gold. On the golden box was an inscription saying that it contained a hidden treasure that had been Rama's and Nala's and was to be Nanyadeva's. The treasure, contained m the box, was Taleju's yantra , that is, Taleju herself. The story then continues in its wondrous mode to recount how with Taleju's council given in a dream, Nanyadeva has encounters with wondrous serpents, hidden treasure, twelve architects, a host of workers, and a female demon (raksasi^[*] ), resulting in the magical construction in one night of a city that came to be called "Simraun Gadh^[*] ". The legend begins to correspond to history here.^[32]

The story goes on to recount that Nanyadeva worshiped Taleju properly, that is, with Tantric worship and with flesh-and-blood offerings, and that after his death she was so worshiped for another five or six generations. During the time of Nanyadeva's descendant Harisimhadeva^[*] , however, the Muslims were expanding their territories and thus came to Simraun Gadh^[*] . Then, following the orders of the goddess Taleju, King Harisimhadeva^[*] , having fled Simraun Gadh^[*] , entered Nepal through the forest carrying Taleju.

Now the story begins an attempt to explain certain aspects of Taleju's cult in Bhaktapur and to record and to account for her historical displacements within and near Bhaktapur. On their trip through the forest, Taleju informs Harisimhadeva^[*] that if no proper sacrificial animal can be found, such as a goat, then it would be permissible to sacrifice a water buffalo, an animal that had previously not been acceptable to her—and that is now the main sacrifice, along with goats, offered to her during Mohani.^[33] The king, having found a buffalo, then noticed a man defecating facing east (a sign that he was not of twice-born status) and selected him to kill the buffalo.^[34]

Then, the story continues, Harisimhadeva^[*] came to Bhaktapur and became king. He established the goddess Taleju in the "Agnihotra Brahman's" house in Bhaktapur. (This is her present site. "Agnihotra Brahman" refers to a particular Rajopadhyaya Brahman; see below here and chap. 9.) The story now moves backward a little in time to tell of the prior search for the proper location. Taleju has told the king that the proper place for the installation will be known when a hole is dug and the soil removed from it will, upon being returned to the hole, fill it exactly to the surface. The story tells of the various places where Harisimhadeva^[*] tested the ground unsuccessfully. First he tried in the village of Panauti (just outside the Kathmandu Valley, to the southwest of Bhaktapur). "He dug there in the Dumangala Twa:." The soil did not

fill the hole. Nevertheless he established a temple to her there (from the point of view of Bhaktapur and this story, a secondary temple). "The people of Panauti still say that the goddess Taleju came to Dumangala from Simangala, which is Simraun Gadh^[*] ." Next he began to dig in Bhaktapur, first at the Dattatreya temple area in northeastern Bhaktapur. This time the soil overflowed the hole. He then went to dig in a "garden," called "Megejin," but the replaced soil overflowed the hole. He went on to the Kwache(n) Twa: in eastern Bhaktapur (where there is now an important Bhagavati temple associated with Taleju), but this also proved not to be the proper place. Finally he went on to the home of the Agnihotra Brahman, in the area of the present Laeku Square. Here he dug, and the soil exactly refilled the hole. "Therefore the king established the goddess Taleju in that place."

The story now introduces another theme, which seems to echo some now obscure past events, perhaps the establishment of a new group of Royal Brahmans (see chap. 10). The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans who had lived in the place did not want to leave their homes. King Harisimhadeva^[*] gave them money and a substitute house. This substitute house still exists; it is still called the palisa che(n) or palsa che(n) , literally "substitute house." The Agnihotra Brahman (whose name in the story is "Agnihotra") was a Tantric practitioner. He did not want to leave his family land, even if he were given money and a substitute home, he was not a greedy man. He always sat on Chetrapal Bhairava's stone (an area-protecting "stone god" in the Taleju main courtyard) which was then bordered by four stone pillars, each with an image of Ganesa^[*] and Durga. The Brahman wanted to kill himself rather than leave his own ancestral home. King Harisimhadeva^[*] finally chased Agnihotra away from his ancestral home by force. Agnihotra committed suicide in his temple there, a temple of Siva (Mahadeva), because he had lost his public prestige. Agnihotra became a ghost (preta ) because he had killed himself. The ghost gave Harisimhadeva^[*] trouble every day. Thus, Harisimhadeva^[*] had the Siva temple entirely destroyed. He then did the necessary pacifying rituals.

Then, the story concludes, the four pillars with the Ganesa^[*] images were sent to various places. One, a dangerous form of Ganesa^[*] , was placed at the left side of the Golden Gate (the entrance to the Taleju temple complex). Another is at Bidya pitha (Tripurasundari's pitha ). Another was brought to the Indrani^[*]pitha .^[35] (Our story doesn't mention the fourth pillar.) Then, the story concludes, "In the Beko courtyard (the courtyard just outside the inner gate and compound of the Taleju

complex) the Bhairava Chetrapal stone where that Brahman used to sit exists, still, until now."

It seems likely that Taleju had, in fact, been introduced to the Kathmandu Valley from Mithila, although not by Harisimhadeva^[*] , who never reached it (chap. 3), and that the pressures of the Turkish Muslims on Mithila with the consequent movement of Maithili Tantric Hindus into Nepal contributed to the subsequent importance of the goddess and of Tantrism to the valley. Slusser summarizes the historical evidence as follows (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 318):

That Taleju's cult in the Kathmandu Valley antedated Harisimhadeva^[*] is documented history . . . but Taleju appears to have been held in high regard in that country [Mithila], and it is not improbable that she was the tutelary of Nanyadeva's dynasty. She was almost certainly well-known to Harishimha's^[*] queen, the omnipotent Bhaktapur refugee, Devaladevi. It is abundantly clear that Taleju was favored by Sthitirajamalla [Jayasthiti Malla] and with his subsequent eruption into the affairs of Nepal Mandala^[*] , the goddess was apparently raised to an eminence she had previously not enjoyed in Nepal. As we know, on Sthitimalla's visit to Patan, the fractious nobles made haste to please the new Valley strong man by restoring the run-down temple of Taleju. . . . That many of the Newars associated with Taleju's cult claim Maithili descent [as do the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans of Bhaktapur] is also suggestive of the deity's ties with Mithila.

Whatever its historical relevance, the story as it is still told in Bhaktapur also suggests some special aspects and qualities of this particular goddess in the domain of Bhaktapur's goddesses. She is located first in a traditional Hindu heaven, in contrast, say, to the members of the Nine Durgas troupe whose legends identify them first as forest-dwelling demonic figures (chap. 15). She is the favorite goddess of a particular god; as a divinity's divinity, this places her in a hierarchy—her devotee is a figure remembered as the "king" of the gods. Her subsequent history is associated with invasions, thefts, and dynasties, and with politics and power struggles. From the start she is embedded, available for use by humans and quasi-humans, in a concrete form, a diagrammatic representation on a piece of metal. The form when properly worshiped is protective. The proper worship is Tantric with blood sacrifice. This captured divinity, with its history and functions relating it to power, belongs to a political dynasty, a legitimate form of power. The legend associates it not only with Indra, but with Rama, an avatara of Visnu^[*] , a divinity closely associated with Newar (and Hindu) royalty and with

civic moral order. When Taleju was established in Bhaktapur, she necessarily took precedence over other deities with similar political claims, which may perhaps be part of the significance of the displacement of the Agnihotra Brahman, the destruction of his Siva temple, and his suicide.^[36] We may note that in contrast to other forms of the Goddess, Taleju is not conceptually related to and in a sense dependent on Siva, but is the Tantric goddess as independent and self existing and fully powerful.

Taleju is kept in a secret inner part of the Taleju temple. The nature of her image is also secret. Only a very few Rajopadhyaya Brahman priests from households traditionally providing Taleju Brahmans, and who have special initiation are allowed to see the image. Outsiders generally follow the description in the legend and assume that it is a yantra . Hamilton was also told at the beginning of the nineteenth century that "there is no image of this deity which is represented by a yantra " ([1819] 1971, 210f.).^[37] In worship in the Taleju temple, Taleju is represented by various forms—yantra , the metal vase-like container called the Thapi(n)ca (or alternatively Ku(n)bha, a vessel that also represents the true Devi pitha goddess, Guhyesvari), sometimes by a metal vessel with a pouring spout (a Kalas), and sometimes by an anthropoid image.

Like most of Bhaktapur's component organizations the Taleju temple has its esoteric internal ceremonies and public external ones related to the larger city organization. The internal functions center around the worship of Taleju by her attendant priests^[38] during the course of the year. Many of these take place during city-wide calendrical festivals, but there are some thirty-five important annual internal worship ceremonies unconnected to external urban events. Many of these commemorate Taleju's functions as the Malla kings' lineage goddess. These acts of worship or puja s are called tha (Kathmandu Newari tha ) puja , or tha taegu , "elevation worship," or "elevation producing and maintaining" acts. Tha taegu is thought of as a kind of initiation, dekha (chap. 9). It lacks some features of a full Tantric initiation, and is sometimes thought of by those who have such full initiation as a baga dekha , a "half-full" initiation. Those tha puja s that commemorate the Malla king and, in fact, treat him as if he were still present, take the Malla king (represented by a priest) through three successive levels of initiation, during each of which he is presented new mantra s, new secrets, and new instruction on ritual procedures. There are other tha puja s as well as full initiations given at Taleju, all necessary for Taleju temple's internal functions. These are necessary not only for the staff and for the

"king" but also for all those for whom Taleju is in one way or another a special deity. Descendants of the Malla kings, that is, members of the present Malla and Pradhananga^[*]thar s, have Taleju as their lineage goddess, and male thar members have some of their initiations at the Taleju temple, although they do not receive the highest levels of initiation in Taleju's mysteries. Those are reserved to the chief Taleju Brahman. He is considered to be the surrogate for the Malla king in many rituals, and the king was entitled to higher levels of initiation than his male kin and descendants (who are furthermore now considered by the priests to be no longer "pure Mallas"). The Taleju principal priests who were the king's guru s, had even higher levels of initiation than the king himself, a fourth level, one beyond the Malla king's three. Taleju is also the object of special devotional rituals of the other temple priests. She is considered a sort of lineage goddess for them, in the limited sense that the temple priesthood is inherited in their families' lineage. All these priests also have in all other contexts another Tantric lineage divinity, for ordinary family rituals and rites of passage (see below and chap. 9).

In addition to the two thars of Malla descendants and three priestly thar s attendant at the temple, there are about twenty thar s throughout the macrostatus system, some of whose members (as we have noted in chap. 5) have some special assigned ritual function at some time or other during the year at the Taleju temple. Many of these people must be given tha taegu initiations, in which they must swear secrecy about their duties and about what they see in the temple.^[39]

Taleju's external function is uniquely important to the Tantric component of Bhaktapur's symbolic system. Through her priests and by means of her mantras , she is understood by initiated practitioners to empower all city-level legitimate Tantric procedures in Bhaktapur.^[40] The Brahman Taleju priest is in this context considered the ultimate guru of all who have Tantric power. Some of this power must be transmitted annually. For the rest, the great majority, such as the special knowledge and efficacy of various Tantric priests (chap. 9), or the effective ritual knowledge of the people who make religious paraphernalia, it is said that the special knowledge, initiation, and mantras were originally given to ancestors by a Taleju priest, but then passed down within the family or the thar from father to son or guru to student in repeated internal initiations.

Taleju's external relation to the city is manifested and enacted at length in the course of the harvest festival, Mohani. In the course of this festival Taleju, as we shall see (chap. 15), is brought into relation with

several forms of the Goddess—with all the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, with Kumari (as another deity than the similarly named Kumari of the Mandalic^[*] group of goddesses), with the Nine Durgas group of deities, and with the Goddess Devi herself in her form as Bhagavati. In this festival Taleju is seen as participating in the basic myth of the Dangerous Goddess and, in fact, temporarily becoming Mahisasuramardini herself (chap. 15). During Mohani, Bhagavati/Taleju represents the maximally powerful and full form of the Goddess. This maximal Taleju then becomes manifest in certain ways, controlled and mediated by her temple priests. She possesses a maiden to become manifest in the form of Kumari, in which form she can give oracular advice to kings. She provides the mantra that empowers the partial forms of the Nine Durgas troupe to begin their annual nine-month cycle of manifestations of the Goddess throughout the city. Taleju is a central focus in the interrelated set of symbols and symbolic enactments associated with the dangerous deities of Bhaktapur.^[41]

Bhagavati

In her anthropomorphic representations Taleju is usually represented as a form of the goddess that people in Bhaktapur in other contexts identify as "Bhagavati." This is a female form with many arms, clearly a dangerous goddess, but lacking any further identification (through location or specific iconographic features) as one of the "partial" goddesses.^[42] The representation identified as Bhagavati is also very often (in both temple and household images) that of the Devi of the Devi Mahatmya account in the form of the slayer of the buffalo Asura, that is, as Mahisasuramardini.

Bhagavati is a traditional title for what we have been calling the full goddess. She is equivalent to "Devi," to "Sakti," to "Prakrti^[*] " (Mani 1974, 113). For people in Bhaktapur, however, Bhagavati is a separate goddess, a divinity in her own right. She has three temples. All of them have Taleju staff priests as temple priests, and are closely connected with Taleju's internal rituals. One of these is housed at the Natapwa(n)la ("Nyatapola") Temple (fig. 10), a large five-tiered temple, one of the most striking traditional buildings in Nepal. The Natapwa(n)la goddess is in the same square as the main temple of the city's major male dangerous divinity, Bhairava, with whom she has an esoteric connection for the purpose of "controlling him." The story of the temple is presented in one of the chronicles (Wright [1877] 1972, 194f.):

Bhupatindra^[*] Malla built [in Bhaktapur] a three-storied temple, the length of which ran north and south, and placed in it, facing west, a Bhairava for the protection of the country, and the removal of sin and distress from the people. This Bhairava gave much trouble, and the Raja ,n consequence consulted many clever men, who told him that if the Iswari [goddess] of the Tantra Shastra [texts], whom the Bhairava respected, were placed near him, he would be appeased. He therefore, at an auspicious moment, laid the foundation of a five-stoned temple. . . . The pillars were of carved agras wood, and there were five stones of roofs. This temple is the most beautiful, as well as the highest in the whole city. In building it the Raja set an example to his subjects by himself carrying three bricks, and the people brought together the whole of the materials in five days. When the temple was finished he secretly placed in it a deity of the Tantra Shastra, who rides on Yama-raj whom no one is permitted to see, and who is therefore kept concealed.

This goddess has a secret name and form, and is supposed by some experts to be "Siddhi Laksmi" However, she is known publicly as "Bhagavati." The two other Bhagavati shrines in addition to their use by Taleju Brahmans have some local worshipers.

Bhagavati has only one minor processional festival, which had been inaugurated in Bhaktapur only some ten or fifteen years before this study. In spite of this sparse representation in public space, however, Bhagavati is one of the principle divinities of Bhaktapur. She is the most common local name for the goddess in her full power, in the form where she has incorporated the power of all lesser forms of the goddess. She is thought of as a warrior goddess, as most clearly portrayed in her Mahisasuramardini representation and legend (see section on principles of classification of dangerous goddesses, below). Her main concrete presence is in the household. Bhagavati is the name and form of the household image in which the Dangerous Goddess is worshiped in home puja s as one of the group of household gods. She is at the focus of home worship during the important household ritual components of the Mohani festival. Bhagavati is also the main deity worshiped in many Tantric puja s. She is also the secret Tantric family goddess, aga(n) dya: , of the majority of upper-status households (chap. 9). For Bhaktapur's people Bhagavati is the city's main protective goddess when they are thinking of the city as a whole, rather than the protection of its boundaries. For the Taleju priests she is sometimes conceived of as "Taleju's older sister," because they believe she long preceded Taleju in Bhaktapur's history and in legendary status. But she is also alternatively conceived of by them as Taleju's "assistant," for she protects the city at Taleju's wish and direction.

Miscellaneous Dangerous Goddesses

There are some dangerous goddesses in Bhaktapur of circumscribed present importance. Some of these are auxiliary forms associated with Taleju in the Taleju temple, and others are goddesses located elsewhere in the city, where they have some specific and limited functions.

Taleju temple contains a number of Tantric images of various degrees of secrecy. These include Mahesvari (whom we have mentioned above) represented by a stone, Guhesvari considered as secondary to the major Guhyesvari Devi pitha goddess at the Pasupatinatha shrine, and Dui Maj.. Dui Maju is said to be the goddess of an internal pitha in Taleju temple, and to be "Taleju's own pitha goddess." In the Padmagiri chronicle Dui Maju is said to be the lineage deity of a "caste" of Maithili invaders, and to have helped King Nanyadeva take possession of Bhaktapur. In time, the account says, when Harisimhadeva^[*] in turn captured Bhaktapur as "he had received immense wealth from Dwimaju Deva whom he regarded as his Penate [lineage god] [he] established a Devali Puja [lineage puja ] to her" (Hasrat 1970, 50, 52). The dim reflection of some historical reality distorted in the chronicle, and the special esoteric position of Dui Maj. now in Taleju temple suggest something of her possible historical identity.^[43]

Another important esoteric form associated with the Taleju temple is Ugracandi, who is represented in some of the events there during Mohani, and who is thought by some to have an esoteric relation to the Nine Durgas.

There are some goddesses represented in the collection of shrines and temples built by the Malla kings in proximity to their palace, which we will discuss below as "gods of the Royal Center." The two goddesses in this group, who have no relevance to the rest of the city, are Baccala^[44] and Annapurna^[*] .

Of the few miscellaneous goddesses scattered throughout the wider city, some have special functions, and others had some past function and meaning and are now dimly remembered as a shrine or image that has some residual power. Kulachimi (or Ku Laksmi) (located in the Tulá che(n) twa: ), identified as Laksmi's^[*] "older sister," is considered to be a "bad god."^[45] She is worshiped daily by an assigned temple priest, probably, in a pervasive idea about such deities, to keep her from doing harm.

The Palu(n)palu(n) goddess, identified with Kumari and represented by a stone, is located in the Inaco Twa:. It was popularly used in the past as part of a curing ritual for children—rice held first to a sick

child's head, was then brought to this shrine and offered to the goddess.

Sitala (Newari Si:tala), a goddess of frightening mien whose vehicle is a donkey, is found at the river at Hanman Ghat^[*] . She is the goddess thought to have been efficacious for curing or preventing smallpox. On the twelfth day^[46] after the first signs of infection people went there to pray for cure and for protection from disfigurement. She is a well-known goddess in South Asia and can produce smallpox as well as cure it (Stutley and Stutley, 1977, 278; Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 328). Bhaktapur's Sitala has a broken nose, reportedly broken by a father whose son died in spite of his prayers.

Another goddess with curative functions is represented by a hole with a stone at its bottom in the Inaco Twa:, which is identified as Balkumari. People go here to pray for the cure of someone with a bleeding nose or who is coughing up blood.

In the Sukhu Dhwakha neighborhood there is a goddess called the "Durupo" or "Durupwa:" goddess, literally the "breast" goddess. She is also considered to represent Draupadi, the wife of the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata epic, and to be at the same time one of the ten Tantric goddesses of the Mahavidya. These varied attributions attest to her historical interest, but she now has no function or worship. Another such historical remnant is the Tantric goddess, Chinnamasta, also one of the Mahavidya, but of no present significance.

Dangerous Goddesses: Some Principles of Classification

After we have introduced the remaining classes of divinities, we will attempt to distinguish some of the important contrasts among the classes that are made use of in Bhaktapur to build a symbolic order. In this section we will introduce some of the "ordering potentialities" of the dangerous goddesses. They share most of these with the dangerous male divinities, but as the goddesses are a much more numerous and salient set and as they have some distinctive features of their own, they warrant discussion at this point.

Although Bhaktapur selects aspects of the goddesses as they are portrayed in South Asian tradition for its special purposes, it follows closely the ideas and specific forms (as we have seen in the placement of the Astamatrkas^[*] , for example) presented in the Devi Mahatmya .^[47] We can therefore begin with some passage from that text that convey these ideas. The Devi Mahatmya describes in various ways what we may call a maximal or full form of the goddess (see fig. 13) whose power is in the

Figure 13.
The Goddess in her supreme manifest aspect.

concentration of other divine principles, principles that are partial in relation to the full form. (Devi Mahatmya , II, 9-17; Agrawala 1963, 45f.):^[48]

From the face of Visnu^[*] filled with intense indignation as well as from that of Brahma and Siva sprang forth fierce heat. From the bodies of other Devas also headed by Indra issued forth a resplendent luster. All this light became unified into one. The Devas saw in front of them a Pile of Light blazing like a mountain whose flames filled the whole space. Then that matchless light born from the bodies of all gods gathered into a single corpus and turned into a Woman enveloping the three worlds by her luster. Her face was produced from the light of Siva, her hair from that of Yama, her arms from the luster of Visnu^[*] , her breasts from that of the Moon; her bust from that of Indra; her thighs and legs from that of Varuna.

The Devi Mahatmya goes on to list the derivation of other parts of her cosmically inclusive body. In this particular description she is being generated to fight a demon who has also, significantly, concentrated power of other more limited divinities into himself, and is thus beyond the control of any of the ordinary gods. Mahisha, the king of the Asuras, had "taken over the authority of Surya, Indra, Agni, Vayu, Chandra, Yama, and Varuna^[*] as well as other gods. The wicked Mahisha has turned out all the gods from heaven who are now stalking their life like mortals" (Devi Mahatmya , II, 5, 6; Agrawala 1963, 45).

For another battle against the Asuras, the Goddess absorbs into herself the other dangerous goddesses, themselves the emanations or Saktis of gods, who had fought together in an earlier battle. The Asura Sumbha taunts the Goddess for winning a battle with the help of these other goddesses (Devi Mahatmya , X, 2-5; Agrawala 1963, 123):

O Durga, you are puffed up with the pride of strength. Do not be haughty, you are exceedingly proud but fighting with the strength of others. The Devi said: "I am all alone in the world here. What other is there besides me, O you wild one. See that these goddesses are my own powers entering into myself." The Rishi said: "Then all those Matrka^[*] , Brahmani and others, became absorbed in the body of the Goddess. Thereupon Ambika alone remained." The Devi said: "Through my power I stood here in many forms; all that has been withdrawn by me [into myself] and now I stand alone."

In still another passage the full Goddess is represented as springing directly from the body of Siva's consort, the benign goddess Parvati (Devi Mahatmya , V, 38-40; Agrawala 1963, 85):

O Prince, while the gods were thus engaged in invoking the Goddess through praises and m other ways, Parvati came there to bathe in the waters of the

Ganga^[*] . She of the lovely brows said to the gods, "Who is being praised by you here?" Then sprang forth from her physical sheath Siva Kausiki [an appellation of the goddess] who replied, "This hymn is being addressed m me by the assembled gods vanquished by the Asura Sumbha and routed m battle by Nisumbha." Because that Goddess came out of Parvati's bodily sheath, she is sung as Kausiki amongst all men.

It is important to note here that the benign goddess Parvati seems, as Lynn Bennett puts it in a comment on this passage, "unaware of her powerful war-like ego"—and that after the Dangerous Goddess appears "Parvati withdraws and has no part in the ensuing battle scenes" (1983, 268). The Dangerous Goddess seems, however, to be aware of Parvati. The Goddess as portrayed here can absorb other subsidiary goddesses into herself, can emit subsidiary goddess forms, and is capable of taking different forms at her own full level.

The Devi Mahatmya also deals with the Goddess in another and very different way as the ultimate creative force. Here she is no longer produced by Siva or the other gods, or through a transformation of Siva's consort. The Goddess as creative force is the subject of some of the stotras , the hymns of praise, to the Goddess, which introduce and intersperse the accounts of the heroic cosmic battles of the Devi Mahatmya . Here she is called simply Devi, Goddess, or sometimes Mahamaya, the generator of the concrete and illusionary forms of what is taken to be reality, who "forcibly seizes the minds of even those who have knowledge and leads them to delusion. . . . This animate and inanimate world is created by her. . . . She is supreme eternal knowledge being the cause of moksa^[*] [escape from delusion]. . . . She is eternal having the universe as her form . . . the supreme knowledge, the supreme power, the supreme mind, the supreme memory and the great delusion . . . the giver of manifest form to the gods Brahma, Visnu^[*] and Siva . . . the supporter of the world, the cause of its maintenance and dissolution" (Devi Mahatmya , I passim; Agarawala 1963, 37-43). Devi in this aspect has various titles or equivalences besides Mahamaya, such as Sri, Isvari, and Prakrti^[*] . These titles and names are different than those given to the "manifest" goddesses, either full or partial. This cosmic creator Goddess is referred to in Bhaktapur; for example, she is represented in the central point of the city as a mandala^[*] under her name of Tripurasundari. But much more salient to Bhaktapur is what we have called the "full goddess," the manifest form of Goddess, who is different from the creator Devi of the stotras .

This form, the central protagonist in the drama of the Devi Mahat-

Figure 14.
The Dangerous Goddess in her horrible form.

mya , is manifest at a position in space and a moment in time, albeit mythic space and time. This is the goddess who combines the forces of all the other and separate divinities, who freely yield them to her for their defense. As she fights for the defense of the divine order, she is described as a warrior, "filling the three worlds with her splendor, bending low the earth with the force of her strides, scratching the sky with her pointed diadem, shaking the nether worlds with the twang of her bowstring and standing there filling the ten directions of space with her thousand arms" (Devi Mahatmya , II, 37-38; Agrawala 1963, 51). In the Devi Mahatmya this full form of Devi is most commonly called "Chandika." However, she is given various other names and titles, such as Ambika, Bhadrakali^[*] , Mahadevi, and Durga. She also shares some appellations with the creator Goddess such as Sri and Prakrti^[*] . The full form has as her vehicle a lion. In some battles Chandika fights as herself, but in others she emits another form, Kali, who has a terrifying aspect and who does the fighting. This special terrifying form has a description which is repeatedly represented in Bhaktapur's art, icons and masks, and which is of great ritual importance (Devi Mahatmya , VIII, 5-8; Agrawala 1963, 98):

Kali of terrible countenance [see fig. 14], armed with a sword and a noose, carrying a . . . skull-topped staff decorated with a garland of human heads, clad in a tiger's skin, looking terrible . . . [with] emaciated flesh, with a widely gaping mouth, . . . with lolling tongue, . . . deep sunk reddish eyes, and filling the quarters of space with roaring voice, she impetuously fell upon the great Asuras, killing them and devoured the army of those enemies of Devas.

In some passages Chandika fights alongside of Kali (e.g., VIII, 52-62). Yet, repeatedly in the Devi Mahatmya Chandika gives orders to Kali, and confers praise and titles on her. Kali in this account is not just an aspect of Chandika; she is a subordinate, a more limited, more specialized being.

A rank still lower than Kali, still more limited and discrete in their forms are the Matrkas, the gods' Saktis, who fight in one episode alongside the Goddess as Chandika. Kumari fights with her spear, Brahmani by throwing water that is given power through her mantras , Mahesvari with a trident, the boar-goddess Varahi with her tusks, and so on (Devi Mahatmya , IX). However, as the stotra that follows this account (which we have quoted above) insists, these various Matrkas are all aspects of the one Goddess, Devi.

These relations of whole to part allow for the two dimensions of

classification that we have suggested in relation to spatial units, and, following the approaches of others, in relation to social hierarchy. The whole includes the part, but may emit it in some way so that the part can be considered as a unit in itself. In this case the part and the whole are in a vertical relationship, share some of the same qualities, and are hierarchically arranged, with the whole superior to the part. Furthermore, the whole tends to be more abstract and less specified, whereas the parts is more concrete and more specialized in its function and meaning. This arrangement also allows for horizontal relations because entities at the same level of inclusiveness are equal to each other. We have noted a distinction in the Devi Mahatmya of the full goddess Chandika from a cosmic creative Goddess of a still higher order, the absolute divinity prior to all manifestation. The manifest form of the Goddess in her full power was differentiated from the cosmic form in name, and sometimes was described as a form created by the male gods in concert. Bhaktapur's city religion puts four goddesses in different contexts at the same highest level (and makes no use of a distinction between the rank of a cosmic and a full manifest goddess). Two are related in tradition to names of the creator Goddess, Tripurasundari and Mahalaksmi^[*] (who is a supreme goddess in her context as the Nine Durgas' own deity). One refers to the full manifest form of the Goddess—Bhagavati in Bhaktapur's usage. The fourth, Taleju, is both in her legend a god's god (and thus in a rank above "ordinary" gods) and also, through her participation in the symbolic dramas of the harvest festival, a version of the fully manifest warrior goddess.

Three of these goddesses, Tripurasundari, Mahalaksmi^[*] , and Bhagavati, show their equivalence by having as their identifying Vahana or "vehicle" the lion, as does the manifest Devi in the Devi Mahatmya . So do, significantly, the two goddesses within the Taleju temple who are thought to be royal or warrior deities absorbed by Taleju, namely, Dui Maju and Manesvari. Taleju is, however, popularly said to have a horse vehicle. This probably refers to the white stallion that is used during the procession of Taleju during the Mohani festival. Slusser suggests plausibly that this white horse derives from the "sanctified horse required in ancient Indian coronation ritual, as it was in ancient Nepal, and is in the coronation of the kings of Nepal today" (1982, vol. I, p. 317). Whether the horse is considered the vehicle of the goddess in her Yantra representation is dubious, but that vehicle is an esoteric secret.^[49] The other dangerous goddesses, like the other ordinary goddesses, have each their own particular vehicle. Vaisnavi^[*] has (like Visnu^[*] ) the half-bird Garuda^[*] ,

Varahi, a water buffalo; Indrani^[*] , an elephant; Brahmani, a goose; and Mahesvari, a tiger. The ordinary goddess Sarasvati, like Brahmani (because of her traditional associations with the god Brahma, whose vehicle it also is) has a goose vehicle.

There is one figure whom we encountered in the Devi Mahatmya as the special agent of the full manifest goddess Chandika. This goddess, Kali in the Devi Mahatmya , is in Bhaktapur called "Mahakali." She represents the most frightening form of the Goddess and is used as such in the powerful symbolic enactments of the Nine Durgas group. Here she is below the full Goddess (as the Nine Durgas' supreme goddess Mahalaksmi^[*] ), but in a superior position to the remainder of the goddesses in the group. This Mahakali is a flesh-devouring, blood-drinking, intoxicated, cadaverous form. She has a male equivalent, whose consort she is, the god Bhairava, whom we shall discuss below. Mahakali does not have the full goddess' lion vehicle. Her vehicle is an anthropomorphic male form, supine at or under her foot, which is locally identified as a Kali preta , a kind of dangerous spirit.

The lesser goddesses are thus distinguished from the full manifest form, the Devi, in several ways. They are sometimes literally described as a(n)sa (Sanskrit, a[n]sa ) Devi, as "partial Devis." "Partial," we must emphasize, has a particular meaning here. It does not mean imperfect, but more concrete and more specialized, and in being more specialized, therefore limited. The lesser goddesses as a group are generally of equal status, although in some domains, such as the Nine Durgas, some of them may have special salience. In a few contexts a form that is a full goddess in another context may be conceived of as a partial goddess. This is the case of Mahalaksmi^[*] as one of the peripheral Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, and of Tripurasundari when she is thought of as only the central mandalic^[*] area's protective local goddess, and not the concentrating center of the mandala^[*] . However, in these two particular contexts, while goddesses may be treated in more limited ways, the reverse, the treatment of a limited goddess as a full goddess, does not occur. Each of the full goddesses is located in a different context, within which are clustered her own dependant partial goddesses, in the cases where these exist. Relations and equivalences among the full goddesses in the various sets, horizontal relations, are signaled in various ritual actions. All of the relations between the full goddesses are enacted during Mohani, which is one of the reasons that the festival will be of special interest to us (chap. 15). Finally we have noted the barrier between Parvati and the forms of the Goddess we have been considering here. The same barrier

separates the other "ordinary" goddesses from the Goddess. They belong to a civic, although heroic, sunlit world, she to a peripheral world of shadows.

The dangerous goddesses are used in differentiated ways to create a structure to represent and create order in Bhaktapur. This must be emphasized in the face of a tendency within the Tantric segment of Newar religion to absorb and blend all divinities, particularly the goddesses, and such resulting claims as David Snellgrove's that "there is no need for us to follow the development of these different goddesses, for they all tended eventually to accord with one basic form, that of the Great Mother Goddess, in whom they all more or less lost their separate identities" (1957, 81).

Dangerous Male Gods

There are a few male divinities in Bhaktapur who must be offered meat and alcoholic spirits, and who have frightening representations. Compared to the female dangerous divinities, they are fewer in kind, much less systematically related, and of more limited civic function. In another contrast with both the dangerous female divinities and with the ordinary gods, the male dangerous divinities seem to be further from the classical traditions of South Asia, comparatively more locally adapted and transformed. For that reason we prefer to use their local names, rather than the names of their distant classical ancestors. We have already mentioned that Ganesa^[*] may be a dangerous divinity when he is used to "enter" and give siddhi to the worship of a dangerous divinity, usually in Tantric ritual. In addition there are three exclusively dangerous male divinities who are prominent in Bhaktapur's urban religion—Bhisi(n), Nasa Dya: and a somewhat complex category, Bhaila Dya:.

Bhisi(n) (Bhima)

Bhisi(n), or Bhisi(n) Dya:, "Bhisi(n) God (see fig. 15)," as he is usually referred to, is related tenuously to the Mahabharata's epic hero, Bhima or Bhimasena, one of the five Pandava brothers. He is included in most households' sets of gods (discussed below), but he is in Bhaktapur the special divinity of shopkeepers.^[50] He has three major city shrines, two of which are significantly located along that portion of the city festival route that follows the bazaar. The third one is just to the south of the

Figure 15.
The merchants' special deity, the Bhisi(n) God.

city. Shopkeepers worship him at home and in his temples for good fortune in their commercial affairs. He is also the focus of one annual festival, centering on the temple of Suku Bhisi(n) Dya: in Dattatreya Square in the northeastern part of the city. Representations of Bhisi(n) show him as a powerful man with a full moustache, usually subduing a kneeling vanquished figure, said to be the epic's Kaurava King, Dussasana.

Slusser notes D. R. Regmi's claim (1965-1966, part II, p. 612) that the earliest reference to Bhisi(n) in the Kathmandu Valley is 1540 A.D. , and remarks that all of his images are works of the late Malla period, suggesting a relatively recent (in terms of Newar history), introduction of the figure as a separate god, independent of his position as one of the five Pandava brothers. How he became a god of commerce is unclear. Slusser surmises that he may have been "first associated with the fields as a heroic guardian figure, and later, by extension, guardian of the granary and of trade" (1982, 258f.). It is not clear whether any of the special characteristics of Bhima as portrayed in the Mahabharata, where he is a kind of marginally socialized figure of great strength, facilitate his semantic appropriateness for the merchants. One may, perhaps not entirely frivolously, note the following. When Bhima fought and killed the Kaurava King Duryodhana "the two were well matched, but when Bhima was losing he struck an unfair blow with his mace, thus disregarding an ancient rule that a blow should never be dealt below the navel. This blow broke his adversary's thigh, and hence his epithet Jihmayodhin, the 'unfair fighter'" (Stutley and Stutley 1977, 45). Whatever his specific appropriateness to commerce may be, there are considerations that make a dangerous god more appropriate to the sphere of commerce than an ordinary god, as we shall argue in the summary section of this chapter.

Nasa Dya: (Nrtya^[*] Natha)

Throughout Bhaktapur are a large number of shrines associated with a divinity locally called Nasa God, Nasa Dya:. Niels Gutschow mapped twenty-one of these shrines in a 1975/76 survey (personal communication). Of these, one in the southwestern part of the main festival route is considered the main one, and is a center for sacrifice and worship to him. Nasa Dya: gives skill and effectiveness to public performers; thus people who are to take part in dance or drama or musical performances pray and offer flesh and alcoholic offerings to Nasa Dya: before the

performance. Similarly people who are learning one of the performing arts, including those whose traditional thar profession is music of one kind or another, worship Nasa Dya: in the course of their training. Jugis, for example, on the completion of their formal study of their special musical instrument, a double-reed woodwind, make a flesh and alcohol sacrifice to Nasa Dya:" Nasa " means grace and skill in social as well as "artistic" performances. Someone who has nasa is "cultivated, delightful in social intercourse, . . . entertaining, the life of the party" (Manandhar 1976, 253). Thus people also worship Nasa Dya: for such social skill. Nasa Dya: is represented by holes in the wall of a shrine (or often in private homes). These may be single or in sets of three, and of various shapes, sometimes as triangles with the apices pointing downward. Brahmans identify Nasa Dya: with the South Asian Siva in his aspect as Nrtya^[*] Natha Raja, the "Lord of the Dance," but there are probably no shrine images of him in this form in Bhaktapur. Mary Slusser had identified one such image, of "exceptional interest" precisely because of its unusualness, in the Pasupatinatha shrine complex (1982, vol. 1, p. 233, n.76; vol. 2, pl. 356). She notes that most Nasa Dya:s "are inconsequential images . . . or they decorate the toranas^[*] [decorated arches placed above major shrine icons] of Siva temples" (1982, vol. 1, p. 233, n.76). Like Bhisi(n) Dya:'s relation to Bhima, Nasa Dya:'s to Nata Raja is very distant.^[51]

Bhaila Dya: (Bhairava)

Bhaila Dya:, "Bhaila God," the Newar version of the Hindu deity Bhairava (see fig. 16), is a divinity, or group of divinities, whose images, supremely dramatic in some of their anthropomorphic representations, are widely represented in Newar communities. In the Puranas^[*] Bhairava is sometimes a son of Siva and Parvati, sometimes an emanation emitted by Siva when infuriated. The Newar's Bhairava is associated with this emanation. In his anthropomorphic form he is represented with fangs, bulging eyes, dark blue or black coloring, carrying destructive weapons in his many arms, and wearing garlands of shrunken decapitated heads or skulls. He is thus an iconographic male equivalent of the Kali or, for Bhaktapur, Mahakali aspect of Devi. Bhaila Dya: is also present in a vague nonanthropomorphic form. Here he is a spirit-like creature who is located at or below the surface of the ground—in the cremation grounds or within the city in association with certain powerful natural stones. Finally he is theoretically related to the genesis and classification

Figure 16.
An image of the dangerous deity Bhairava in front of the city's main
Bhairava temple.

of the other dangerous male deities who are in certain contexts considered as "kinds" of Bhaila Dya:s.

The anthropomorphic Bhairava has two main presences in Bhaktapur, Akasa (Sanskrit akasa ) "Sky," Bhaila Dya: and as the Bhairava of the Nine Durgas cycle. The Akasa Bhaila Dya: is housed in one of Bhaktapur's major temple structures located in Ta:marhi Square, a square located on the axis that divides the upper half of the city from the lower half, and which is one of the ritual centers of the city. This is the center that becomes the pivot of the drama of the division and reunification of the city during the spring solar New Year festival, Biska: (chap. 14). Akasa Bhairava and his consort, the dangerous goddess Bhadrakali^[*] , are one of the symbolic foci of the dramatic sequence of the festival that dramatizes in their separation and coupling—in concert with a variety of other vivid symbolic enactments—the conflict and unification of the divisions of the city. The Akasa Bhaila Dya: temple has several representations of Bhairava. In front of the temple, in a recess on its front wall, is a small frightening figure (see fig. 16), sometimes given the name of Kala Bhairava or Kala Bhaila Dya: (because, in one explanation, "even Kala, the Lord of Death trembles before him" [Sahai 1975, 119]). Within the temple are images used in the festival procession, and the major fixed temple image, which is a head without a body. This image is related through various legends (chap. 14) to a headless image of the god in Benares (Varanasi) in India.^[52]

Akasa Bhaila Dya:'s vehicle is Beta Dya: (from the Sanskrit Vetala). In those Puranic^[*] accounts where Bhairava is the son of Siva and Parvati, Vetala is Bhairava's brother (O'Flaherty 1973, 69, 106), but in Bhaktapur he approximates more the South Asian idea of Vetala as "a class of demons, ghouls or vampires who frequent burial grounds, and are said to re-animate the dead" (Stutley and Stutley 1977, 331), a conception that is related to Bhairava's attributes as a stone god (below). Beta Dya: himself is conceived as a sort of agent for Bhaila Dya: in the exercise of his powers. Like many other deities in Bhaktapur, Akasa Bhairava is balanced by another deity. In this case it is the goddess "Bhagavati" in the nearby Nyatapwa(n)la^[*] temple as we have discussed above. In the account of the building of the temple and the installation of "a Bhairava for the protection of the country, and the removal of sin and distress from the people" it was the Bhairava itself that gave people trouble (which is a general potential of the dangerous gods), and it was necessary to balance him with a complementary dangerous goddess. This conception of the goddess of the Nyatapwa(n)la^[*] temple as calming the

dangerous Bhairava is still the popular explanation in Bhaktapur for the juxtaposition of the two temples.

The anthropomorphic Bhaila Dya: has a second dramatic presence in Bhaktapur's civic symbolism and ritual in the Nine Durgas sequence (chap. 15). Here he is represented in his fully powerful and frightening form, as a mask that is the symmetrical complement of the mask of the sequence's most frightening goddess, Mahakali (see color illustrations). Among the group of divinities who make up the Nine Durgas group, Bhairava and Mahakali have the predominant roles. In some of their performances he is the most prominent character, particularly in his presiding over certain animal sacrifices. In the most important of their performances, however, the calendrically determined sequential twa : performances, Bhairava is peripheral to Mahakali. There is also in the Nine Durgas troupe of divinities a god form called "Seto Bhaila Dya:," the white Bhairava, who is in his relation to the female deities of the group a clown-like, ineffectual figure. In his iconographic representation the mask of this Seto Bhaila Dya: is a transformation of Siva, who is also represented as a mask in the performance (see color illustrations). He reflects Siva's ineffectiveness in relation to the Saktis, who have become independent dangerous goddesses.

Bhairava as a vague demonic spirit inhabits the cremation grounds. He is found sometimes located in buried stones under the cremation pyres and is the focus of some Tantric pujas , and in popular assumption, at least, of pujas by spirit doctors, Tantric magicians, and witches. This sort of Bhairava is also thought to be the power in certain stones that "protect" the areas in which they are located. He is related both to ghosts and spirits and to the divinities of such stones, and we will return to him and some of the details of his cremation ground and stone habitations in a later section. Gutschow and his associates have reported eight Bhairava shrines in the city that appear on some paintings as part of a set of mandalic^[*] circles in Bhaktapur's city space (Kö1ver 1976, 69-71; Gutshow and Kö1ver 1975, 21f.; Auer and Gutschow n.d., 38). These are all natural stones. The same set is represented by anthropomorphic statues within the Taleju temple complex. These Bhairavas are considered as consorts of a corresponding set of goddesses.^[53] They have no meaning for public urban symbolic enactment, and little for contemporary Tantric esoteric religion.

The other dangerous male gods of Bhaktapur are vaguely related to Bhaila Dya:. Nasa Dya: is said by some to be an emanation of Bhaila Dya:, and Bhisi(n) Dya:, with his human attributes, to be a sort of ava-

tar of Bhaila Dya:. In spite of such ideas, however, they are treated for the most part as independent divinities.^[54]

Bhairava/Bhaila Dya: encompasses a fairly diffuse class of beings in comparison with the elaborately formulated relations among the dangerous goddesses. There are fewer forms, and many of them are quite vague, which, as we will argue, give those aspects of Bhairava some of their semantic force. While the frightening form of the Goddess, most clearly exemplified by Mahakali, is only one of the forms of the Dangerous Goddess, Bhairava exists only in his frightening form and is in many ways a lesser figure than the Dangerous Goddess. She may be the supreme deity, whereas he never is. Furthermore, his theoretical relation to Siva is even more vague than the relation of the Dangerous Goddess to Siva, for even if in many contexts she has separated herself from Siva, in Tantric theory and practice the relation of Siva and the Goddess as Sakti are obsessively investigated and enacted. And, finally, while the Goddess as Bhagavati is a usual member of collections of household gods, Bhairava is only very rarely included, and that only by upper-status households who have special Tantric initiations and, therefore, powers. These asymmetries are significant.

Natural Stones As Divinities

The figures that we have been calling "major gods" in the previous sections are so referred to because of the overlapping of two qualities: (1) they are major and widely shared figures in South Asian Hindu oral and scriptural traditions, particularly that of the Puranas^[*] , and (2) they are made use of in the integrations of the city as a whole. In addition to such "major gods," however, there are other classes of supernatural figures, with special characteristics and special urban uses. We will discuss them here and in the following sections.

In the previous sections we have been concerned with divinities whose anthropomorphic (or on occasion diagrammatic) forms can be indifferently represented in "man-made" forms in carved wood, cast metal, painting on cloth, paper or wood, masks, or possessed human bodies, or in the case of some Tantric worship (chap. 9), clear mental images. We have noted in this and previous chapters that some divinities were represented and embodied by unworked "natural" stones. Some of these stones may be marked with some kind of symbol carved on them, but it is their "naturalness" that mostly seems to characterize them and give them some special possibilities of use and meaning.

Pithas

In his book on Hindu iconography, J. N. Banerjea notes that from very early periods in India "aniconism" existed along with iconic forms, anthropomorphic and, more rarely, theriomorphic images. Among these aniconic objects were, and are, sacred stones "scattered over different parts of India, which are taken to stand for one or [an]other of the cult divinities. . . . The well-known Sakta tradition about the severed limbs of Sati falling in different parts of India and about the latter being regarded as so many pithasthanas^[*] , particularly sacred to the Saktiworshipers^[*] , should be noted in this connection. In modern times, the most important objects of worship in many of these shrines are usually stone blocks covered over with red cloth" (1956, 83). At the core of Bhaktapur's pithas are such unworked stones, and the pitha goddesses we have discussed are located in them. Almost all pithas are marked by stones, but an apparent exception is Guyesvari, the true Devi pitha located in the Pasupatinatha shrine complex, which is "a water-filled pothole surrounded with the carved stone petals of a lotus" (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 327). In such apparent exceptions there is often a popular or an esoteric understanding that somewhere beneath the surface there is, in fact, a stone that is the seat of the divinity. There are various groups of deities associated with pithas . These are manifestations of the Tantric Goddess and groups of gods associated with her in Tantric theory and imagery among the Newars. Several of these are present as esoteric or lost historical residues in Bhaktapur (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 326; Kölver 1976), but the important persisting ones in Bhaktapur are the pithas of the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, and, for the internal religion of Taleju, those of superseded royal lineage goddesses, as we have discussed above.

The Digu God, Lineage Gods

Outside the city boundaries in several directions (chap. 7) are natural stones,^[55] which are the divinities that various extended family groups (phuki ) worship once a year as their lineage god. These stones are called "Digu Gods," or, popularly, "Dugu Gods," after the goats, dugu , which are often sacrificed there. Phukis also have shrines and icons of their lineage gods within the city. In those groups in the upper levels of the macrostatus system, those that are entitled to Tantric initiation, the images, called the "Aga(n) God," are elaborately housed and wor-

shiped. The Aga(n) Gods are usually anthropomorphic forms of the Tantric Goddess. The pairing of an external open shrine with its aniconic stone divinity and an internal anthropomorphic or sometimes yantra god-form housed within the city, is parallel in both structure and certain aspects of worship to that of an Astamatrka's^[*] external pitha Goddess and her iconic image in her god-house within the city. The Digu God's shrine is sometimes referred to as a "kind of pitha ." The Digu Dya: stone is usually backed by a carved arch or torana^[*] .^[56] Rarely there is no stone visible in front of the torana^[*] , and the ground is considered the sacred spot, with the stone often assumed to be beneath it. The Digu God is sometimes considered as the lineage god in itself, but for upper-status families it is generally considered as the seat of the particular form of Devi which is their lineage divinity. Whatever the conception of the Digu divinity, it is necessary to offer it blood offerings and alcoholic spirits. We will return to the uses and worship of the Digu God and the Aga(n) God in chapter 9.

Protectors of Local Space, Chetrapal and Pikha Lakhu

Everywhere in Bhaktapur are natural stones, some lying flat, some protruding from the ground, which are identified as "area protectors," chetrapals , from the Sanskrit ksetra^[*]pala , a guardian of a field or place, or, within the realm of divinities, a "tutelary deity of the fields" (Macdonnell 1974, 79). These are popularly called chelpa gods. They are found near all dya: che(n) (god-houses), all Aga(n) che(n) (the special houses for upper-status thar s' Tantric lineage deities), near many private houses, and near or within the grounds of many temples. Each twa: or important sub-twa: has its own central twa: chetrapal . The various chetrapals are regarded as distinct individual divinities, and may have local names. Some of the chetrapals in public city spaces are identified with Bhairava or Kumari. In theoretical discussion all chetrapals are said to be a "kind of Bhairava," following a general South Asian association of such area protectors with Bhairava, or with a "portion of Siva" (cf. Stutley and Stutley 1977, 153; Mani 1974, 434). Some chetrapals have a yantra , or "mystic diagram" engraved on them—a lotus, a triangle, a six-pointed double triangle, or a more elaborate Sri yantra —but others are left uncarved. Chetrapals protect the nearby structure or the area around themselves from thieves, from illness, and from misfortune caused by evil spirits. They are the kind of divinity (typical of the dangerous divinities) that can cause trouble if inadvertently neglected or

mistreated, and can thus in themselves cause illness or misfortune. Tantric physicians will sometimes ascribe illness to the inadvertent stepping on, spitting on, or otherwise offending some chetrapal . The major chetrapals in each twa: must be given offerings of food by each household at the finish of major household feasts. Some households make an optional additional offering before the beginning of the feast. Chetrapals protecting god-houses and Aga(n) houses may also be offered food offerings in conjunction with feasts in honor of the particular deity whose house they protect. Sometimes people worship local chetrapals in hopes of propitiating an offended chetrapal or curing or preventing some misfortune. The major areal and neighborhood chetrapals are sometimes covered with a decorative honorific canopy and smeared with colored pigments.

Several of the chetrapal have particular legends associated with them. Two are of general city importance. One is associated with the Bhairava who inhabits the cremation grounds. Another, called "Swatuña Bhairava," is of importance as the spot where the power of the goddess Taleju is transferred to the Nine Durgas performers at the beginning of their annual cycle (chap. 15). We will discuss these two figures further in the next section.

There is a kind of aniconic stone divinity that is sometimes regarded as a kind of chetrapal and sometimes as an independent and different form that is of considerable importance for symbolic action. This is a stone placed in front of the main door of every house, between that door and the road (chap. 7). This is called the pikha lakhu ("pikha " has the sense of moving or depositing something "outside"; "lakhu " [lakhu in Kathmandu Newari] is an old Newari word for path or road). This stone, embedded in the ground, may have been found there, but usually is brought from somewhere else during the construction of the house. It is usually engraved with the same kinds of figures sometimes carved on chetrapals . It is sometimes theoretically identified as Kumara, thought of as Ganesa's^[*] brother, a god who has little significance in Bhaktapur. In its use, the pikha lakhu , popularly called the pila laki god, is in each of its locations an individual god in itself. This stone marks the point in front of the main entrance, which locates an imaginary line at some distance from its actual external walls, separating its symbolic interior from the exterior public space. We have noted in chapter 7 something of the uses of that boundary.

Finally, the chwasas , the stones marking major crossroads whose principal functions ally them to the group of pollution-disposing stone

divinities that we shall consider in the next section, are also sometimes secondarily considered as area protectors, and thus as chetrapals .

Mediators to the Underground—Disposers of Pollution

An important use of stones as deities is in the marking and protection of boundaries. The forces of the boundary protectors are directed to the outside of the boundary. They keep things out, rather than in. As we have noted in the last chapter, Bhaktapur has another boundary, that with whatever it is that lies beneath the city. While the space above the city is open to the sphere of the astrologically important "astral deities" and to the vaguely conceived heavens of the various gods, it is not conceived as separated from the city by a boundary. What is below is somewhat more problematic. It joins with the outside of the city beyond its encircling boundaries as a realm of somewhat nebulous forces, such as the nagas , which may be dangerous if disturbed or inadvertently encountered.^[57] The underground, like the area outside the city is a realm into which waste and pollution can pass. Stones that are the loci for the passage act as a kind of valve, which consume the dangerous pollution and/or prevent its return. Like all deities of similar function, the stone deities involved are dangerous in themselves. In the last chapter we discussed the chwasa , stones placed at the major crossroads in each neighborhood. Portions of the head of a sacrificial animal which were used ceremonially at feasts must be brought there by the senior woman of the house. Clothes worn by a person at the time of or just before death are also brought to the chwasa . It is the traditional responsibility of designated members of the Jugi thar to remove these clothes from the chwasa . We have noted in the last chapter other polluting materials deposited at the chwasa in Bhaktapur and other Newar communities. For some religious theorists the god of the chwasa is the dangerous goddess, Matangi^[*] . Matangi^[*] (or more popularly the "Chwasa god," or the "Kala god") consumes the dangerous pollution of the materials left on it.^[58]

Food left over from a feast and thus polluted may be given to a Po(n), as a human pollution remover, or it may be thrown into a garbage pit in the courtyard at the rear of the house. The courtyard is the seat of a form of Siva,^[59] Luku Mahadya:, the "hiding Siva." This is a stone buried in the courtyard and worshiped once a year on Sithi Nakha, the day that ceremonially marks the end of the dry season and the anticipation of the annual rainy season (chap. 15). According to Vogt, Siva as

Luku Mahadya: "feeds upon the waste of the houses and transmutes it into creative power. To do this he takes the form of a ghoul. Otherwise the pisaca [a dangerous spirit, see below] . . . would come and feast on it. They [pisacas ] are evil ghouls with only skeleton frames who are associated with decay and madness" (1977, 103).

A third set of disposers of symbolic waste or pollution are found outside the city in the cremation grounds, and are also natural stones. These are the Masan (cremation ground) Bhairavas. In the main dipa or masan (Nepali, from Sanskit smasana^[*] ), the Cupi(n)ga:, the Masan Bhairava or Masan Bhaila Dya: is represented and focused in a stone believed to be under the ground at the place where the cremations are done. In the other two dipas there are visible stones at the surface of the earth, representing and embodying the divinity. During cremations Masan Bhairava is conceived as being below the burning body. The body must be consumed before the spirit is free to leave the locality. The fire does this, but Masan Bhairava also is associated with the destruction of the body and the liberation of the spirit. In his main location at the Cupi(n)ga: dip , Masan Bhairava is worshiped or at least thought to be worshiped by various peoples whose powers are independent of the ordinary priestly system of the city. These include non-Newar Shaivite pilgrims and sadhus, shaman-like spirit doctors, members of the Jugi thar , and witches. Some Tantric pujas are rumored to be offered to him there. These are all quests for religious/magical power or siddhi beyond the ordinary interior moral controls and institutional arrangements of the city.

The taming of Masan Bhairava is reflected in a legend. The Bhairava of Cupi(n)ga:, whose stone is supposed to have a yantra engraved on it, is associated with an anthropomorphic form of the deity that roamed the city in the past and was the cause of much trouble, including the death of many young people in Bhaktapur. A Tantric priest of great power, understanding the cause of Bhaktapur's troubles, seized Masan Bhairava and pulled out his tongue and cut it into three parts. The three pieces of the tongue are now three contiguous stones, named "Swatuna Bhairava," which function as a chetrapal in the Inaco Twa: in the eastern part of the city, and as important markers for certain important festival actions during the Mohani and Biska: festival sequences.^[60] The remainder of the Bhairava remains now usefully fixed in the cremation ground.

Masan Bhairava is a clear example of the theme common to many stories and ideas about the dangerous deities—that they are destructive

forces captured (more or less tentatively) through power for some special purpose, and put to the use of the city as a city divinity (compare the Nine Durgas legend, chap. 15).

Astral Deities

Bhaktapur, like all South Asia, has a body of astrological theory centered on the Navagraha, nine heavenly bodies and events,^[61] which are also thought of as divinities of benign or malignant influence. In the course of Hindu and Newar iconography these Navagraha have been given iconic representations, sometimes, particularly for Surya the sun god, elegant ones (Pal and Bhattacharyya 1969). The Navagraha are studied by astrologers (chap. 10)—with the help of detailed printed annual astrological charts and calendars—in their relation to the time of an individual's birth for the purpose of guiding decisions about important undertakings of many kinds and to diagnose and recommend treatment for certain illnesses and misfortunes.^[62] Astral considerations are also used in some pujas and festivals to determine their exact proper timing. In general, astrological procedures are used, particularly in the anticipation of risky undertakings or in problems arising out of errors in previous undertakings, to adjust individual action to impersonal cosmic order. The action at issue must be, of course, one where choices are free in some sense—aspects of a journey, a marriage, a business undertaking, or the timing of a ceremony, which are not specified by some other aspect of urban order. Astrology fills a gap, where the more common kinds of ordering of action, that determined by role, city area, annual calendar, or phase of the life cycle, do not operate.

Astrological considerations are important throughout the life cycle starting with the astrologically orienting time of birth. Worship of the sun, sometimes taken as the representative of all the Navagraha, is part of each of the life-cycle ceremonies. In one set of ceremonies, those associated with a girl's first menses (app. 6), the sun has particular importance, as the girl is "presented" to it and worships it after a prolonged period of seclusion in darkness.

The sun, and to a much lesser extent the moon, have other symbolic usages drawn from other aspects of the Hindu tradition, particularly those remnants of early Vedic religion that are parts of Brahmans' internal thar religion, and the Vedic component of their service to high-status clients such as the Homa ceremony. Ordinary people pray to the sun in a perfunctory manner on Sundays from the open roof porches of

their houses. Finally, many collections of household gods also include an image representing the sun.

The Navagrapha have no special shrines and are not used to mark city space. As we have noted above in the discussion of the peripheral Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, the Pujavidhi section of the Agni Purana^[*] contains a diagram associating the Navagraha each with a specific Matrka^[*] (Pal and Bhattacharyya 1969, 39f.) in a sequence that has some correspondence to the sequence of those goddesses at Bhaktapur's perimeter. The circle of peripheral Mandalic^[*] Goddesses in Bhaktapur, which are thought of and dealt with as arranged starting at the east and moving clockwise in almost exactly the same order as the listing of the Saktis of the gods in the Devi Mahatmya , corresponds at the same time—with one problematic position interposed—to the order of the planets as days of the week when the Matrka-planetary^[*] correspondence noted in the Pujavidhi is taken account of. This dim possible echo of astrological associations has no contemporary meaning.

The Brahmans' Vedic Gods

The term "Vedic" is sometimes used in Bhaktapur to separate the "ordinary" gods and religious practices from the dangerous gods and their associated worship, which are then sometimes called "Tantric." In this usage "Vedic gods" are for the most part the Puranic^[*] gods of later Hinduism. However, there are many ancient truly Vedic gods, who are invoked in the litanies, mantras, and practices of some ceremonies of the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans for their own internal thar and family uses, and for aspects of ceremonies performed for their clients. As Michael Witzel writes in an article entitled "On the History and the Present State of Vedic Tradition in Nepal," "the Vedic religion, which preceded both Buddhism and medieval Hinduism, had already in Licchavi time largely been superseded by Puranic^[*] and Tantric elements, yet this oldest form of Aryan worship and learning has come down to the present age" (1976, 17). Witzel traces the history of Vedic practices and texts in Nepal, and (for our present purposes) notes the continuing performance of some ancient rituals such as the Agnihotra through the centuries. He also reports the persistence into the present of an annual Vedic Soma sacrifice. Bhaktapur Brahmans still learn and chant the Yajurveda , although (as Witzel notes) the knowledge of the other Vedas is dying out and there has been a diminution in Vedic studies among the Brahmans in recent generations.

The persistence of these rituals and their associated gods is of considerable historical interest, but from the point of view of Bhaktapur's city religion, these Vedic gods are the internal gods of the Brahmans and a canonical reference in some phases of Brahman conducted worship for others. These Vedic gods are the gods that add special supernatural effectiveness to the Brahmans' practices. Many other thars also have special, internal divinities of diverse origin, who are of importance to the life of the city insofar as they guarantee the effectiveness of the thar 's output into the city system, although for these other thars they have later historical origins. Thus, for city religion the true Vedic gods have become the internally validating thar deities of the Brahmans as one cell in Bhaktapur's complex religious system.

Pilgrimage Gods of the Royal Center

There are a number of shrines and temples that are found for the most part in the large square in front of the Malla palace and within the Taleju temple complex which represent gods that are not important to the public ritual or symbolic life of the city. These include such forms and appellations as Pasupatinatha, Guhyesvari, Annapuna^[*] , Jagannatha, Ramasvara, Kedarnatha, and Badrinatha. These shrines were erected by the Malla kings to represent gods found at famous pilgrimage centers in India^[63] and in other parts of Nepal, particularly the Valley shrine complex, Pasupatinatha. These shrines are now maintained and worshiped in a perfunctory way by Rajopadhyaya Brahmans in their continuing function as the Malla kings' priests. They were conceived of as places where worship could be a substitute for pilgrimages for the convenience of the court. The Malla kings, local Brahmans say now, could get as much merit from erecting them and in subsequent generations praying at them as by going on a pilgrimage. It is also said that such shrines were especially important when war or other external conditions made such pilgrimages impossible. These sites are now sometimes worshiped by passersby or local residents, and sometimes the local Pasupatinatha and Guhyesvari may still be worshiped as a substitute for a visit to their main shrines at the Pasupatinatha temple complex.

The structures are of interest to our present study in that in contrast to most of the temples and shrines and associated gods of Bhaktapur, they have a reference to real space and location elsewhere than Bhaktapur and its immediate environment. The placement of these sites at

Bhaktapur's Royal center, their Royal use, and their identification with "foreign" shrines, echoes, perhaps, a symbolic device for relating a city as a "cosmo-magical" symbol, as Paul Wheatley phrases it, to an "empire." Wheatley illustrates this with a summary of Paul Mus's (1936, 1937) study of twelfth-century Bayon in Cambodia, a city that contained statues of provincial gods, "so that Bayon as a whole constituted a pantheon of the personal and regional cults practiced in the various parts of the kingdom. By thus assembling them at the sacred axis of Kambujadesa, the point where it was possible to effect an onto-logical passage between the worlds so that the royal power was continually replenished by divine grace from on high, Jayarvarmin, the King, brought these potentially competitive forces under his own control" (Wheatley 1971, 432).

Traditional Bhaktapur's "imperial" impulses began to fade rapidly beyond the boundaries of the Valley, but they were, in however attenuated form, an aspect of royalty and its symbolism, as we will see in other contexts. The loss of Bhaktapur's Malla kings, that is, of its "own kings," exaggerated and distorted the balance toward Bhaktapur's inner orientations. The "Gods of the Royal Center" are, perhaps, a wistful sign of past Royal conceits.

Household Gods

One of the cellular units in Bhaktapur is the household. Like other such units, households have their own internal gods. Daily household worship, puja , in households are offered to "all the gods" (usually, as we have noted, with Visnu^[*] as the central figure), but these gods are really a limited group, as represented by the images that may be present in households. On special occasions, however, one or another of these household gods is the focus of worship. Upper-status households (in the past only the groups higher than the farming thars , but now including also most of the economically comfortable farming families) have in the puja kuthi , or puja collection, not only a variety of equipment for pujas but also collections of images of gods usually as bronze or brass statues. There are, according to Brahman family priests, some god images that are virtually always included in these collections, and others that are only occasionally found there, at the whim of the household.

All puja collections in households able to afford a collection of metal god images will include images of Ganesa^[*] , Visnu-Narayana^[*] , Siva, Bhagavati, and among shopkeepers and those engaged in commercial enter-

prises, Bhisi(n) Dya:. Visnu^[*] may be represented by an anthropomorphic image either alone or with his consort Laksmi, or by a stone or fossil salagrama . Siva is represented by an anthropomorphic figure, by himself or with his consort. In these combined figures of Siva and his consort as household deities, Siva is generally called "Mahesvara" and his consort, "Uma." Siva is also represented commonly by some form of the linga^[*] . Other deities commonly represented are Sarasvati, the Sun and Moon (usually in a combined image), and certain of Visnu's^[*] more popular avatars and their associates—Rama and Krsna^[*] , with or without consorts, and Hanuman. Upper-status families with Tantric initiation may also have a metal plate with an engraved yantra representing Siva and Sakti and an image of Bhairava in their ordinary household collection. (They will also have special Tantric lineage images kept in a separate room with restricted access.)

Among the less common images found in some collections are images of the gods' consorts by themselves—Laksmi, Parvati (often in this form called "Annapurna^[*] "),^[64] and Rama's consort Sita. Among the rare images are vehicles associated with gods, such as Siva's bull and Indra's elephant. These latter seem to be of aesthetic or novelty interest as much as for their connection with a god. There are also rare images of major gods in unusual forms such as the cosmic Visnu^[*] reclining on a serpent, and images of the minor avatars of Visnu^[*] , such as the dwarf, turtle, fish, or boar avatars . There may be images of Rsis^[*] , Vedic "seers," and of the minor god (for Bhaktapur) Kumara. The collection may also include other kinds of divinized objects—images of nagas , river stones representing various gods, books divinized as Saravati, and so forth.

The common household pantheons consist for the most part of the major ordinary gods, the gods that represent, as we will argue, ideal and representative images of civic persons. To this group an image of the goddess in her protective warrior form is added. Then there are the various idiosyncratic household choices, which are generally representatives of the benign, ordinary deities. In these collections some images can represent any subsidiary gods that they "contain"—Visnu's^[*] image can represent his consort and his avatars and their consorts; Bhagavati can represent all the forms of the Tantric Goddess.

Ghosts and Spirits

The various supernatural beings we have been discussing are all called "dya: " in Newari, a term that we have variously glossed by the histor-

ically cognate terms "divinity" and "deity," as well as by "gods." In addition, Bhaktapur also has a diverse assortment of beings that are not dya: , nor in Western conception "gods." These beings are heterogeneous nebulous forms having wills, understanding, motivations, and some sort of corporal identity. They are usually, but not always, malignant, and of various degrees of potency. All of them are uncanny, the subjects of thrilling accounts and horror tales. In comparison to the divinities with their canonical representation and traditions, these forms, "ghosts" and "spirits," are more vaguely defined and there is much less agreement on their nature and proper names. The social and psychological implications and uses of these creatures differ in important ways from those of the dya:s . Our purpose for introducing them in this chapter is a limited one—to see what light they may throw on the nature of Bhaktapur's aggregate of supernatural actors. These beings may be roughly sorted into those that are somehow derived from some spiritual substance left by humans after their deaths, and those that are independent beings in their own right—as are other living creatures in general, including gods. There is not always agreement if a particular kind of uncanny creature belongs in one or the other category. Most of these beings are familiar South Asian forms, some few are perhaps of Northern origin.

The ghost-like creatures, associated with spirits of the dead, are often called preta or bhut-pret (from the Sanskrit preta , locally pronounced "pret "). "Preta " refers to the particular spiritual principle or entity that represents the continuation of a person after death, and that undergoes various transformations. For the first twelve days after death the spirit is conceived to be in a preta form, after which it is variously conceived as becoming an ancestor spirit or pitr^[*] , or of being safely on its way to some place of judgment, or state of reincarnation (app. 6). The corpse itself is also referred to as a preta . There are various mishaps that can prevent the proper passage through and beyond the preta stage, and the preta then will become a troublesome earth-bound ghost. A person who was not "ready" to die or did not want to may become a permanent preta . Someone who dies in such a way that the proper rituals cannot be done—such as in an accident away from home or whose death is considered "unnatural"—can also become such a preta (cf. G. S. Nepali 1965, 124f.). The presence of these ghosts is often harmlessly manifested in such events as a window or door moving by itself or a chair shifting position. They stay around their former homes usually, and will not harm family members if as many as possible of the proper postdeath

rituals have been performed. There are, however, more malevolent varieties that may enter a person and consume them from the inside,^[65] causing them to lose weight and become ill, and which require the services of a special spirit exorcist.

Bhutas (from the Sanskrit bhuta , in Bhaktapur pronounced "bhut ") are differentiated from pretas (by more theoretically inclined Newars at least) as being uncanny forms that are not derived from human spirits and that are independent beings.^[66] They are responsible for the same kinds of phenomena as pretas —unexplained movements of inanimate objects, illness, apparitions, and sleep disturbances. There are still other beings that for some people are kinds of bhutas , for others kinds of pretas , and for still others neither pretas nor bhutas but independent beings. Among these is the Khya,^[67] which exists in two forms, white and black. The white is benign and guards the house from other spirits. It sometimes may snuggle up to a person, and produces a tickling feeling. Black ones may produce frightening nightmares. They may press on people's chests during sleep, making it difficult to breath or to move. While for some people Khyas are independent spirits, but not bhutas , for others they are a kind of bhuta ; for still others they arise from a body that has not been thoroughly cremated so that some flesh. remains. Another group of spirits are Twa(n)s, which shriek at the moment of the death of someone in the area, and whose shriek may cause the death of people who hear it. Another is the Kini or Kikini, which has the form of a beautiful woman who tries to seduce young men. If they yield they will sicken and die. The only clue to her spirit nature is that her feet are placed backwards on her legs. There is also the Kawa(n), a particularly dangerous spirit, which looks like a skeleton and makes a rattling sound when it moves. If you run into one, it will kill you. Kawa(n)s help guard the goddess Mahakali, and are represented by boys in the Nine Durgas dance dramas. People talk of actual encounters, their own and others, with such spirits. Legends and "literary" tales told in the city tell of still other demonic forms—such as the giant Raksasas^[*] and goulish Pisacas who are not, however, thought to be encountered in the ordinary life of Bhaktapur as the other spirits and ghosts may be.

The ghosts and spirits cluster at crossroads, inhabit the woods and fields outside of the city, lurk in the dark, and are driven away by bright lights. Sometimes they may invade a home but usually lurk in outside shadowy areas. An encounter with them is usually a matter of some accident or inadvertent mistake. There is a period lasting about one month in the spring of every year when rice planting is under way in the

fields around Bhaktapur when the "bhut-prets " are free to enter the city (chap. 15). This freedom is explained in that the protective Nine Durgas have completed their annual cycle, and have left the city. The spirits must be chased out of the city during the subsequent Gatha Muga: Ca:re festival. Usually, however, ghosts and spirits are the private concerns of individuals or families. This, we shall argue in the context of the other supernatural beings in this chapter, is reflected in the attributes that are ascribed to them.

Nagas

There is one creature that is difficult to classify. It is spirit-like but also is like a powerful "natural" serpent. It usually dwells beneath the earth, but may shake the foundations of people's houses, or leave its underground domain and enter them. These are the nagas , "supernatural snakes." They are most important in considerations of new building on previously undisturbed ground, and astrologers must determine how to avoid disturbing them and how to placate them chap. 7). The shaking or collapse of houses may be ascribed to them, as are some episodes of disease among household members. Sometimes people glimpse a naga moving in snake-like form within the house. When the naga of the foundations is in harmony with the house, it serves to protect it from harmful influences. As we have noted, holes are placed in the walls of houses so that the nagas can easily get out.

Bhaktapur's Pantheon As A System of Signs

Underlying our presentation of Bhaktapur's deities and supernatural figures is the assumption that the many individual deities, objects, and creatures we have discussed are imagined, created, and arraged in such a way that they can be comprehended by people in Bhaktapur and that they are able to make, each in its own way, their special contribution to the representation, creation, and maintenance of the city's mesocosm. We have noted that the active members of the pantheon are, for the most part, selected from the great South Asian historical and areal lending library of god forms. There are both economic and semantic reasons for the selection.

In a study of the meaningful (as opposed to "known about") deities in the "personal pantheons" of a Chinese and a Hindu informant,

Roberts, Chiao, and Pandey (1975) found that although the Chinese informant knew in some detail about some sixty deities and the Hindu informant about more than one hundred, their "meaningful god sets"—the ones that had "personal significance and salience" for them—was, for each, fifteen deities. After examining some of the aspects of meaning by which each informant compared, contrasted, and sorted the members of his pantheon, they concluded that "Meaningful god sets appear to be symbolic small-group networks, with believers ordering their thoughts about their gods in terms of a relatively small number of major dimensions. Since they seem to have few members, it is probably the case that every god within this limited number must carry his full religious and psycho-cultural weight" (Roberts, Chiao, and Pandey 1975, 145f.). The number of active gods in Bhaktapur's urban pantheon that are of general urban importance are also limited in number, although there are more of them than the fifteen in those two sample private meaningful pantheons.^[68] There are somewhat more than forty if the ghosts and spirits are included, and less than forty without them. That quantity is probably small enough so that each deity may carry a "full religious and cultural weight" for city dwellers. This is to argue, following Roberts et al., that the civic pantheon is a "meaningful god set" to the city's individuals , for the numerical constraint has something to do with individual cognitive capacities. However, the gods' identification, meaning, and use are made easier by their location in a few more general meaningful classes . Those classes, in fact, contribute importantly to the deities' differential "religious and psycho-cultural weight" in the public urban order.

In his summary work on ancient Greek polytheistic religion, Walter Burkert writes of Greek ritual that "the same repertoire of signs is employed by various groups in various situations" (1985, 55). The Greek pantheon, in contrast to, say, the vast Hittite and Babylonian pantheons, is distinguished by its "compactness and clarity of organization . . . the Greek gods make up a highly differentiated and richly contrasted group." And, he adds, "The primary differentiations are taken from the elementary family groupings: parents and children, male and female, indoors and outdoors" (1985, 218).^[69] If a common "repertoire of signs" is to be put to concrete uses in a community and thus to be understandable and learnable, it must, as the paper of Roberts and colleagues suggests, be sufficiently compact and differentiated for such uses.

There have been some anthropological approaches to Hindu pantheons as "repertoires of signs" (Babb 1975; Wadley 1975; Harper 1959) in comparatively simpler Hindu communities which will later provide some useful comparisons with Bhaktapur. As Babb put it for the area of Madhya Pradesh that he studied, "The pantheon is not a haphazard congeries of gods and goddesses but a system of symbols that formulate a view of reality. The pantheon symbolizes a world, the world in which ritual action takes place" (1975, 215). When we consider a deity (or any other type of cultural object or event) as a "sign" and as a member of a domain of signs, we are interested in its meanings and uses to a particular community of sign interpreters and its meaning for certain purposes—here, as throughout this book, for the most part for the purposes of urban integration. The deity's history is of interest in such an analysis only as it is "living" and informs present meaning and use. In a sense "extra" history clings to it, however, and makes it something more than present systematic community usage may require^[70] and gives it a creative potential for some emerging future conditions.

But to what do those meanings cling?

Bhaktapur's Pantheon As A System of Signs: Some Notes on Idols

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Abbé Jean-Antoine Dubois, carefully considering the question of "idolatry," wrote that Hindu idolatry was "grosser" than pagan idolatry, in that while the pagans worshiped fauns and naiads, the beings who presided over the forests and the rivers, Hindus worshiped the "material substance itself, . . . water, fire, the most common household implements" (1968, 548). "Idolatry" here means the violation of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic profoundly transforming program and dictate to pagan and "primitive" religions to worship the distant creator rather than the environing creation.^[71] But, Dubois continues, "It is true that they admit another kind of idolatry which is a little more refined. There are images of deities of the first rank which are exposed to public veneration only after a Brahman has invoked and incorporated in them these actual divinities. In these cases, it is really the divinity that resides in the idol, and not the idol itself, that is worshiped" (1968, 548). This is what sophisticated—and probably most—people in Bhaktapur still hold. This does not allow us to dismiss the "idols" themselves, however, the "idols" that, as Dubois reminds us, embody specifically "deities of the first rank."

The "idols" are, that is, only one of several kinds or classes of forms of deities. Those classes of forms are centrally important for carrying, each in its way, an important category of significance. Within the class of "idols" their members' differentiated identities are constituted by their own iconographic components—the gestures, postures, paraphernalia, associated "vehicles," crowns, arrangement of hair, and so on, which are the subject of iconography, and which serve to identify the particular divinity. These components, which turn, for example, a carved piece of stone into an adequate representation of Siva, are for the most part neither our concern nor the concern of the people of Bhaktapur once the minimal adequacy of the image to represent what it is supposed to represent has been assured. The central problem in the urban uses of the pantheon is to know that an image is or is not Siva. The constituting parts of the image are of concern only where they may have some direct semantic import and thus contribute to the meaning as well as the identification of the image, and in the rare cases where the iconographic details of a particular version of a divinity may give the image one rather than another of its possible significances and uses.

Bhaktapur's Pantheon As A System of Signs: Classes of Meaningful Forms

Each of Bhaktapur's urban supernaturals is from one point of view a somewhat fuzzy clump of ideas and feelings and urges to action in peoples' minds. These are usually manifest in or focused on concrete material objects or, in the case of spirits and ghosts, an imagined object. Whatever the ideas, emotions, and calls to action understood to be associated with these objects, it is the concrete objects that exist in some sort of external space, make an impact on the senses, and have perceivable boundaries. Many of these objects can be manipulated, placed and fixed in space or moved through it and used as central references for action. The object is a part of the meaningful deity considered as a "sign," but it is important for our purposes to distinguish it from other meaningful aspects. It is something like what Charles Morris (1938) called a "sign vehicle." The sign vehicle, in concert with the other sorts of meanings that it focuses makes up a sort of "god sign," which, following the semiotic analogy somewhat further, can be combined and contrasted with other such signs in various ways making possible an infinite variety of symbolic statements.

The meaning of a city god, like all "natural" sign systems (in contrast

to logically constructed ones) is a multilayered, context-dependent, and sometimes ambiguous fabric. The god-bearing objects and man-made images not only carry great quantities of history, myth, and legend but also absorb the implications of their uses, their relation to status, space, time, and specific symbolic enactments, and that absorbed meaning, in turn, makes them fit for new relations from which they again absorb meaning in a continuing process. However, the objects and images are not just sponge-like units absorbing any meaning of placement and use, Humpty Dumptyish terms that can mean anything one chooses to make them mean. Certain aspects of their meaning are more central, less fluid than others, and give to the gods as signs their adequacy to be used or located in certain ways. This can be called, for want of a better term, their "primary contribution" to the field of meaning. These "primary" aspects include the major legendary characteristics ascribed to the god in Hindu tradition. Much of their "primary contribution" comes from very general aspects of their form, however, and that form is at the same time—and in specific relation to its context-resistant contribution to their meaning—an important aspect of their classification.

The formal aspects that may be used to sort the pantheon into classes of deities are different from those that differentiate the members of the various typological groups. The members are usually differentiated by conventional iconographic features. Hierarchical relations among members, where they obtain, may be indicated by relative features—comparative size or position (right vs. left, center vs. periphery). The classes of gods are distingusihed by neither conventional iconographic signs nor relation, but by discontinuous and "directly meaningful" (rather than "conventional") contrasts.

The classes of deity differentiated by "directly meaningful," easily understandable, contrasts of form are those fundamental contrasting sets we have discussed throughout the chapter, the sets that are put to extensive symbolic use in the city. Let us recall those classes, rearranged for present purposes in an order different from that in which we presented them above. These classes are: astral deities, ghosts and spirits, stone deities, and major civic deities (of which there were two sub-classes, benign and dangerous). The other deities we discussed (e.g., royal pilgrimage gods, household gods) belong in their form to one or another of these groups.

The contrasts that serve to sort the types of supernaturals and bear on their meaning and use are in the following dimensions:

1. Proximity.

Proximate forms are present in city space (including its bordering outside where they may be directly encountered, and are in contrast to the distant impersonal forces represented by the astral deities, who are for the most part, the distant heavenly bodies.

2. Materiality.

Among the proximate beings are those having a fixed material form, which may be contrasted with those whose forms are immaterial , the ghosts and spirits.

3. Artifice.

Among the beings with material forms, there are those whose forms are humanly worked in contrast to those whose forms are aniconic "natural " forms.

4. Ordinary versus uncanny humanly worked forms.

Among forms that are humanly worked there are the ordinary forms , whose imagery is closely derived from the forms, logic, and relations of the social world of objects and persons, in contrast to the dangerous forms , whose imagery is derived from dream-like or hallucinatory forms, logic, and relations. A diagram of these contrasts indicates certain aspects of this branching typological schema:

The main movement of this classification as the contrasts at each level are isolated—the right-hand terms above—is a progressive movement toward the everyday moral life of the city, ending with the ordinary deities, those deities that are thought of and dealt with as "persons," and who represent community ideals and norms. They are proximate, material, shaped through culture, and not demonic. Let us recall some of the aspects of the formal sets distinguished by these contrasts to suggest their contributions to meaning.

1. Proximate versus distant.

This first distinction separates the astral deities from all the rest. The astral group are essentially impersonal cosmic forces. Their movements are regular and they provide the external rhythm and tempo that must be understood and adjusted to, as opposed to the manipulations and avoidances possible within other realms. This is true of both the calendar-determining phases of the moon and movements of the sun and the influences on "luck" of the whole astral set. The function of the astrological expert, the Josi, is to map the exact state of the astral realm and help individuals and priests adjust to it. Most ritual activities addressed to other kinds of deities are fitted in various ways to one or another indication of cosmic rhythms given by the astral bodies. Although they may have some iconic representations, the astral deities are embodied in their existent forms as distant astronomical forms and events in the skies. In contrast to the astral deities, all the other divinities and ghosts and spirits are immediately present and closely encountered in and around the city, and in contrast to the regular clockwork movements of the distant deities, the proximate beings have minds and passions and whims and thus have some freedom of action, make decisions, and can be influenced by individuals in one way or another.

2. Material versus immaterial.

The proximate beings can be divided into those that are embodied in some concrete form for most city purposes, and those that are not so embodied, which remain "immaterial." The nonembodied forms are the spirits and ghosts. The identification and classification of the nonembodied forms are, as we have noted, comparatively vague. These beings have relatively little cultural construction, local tradition providing only vague identifying sketches. They are not objects of any cult or community religion, and are the only beings we have listed here who are not in one or another context referred to as dya : or "gods." They are of personal and immediate local concern only. They are only rarely, fleetingly, and haphazardly encountered, although they provide the basis for many exciting accounts. The work they do for the community is to give some shared name and vague form to a range of vague private encounters, perceptions, and psychological states. The embodied beings, in contrast, constitute the working civic gods. Because of their embodiment in material objects they can be perceived in common, and can be related to significant space, either as fixed in a particular spot or carried through some particular area. The embodied deities are public objects, and as they are objects that affect

the senses in a discrete and controllable way, they serve perfectly as civic "sign vehicles."

3. Worked versus natural.

The embodied material beings can, in their turn, be sorted into two groups, "worked"—those that are given some conventional form through the efforts of artists and craftsmen following the traditional canon for the production of valid images—and "unworked"—naturally occurring objects that are credited with embodying a divinity. The unworked objects of importance in the public city religion are, for the most part, stones, almost always embedded in the ground. These unworked stones represent in local conception as they do in their form something intermediate between the formless spirits and the crafted deities, having both spirit-like features and god-like features. The gods they represent are vague in their conception and classification when compared to the gods of the worked images. The stone gods are never portable, and thus never used to mark out an area through their movements; they mark or protect fixed boundaries between some socially differentiated interior unit and its less social or nonsocial outside. They belong mostly to that vague outside, and mark the outer, the relatively nonsocial face of the boundaries at which they are fixed. They share some features with one division of the worked divinities to form a crosscutting group of "dangerous" divinities.

4. Benign versus dangerous.

When we turn to the divinities who are represented by humanly worked and formed images, icons, we enter the realm of the major gods of Hinduism, those that are usually considered as constituting a pantheon. These gods all have anthropomorphic images, although some part of the image, usually the head, may have an animal form. We are now encountering figures that not only are sentient beings but also have at least external human characteristics. They represent a movement away from uncanny beings, toward something more understandable—understandable, that is, in a particular way, the way we understand humans as "persons." It is this group that is the focus of most calendrical festivals, whose myths, legends, and relationships order most ritual action. These divinities have houses and temples, and may be fixed in a position in space or be carried in festival processions or embodied in human agents. They are present in the city at rest or in movement as anthropomorphic, embodied beings, very much as the citizens of Bhaktapur are so present.

This final division of classes of divinity is within the set of culturally

worked anthropomorphic gods. Here the distinguishing formal contrast is the appearance of the images themselves. One set has various features that suggest emotionally driven dream-like images, features that escape from the constraints of ordinary everyday reality. They include fangs, cadaverous bodies, bulging eyes, garlands of decapitated heads or skulls, mantles of flayed human skin, and multiple arms. The arms carry human calvarias (understood to be drinking cups full of human blood) and various destructive weapons. The female forms of this type (and not the male ones, which, when shown as being sexually aroused, maintain their demonic forms [fig. 17, chap. 9]) included images of exaggerated seductive sexuality, with exaggeratedly rounded, youthful faces, hips, and breasts. Their hands, however, bear the same objects as those of the frightening figures. Both versions—beautiful and horrible—may be conceived of as dream-like and hallucinatory images. This group represents the "dangerous anthropomorphic gods"—"dangerous anthropomorphic gods" because the group of "dangerous gods" also includes the stone gods, with whom these deities share some characteristics. These anthropomorphic dangerous gods are the foci of many city festivals. They and the associated stone gods are the major symbolic resources for the marking of significant city space. The anthropomorphic dangerous gods have potentialities beyond the stone gods. They, like the benign set, may be arranged in differentiated sets; they can move through space, and they thus allow for differentiated and specialized statements in their use in the various symbolic enactments that mark, relate, and protect various units of the city.

With the group of culturally crafted anthropomorphic gods, we begin to have identified individuals who are embedded in characterizing relations with similar beings. We have something like a socially created, morally controlled person . The dangerous deities, however, as we have noted in earlier sections, are uncanny persons; they are too dream-like, shifting and flowing in their forms and in their logical relations with each other. When we have followed our main axis from distant to proximate, to materiality, to anthropomorphic form, and finally to ordinariness , however, we are at the end very close to full "persons," as defined by the roles, needs, and possibilities of a social community. These residual "ordinary" anthropomorphic gods are heroic persons, with extraordinary—albeit not unlimited—powers and with graspable minds. This is manifest in their prevalent imagery as idealized human types. Even if they are partially animal in form, such as Ganesa^[*] , Hanuman, or Visnu's^[*] vehicle Garuda^[*] , they are humanized animals, in con-

Figure 17.
An esoteric image of a Bhairava.

trast to the frequently bestialized humanoid forms of the dangerous anthropomorphic gods. They represent the moral interior of the city and both represent and are models for the moral dimensions of human relations (above all, those of the household and other intimate relations) and of the self.

Walter Burkert argues that the Greek Homeric gods move beyond the anthropomorphic gods of the Near Eastern and Agean neighborhoods of Greece. Those gods "speak and interact with one another in a human way, . . . love, feel anger, and suffer, and . . . are mutually related as husbands and wives, parents and children." But the Greeks, he says, add something to this. "The Greek gods are persons , not abstractions, ideas or concepts. . . . The modern historian of religion may speak of 'archetypical figures of reality,' but in the Greek, locution and ideation is structured in such a way that an individual personality appears that has its own plastic being. This cannot be defined, but it can be known, and such knowledge can bring joy, help, and salvation. These persons as the poets introduce them are human almost to the last detail" (1985, 182-183 [emphasis added]). Jean-Pierre Vernant, on the contrary, asserts that "the Greek gods are powers, not persons" (1983, 328). He argues this on the basis of their difference from what he takes to be the essence of social persons—namely their being as "autonomous focuses of existence and action, ontological units." Claiming that "a single person cannot be several," he calls attention to the various states and conditions referable by term such as "Zeus." However, this does not affect the argument that in particular temporal and spatial contexts and uses these gods are "persons" in a way that the members of some other pantheons are not, and that this quality as manifest in these contexts is of considerable importance for understanding the ancient Greeks and their religion. It is their person-like aspects that most clearly locate the forms, meanings, and uses of the ordinary gods as members of a particular class in Bhaktapur's civic pantheon. When, in contrast, a member of this set is considered in historical perspective, and its uses in other settings and conditions and in differently arranged pantheons are all added to the identity of the divinity, another type of figure, of great mythic complexity, emerges. As we have noted, such histories surround all the gods of the pantheon but are distant background to the choices and simplifications that must be made for the god's synchronic civic uses.

"Person" refers to a universal social invention, "someone" as the

legal definition has it, "who is capable of having rights, and being subject to duties and responsibilities," that is, a relatively fixed actor in the give and take of a moral system. Not all individuals in a community are "persons" in this sense; infants and often the mentally ill and defective are not. The benign gods have many of the characteristics of persons in this sense. They look like humans, and their special differentiating aspects are all social. They are embedded in and defined by social relations, out of which a larger community of related divine individuals is built. Their relations to each other are in part moral, matters of understood obligations and limits, and in part passionate. But their passions and motives—annoyance, rage, lust, compassion, respect, and fear—are ordinary social ones. The benign gods are in large part fixed in their forms and in their relations, and usually work things out within the constraints of logic and ordinary reality to which is added a superhuman (but limited) power that they use in times of special need. Like ordinary persons, they are subject to pollution (compare the discussion of the Nine Durgas in chap. 15), which indicates that they must, like all mature citizens of Bhaktapur, take care in order to maintain their social definition as persons (chap. 11). The dangerous gods have no such concern.

The benign gods as persons represent, as Babb has proposed, "certain key values of Indian civilization" (1975, 224). But they represent not only ideal values but also aspects of "normal" behavior, that which is tolerable for humans. What they do not represent (except transiently in the history of that generative and bridging form, Siva) is "insanity" and other modes of operation and understanding of the mind peripheral to the "person." This is done by the dangerous deities in various ways. As representations of the ideal and "the human," the benign deities become foci of identification and guides for proper behavior and moral standards, and also for tolerant understanding. Their soteriological functions have to do with reward or punishment of the atma , the particular spiritual entity that is for most people closely connected with the idea of the self and its persistence after death. This reward or punishment is based on moral performance within everyday life and with the proper devotion or "service" to the god and, in marked contrast to the effects of encounters with the dangerous gods, with inner intentions as well as external behavior. The benign gods, like all the gods, are subject to ritual manipulation. But their proper devotion and ritual manipulation consists primarily of a mimesis of honorific and respectful behavior, in the course of which they are offered the same honor, hospi-

tality, gifts, and services that would please any honored guest or person of high status. Such rituals reinforce and reaffirm the worshiper's social relation to the benign deity. All this does and can go on only within a rational, dependable world. These gods are "ordinary" and not "dangerous" precisely because they respond dependably to anyone with adequate social and moral skills, anyone who has, in part with their help, become a competent person by Bhaktapur's standards.

For other tasks and meanings Bhaktapur employs other types of divinities, divinities who are much more peripheral to the moral world of persons than the ordinary gods, and who thus represent other realms and ideas and who must be dealt with in other ways. The dangerous anthropomorphic gods vividly represent this nonmoral realm precisely because they have some characteristics of persons—names, forms, and anthropomorphic embodiments. They are radically peculiar and unacceptable persons, however, persons in flux—to recall Vernant, they are not quite "ontological units." They are outside the constraints of both logic and morality that are the essence of true persons. They represent the bordering outside of the ordinary world in a variety of ways—they are related to the forces and forms of "nature" beyond the city, wild and dangerous but at the same time vital, and also to certain psychological modes—dream, insanity, and those passions and impulses (e.g., cannibalism) that are beyond what are acceptable even to a tolerant view of what a person is or should be. As they do not operate through moral interactions and manipulations, they operate in the only other available mode, through power, and that is the way they, in turn, must be dealt with. This constellation of characteristics used to portray the hinterlands of any moral community has many familiar echoes throughout the world,^[72] but the uses of the dangerous gods have a particular development, force, and legitimacy in Bhaktapur. In contrast to many other Hindu communities (below), the dangerous gods have a special status in Bhaktapur as legitimate and high-ranking members of the pantheon, and as Tantric gods they are (as we will see in the next chapter) in many ways the foci of aristocratic and royal worship.

The dangerous deities represent not only the nonmoral exterior of the city but also the relatively nonmoral aspects of the exteriors of various of the city's component units. In some contexts, they are associated with individual's bodies and, particularly, with danger to those bodies in contrast to people's selves, souls, or "personhood," all associated with the benign moral deities. Most generally the dangerous gods protect the perimeters of the community, of its components, and of its

members, within which the ordinary moral life, represented by the ordinary gods, can go on, while at the same time representing aspects of the external dangerous forces. In protecting the boundaries of moral units and civic spaces, however, they also represent and protect such units as a whole . It is in this way that they can be made to represent the city as a whole, a lineage, guthi , or a neighborhood.

The use of dangerous deities as the representatives of a moral maximal unit warrants more comment. Let us recall the emergence of Devi in the Devi Mahatmya . When the world of the gods is threatened by danger from the Asuras—that is, when that world emerges as an entity precisely and only because it is set against a dangerous, contrary world—the Devi arises. She uniquely represents the world of the gods, even though she is not a "normal" member of that world. if she were, she could not protect them. She can protect them only by sharing in the nonmoral power of the external forces she has to defeat. In analogous ways Bhaktapur uses nonmoral deities to represent, as well as protect, moral units.

There is another important aspect of the use of nonmoral dangerous deities to represent a moral unit. They protect that unit in a very real way (as we will discuss in later chapters, particularly in relation to the Nine Durgas in chap. 15) by helping to ensure the adherence of its members to its moral system. The dangerous deity, usually a goddess, in concert with the meanings of blood sacrifice offered to her, represents the destruction that will overtake members of a group if they violate their adherence to the moral system and moral solidarity of the group. She binds members into the group as well as defending the group's boundaries and representing it as a whole.

Insofar as the dangerous deities themselves represent the kinds of external dangers they protect against, they must first be captured in order to be put to work for the community. As we will see in later chapters, this is done in local legend through the Tantric power of exceptional individuals. For ordinary individuals the dangerous deities can be controlled, albeit somewhat tenuously, not through social deference and good behavior as are the ordinary gods but through an individual's initiation into secrets of power, and the use of spells (mantras ) and, above all, through the use of one of the most important ritual resources in Bhaktapur, blood sacrifice, whose meaning in relation to the dangerous gods we will discuss in later chapters. Most of the time one deals with these powerful and erratic deities by trying to avoid them, or not to anger them or—if one has reason to assume that they

are angry—asking forgiveness and making restitutive offerings, even if (in contrast to the moral deities) they may have become angry "without cause." As the dangerous deities do not represent moral values, they cannot be, as the ordinary deities are, models for ideal or tolerable behavior. Their psychological functions for individuals, like their uses for th city, are quite different from those of the benign deities with whom they contrast within the formal supernatural class of humanly worked deities.

A few classes of deities differentiated among themselves by a few structural features do, as classes, much of the work of organizing realms of meaning in Bhaktapur. Their contrasts use kinds of meanings—near versus far, vague versus clearly formed—which are easily apprehended, and require minimal special cultural knowledge. The situation changes radically in relation to the organization and uses of the differentiated supernaturals within the classes of deities.

Bhaktapur's Pantheon As A System of Signs: Distinctions Within this. Types of Gods

The differences among the sets of gods, essentially the differences in their mode of representation, are, we have argued, based on certain contrasting structural features and are the basis for much of their meaning. Within the sets the distinctions are not the distinctions of classes or types, but, for the most part, distinctions among individuals . These distinctions are generally made on the basis of the clusters of iconic signs that identify each individual, usually redundantly—any one of several features will sufficiently identify the deity—as long as the other features are not too anomalous. These differentiating features are the usual ones emphasized in treatises on the iconography of the Hindu god images^[73] —crowns, vehicles, markings on foreheads, objects held in the hands, vehicles, aspects of dress, color, and the like. Without considerable interpretation based on knowledge of their myths and histories, the meanings of many of these features—beyond their identifying uses—may (with exceptions to be noted below) seem more or less arbitrary as direct indications of the paricular individual's present meaning or use. The individual stone deities (helped by some associated markings) and most of the astral deities are identified by their positions.

In most sets of deities the different deities—Indrani^[*] , say, in her contrast to Brahmani—do not contrast in their general meaning and use, in

which they are often identical, but in the portion or component of some larger whole made up of equivalent or near-equivalent parts—such as the mandalic^[*] segments of the city, the aspect of the full Goddess emphasized for some special purpose, the days of the week of astrological concern, or the set of all tutelary phuki deities—which they stand for. Each of these member deities in a set must be identified as an individual, but an individual whose particular individuality has little differentiating significance beyond their relevance to some specific sector of space or time or society. Often people who are not specially concerned with one of these individual member deities may not be entirely certain as to which member of the group they are, and may misidentify them or identify them with some lumping collective term.

The relation of deities within groups insofar as they mark equivalent divisions of space, time, or status is generally "horizontal" and more or less equal, but there are also some hierarchical relations within groups. These are sometimes indicated by size (anthropomorphic statues of an ordinary god and his consort usually depict him as larger (see fig. 12); the masks of Mahakali and Bhairava are larger than the less powerful figures in the Nine Durgas group (see color illustrations), and so on), or by central versus peripheral positions. (Tripurasundari is at the center of the city mandala^[*] , the vehicles of Siva and Visnu^[*] may be placed at the periphery of a temple, they at its central axis.) Above and below may also be used to indicate relative status, with a god's vehicle sometimes shown as kneeling at his feet, or placed below them. Among the benign gods the relation of the male gods and their consorts is shown by the consort being placed to the male god's left. Such relative features are not used in contrast between the different classes of gods who do not have hierarchical or consort relations across types.

Against these general features of the differentiation of the members of sets there is a very significant exception within one particular set, the benign deities. Within the set of the ordinary gods directly understandable implications in the images become, as they were in the case of classes of deities, once again salient for a differentiation of the meanings represented by each deity. Here the distinguishing features are the dusters—among the background of presently otherwise meaningless identifying iconographic features—which identify social behaviors and qualities. The tiger skin and yogic costume of Siva in some of his moods, the modest beauty of Parvati, the cuteness of the benign Ganesa^[*] , and so on, are such easily apprehensible meaningful features.

The benign deities in contrast to all the others are persons, and their forms help remind people of the kinds of persons they are. There local uses are rooted in these meaningful personal differences.

Bhaktapur's Pantheon As A System of Signs: Some Contrasts With Other Hindu Systems

A comparison of the organization of Bhaktapur's pantheon with reports from other Hindu communities highlights some of Bhaktapur's special features. Edward Harper, in a study (1959) of Totagadde, a village in Mysore State, found a local hierarchy of three levels of supernatural beings. The highest level were the familiar "vegetarian" gods of the major Hindu tradition ("Sanskritic gods"). These gods, locally called "Devarua," are "generally iconographically represented." They are most frequently worshiped so that the devotee will obtain punya^[*] ("merit"). This may be in the hope of good fortune in this life, or a good fate after death (1959, 228f.). We recognize in this group some of the characteristics and uses of the "ordinary" segment of Bhaktapur's pantheon. Harper's second class of deities, second in a hierarchy of purity, are locally called "devates. " These gods demand and accept blood sacrifices. They protect the village in various ways. They patrol the village boundary or guard designated parts of the village. They also protect various social segments, families, and lineages in the village. Some are attached to houses, where they "protect adults, children and livestock from spirits . . . who cause minor illness" (1959, 231). The same class of deities can possess individuals, and cause illness. While the first group of deities are responsible for trouble only in the sense that they withhold aid that might have been granted, this class may actively cause harm, and part of their worship is intended to prevent this. These deities resemble in nature and use Bhaktapur's dangerous deities, but there are important differences. For the Mysore village these "local gods" do not derive their names and legends from the high Hindu tradition. They "almost never" have iconographic representations. They are less pure, and thus lower than the "Sanskritic gods." Finally, within their ranks are some of the forms and functions (illness-causing possession) that are proper to some of the members of Bhaktapur's "ghosts and spirits."^[74] Harper's village has a residual third group of supernatural beings "devvas, " "free floating marauding spirits . . . malicious and destructive [which] perform no protective functions" (1959, 232). The main contrast with Bhaktapur suggested by Harper's sketch of Tota-

gadde's religion is that there the dangerous deities are much closer to the realm of the immaterial ghosts and spirits than they are in Bhaktapur. The Tantric tradition has facilitated the capturing, embodiment, control, and legitimate civic use of a large segment of supernaturals of this kind in Bhaktapur, and does not place them in an inferior hierarchical relation to the "Sanskritic," that is, the benign Puranic^[*] deities.

In Susan Wadley's study (1975) of Karimpur in Uttar Pradesh, the supernatural beings in the "village experience" (that is, in contrast to the unknowable divine principle, the brahman ) were the category of gods, "devas " and a set of spirits and ghosts that, as in Bhaktapur and like Totagadde's "devvas, " were considered outside the class of "gods." The class of devas includes, according to Wadley, both "normally" benevolent and always malevolent deities. The normally benevolent deities (which would include Bhaktapur's dangerous gods) she calls the devata , the remainder "demons." Wadley's main concern is with the differentiations within the class of "normally benevolent devas, " where she suggests (as does Babb, whom we will consider presently) that a central distinction for functional differentiation within the group is the gender and gender relations of the various members. The male devas are referred to as "bhagavan "; the female, as "devi ."^[75] The male bhagavan and his concrete manifestations such as Visnu^[*] , Siva, and Ganesa^[*] , can help people if they are devoted to them. Devotion sets up a social relation, "a relationship based on hierarchical exchange because the gods and men have a commitment to each other" (1975, 117). This set of gods, male gods, can be helpful in gaining "relief from existence and the troubles of existence." These gods can help in getting through the problems of life, but they do not hurt, except presumably by failing to help. These are, thus, similar to Bhaktapur's benign gods, and to Harper's "Sanskritic gods." According to Wadley, the female devatas , the Devi and the component devis , "to a much greater extent than the male gods categorized as bhagavan are potentially malevolent." She cites Babb (1970) and Beck (1969), agreeing that "there is an ever present awareness that female power may become uncontrolled. And when male authority (usually a consort) is absent, the malevolent use of female power is almost assured" (Wadley, 1975, 121). She claims for Karimpur that male deities can always dominate the female deities while female deities have a "potential for malevolent action [that] makes them more suspect than male deities" (ibid., 121). Among the devis there are "some who are almost totally malevolent and act positively only to remedy their own actions" (ibid., 121f.).

Before discussing these observations in relation to Bhaktapur's use of divine gender, we may note Lawrence Babb's extended consideration of the pantheon of various communities in the Chhattisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh. He begins with the familiar distinction about the "philosophical" status of the undifferentiated "world-soul" of Hindu tradition, which he calls the paramatma . This is "an object of contemplation not of worship. Divinity becomes active in the affairs of the universe and men only when it is differentiated into particular divine entities. With this differentiation we move into the world of everyday religious practice. Of all the different kinds of differentiation found within the pantheon, one seems to be particularly stable, that of sex" (Babb 1975, 216). Gender, he argues, sorts two basic qualities of the pantheon. The male "devtas " are "essentially protective and benevolent." The female devis are "the very embodiment of malevolence when unrestrained or unappeased" (ibid.). Babb, starting with suggestions from the Devi Mahatmya , recalls the association of the female goddess as Sakti with "energy" or "force." He notes that in the male-female polarity as conceived in Hindu Tantrism, "the 'female principle' is conceived as the active, dynamic component of reality, while the male principle is regarded as static and passive" (ibid., 220). Taking the angry, destructive, embattled Devi of the Devi Mahatmya in her Kali form as emblematic of that force whose "only discernible emotion is anger—black, implacable and bloodthirsty," he finds female deities in such benign and non-Tantric manifestations as Laksmi problematic, that is, as secondary, and asks, "what is the context in which the Goddess becomes Laksmi?" He suggests that when the male and female deities are related in the ordinary social relation of marriage, with the god dominant—as husbands are—and the Goddess dutifully subordinate, this "imposition of social order" yields deities embodying key values of Indian civilization. He also notes that these social relations allow for "the elaboration of divine attributes in accordance with basic order-producing values—hence the great variety in this sector of the pantheon." In contrast, where the goddess is either alone or dominant, and "if the god appears at all, it is not in the role of husband but of henchman and servant, [then] . . . the pairing as a unit takes on the sinister attributes of the goddess herself. The goddess in this form is not conceived primarily as an exemplar of values and principles, but as the embodiment of an impersonal force—one that can be used, but that may be dangerous to the user, as indeed it endangers the gods themselves until it is contained" (ibid., 225). In a summary he argues, "With-

in the pantheon a very dangerous force is symbolized, but this is a force that seems to undergo a basic transformation into something almost anti-sinister, the loving wife, the source of wealth and progeny, when placed within the context of a restraining social relationship, that of marriage. An appetite for conflict and destruction is thus transformed into the most fundamental of social virtues, that of wifely submission which, on the premises given in Hindu culture, makes the continuation of society possible" (ibid., 226).

These suggestions of Wadley and Babb illuminate a powerful component of the pantheon's semantic force, and are congruent with other meanings of male and female persons and their relations in many societies and as particularly emphasized in Hindu social systems. But these suggestions are not fully applicable, at least in Bhaktapur's version of things. The creative Goddess in her absolute, full form is not malevolent or sinister, and no more uncanny than concepts of Visnu^[*] or Siva as creative gods, and certainly no more destructive. She seems to represent a component of a maternal image that is prior to the submissive role of a wife, one worthy of trust and adoration. There are also male forms of considerable malignity, Bhairava, and to a lesser extent the minor dangerous male gods, who are not "henchmen or servants" of a goddess. In some cases the relation to a goddess (as in the case of the Akas Bhairava) helps to make the male dangerous god, less dangerous—in some reversal of the argument. Furthermore, there is at least one female goddess of complete benignity who has in Bhaktapur no present reference to a male controlling and socializing consort, namely, Sarasvati. Furthermore, Siva, when not controlled by social relations, either as a husband or by his friendship to Visnu^[*] , is a potentially wild and dangerous being. Finally, the dangerous ghosts and spirits of Bhaktapur are not predominantly female. Granting such qualifications, however, the predominance of the male deities in the domain of moral and social order, on the one hand, and the predominance of independent female ones at the boundaries of that order on the other, is, of course, also characteristic of Bhaktapur. Bhaktapur's imagery and symbolic action treats these independent goddesses as not only dangerous but also as necessary, vital, and protective.

Insofar as Bhaktapur's use of divine gender is less categorical and oppositional than the forms proposed in the studies we have cited, this is congruent with the way Bhaktapur's social system and culture has allowed for the comparatively independent position of women in the family within a Hindu perspective and the resulting modification of

the role and meaning of wife and mother in that perspective. Some of that different emphasis may also be related to the movement of the dangerous female deities from a "non-Brahmanical" social and spatial periphery, as the "folk goddesses" characteristic of Indian villages, to the high-status central position in a socially integrated Tantra (chap. 9), which they have in Bhaktapur.

A Final Remark

We have added the supernaturals to our static collection of elements of Bhaktapur's mesocosmic ballet. Status, space, and deities are variously combined in action in progressively more complex structures of meaning. We will in the following three chapters consider some aspects of action, concept, and role bearing on the manipulation of aspects of the symbolic order before, finally, adding time and tempo and considering the ballet in its full action.

Chapter Nine
Tantrism and the Worship of the Dangerous Deities

Introduction

In our discussion of Bhaktapur's pantheon we have emphasized the division of the deities most centrally concerned with the organization of the public city into "ordinary" and "dangerous." These two categories of deities are related to two general modes of religious activity in Bhaktapur and in the Hindu tradition. The mode focusing on the ordinary deities takes special definition in Bhaktapur from its contrast with the worship of the dangerous deities. The worship of the dangerous deities has roots in popular and folk tradition in South Asia but has within it a differentiated aspect that has had a literate development of its own in South Asian high culture. This is "Tantrism," which Bhaktapur differentiates in a traditional South Asian distinction from the "Vedic" practices of the ordinary religion.

Esoteric Tantrism must be distinguished in Bhaktapur on the one hand from the worship of the ordinary deities (which has in itself, as we will note, "Tantric" references) and on the other from the exoteric worship of the dangerous deities by noninitiates. It is Tantrism in itself that will be central to our discussion of the worship of those dangerous deities. For Tantrism not only is the developed mode of relation to the city's dangerous deities in the esoteric practices of the upper social levels of the city but also lies behind much of the public urban symbolism and symbolic enactments centering on those deities which are experienced by all of Bhaktapur's citizens. And it is Tantrism that gives Bhaktapur and

the Newars (as it does neighboring Tibet) much of their special qualities in South Asian religious perspective.

Tantrism As A Religious Mode

There is a substantial literature discussing aspects of the Tantric tradition in Buddhism and Hinduism (see, particularly, the synthesis by Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan [1979]). Tantrism has been characterized as an "historical current" within the larger South Asian tradition, a current that is relatively easy to recognize in its manifestations and notoriously difficult to define. "The extremely varied and complicated nature of Tantrism, one of the main currents in the Indian religious tradition of the last fifteen hundred years, renders the manipulation of a single definition almost impossible. There is, accordingly, a general uncertainty about the exact scope of the word" (ibid., 5). These authors attempt, however, a definition, which will serve as a useful introduction to Bhaktapur's Tantrism (ibid., 6 [emphasis added]):

In our opinion, it is mainly used in two meanings. In a wider sense, Tantrism or Tantric stands for a collection of practices and symbols of a ritualistic, sometimes magical character (e.g., mantra, yantra, cakra, mudra, nyasa . . .). They differ from what is taught in the Veda and its exegetical literature but they are all the same applied as means of reaching spiritual emancipation (mukti ) or the realization of mundane aims, chiefly domination (bhukti ) in various sects of Hinduism and Buddhism. In a more restricted sense, it denotes a system, existing in many variations, of rituals full of symbolism, predominantly—but by no means exclusively—Sakti, promulgated among "schools" . . . and lines of succession . . . by spiritual adepts or gurus . What they teach is subsumed under the term sadhana , i.e. the road to spiritual emancipation or to dominance by means of Kundaliniyoga^[*] and other psychosomatic experiences. . . . It is important to remark at this point that the true Tantric sadhana is a purely individual way to release accessible to all people, women as well as men (at least in theory), householders as well as ascetics . At present the practicers (sadhaka ) of the Tantric system are mainly people who live an ordinary life within family and society. But beside this ordinary reality, they try to come into touch with a higher stratum of divine reality by a course of identification with their chosen deity who Is usually the Goddess.

Elsewhere in South Asia the individualistic, anti-Brahmanical, anti-social-structural aspects of Tantrism, although they influenced renouncers of Hindu society (see, for example, fig. 18) and those who tried to manipulate the world through magical power, became for most

Figure 18.
Outside the city. A wandering Indian sadhu doing yoag on a public
porch in a mountain village.

practitioners—for those who "live an ordinary life within family and society," that is, within the Brahmanical order—comfortably bracketed into safe and nondisruptive contexts (ibid., 32):

The Kularnavatantra^[*] states that anything which is despised in the world is honorable in the Kula [a particular school of Tantrism] path. On certain occasions, the texts even express a preference for anything which is associated with low social standing or with the breaking of taboos. . . . Of course, this was an important factor in creating for Tantrism its bad repute with the orthodox. But anti-caste statements should never be read outside their ritual context. Returned into ordinary life, no high caste Tantric would think of breaking the social taboos. One might even argue that the predilection for contact with low-caste people, especially women, in a ritual environment served to render the high-caste practicer still more conscious of the violent breakthrough of his ordinary situation which he had to make in order to proceed on the way to spiritual emancipation. Seen in this light, the ritual egalitarianism of Tantrism in practice acted as a caste-confirming and class-confirming force. One can compare the confirmatory and stabilizing role of festivals like Hob or Sabarotsava, during which caste or class relations are temporarily eliminated.

Bhaktapur has gone further in the use and transformation of Tantrism than as an exciting and cathartic antistructural fantasy for upper status men—although that is still one of its important uses. It has transformed the Tantrism of transcendence of Brahmanical order for the purposes of individual salvation and individual power and put it to the use of the civic order, in so doing complexifying that order. Legendary accounts of the capture of Bhaktapur's protective deities, the Nine Durgas (chap. 15), vividly portray this double movement. The stories tell how the demon-like deities who make up the group once lived in a jungle outside of Bhaktapur where they killed and ate the innocent passers-by whom they happened to encounter. Eventually the gods were captured by the spells and wiles of a powerful Tantric practitioner. He took them into the city, put them in a secret room in his house, and, using them for his own private amusement, "played with them" and made them dance for him. But then through the interference of his wife—representing one of the central symbolic mediators from private masculine pleasure to social order—the demon deities escaped his private control and fled the house. The Tantric practitioner was able to recapture them, but by now they had taken measures to prevent his taking them back into his house. Now unable to use them for his own purposes, he, in a compromise, forces them to pledge to protect the public city, to use their power against those external forces of disruption that they originally repre-

sented in themselves. The Tantric expert who presided over this transition (who in some versions is different from the magician who originally captured them) was, significantly, a Rajopadhyaya Brahman. However, once the secret was out, once the dangerous, blood and alcoholic spirit-swilling, order-destroying, and polluting^[1] gods were out in the visible public space of the city, special kinds of priests, Acajus (chap. 10) had to replace the Brahman to deal with them in public—although the Brahman's descendants would continue to be engaged with them in more esoteric arenas.

For Bhaktapur's "Newar Brahmans" (chap. 10) and Ksatriya-like^[*] Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya groups, Tantrism is not only, as it was for the Tantric master who captured the Nine Durgas in the self-indulgent time before his wife's interference, a source of private fascination but also central to the worship of their partilineal lineage deities. Their exclusive right to Tantric initiation is, in fact, one of the most important markers setting them off from middle-status and low-status groups in the city. This "gentrification" of Tantrism existed in other parts of South Asia. "The study of later Tantric literature seems to reveal an ever tightening grasp of Brahmans and other intellectuals on the movement—or, as one could as well say, an ever greater hold of Tantrism upon the traditional bearers of Indian literary culture" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 27). This elite domestication existed and exists in a somewhat uneasy relation with Tantrism's asocial and, in fact, antisocial central thrust, as well as with the low origins and family connections of its central deities.

The problem is clarified by the situation of the dangerous deities in non-Tantric communities. In a consideration of ritual in the Indian village of Konduru in Andhra Pradesh, Paul Hiebert made a distinction between the "high religion" of the village and its "low religion." The "high religion" centers around the benevolent Hindu gods of the "great tradition." Its priests are Brahmans (for the higher castes), the offerings to the gods are vegetarian. The "low religion" centers around "regional Hindu gods and local gods linked to Hinduism" (1971, 133). Hiebert further notes (pp. 135-136):

Chief among these [supernatural beings] are the local and regional goddesses who reside in trees, rocks, streams and whirlwinds and are enshrined in crude rock shelters in the fields, beside the roads, and in the home. Capricious and bloodthirsty, they demand the sacrifice of animals to satisfy their desires; therefore, the Brahmans refuse to serve them. Their priests are Washermen, Potters, and Leatherworkers. . . . All villagers fear their anger

which can bring disease and death to those who neglect them, blight to crops, fires to houses, barrenness to wives, and plague and drought to the village. Even the local Brahmans who deny their existence take no chance and send their offerings by the hand of a family servant to be sacrificed to the goddesses of their fields.

This village arrangement reflects the hierarchical predominance of "Sanskritic" over the other deities in Indian village pantheons that we noted in the last chapter, but it also emphasizes the social peripherality of such "local and regional" deities whose worship and characteristics are those of Bhaktapur's dangerous deities. Even as the status of the dangerous deities—who have been, like the Nine Durgas, captured and taken into the city, albeit in an ambiguous incorporation—has changed in Bhaktapur, so has the social status of their cult and their priests. Yet, the Indian village situation clearly suggests the contradictions and tensions in the apparent urban respectability of these deities in Bhaktapur. The Newar Brahman, the Rajopadhyaya Brahman, has, as we will see below and in chapter 10, important Tantric functions, but these are hidden within private, esoteric arenas of the city's worship. Public Tantric worship is usually done by other priests, the Acajus (which has sometimes led to the erroneous statement in descriptions of the Newars that they are somehow the "Tantric priests" in some sharp opposition to the Brahmans as "Sanskritic priests"). As we will see in chapter 10, the interlocking roles and relations of Brahmans and Acajus in relation to Tantrism and ordinary Hinduism in Bhaktapur are complex. As he is in Hindu communities everywhere the Brahman is a central priestly figure in the "ordinary" Hinduism of Bhaktapur. In relation to the Tantric component of the city religion, however, he has special functions—as guru , giver of mantras , officiant at some Tantric ceremonies for clients, performer of his own private and family Tantric ceremonies, and as priest at the Royal temples of the dangerous deities (particularly Taleju)—which make him, the priestly master of Bhaktapur's urban, civilized Tantrism, a much more complex figure than the ideal Sanskritic Brahman.

Tantrism In Popular Fantasy

People in Bhaktapur without Tantric initiation have various interpretations and fantasies regarding Tantrism. Such fantasies are encouraged by the Tantric strategy of protecting esoteric doctrines through multiple veilings and obfuscations of its doctrinal and symbolic implications (cf. Bharati, 1965, chap. 6). Those veilings and obfuscations are, as we will

discuss below, often associated with some sort of an "advertisement" that there is , in fact, a secret that is being hidden. For the noninitiate, Tantrism means primarily "magic" practices, sometimes referred to as tantra-mantra , that is, to practices that are capable of direct manipulation of supernatural power for worldly ends. Noninitiates, particularly—although not exclusively—lower-status ones, assume that this magic power is used for legitimate, albeit usually private, ends, such as curing disease, chasing off evil spirits, and keeping wandering bulls out of cultivated fields.^[2] Occasionally, it is assumed, the power may be used for love magic or for harming an enemy. It is also popularly believed that particularly powerful Tantric experts can (and could more frequently in the past) levitate themselves or objects, travel through the air to distant places, and control and dominate powerful supernatural beings. From the viewpoint of the legitimate practitioner, such direct personal uses of "power" are possible but illegitimate and peripheral to their goals. However, even sophisticated initiates believe that outside the civic esoteric system, out of Brahmanical and civic moral control, there are such figures as sadhus (wandering "renouncers") witches, sorcerers, and healers who use a degree of Tantric power sometimes for good (in a struggle against a contrary harmful supernatural power), sometimes for evil.

Noninitiates often believe that Tantric pujas are associated with major violations of ordinary moral and religious regulations such as the eating of forbidden foods and overt sexual intercourse—including (according to one informant) even the incestuous intercourse between brothers and sisters. In general, however, noninitiates seem to believe that legitimate Tantric practice is, albeit strange, good behavior and in the pursuit of socially acceptable goals. These same people also seem to believe that most Brahmans, at least, do not know much Tantrism, their fantasies about the dharma -violating procedures of Tantrism are directed to the secular upper thars . This interpretation is, in fact, consonant with another essential aspect of Bhaktapur's Tantrism, its alliance with the realm of power of the king in opposition to the realm of moral order of the Brahman, in his role (for Bhaktapur only one of his roles) as a priest of the benign deities.

Upper-Status Tantrism

As we have noted in chapter 5, there is an upper segment of Bhaktapur's macrostatus system whose male members, after completing initiation as full members of their thar (and whose female members under certain

conditions and restrictions), have the right to Tantric initiation. These are the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, all the thars at the Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya levels, the Tini, and one Jyapu thar with some priestly functions, the Jyapu Acaju.^[3] All of these thars share certain rights and customs in contrast to other, lower, thars . Their male members have the exclusive right to wear the sacred thread, the jona ; they alone have a special kind of lineage deity, the Aga(n) God; they alone have the right to have Tantric gurus (who are Rajopadhyaya Brahmans), initiation, and practice. The worship of the dangerous deities by people of the middle and lower thars is not considered Tantrism by upper-level initiates, nor by members of the lower-level thars themselves.

We will follow this distinction and consider Tantrism per se as the practices of initiates. We will begin with Tantric worship, that is, Tantric puja , in Bhaktapur. We can then consider the uses of that worship. These are of two general kinds for upper-status initiates, worship directed to the phuki's lineage god and practices directed to mukti or "individual salvation." We will then turn to forms that span both esoteric initiate religion and the symbolism and religion of the larger city.

Upper-Status Tantrism: Puja

In part three of Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan's book Hindu Tantrism (1979), a section entitled "Modes of Worship and Meditation," Sanjukta Gupta presents the "fully developed" Tantric puja in detail. The "fully developed" Tantric pujas performed in Bhaktapur by priests and their upper-status clients are minor variations on the sequence Gupta describes and interprets.^[4] Descriptions such as Gupta's relieve us to some degree both of our ethnographic responsibility to record Bhaktapur's esoteric practices here and of our conflcting moral responsibility to keep them secret.

Tantric worship has many of the features and sequences of ordinary worship (app. 4), but there are additions, emphases, and occasional reversals, which take their force from their contrasts with those ordinary procedures. Acajus and Brahmans have manuals of instructions, paddhatis , often in the form of palm-leaf manuscripts, which outline the steps of all complex priest-conducted worship sequences used in Bhaktapur. For basic Tantric pujas , such as those held in conjunction with important family or phuki worship to the Tantric lineage deity (see

below), paddhatis include about a dozen major phases. We will follow one of these paddhatis in order to give a rough and superficial paraphrase of an illustrative sequence for our present limited purposes, namely to suggest the Tantric puja's special features.^[5]

Prior to the puja there must be worship and offerings to the local areal Ganesa^[*] and at the proper mandalic^[*]pitha . The participants must purify themselves in preparation for performing puja , as they must for all important worship (chap. 11). The area in which the worship is to be done has also to be purified and marked out in colored powder with diagrams, mandalas^[*] and yantras , and the proper utensils and materials for the worship are assembled.

The first preparatory phase of the worship is done by the principal worshiper, the jajaman , and will be done subsequently by the officiating priest. This is called a nyasa , a Sanskrit word that apparently originally included the meaning of "laying aside" and "renunciation" (Macdonell 1974, 148). The nyasa is a mimesis of yogic practices; the sorts of things that yogis do at length to produce altered states of awareness in conjunction with meditation and a quest for "escape" or mukti are done here as ritual gestures. "Nyasa " in Bhaktapur's usage seems to refer to a less specified range of yogic activities than the term does elsewhere (cf. Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 143f.). "Nyasa " varies in the details of the procedure depending on the particular kind of puja in which it is used. It includes various gestures, movements, and hand signs, mudras , and meditative acts, which among other purposes, are said to be for the purpose of establishing the worshipers' bodies as the mandalas^[*] , or sacred circles, in which the deity will be realized. It also includes rudimentary breath control procedures (pranayama^[*] ), essentially the alternate closing of the right and left nostril during the inhalation and exhalation of air and the holding of the inhaled breath, with the various phases being accompanied and timed by the mental recitation of a mantra . The nyasa prepares the jajaman for the puja .

On the completion of the nyasa the jajaman dedicates the puja , identifying its central deity and its conventional purpose, for example, as part of a marriage, a death memorial ceremony, or as some focal worship of the Aga(n) lineage deity. After the dedication, the sa(n)kalpa , the jajaman touches and makes an offering to a ritual waterpot and to a container of various ritual items that will be used in the later worship and hands them to the priest.

The priest, in a purification and preparation for his part of the ceremony, washes his mouth and performs a nyasa . He now becomes the

central performer in the remainder of the puja , instructing the jajaman when the latter has to participate. The next step is snana , offerings of various kinds made to the primary and attendant deities of the puja . The attendant deities include an oil lamp (representing Ganesa^[*] , Siva, and Sakti), "the deity dwelling in one's own heart," and the worshipers' quasi-deified gurus . Offerings to these deities include flowers, vegetarian foods, grain, and light, the same offerings that are given at all pujas . In a departure from ordinary pujas , some aspects of the snana sequence precede the worship of Ganesa^[*] within the puja . (He has been worshiped at his neighborhood shrine prior to the puja .) This violation of the usual preliminary worship of Ganesa^[*] as the siddhi -giving god is explained locally as showing that the Tantric goddess (the usual focus of the puja in one or another of her forms) "comes before all." The snana is followed by a puja to the officiating priest's own guru , and at this point he performs nyasa for the second time.

The next step begins a sequence in which there is worship by all assembled to, first, the secondary gods and goddesses and, then, to the main goddess through offerings of flowers, grains, colored powder, and the like. This sequence is concluded with an offering by the worshipers to themselves—to the internal representation of the deity in their body. In the course of these offerings uncooked polished rice, known in ritual contexts as kiga :, which is of central importance as an offering in all pujas (app. 4), is presented in a flicking motion to the deity by the left hand rather than with, as would be done in ordinary pujas , the right hand.

After an interlude in which the client performs japa meditation (see below) comes a sequence called "giving bali ." "Bali "—Sanskrit for a food offering—is used in the context of worship of the dangerous deities to designate an animal sacrifice. At this point there is no actual animal sacrifice; that will come later. What is offered now is samhae (a mixture of fish, meat, ginger, and grams; see section entitled "Symbolic Complexes: Sacrifices") and alcoholic spirits, either fermented rice beer, tho(n) or, more commonly, a clear distilled alcoholic spirit, aila (Kathmandu dialect, aela ).^[6] These offerings are a further reversal and violation of what would be the proper worship of an ordinary deity.

In the next episode oil-lamp wicks and incense are first worshiped to give them power, sakti , and then lit and presented to the gods by the priest as he rings a bell. The flaming wick and burning incense, used in all pujas , have here special meaning in relation to the Tantric use of the imagery of Sakti and Siva (below).

Now the priest, as the jajaman had previously, performs japa meditation. He covers his left hand, in which he holds flowers and kiga :, with a cloth and counts off a number of mantras , usually 108, which he mutters or says silently to himself. He then offers some of the kiga : and flowers he held during the japa meditation to the goddess. Next he puts some on his own head, as an offering to the internal goddess who dwells within him.

A stotra , a hymn of praise, is now read by the priest from one of the Tantric texts. He rings a bell in the course of this, and then worships the goddess with kiga :, throwing it three times, again from his left hand. As in all pujas , this presentation of kiga : accompanied by sound announces one of the major climaxes of the puja . The climax here is a blood sacrifice. This is usually a goat or a drake in upper-status phuki pujas . On some occasions, however (often for economic reasons), an egg or samhae may be substituted at this step. We will return to the procedures and interpretations of animal sacrifice in a later section.

Now the priest and the jajaman (and the other participants) take and eat some of the fish and meat-containing samhae that had previously been offered to the Goddess—which will now also have some of the sacrificial animal's blood splattered on it—and they also take some of the aila , the alcoholic spirits presented to the god and drink it. This is here not only prasada —the taking back of materials that have been offered to the gods and "contaminated" by the gods, and then by eating them putting oneself in a dependent but inferior hierarchical relation to that god (compare "cipa, " chap. 6)—but something more. The eating of the substances represent, in part, an offering to the participant's body and its internally dwelling Goddess, whose Tantric, nonordinary status, and contrast to the moral entity of the "self" (represented by another internal god, Visnu^[*] , who dwells in the "soul" or "heart" [chap. 8]) is repeatedly emphasized.

If the Acaju were performing a Tantric puja for a client at a pitha , he would not himself eat part of the offering, for the pitha is a relatively public setting. In this case some of the offering, samhae , with blood and aila sprinkled on it would be sent to the client households. This mixture would be eaten by members of these upper thars who sponsor pitha pujas , including Brahmans, in the same way as they would eat the blood-spattered prasada in worship within their homes.

Now flowers are taken back from the Goddess as prasada. Daksina^[*] , a gift of money, is given by the jajaman to the Acaju , and finally a farewell ceremony to the gods is performed, thus ending the puja .

This basic puja varies somewhat as it is used in different settings and for different purposes. However, variations are within this general pattern. The offering and sharing of meat and drink make this "left-handed, "or Vamacara Tantrism.^[7] These are two of the five "forbidden substances," the five makaras , whose use as witnesses of the true Tantric adept's supposed ability to be spiritually impervious to practices and substances that would represent dangerous and profound violations of the moral order for an ordinary person characterize the kaula school or tradition within Tantrism, a school that "is without doubt the most important—and certainly the most characteristic—movement within Tantrism" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 45). Bhaktapur's upper-status Tantrism includes (in at least gestural form) these five makaras . The other three forbidden substances or actions (besides meat and alcohol) are fish, "mudra " (probably originally thought of as an aphrodisiac), and sexual intercourse. One of the substances presented to the gods, and tasted during the course of the puja, samhae , contains fish. "Mudra " is identified with some of the grain offered and eaten during the puja .^[8] Although there is speculation among noninitiates (which is characteristically not discouraged by initiates) that there is sexual intercourse during Tantric pujas , this does not normatively exist. The sexual act, like whatever sexual reference mudra may have, is a matter of symbolic reference. In many Tantric pujas that are performed for householders or phuki groups, one or more women who have the proper "half-dekha " or "half-initiation." may take part, as they do in ordinary pujas , but most Tantric pujas have only men participants. In all these pujas , the parts of the prayers and stotras that refer to sexual intercourse are read only in Sanskrit and, in contrast to some other Sanskrit passages, are not translated into Newai. References to the performance of sexual intercourse that occur in some of the puja sequences are represented by hand positions (also called mudras ) and are, it is said, not thought of as directed to a particular woman participant. Some initiate informants believe that sexual pujas were performed in the past, but this was privately by husband arid wife "for the purpose of procuring a son." This is in contrast to the fantasies of noninitiates about sex between nonspouses, including men with women of lower social levels, a fantasy that is closer to some reported actual practices of the kaula school, to which Bhaktapur's symbolic Tantric forms and a considerable portion of Tantric practice are related.^[9] Whether these sexual practices existed among Newar Tantric initiates in the past and

constituted an acceptable aspect of aristocratic Tantric practice seems unknowable now.^[10]

The upper-status Tantric puja represents a struggle and a compromise between proper social behavior as defined in the ordinary civic dharma , the behavior that is necessary for the maintenance of social respectability, ijjat , and, in fact, for the maintenance of social status (for there is, or was, the threat of outcasting for serious violations of the dharma ), and the anti-dharmic , antinomian behavior, which in the context of Tantric ideology and practice, represents the transcendence of that dharma . The transcendence is suggested in the mimesis of Yoga, that attempted escape from the illusion of phenomenal reality. However, it is clearest in the transgressions of what would be fundamental violations of pujas to the moral deities. In Bhaktapur's moral system where reputation, rectitude, and proper behavior is closely monitored in what is for the middle and upper social levels, at least, a rather puritanical system, the violations inherent in the Tantric pujas , even if some of them are, in the case of sexual acts, "symbolic" (or more precisely a much weaker symbolic act than actual Tantric intercourse), are still presumably potentially moving and meaningful to the participants, as the rumors of these acts are to outsiders.

In comparison with Tantric rituals that take place in vegetarian Hindu communities, the eating of fish and meat and the drinking of alcoholic spirits is perhaps less powerful in that Newars do these things in other settings—although the offering of these products of slaughtered animals to gods in the context of the radical inappropriateness of this to the benign moral gods is still a clear antinomial reversal. As "slaughtered animals" suggest, however, the most significant aspect of meat eating is the taking of life, and this is quite overt in the animal sacrifice—which is at the climax of major Tantric pujas —whose blood splatters the prasada and whose flesh will be consumed by household members or the phuki group or some larger group of kin in the ceremonial feasts, bhwae , which follow many major Tantric pujas and are held in connection with auspicious rites of passage and some major calendrical occasions. The sacrifice is ideally done by the jajaman himself on behalf of his family group; he should himself cut the animal's throat. We will return to this central antinomial act, sacrifice, later in this chapter and in connection with urban symbolic enactments centering on Devi in chapter 15. For Bhaktapur, however, the violation of the ordinary dhar-

ma in the worship of the dangerous deities, which most resists becoming routine and trivialized during ritual repetition, is the sacrifice itself.

The participation of Brahmans in some of the most esoteric and "powerful" Tantric puja s is another profound violation of the implications of the city's ordinary religion. Newar Brahmans can eat certain meats, but are never supposed to drink alcohol, which would be a violation of their basic status regulations. In the course of the Tantric puja s in which their participation is essential, the worship of Taleju as the Malla lineage deity and as a central civic deity—which is witnessed by the auxiliary priests of Taleju, and in worship held for and witnessed by high-status clients in the most elaborate Aga(n) House puja s, and in their own phuki Aga(n) God worship, the tasting of alcoholic spirits by the Brahman priest as part of the five makara s is necessary. These spirits are specially prepared and purified, both physically and ritually. They are not called "aila ," "alcoholic spirits," but "Ga(n)ga jala " (app. 4), the purest of the various pure waters used in rituals, and considered in some contexts as amrta^[*] or nectar, and in others as Sakti herself. Furthermore, in some Taleju ceremonies and in their own Aga(n) God puja s, Brahmans must perform animal sacrifice. All this involves a genuine risk for the Brahman, not only in the usual Tantric sense that what is clearly a violation and a sin in an ordinary context must somehow become transmuted into a proper religious act but also because their behavior (like all Tantric behavior, but the Brahman has the most to risk) can be used as an attack against the status of participants by those who discount the validity of the Tantric ritual.^[11]

Upper-Status Tantrism: Family And Phuki Worship—Worship oF the Lineage Gods, The Aga(n) Gods, And the Digu Gods

We have remarked that the consideration of upper-status Tantrism may be divided into group worship and individually centered worship. Group worship is primarily that of the family—household or phuki —and centers on the lineage deity. The various kinds of internal esoteric worship at Taleju temple are closely related to such family worship, for Taleju is worshiped as the lineage deity of the Malla kings. Tantric worship of the lineage deity is amalgamated with and added to a worship of the lineage deity as the "Digu God" which is shared by all Newars.

We have introduced the basic Tantric group puja in the previous section. Such puja s are required for the rites of passage of family members, and in the course of certain annual events. They may be performed at the mandalic^[*]pitha , rarely in the god-house of the Mandalic^[*] Goddess, sometimes in a special room of a family's house—the Aga(n) Room, and most commonly in a special house for the phuki 's lineage deity, the Aga(n) House. Although a householder may perform or lead a perfunctory ritual by himself, most important Tantric family rituals are performed under the direction of, and in part by, an Acaju. On very important occasions a (sometimes more than one) Brahman may preside, and the Acaju will assist him. In the case of those upper-status families without initiates, or without an available one, an Acaju must perform the puja alone in the name of the family.

In addition to required Tantric puja s there are optional ones, and in these cases the household may be free to choose between a Tantric and an ordinary puja , the latter usually directed to Visnu^[*] . The optional Tantric puja s are performed in relation to some "serious problem." Examples are a major disease of a family member; an outbreak of disease in the city from which the family wishes to be protected; a prolonged inability to have children for which lesser remedies have not worked; a period of bad luck thought to be due to astrological forces; or the wish for success in some major, risky undertaking. Tantric puja s are considered more powerful than puja s to a non-Tantric god. It is said that optional Tantric puja s are more directed toward the granting of a wish, while non-Tantric ones have to do with maintaining relationships with the gods. As a Brahman put it, the ideal attitude in an ordinary puja to the benign gods is, "We are here to serve and honor you. When you are here we have no problems." The distinction is important and emphasizes contrasts in the general meaning and uses of the two kinds of deities, although, in practice, favors are often hoped for from the ordinary gods and conversely one does not overtly confront the Tantric gods with the concrete goal of the Tantric puja , which is rather "kept in the mind."

An optional Tantric puja may have been given at the time of seeking help with a problem. More often a promise or pledge, a baca is given mentally to the Aga(n) God, to the effect that if the wish is granted, a puja will be performed. In these cases, in fact, even if the wish is not granted, a perfunctory puja is often given to the god; people may worry that perhaps the Aga(n) God was angry at them and that was why the favor was not granted, and that if they then neglect the proposed puja ,

they will have even worse luck. Misfortune is sometimes explained by some such neglected promise to a dangerous god, which may have just passed rapidly, even unconsciously, through someone's mind and which might even have resulted in the granting of the desire.

Once a decision to have a puja to solve some problem has been made, there is often (although not always)^[12] some choice, as we have noted, as whether to have a Tantric puja , or a Brahman-assisted non-Tantric puja . While a Tantric puja is said to be more powerful than a non-Tantric one, it is also liable to be more elaborate, time consuming, and expensive.^[13] Furthermore, the participants, in contrast to the participants who can be gathered in a major Brahman-assisted puja to the ordinary gods, must have the proper initiation. In recent decades non-Tantric puja s have become increasingly common as the upper-level groups have less money (and are less likely to devote it to religious activities), and less time, and are less liable to have received initiation. The Tantric puja , centering as it does on the lineage deity, is essentially a phuki activity. Thus the shift to the non-Tantric puja (a dhala[n] danegu ; app. 4) has the additional characteristic that it is less exclusive and is sometimes attended by non-initiates, friends, and invited neighbors.^[14]

Most of the Tantric puja s performed now (as was probably the case in the past) are not optional but required ones. They were dedicated primarily to the Tantric lineage deity, with an associated emphasis on the areal Mandalic^[*] Goddess.^[15] The Aga(n) God in the Aga(n) House is supposed to be given daily puja s by an initiated family member or an Acaju, and a more elaborate puja once a month (on the fourteenth day or "ca:re " of the dark half of the lunar month; see chap. 12). There is also special worship on the first, eighth, ninth, and tenth days of the autumn Mohani festival (chap. 15) and during the course of the lunar and solar New Year festivals. During all of a phuki 's rites of passage there is special worship by the Acaju and initiated males. Previously many phukis had also dedicated themselves to one or two large annual feasts—often in commemoration of the death of some important phuki ancestor—which must be preceded by elaborate Aga(n) House worship, and need the assistance of one or more Brahmans as well as an Acaju.

We have in the chapters on space and on deities discussed the Digu Gods, the stones placed outside of the city limits, which represent the lineage gods of various phuki groups. These deities are dangerous deities, variously identified, and require offerings of meats and alcohol.

The Digu Gods are, in turn, related to representations of the lineage gods within the city, which are for thar s with Tantric initiation, the "secret gods," the Aga(n) Gods.^[16] The Aga(n) Gods, in turn, are closely related to the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses who preside over the sector in which the phuki members live or, rarely, in the case of movement of a family within the city, where they had their origin in the city. The relation of the stone lineage deity outside the city and the housed image within reflects the relationship of the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses' external pithas and internal god-houses. The Digu God's stone is, as we have noted, sometimes referred to as a pitha , and its form and placement resembles the pitha s of the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses. The pairing of the two locations also recalls a characteristic theme in the arrangements, legends, and symbolic enactments of the dangerous deities, that is, the description of a form related to and representative of the dangerous but generative forces surrounding the city and its society, on the one hand and, on the other, the introduction of that form into the city—for the city's protection—under the careful control of powerful Tantric ritual safeguards.^[17]

From the point of view of sophisticated upper-status people, both the Digu God outside of the city and the Aga(n) God within it are representatives of the same deity, the lineage god, the Kula (or Kul ) devata . Families below the level of those that have elaborated Tantric secret gods and worship, often have a god image that they keep hidden somewhere in the house and which they often call their "Aga(n) God." That lower-status image is thought of as the family's secret lineage god and is often a yantra worked onto a metal plate, an image of Bhagavati, or a small stone. This image is hidden in cloth wrappings and kept in a safe place in the house, usually, of the leader of the phuki group. This house image is brought in a procession to the family's Digu God location outside the city on the proper day during Dewali, the annual occasion for the worship of the lineage god. Household members in these middle-status and lower-status families are allowed to see and know about the hidden god for the first time for boys after the Kaeta Puja ceremony, during which they are initiated into membership into their thar and for girls after their Ihi or mock-marriage ceremony (see app. 6).

The upper thar s, in fact, have similar portable deities, which they use during the external annual worship of their Digu Gods, but these are different from the main image of their Aga(n) God, the form that is thought of as the Aga(n) God. Ideally, that main Aga(n) God image is kept in a "secret (god-) house" an Aga (n ) che(n) , of its own, often an elaborate four-story structure^[18] belonging to the phuki .^[19] Sometimes,

the Aga(n) God is kept and worshiped in a special room, the aga (n ) kotha , "secret room," on the cwata floor (chap. 7) of the house of the leader of the phuki . Each household in the phuki group will have a secondary image of the Aga(n) God in their Aga(n) Room, which will serve as the locus of some of the individually centered worship of household members (below). The main image of the Aga(n) God requires daily worship, which is now usually done by an Acaju, who may have several such shrines to attend to each day. It is worshiped by male family members with proper initiation during major Tantric puja s, but in many families in recent years there are no members with the proper initiation, and only the Acaju attends the god in the Aga(n) House.^[20]

In spite of the understanding by religious experts that the Digu God and the Aga(n) God are both "the same god," the lineage god, the two foci are, in general, regarded differently and have some important contrasts. The Digu God is often regarded as a specific deity, called "Digu God," and the Aga(n) God is sometimes also thought of as a separate deity, "the Aga(n) God," in its own right. The true identification of these gods is something that is revealed to members of the family during the course of various initiations. men (women have only perfunctory and limited initiations) learn during their initiation the name of their particular lineage god and the mantras appropriate to its worship. All lineage gods for the thar s with rights to Tantric initiation in Bhaktapur are, in fact, most probably forms of the Goddess, and the majority of them the form locally known as "Bhagavati," the goddess in the form of the slayer of the buffalo demon, that is, as Mahisasuramardini. The remainder of the lineage deities are probably the same as the Mandalic^[*] Goddess of the area in which the family group is established or from which it moved in the city. Most families, however, not knowing what Aga(n) deities other phuki groups have, are able to think of their own Aga(n) God as uniquely special to their own lineage.

The Digu God is represented in and in a sense is the stone itself. However, there may be several images and representations of a phuki 's Aga(n) God. The central one, the focus of the phuki worship is, like Taleju is supposed to be, a yantra . There may be secondary images kept at the Aga(n) House. They include anthropomorphic figures, often elaborate images, which are the sorts of images usually carried to the Digu God location at the time of the annual Dewali lineage worship there. The image brought to the external shrine at Dewali may not necessarily be kept in the central Aga(n) House, it may be kept in the house of the phuki 's senior leader, or of the particular senior phuki

member whose turn it is to be principally responsible for the Aga(n) God worship. Other secondary images are kept in the Aga(n) Rooms in the houses of the individual phuki households. As we will see later, most individual Tantric worship among these upper-status families takes place not in the Aga(n) House, but in these household Aga(n) Rooms.

An important aspect of the meaning of—and the contrast between—the Aga(n) God and the Digu God is their relation to the lineage groups, which they and their symbolic enactments centrally define. Both define the phuki group, but there is a certain difference in emphasis, the Digu God serving to hold together a larger grouping. The core phuki group consists of those households who during the Dewali period go to the same Digu God shrine at the same time. This ceremony, a procession carrying an image of the Aga(n) God to the Digu God shrine, is an integration of the internal and external representations of the lineage deity. It must take place during the period of some seven weeks, beginning during the waning lunar fortnight of Caulaga in late April (chaps. 12 and 13), finishing seven weeks later prior to the day of Sithi Nakha (chaps. 13 and 15), which signals the ceremonial end of the dry season and the anticipation of the annual rains. The ceremony at the Digu God shrines is called either "Digu God puja " or "Dewali puja ."^[21] The core phuki group, those households who go to the same Digu God shrine together, is the phuki group (chap. 6) which is united in the rites of passage of all its members. Particularly salient for members of this group is their sharing of ritual pollution at the birth or death of members, the latter entailing the necessity of prolonged purifying rites. This group shares in ritual feasts and may act (albeit rarely) as a council to discuss problems concerning the group of related families. Its member households tend to live in close proximity to each other, sometimes around a common courtyard. This is also the same group which will have a common Aga(n) House, the house and its god belonging to the phuki groups as a whole. As we noted in chapter 6, these groups must always split when they become too large. What happens now in the case of the Aga(n) House and Digu God is not quite the same.

As the phuki becomes too large and splits, the members of the two newly formed groups still have the same Digu God, but they now go at different times. They have become two ba-phuki s, or "split-phuki s," who, although sharing common male patrilineal ancestors, are now no longer a ritual unit, and do not share the birth and death pollution of the other split-off group. They are no longer, in this sense, one body.

Through repeated splittings there may be a large number of phuki groups that worship the same Digu God at different times. As all these phuki groups worshiping one Digu God are assumed to have a common male ancestry, they are not supposed to intermarry.^[22] Thus the Digu God acts as a sign of the group that is subject to exogamy. The different phuki groups represented by the same Digu shrine have, through long periods of time, often become scattered throughout various areas of the city. It is thus believed that the Digu God protects the maximally extended patrilineal group within and throughout the city, and by extension in concert with other Digu God shrines (and in analogy with the protective ring of mandalic^[*]pitha s), protects the entire city.

The Aga(n) House, with its central image of the lineage deity, is the center for each upper-status phuki group within the city. When a phuki group splits, ideally a new Aga(n) House will be built and a new representation of the Aga(n) God made, which is ritually "established" or consecrated (pratistha^[*] ) in the new house so as to partake of the power and nature of the original deity.^[23] While in one sense the Aga(n) Gods which have become duplicated and established in various different Aga(n) Houses are the "same" god, the duplicated deity begins to lose its unifying identity. Once it is in different Aga(n) Houses, there are no longer any ritual enactments tying those houses and the various split-phuki segments together. The different Digu God ceremonies at the same shrine are tied together through the visible identity of the shrine; it is understood that the Digu deity is the same, and the proper mantra s used in its worship are also understood to be the same for each of the split-phuki groups. The Aga(n) Gods disappear from the view of other phuki sections, however, and each comes to be regarded as the protector of a special corporate group in a circumscribed area of space within the city.

Upper-Status Tantrism: Individually Centered Practices and Initiation

The aims of the Tantric tradition for the achievement of mukti , "spiritual emancipation," or bhukti , "domination," as the quotation from Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan (1979) at the beginning of the chapter epitomizes it, are aims to be achieved by individuals, not by groups of Tantric followers, and certainly not by traditional Hindu social units. This is the aspect of Tantrism that is emphasized in popular books directed toward the West and toward modern South Asians. Tantrism,

so conceived, is a practice that is supposed to alter the relation of the individual practitioner of Tantrism to the ordinary social, religious, and logical reality in which he or she lives. Able through Tantric practice to see that reality as maya , illusion, an individual achieves liberation from it.

Thus, as put in a passage typical of such books (L. P. Singh 1967, 2):

In an esoteric sense Tantra means "the spiritual cult by which divine knowledge is unfolded." . . . The mystic definition of Tantra is that It is the spiritual cult which liberates from the bondages of crudeness and ignorance. . . . Tantra is a process . . . which relieves one from the fetters of crudeness. Thus Tantra is an intuitional science which stands for the progressive realization of the divine. It liberates one from the cimmerian darkness and leads unto the divine effulgence. It is a path of salvation. It is a science of the soul. The authoritative definition of Tantra is, that which brings liberation, emancipation from the bondage of Maya.

This particular path to salvation among the several offered by Hinduism, a salvation centered on the nature of the individual, his or her personal and private effort and transcendence of maya , links Tantrism to those South Asian practices such as yoga, meditation, and social renunciation, which are based on temporary or permanent withdrawal from social relationships and modes. Such practices, like bhakti , devotion to a personal god, are antithetical to Hinduism's and Bhaktapur's dominant emphasis on submission to—and salvation by means of—the sacralized forms of social life, a submission phrased as adherence to the dharma . It is the very density of the familial and larger social world regulated by dharma that gives renunciation its special oppositional force and motivation in South Asia. In Bhaktapur the "reality" that is being seen through includes in large part the symbolically constructed mesocosm itself and the self that is to be dissolved is the socially constructed self. The salvation produced by escape from moral reality, the salvation of mukti or moksa^[*] , is, on the face of it, quite different from and subversive of the idea of salvation produced by adherence to the moral and religious system of the city.

The technique for achieving mukti and its consequences is, like the goals of Tantric practice, typically described in effulgent terms even in the scholarly literature. Thus Gupta, in a discussion of nyasa and the associated practices of bhutasuddhi in Tantric puja s, describes the sequence in terms that are typical of Tantric commentary (Gupta, Hoens and Goudriaan 1979,136):

Using his yogic technique and his highly developed powers of Imagination and concentration, the Tantric practicer envisages all the ontological realities that go to make up his personality. He then proceeds to envisage within himself the process of cosmic creation . . . in reverse order. . . . He follows every single step, imagining the dissolution of each element into its preceding cause, until in the end he is ultimately dissolved or immersed m his cosmic source. He then envisages his own resurrection, retracing each step of cosmic creation. Only now, having burned away with cosmic fire and blown away with cosmic air all his human imperfections and limitations, he experiences bliss and, permeated with it, remains immersed in the cosmic source. . . . He now has a body made of pure substance . . . identical with that of the deity's and he is free to invite her to descend into it—to invoke the divine ego to descend on to his ego.

What is the relation of such ideal transcending procedures—these techniques for a blissful escape from self, family, and city in Bhaktapur—to the actual individual uses of individual Tantrism there? As we did in the yogic references in familial Tantric puja s, we will find echoes of these antistructural, reality-transcending, and self-altering programs in the goals and forms of individual practice and symbolism, transformed and tamed, as all Bhaktapur's Tantrism is, by a careful fitting into in the civic system.

Individually centered Tantrism is presented to upper-status males in conjuction with a sequence of initiations, dekha (sometimes dikha , both deriving from diksa in Sanskrit), which are conducted by the family's Brahman guru , the same Brahman who is also the family's purohita , or family priest. In the course of each initiation certain information is passed on by the guru to the pupil or initiate (sisya^[*] in Sanskrit). There are three significant levels or stages in relation to Tantric knowledge for the upper-status thar s: (1) the initiation to "caste," the Kaeta ("loincloth") Puja (app. 6); (2) the initiation into the worship of the Aga(n) God; and (3), an initiation in preparation for dying, death, and "salvation," the moksa^[*] or mukti initiation.

There are many kinds of initiation in Bhaktapur. They all entail the transmission of some esoteric knowledge by the guru , or his equivalent, and a solemn and sacred pledge of secrecy by the initiate. When, for example, a new wife comes to a household, or a new Acaju is employed, they are told the names and some of the mantras of the particular form or forms of the household lineage gods they must deal with, in a ceremony in which they pledge secrecy. Such initiations are sometimes called ba dekha (or "baga dekha ") or "half-initiations" by those familiar

with more advanced Tantric initiations. There are also many special initiations within those thar s that have a craft profession, such as the playing of some particular musical instrument, the making of masks, or the making of metal images. These initiations initiate and make sacred the teaching relation between guru and initiate, introduce the appropriate mantras and procedures of worship to the deity who will give effectiveness to the studies, and may introduce technical instructions or esoteric knowledge.

At all levels and in all thar s, now including the Po(n)s, there is an initiation of boys into their thar , the Kaeta Puja . All thar s have Kaeta Puja ceremonies that are associated with the idea of a radical change of status for a boy, his entry into his thar 's secrets, and his becoming fully morally responsible for following the dharma . The Kaeta Puja is a samskara , one of Bhaktapur's rites of passgage (app. 6) derived mostly from the Hindu tradition. In the upper thar s, the boy receives not only a loin cloth symbolizing his maturity but also the jona or sacred thread. For these upper-status boys this is the first in a potential series of initiations. For boys of other thar s it is the last (with the exception of craft initiation, which is sometimes given in conjunction with the Kaeta Puja ). During the Kaeta Puja boys are told something about their lineage god and are given some mantra s to use in worship. These mantra s, given by the guru (who in lower-status households may be a family member), like the mantra s given in more advanced initiation, are those shared by the larger phuki group and are thought by the phuki members to be their particular and special mantra , although they may, in fact, like the name of the phuki Aga(n) God, be common, not only to other groups that have split off from the lineage, but also to much larger groupings.

The next level of initiation, possible only to the upper thar s, is the one that is usually designated by the unqualified term "dekha ," the initiation to the phuki 's Aga(n) God practices. In previous times almost all men in the upper thar s took this initiation as young adults. Now, except for those Brahmans and Acaju priests who need this and other initiations for their priestly duties, many upper-status men delay taking this initiation until after the active years of their education and professional life—and some may never take it. Once having taken the Aga(n) dekha , one has time-consuming obligations in the ceremonies for worship of the Aga(n) God. In this second dekha the initiate enters into the secret Aga(n) religion of the phuki , is told the name of the god and its proper mantra , and can see it—or in those thar s where noninitiate family

members are able to see the Aga(n) God wrapped and hidden in cloths on some occasions, see it uncovered—for the first time. The initiate is now also told the proper procedures necessary in the worship of the Aga(n) God. He is introduced to japa meditation, where he repeats the same mantra for some given number of times, while counting off the repetitions by means of the beads of a special necklace. The new knowledge and practice is taught to the initiate over several days (depending on the student's quickness and ability) by the family guru , who has now become his guru . In the context of this initiation the phuki 's Aga(n) God is referred to as the student's istadevata , the student's own tutelary god.^[24] The initiate is also told something about cakra meditation, the idea that the Goddess can be brought into his body, or resides in his body, and can be moved through a series of internal cakras or centers. The meditative practices he is introduced to are not for his private purposes—for either power or for penetrating illusion in a quest for salvation—but as instruments in the worship of his lineage deity. These introductions to yogic procedures in conjunction with the remainder of the esoteric information he is given moves him into the group of initiates which constitutes his phuki in their focal shared relation to their secret lineage deity.

The third possible initiation is often called Nirban (Sanskrit, Nirvana^[*] ) initiation. This is available to men in the upper thar s who had the previous initiations and who would typically take it in their forties or fifties. For Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, the techniques learned at this level of initiation are considered necessary for the really powerful forms of Tantric worship, particularly those associated with the Taleju temple,^[25] for conducting Brahman-assisted Aga(n) God worship of upper-status families, and for undertaking the role of guru to members of these families in their middle- and upper-level dekha s. Brahmans, like other upper-status men, also may undergo this stage of initiation for their own "salvation," for mrban , or mukti . Not all practicing Brahmans have this level of dekha ; some will undergo it later in life, while others—those with middle-level clients or temple pujari work—may never have it. Even fewer of the non-Brahman upper-status men now undergo it. Many of them do not even undergo the Aga(n) initiation, which is a necessary prerequisite to this one. However, for those men who are especially interested in continuing Tantric studies—either from interest in Tantrism in itself, or for the specific salvation promised by the initiation—this aristocratic option is available.

During the third-level initiation and studies, the initiate learns more

about his Aga(n) Goddess and her secret connections with the other Tantric deities in the city. He is instructed further in meditation technique, particularly cakra meditation. This is often in a limited form in comparison with the way this kind of meditation is known and used by Tantric practitioners and yogi s elsewhere, but is more elaborate than the initiate's previous meditation. It is considered to be a kind of Kundalini^[*] Yoga for the purpose of moving the Goddess into the cakra located in the "heart," for meditation and worship. The instruction at this level requires daily study with a guru during a period of about one month. Following Nirban initiation, the initiate may now also read esoteric books, often in the possession of families, which deal with meditation, with Kundalini^[*] Yoga, and with the secret connections and relations of Tantric deities in the city. It is said that the unauthorized reading of such books without initiation leads to insanity or blindness.

What has this to do with mukti , or nirban , that is, with "salvation"? The cosmic fire and cosmic air that the initiate experiences are considerably less freeing and transforming than our introductory quotations promised. He must await his death for their full effect, and even then his self, he hopes, will be only modestly transformed. People in Bhaktapur, like many South Asians, have various elaborate and inconsistent ideas about their fate after death. They believe, in one or another context, that it depends on their moral behavior during life (this life and previous ones), on their ritual activities and general actions at the time of dying, and on the proper ceremonies being performed by their family (particularly by their oldest son) after their death—especially during the first several days. Personal fate after death is also variously conceived. One joins the "fathers," the pitrs^[*] . One wanders around somewhere for a period forming a spiritual body, and then goes to be judged by Yama, the King of the Dead, in his kingdom, whereupon one may be reincarnated or one may go to one of several heavens. Whatever mukti or nirban means to the people of Bhaktapur and to the Nirban initiate practicing meditation for "salvation," it does not mean that "highest [stage] . . . when the soul is absorbed in the Paramatman [the supreme soul] as the river is lost in the sea . . . [and where] there is no persistence of personality . . . and there is nothing left to do, or to attain to, or to gain" (Stevenson 1920, 187f.).^[26] Whatever the highest theological speculations about the dissolving of the self as salvation, mukti , for those people with whom we have discussed this (and in their understanding of what others believe), this is neither what they believe nor what they want mukti to entail. It seems to mean, rather, the avoidance

of painful new lives, and the chance to remain in some heavenly place, usually the particular heaven of the most unproblematic of the city's moral deities, Visnu-Narayana^[*] . This implies, for many, being surrounded by their family and remmbering their present life. The main focus of Nirban studies is the preparation for the time of dying, the maran kal (Sanskrit, marana^[*] kala ) the appointed time for "destruction." Tantric discipline leads to a control of mind which can be helpful at the maran kal in two ways. At the time of death, the spirit resists leaving the body easily, the dying person will suffer for a long time. If he uses the proper mantra s and meditates on the god Narayana^[*] (never on a Tantric deity), however, the soul leaves the body more easily and the adept has a quicker and less painful death. Tantric education, sadhana , helps in this meditation. The other problematic aspect of dying is that bad thoughts during the maran kal —worries about money, angry or vengeful thoughts, a wish for alcoholic spirits, and the like, will cause a punitive distressing reincarnation. Tantric discipline allows the maintenance of a peaceful mind and thus prevents a bad rebirth, and ideally any rebirth less comfortable than in "Narayana's^[*] heaven."

However trivialized these practices and goals may seem from the point of view of Tantrism's highest philosophical ideals, and however woven into larger social practices, the underlying direction is familiar—a detachment from the realities, concerns, and passions of social inter-relatedness, a detachment that will allow the practitioner to avoid, if only at the moment of death, becoming entangled in Bhaktapur's enveloping world.

Techniques learned during the Tantric dekha s are used in the phuki worship we discussed above. These include special mantra s, hand gestures, and meditative practices. An important technique taught in these initiations is the visualization as a clear image—following some canonical description—of the deity to be worshiped and, eventually, the ability to mentally place this image within the body or within a mandala^[*] drawn on a purified area on the floor. The ability to perform a puja to a mental image, to be able to dispense with a material external image, is considered to be one of the essential achievements of advanced Tantric practice in Bhaktapur, and one of the factors separating Tantrism from the externally somewhat similar worshiping of the dangerous deities through the sacrificial offerings of noninitiates.

In the remainder of his life after his initiation, the Nirban initiate practices his cakra meditation during daily worship, which usually

takes place in the morning during, roughly, one hour in the Aga(n) Room on the back half of the civata floor of the house. This daily worship is to the Aga(n) God—(whose, most often, subsidiary image is in the Aga(n) Room)—and to the household gods, who will be represented there by secondary images.^[27] In the course of his worship through one or another meditative procedure, he is supposed to put himself in the state of concentration and ability to create an image called (both in Bhaktapur and in Tantric theory) dhyana . The imagined image has a specified form, color, number of arms, objects in its hands, significant gestures of some of its hands, a special vehicle, and so forth. Dhyana , here, is not a dissolution of consciousness, but a kind of control or concentration of it.^[28] The initiate may also come to the Aga(n) Room for silent meditation when he wishes to. He may now use japa meditation or some form of cakra meditation. Here the meditation in itself, the practice of sadhana in itself, is his goal.

Tantrism and the Public City

We have discussed Tantrism as the esoteric individual and familial practices of upper-status families.^[29] Tantrism and the experience of and worship of the dangerous deities by noninitiates are intimately and reciprocally related, influencing each other. In the top-down perspective, Tantrism affects the larger city in many ways. The complex of activities in and centering on the Taleju temple represents the expansion of Taleju as the Malla king's Aga(n) God into the tutelary deity of the king's city. The Tantric puja s performed in Taleju, above all those done at the climax of the autumnal Mohani festival, are, in part, for the "good of the city," as well as for the king himself. There are also other Tantric puja s performed under certain threatening circumstances for the protection of the city as a whole. These are called chema puja , puja s done for "forgiveness" (chema derives from the Sanskrit "Ksama^[*] " in its sense as "pardon"), or more adequately, as Manandhar notes, "to restore the worshiper to a proper relationship to deity" (1976, p. 135). Chema pujas have been performed in the past, for example, because of epidemics of smallpox or cholera, prolonged droughts during the rice planting season, fires, and earth tremors with threatening earthquakes. The chema puja is addressed to the dangerous gods as a group. As we have noted, asking "forgiveness" of such gods is often associated with the idea that they may have been inadvertently offended, and therefore an act of redress may possibly placate them. Acajus, Josis, and Brah-

mans take part in these puja s, and offerings of prayer, music, meat, and alcohol are presented to the dangerous gods at their temples and shrines throughout the city. The food offerings are then distributed as prasada among the city's people to restore their relations with the gods and to protect them.^[30]

Many of the images of the public city, above all many of the images and actions of the annual cycle,^[31] are the outward expression of Tantric forms whose inner meaning is supposedly known only to initiates. The public images, ideas, and practices surrounding the dangerous deities have their own qualities, however, and have some uses that are in marked contrast to Tantrism. Tantrism uses those images in a quest for control and transcendence; the exoteric religion uses them (as does Tantrism) to symbolize aspects of Newar experience, but, in contrast to Tantrism, it uses them entirely for the purposes of social integration and control, not to escape it. We will deal with much of this in later chapters on the annual cycles, but we may here consider two central clusters of ideas in relation to the dangerous deities, ideas that are related to both the esoteric and exoteric aspects of the worship of the dangerous deities. These are the conceptions of the relations of Siva and Sakti, and the ideas about and practices of animal sacrifice.

Symbolic Complexes: Siva/Sakti

In our account of the mythology of the dangerous goddesses we discussed how the goddesses were emitted as a kind of force, sakti , by Siva and by the other male benign divinities. These saktis operated sometimes independently, sometimes coalesced into one supreme Goddess. This supreme Goddess is quite independent of the gods who in some accounts emit her or her component goddesses; in other accounts she is, in fact, prior to them as the ultimate supreme creative deity. The tradition that emphasizes the worship of the Goddess as the supreme deity is Saktism^[*] . Both historically and in the way they are made use of in Bhaktapur Saktism^[*] and Tantrism are "two intersecting but not coinciding circles" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 6). Within Bhaktapur's Tantrism there is an important difference between the images, conceptions, and uses of the Goddess in herself, and the images, conception, and use of "Sakti." Sakti's use both in Bhaktapur's esoteric and exoteric doctrine is based on her relation to Siva—here once again the supreme deity, albeit at a problematic moment in his supremacy—at the

time of her emission from him, and the precursors and consequences of that act.

In Bhaktapur's imagery, Sakti has two implications that are quite different when seen in ordinary common-sense contexts, but which are related in the theory of Siva/Sakti. These conflicting implications and their resolutions generate shifting ways of viewing certain forms and events that contribute greatly to the aesthetics and mystery of Tantric conceptions and symbols. These two implications derive from ideas about sakti as power, on the one hand, and sakti as passive, receptive female sexuality, on the other.

Local characterizations of sakti often begin with nonesoteric statements about the nature and interdependence of form and function. Any living and vital or potentially effective entity has both a containing form and a potential or ongoing function. The function is the object's sakti or "power." The sakti of an eye is seeing; of a bell, ringing.^[32] When the object has lost its sakti , it is dead or powerless, it cannot function, and the eye becomes blind. In contrast, a function, sakti , that becomes disconnected from its form becomes diffuse and transformed in some peculiar way, in some cases uncanny, such as the sound of a bell that is not there. Siva/Sakti conceptions are a divinized version of this idea. Siva represents, at one point in a cyclical process, a living entity, a container with contained vitality; that is, he has his sakti within him. He is full of potential power. But in order to exercise power in the world (and not just social influence—we are at the edge of the non-moral arena of the dangerous deities here) he must emit his sakti , who now becomes Sakti, a divinity in herself. This emitted Sakti, often portrayed as a ray or an impersonal force, does actual "work" in the world, work that changes affairs through force, not by means of moral and social influence. Sakti is the power that is one of the goals of Tantric practice. But having emitted the power, Siva is now empty and dead. Siva without Sakti, the saying (based on a play on Sanskrit orthography) goes, is Sava, a corpse. The living Siva is male, but he contains a female principle within him. The dead (or weakened or exhausted) Siva is male, but now the female principle is external to him. He is incomplete. For his own sake and for that of society, it is essential to recapture the Sakti.^[33] Now a second step and a partial transformation of the imagery occurs here. Siva, the male principle, and Sakti, the female principle, can become reintegrated through the act of union of sexual intercourse—as well as through other and variously represented

unifications, which never lose their coital implications. For this purpose Siva may be represented as a phallus, a linga^[*] , and Sakti as a vagina, a yoni . But the phallus is active; the vagina is a passive receptacle, a container, in something like the way the form is the container for the force that gives it life. There has been a reversal in the signification of Siva and Sakti.

The Sukunda, an elaborately formed combined oil container and oil lamp used in major Hindu Newar rituals, consists of a semispherical container for oil to which is attached an oval or triangularly shaped shallow container, which is the oil lamp itself, and at whose apex a wick is placed. The oil container is the living Siva with his potential force, and both the burning wick and the triangular dish are Sakti, but in different ways. The burning wick is Sakti as energy; the triangular dish is Sakti as the sexual complement to the male, ready to restore his potential power. The oil from the container is put into the lamp dish as an act of union, and now the flame-Sakti can spring forth. Tantrism adds an emphasis on this vaginal and receptive Sakti as a consort in a sexualized act of union that is restitutive and which prepares the now enriched male for a new generation of power to the more general idea of the Sakti as Goddess and as an active and unrestrained (by civic order and morality) force in the world. Bhaktapur's religious, ritual, and festival imagery is replete with references to these ideas. Any pair of objects or events can be related to Siva and Sakti through one or the other of their interrelational meanings. Meat and alcohol presented to the dangerous deities are respectively Siva and Sakti: the flesh representing the embodied form and the alcoholic spirits, the vitalizing principle. A ritually presented grain of unhusked rice has Sakti as its potentially germinating kernel, Siva, as its husk. Dualisms of right and left, double lines (commonly used in marking out mandala^[*] s on the ground for Tantric puja s), overlapping pairs (or sets) of triangles, are used to represent the splitting and complementarity of form and function, male and female. Such opposities are symbolically brought together in festival and ritual enactments. The joining and collapsing of these oppositions is shown in visual imagery as a dot or point, a bindu , often placed in the center of the pairs or in a central position in a complex image (such as a dangerous god's face, where it may be placed at the bridge of the nose). The bindu represents unity in contrast to dualism—the beginning of phenomenological diversity—and it represents, among other things, the union of the separated Siva and Sakti into a revitalized and rebalanced albeit now problematically self-contained, Siva.

The oscillating meanings of the polarities of Siva and Sakti and their necessary eternal couplings, condensations, and separations are very powerful symbolic resources for representing personal and social dilemmas. At the personal level these are resonances of vital, self-contained, self-sufficient, omnipotential fullness on the one hand—so well represented in the classical imagery of Siva—versus the divisions that initiate a society and social identity on the other. These personal meanings also echo problems about the sexual other and the sexual act, problems that have special South Asian forms and emphases. On the social level, however, which is our present concern, the complex of Siva/Sakti ideas and practices represents a tension between moral order, the heavenly order of the gods, with its static eternal balance, and the periodic need to mobilize an amoral power, a socially unrestrained force that becomes problematic once its job is done (even while it is doing it) as it is socially unrestrained and dangerous. The question then becomes how to get that power back under control, back into the heavenly quietude again. The Tantric interpretations and enactments of Siva and Sakti represent and mimic all this.

Symbolic Complexes: Sacrifice

The dangerous deities are usually distinguished from the ordinary ones in that their proper worship (as the legend of Taleju, for example, emphasized) requires that they be offered alcoholic spirits and animal flesh, (see, for example, fig. 19) which would be forbidden and sinful as offerings to the ordinary gods. The use of animal sacrifice in contrast to vegetarian offerings to mark a division and contrast among gods and types of ritual did not apparently exist in Vedic religion, where (contrary to what most nonscholarly Newar Hindus seem now to believe) there were both animal and vegetable offerings. "Ultimately," as Madeleine Biardeau put it, "the 'putting to death' of cereals or plants was scarcely less violent than the murder of animal victims" (Biardeau and Malamoud 1976, 139 [our translation]). The Laws of Manu (V, 40 [i.e., section V, verse 40]) includes plants in its attempt to justify the "murder" of various creatures. "Herbs, trees, cattle, birds, and (other) animals that have been destroyed for sacrifices, receive [in rebirth] higher existences" (Bühler 1969, 175). Biardeau points out that the Smrti^[*] texts illustrate, however, a particular "embarrassment" in relation to the animal sacrifices, for animals were not to be eaten m non-sacrificial

Figure 19.
Sacrifice of a young male goat to the goddess Bhagavati.

forms. Thus, according to Manu , (parentheses are Bühler's; Bühler 1969, p. 174; Manu V, 31, 32, 33):

"The consumption of meat (is befitting) for sacrifices," that is declared to be a rule made by the gods; but to persist (in using it) on other (occasions) is said to be a proceeding worthy of Rakshasas [malevolent demons].
He who eats meat when he honors the gods and . . . [ancestral spirits], commits no sin, whether he has bought it, or himself has killed (the animal). . . . A twice-born man who knows the law, must not eat meat except in conformity with the law; for if he has eaten it unlawfully, he will, unable to save himself, be eaten after death by his (victims).

Significantly, Brahmans are included among the meat eaters. "A Brahman must never eat animals unhallowed by Mantras; but obedient to the primeval law, he may eat it consecrated with Vedic text." Yet, with all these (and various other) attempts to distinguish sacrifice from murder duly made, the Laws state, "a man who, being duly engaged (to officiate or to dine at a sacred rite), refuses to eat meat, becomes after death an animal during twenty-one existences" (Manu V, 35, 36; Buhler^[*] 1969, 174f. [emphasis added]). Sanctions were sometimes needed to force people to participate in the animal sacrifice. These ancient issues have persisted in full force in Bhaktapur.

Biardeau notes that the division between animal and vegetarian sacrifice has in recent millennia become associated with a hierarchy of lower and higher practices, deities, and priests. As we noted in descriptions of other South Asian communities (chap. 8 and above) the vegetarian gods there are higher than the meat eating ones, and their priests, Brahmans, are, in turn, vegetarian and superior to the priests of the flesh-eating gods, whose priests typically belong to lower and nonvegetarian castes (Biardeau and Malamoud 1976, 140). Bhaktapur, of course, has suppressed the hierarchy of the dangerous and benign gods, and hesitates, in fact, to decide which might be higher.^[34] The suppression is an uneasy one. Newar Brahmans, as they did in the times reflected in Manu's laws, participate in blood sacrifice and eat sacrificially prepared meat. For them and for all the upper thar s, however, sacrifice and meat eating takes its meaning from the various violations of the ordinary dharma that they represent.

Animal sacrifice or an equivalent meat offering is the proper offering to dangerous gods—which in most cases means a goddess—and is required in upper-status Tantric worship to the Aga(n) God and to other Tantric deities. Sacrificial worship of the dangerous gods is optional for those without Tantric initiation, with one essential exception. Every

household in the city must offer a yearly animal sacrifice or meat offering to Bhagavati during the course of the household ceremonies during the harvest festival, Mohani. Most households, if they can afford to at all, perform sacrifices several times during the course of the year. This is done during important rites of passage, during the ad hoc occasions when a worship of a dangerous deity may seem advisable, and during certain of the annual festivals that are occasions for large, semiritualized family feasts.

The kind of animal sacrificed is optional. An egg is considered a minimal but proper sacrifice to a dangerous deity, and it is offered often by very poor families, using the same terminology for the offering as is applied to other animal sacrifice. The offering of the egg is in fact sometimes called khe(n) syaegu , "killing the egg." A poor family may restrict itself to using a mixture, samhae , which is also used by upper-status families in the course of Tantric puja s in addition to the actual climactic killing of an animal. Samhae is a mixture of black soybeans, ginger, beaten and fried rice, "puffed" or "popped" roasted rice, dried fish, and pieces of water buffalo meat. The dried fish are purchased in shops that also sell grain; the buffalo meat is obtained from the Nae butchers whose thar profession is the ritual killing of water buffaloes. The water buffalo was traditionally the only animal that the butcher killed and sold as the only alternative kind of meat to an animal sacrificed in a family puja . These buffaloes are always killed by the butcher in the course of a perfunctory ritual sacrifice, and this makes the eating of their meat by others the taking of what is gesturally at least a consecrated prasada .

Samhae or eggs may also be used by families at any social and economic level for perfunctory worship of one or another dangerous deity. However, the animal most commonly sacrificed in important household or Aga(n) House puja s by people who can possibly afford one is the male goat. Poorer people may use a rooster on the occasion when a goat would otherwise be sacrificed. Other animals are sacrificed in special occasions and settings. Water buffalo are the focus of sacrifice at the Taleju temple and by the Nine Durgas group, where they symbolize the buffalo demon vanquished by Devi in the Devi Mahatmya . At certain sacrificial ceremonies, pa(n)ca bali , five kinds of animals are sacrificed: water buffaloes, goats, roosters, drakes, and rams. A sixth kind of animal, the pig, is sacrificed in special and limited contexts by the men who incarnate the Nine Durga deities. A castrated male goat, called a khasi , sometimes regarded as a unique type of animal, is consid-

ered the ideal animal for sacrifice to Ganesa^[*] . Sacrificial animals are almost always male animals.^[35] There are some astrologically caused problems when the sacrifice of a female animal is required upon the advice of a Josi (astrologer), and there are Newar festivals in other communities in which female animals are reportedly sometimes sacrificed, but almost all sacrifice in Bhaktapur is of male animals.

The most generally used term for an animal sacrifice is bali , (from Sanskrit, meaning tax, tribute, offering) and in some contexts, bau , which is said to be a Newari derivation of bali . ("Bali " and "bau " are also used for nonmeat offerings in one restricted context, death ceremonies, where rice offerings to ancestors and to crows and dogs as representatives of Yama are so named. Daily offerings of rice to the deceased ancestors of a household are also called bali offerings.) The sacrificial animal is also sometimes referred to as a baha(n) (from Sanskrit vahana , the—most usually—animal vehicle of a god), and thus a sacrifice may be called a baha(n) puja.

As part of the attempt to distinguish sacrifice from murder ("Slaughtering for sacrifices is not slaughtering" [Manu V, 39]), the animal must indicate his assent to the sacrifice, so that he may (again echoing Manu) "receive a higher existence," and be freed of the bad karma that has caused him to be born as an animal.^[36] The sign is the shaking of the animal's head or body in certain ways.^[37] During the course of the dedication of the animal to the deity ritually pure water is sprinkled on it, often getting into the ear, which helps ensure the proper movement. Extremely rarely there are animals who are thought not to have assented and they are turned free to wander in the city, and must not be harmed. Throat cutting and death through the resulting exsanguination is considered the specifically Newar way of sacrificing. Rajopadhyaya Brahmans explain that the animal should have life in him to witness the sacrifice he is making as his gift to the deity, and this is not possible in sacrifice through decapitation. Non-Newar Nepalis who perform sacrifices do so by decapitating animals, and this is often referred to as one of the salient contrasts between Newars and others.^[38] Fowl are decapitated by the Newars, but in keeping with the way mammals are decapitated, with the cut starting at the throat rather than at the back of the neck. The stream of blood from the severed carotid arteries of the sacrificial animal is sprayed on the image of the deity.

The sacrifice of the animal, most typically a male goat, comes (as we have seen in the description of the Tantric puja ) in the course of a puja sequence, and at one of the major climaxes of the sequence. The animal

itself is worshiped. Colored pigments and flowers are put on its head; people make gestures of respect to it; a special pasu mantra, a "beast" mantra , is said for it. The goat is told by the presiding priest or family worshiper that if it agrees it will be able to go to heaven. Sacred water, uncooked rice, and flowers are thrown on its body and head. People then wait for the sign of assent from the animal. A chicken, duck, or water buffalo (when killed by a butcher) must shake its head; a goat must shake its entire body as a sign of acceptance. A buffalo of special ritual importance (that is, all except those routinely but sacrificially killed to be sold as meat by butchers) must, like the goat, shake its body as a sign of acceptance. Although, as we have noted, the animal almost always eventually gives the assent sign, people must sometimes wait a while for it. Once the sign of assent ms given, the animal may now be killed. After the throat is slit and the blood allowed to spray over the god image "to give drink to the deity," the head of the animal is cut off and placed on a metal plate, a puja bha: , which is placed in front of the deity as a food offering. Flowers and colored pigment are taken from the deity and placed on the puja bha: which will, bearing the head, be brought to the feast that always follows the animal sacrifice. Parts of this head will be distributed to the senior members of the phuki in a formal hierarchical pattern as we will recount below. At the time of the sacrifice the various offerings made to the god image previously, flowers, colored pigment, and food offerings become splattered with blood. Some of them are taken and distributed among the worshipers as prasada , and among these the food offerings taken back as prasada are eaten by the worshipers. In a goat sacrifice the abdomen may be opened and a length of intestine taken out, then knotted at one end and blown into to inflate it. The other end is tied, and the image of the deity is now garlanded with this intestinal balloon.

The body of the animal is now prepared for butchering. Its hair may be singed. This is considered necessary in some contexts, in pitha puja s, for example, but optional in others where instead the skin may be treated with boiling water to facilitate the removal of hair. The animal is now to be butchered, usually at or near the place of its sacrifice in preparation for a feast.

Who does the actual killing? This question illustrates the tension between slaughter as a sin and sacrifice as a religious duty. The two thar s whose traditional responsibilities include the killing of animals for food—(and, traditionally, in the case of untouchable Po(n) also the execution of criminals)—are among the very lowest in Bhaktapur.^[39]

Fishing, the traditional source of the dried fish used in the samhae offerings, is one of the duties exclusively assigned to the Po(n)s, the untouchables. The Nae who kill the water buffaloes are also close to the bottom of the status system.

The ideal is for the chief worshiper to kill the sacrificial animal himself. For Aga(n) God puja s in the household or Aga(n) House the acting head of the household or representative of the phuki , whether he is king—or his contemporary Brahman surrogate in Taleju, the king's Aga(n) House—Brahman, or Josi, or any member of the upper thar s, must cut the throat of the sacrificial animals himself. In these cases it is not proper to delegate the sacrificial act to the Acaju, although that is done, as we have noted, in cases where no one in a group has the initiation, or is available to perform the sacrifice. In public settings, however, attended by people beyond the circle of initiates, the Acaju or one of the lowest thar s^[40] may do the killing, protecting the highest groups in the public arena from the possible stigma of slaughter. Middle and lower groups also do their own killing in family puja s, although the middle groups may use a member of the Jyapu Acaju, or "farmer Acaju" thar s on important or public occasions.

Sacrifice: The Hierarchical Division of the Head

The deities who receive sacrifice are for the most part those who are the tutelary deities of one or another of Bhaktapur's nested components—phuki, guthi , mandalic^[*] segment, city as a whole—and thus the sacrifice represents the members of the unit. The sacrifice, above all those done in the course of Tantric worship, are done in contexts emphasizing the "equality"—which for Bhaktapur means the collapsing of hierarchical distinctions-of the participating group^[*] . In the feast that follows phuki sacrifices large family groups are assembled. At the core is the patrilineal phuki group, but hatanata —the out-married daughters and their spouses and children and more distantly related kin—as well as family friends may also be invited. They all share in the sacrificial meal as guests of the phuki or household. However, within this communal egalitarian feast there is an important ceremonial fragment that recalls the male hierarchy of the phuki . This is the orderly distribution of segments of the head of the sacrificial animal.

The distribution of parts of the head is one of the customs that people in Bhaktapur consider to be specifically Newar, or at least specially important to the Newars.^[41] The parts of the head of the sacrificed animal are presented just before the fruit course (the arrangement of

courses in such feasts is always conventionally organized in detail), that is, toward the end of the feast. They are given and received in a non-solemn, informal, often joking manner, characteristic of the feast itself.

These hierarchically arranged portions are called siu (in Kathmandu Newari, si ). The particular parts of the head made use of and their hierarchical value varies in various communities and groups. For Bhaktapur, for most upper-level groups at least, the sequence of distribution from highest to lowest is as follows: right eye, left eye, right ear, left ear, nose, tongue, right mandible, and left mandible. Toffin gives for the predominantly Jyapu Newar village of Pyangaon the following sequence: right "muzzle," left "muzzle," right eye, left eye, right ear, left ear, right mandible, left mandible (1976, pp. 329-338; 1984, p. 104). Manandhar in his dictionary of Kathmandu Newari (1976) gives the sequence: right eye, left eye, right ear, left ear, nose (or muzzle), tongue (1976, p. 593). Reportedly, this sequence is not used in Bhaktapur. There are variations in the lowest parts of the status system in Bhaktapur. The Po(n)s, who usually eat pigs during their phuki feasts divide the pig up in the sequence snout, right eye, left eye, right ear, left ear, right mandible, left mandible—to which they add the tail, which in contrast to upper-level restriction of siu to males, is given to a woman, the ranking woman in the family.^[42] In some circumstances, particularly among lower levels, a chicken or a duck is used for a feast. Thus at the initiation of a member of the Jugi thar s in the learning of the thar 's traditional musical instrument, a chicken is divided. On this occasion the head is given to the guru , the right wing to the student's father, and the left wing to the student. Manandhar (1976, 593) gives the sequential order of distribution for a duck or a chicken as head, right wing, left wing, right leg, and left leg. All these sequences have some tendency to go from top down, or front to back, and always from right to left in the ranking of symmetrical parts. Upper-status Bhaktapur and Pyangaon, at least, divide their mammals into eight parts.

In the middle and upper levels in Bhaktapur the siu is presented in order to the eight highest members of the phuki group that is holding the feast. For upper-level and middle-level thar s, at least, the system of ranking among the phuki as symbolized by the siu division is arranged by age within a generation, rather than only by relative age. In other words, even if a member of an older generation is younger than a male in a descending generation, he has more status in the siu distribution system. If there has been an Acaju assisting the phuki at the sacrifice, he may be presented the fifth-ranked piece, the nose. The recipients of the

siu eat a mouthful of their portion. Sometimes one small piece of any of the portions of siu is taken and presented to a representation of the main deity to whom the sacrifice was presented. The remnants of the siu as well as other residues of the feast are brought, as we have noted, to the chwasa at the twa: crossroads after the feast by one of the household women.

Sacrifice: Human Sacrifice

People in Bhaktapur believe that human sacrifice was performed in Bhaktapur in the past and that it may still take place on certian occasions in remote Newar towns in the Kathmandu Valley. The chronicles contain scattered references to what seem to be actual, as well as rumored human sacrifices, in the past. Mary Slusser reviews some of these reports, remarking that "the late chronicles take . . . [human sacrifice] for granted in the Malla Period, and consider it an accepted Licchavi custom" (1982, vol. 1, p. 337), and adds that "the late chronicles offer several descriptions of human sacrifices that seem too specific and too graphic to be mere fantasy" (ibid., 338). As she sums it up, reflecting with her phrase "almost certainty" the kinds of rumors that persist in Bhaktapur about the distant reaches of the Valley, "Human sacrifice, a feature of blood sacrifice up to the very recent past, is almost certainly no longer practiced in Nepal" (ibid., 1, 217).

In Bhaktapur's civic symbolic enactments the idea of human sacrifice is associated predominantly with the legends and dramatic performances of the Nine Durgas (chap. 15). There are some historical accounts, as we will see in that chapter, indicating that their performances in the past in Bhaktapur once included real human sacrifices. The details of their contemporary performances clearly show that the blood sacrifice of an animal deflects the rage of the Goddess m her most terrifying form from those humans or ineffectual minor deities who have offended her. The idea of the animal sacrifice as surrogate for human sacrifice is overt in still other contexts. In discussion of spirits and dangerous gods it is sometimes said that the dangerous force wants a human death (perhaps manifested in the illness of an individual) and that some substitution, often an animal sacrifice, must be made to save the individual. It is said that an animal sacrifice must be made to a newly constructed house; otherwise it may take a sacrifice itself and someone in the house will die. Similarly, if a truck owned by some Newar family is not given a sacrifice during the Mohani festival, it may cause an accident, again taking the sacrifice for itself. The close relation of ani-

mal sacrifice and threats to humans is experienced by some, at the least, individuals in their late childhood in a deeply felt way. We will return to such personal interpretations and responses in the excursion that follows on the significance of sacrifice in Bhaktapur.

Sacrifice: Aspects of Its Significance in Bhaktapur

Sacrifice in Bhaktapur, as the foregoing sections suggest, has the characteristics that have made one or another variation of sacrifice a powerful and useful social resource, one that "has been found in the earliest known forms of worship and in all parts of the world" (R. Faherty 1974, 128). There is an offering of animals and once, probably, humans to a divine being; that offering is equivocal, as it risks being interpreted as murder; the sacrificial animal is in part a representative of and surrogate for humans, as a human sacrifice would have been a surrogate for other humans; and the life—or death—offered to the gods is in part taken back in a transformed state and shared in a communal meal by the sacrificer and the members of the social group he represents.

It is not our purpose here to attempt to relate these forms to the large literature attempting to explain the social, psychological, and historical functions and "origins" of sacrifice, much of it originating in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century social and psychological theory. We will here emphasize certain aspects of it that are highlighted in Bhaktapur's uses and in the responses and interpretations of some, at least, of its people. These considerations are in anticipation of later discussions of how some of the central symbolic forms and symbolic enactments of the annual festival cycle build on the implications of sacrifice to help bind individuals into the city's symbolically constituted mesocosm.

Blood sacrifice in Bhaktapur might be regarded as an extremely immoral act transformed by a powerful context, a "religious" one of a special kind. The immorality and, therefore, the power represented in transformation is greatly enhanced by the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, which renders animals in this and other contexts of understanding morally continuous with humans. Not only the killing of animals, which is relegated to the lowest-status thar s, but even the eating of meat from animals unless they are sacrificial offerings is contrary to the ordinary dharma . Against the background of such understanding sacrifice in Bhaktapur is the antinomial act in which all levels of society participate, in distinction to those acts that exclusively characterize upper-

status Tantric puja s. The transformation produced by the context is equivocal; there is a conflict with not only "common sense" but also the tenets of "ordinary religion," a conflict within the realm of faith itself. The possibility of a characterization of sacrifice as murder is always there. Much of the significance of blood sacrifice derives from this. Peripheral people in Bhaktapur's society, adolescents, and members of lower thar s, as well as Nepalese outsiders—including vocal Buddhist reformers—are skeptically aware that the apparent transformation of murder into sacrifice may be only self-serving hypocrisy, motivated in such skeptical interpretations by "superstition" in the quest for a good meal.

The location in Bhaktapur of some, at least, of the skepticism in the minds of older children or younger adolescents is particularly significant. As one informant, a member of a shopkeeper family, put it: "at first when we were young we used to feel afraid." (Why?)^[43] "Killing is not good. Killing causes something to happen in your mind." (What?) "It is a kind of cruelty. Someone is doing something cruel to the animal and he may do something cruel to me. Every man is also like an animal. A man can kill with a knife. That's why I used to feel troubled. But afterward I got used to the religion and to all kinds of sacrifice. "He was about twelve years old when he began to "get used to" sacrifice. I [R. L.] then ask him what other feelings he had about sacrifice before that time. "The religious books were about peace and about not killing anything, not harming anything. But they [the adults] break all the customs of religion, or the reality of religion, and they kill the animals, they sacrifice the animals for their own satisfaction only, in order to eat the animal, that is why they sacrifice. I used to say that it is not really for the god, the god never told us to kill anybody. I used to say so at that time."

But then he grew up and he came to realize the "religious truth" about sacrifice. That is he had to make, as Kierkegaard ([1843] 1954) put it, a "leap into faith," a commitment to counterintuitive propositions, to the "absurdities" that mark membership in a "community of faith."^[44]

The conflicts of meanings of sacrifice within the ordinary dharmic ethical system with the system of meanings and values of the worship of the dangerous deities means that the issues will be overt and conscious, that alternatives will be visible (i.e., to kill or not to kill), and that a choice is possible. The possibility of rejecting an adherence, on one or another level, to the symbolic forms is essential for the meaning of sac-

rifice, especially when the thing to be chosen or rejected involves a risk. Choice implies that for symbols of social importance (1) adherence must be motivated and (2) the act or state of adherence, being in some sense optional, means something in itself.

The acceptance of the religious interpretation that converts murder into sacrifice is not only a significant commitment to a system of doctrine; it is in part motivated by the powerful personal significance of animal sacrifice. The man we have just quoted has said, "someone is doing something cruel to the animal, and he may do something cruel to me. Every man is also like an animal." This overt association of not only "men" and "animals" but of one's self and the sacrificial animal is common in people's reflections on their thoughts and feelings about sacrifice when they were young. Another informant, a member of a high Chathar thar , said that when he was a child "I had pity for the goat, and I felt some sort of uneasiness which came into my mind. What if I were killed and given as sacrifice in that way, what would happen to me. That was the kind of feeling that came to my mind. If I were, you know, given as a sacrifice, you know, with my head turned up like that and a knife blade being put on my throat [he laughs] what would happen? That was the kind of feeling I had you know, a kind of gooseflesh, you know what that is, I can't express it. I used to have that kind of feeling, but these days I don't." Echoes of early understandings persist, although usually less clearly articulated in other adults. Thus, according to a man from the very low Jugi thar "we love the sacrificial animals like our own sons and daughters, because we brought them up and fed them and gave them drink."

These remarks show empathy for and identification with the animal as sacrificial victim. They also suggest a double psychological movement as individuals mature and fully enter the society, a movement that for boys roughly corresponds to their Kaeta Puja s, their initiation into their respective thars . The "leap into faith," the coming to "understand," the acceptance of the system of marked symbols as having its own legitimate reality, is motivated in part by a solidarity with adults, and hence the community, and that solidarity is aided, urged, by a sort of forced choice between an identification with the community of sacrificers and an identification with its sacrificial victims. One must not only accept the community's "ideology" but must also participate in sacrificial acts, and thus by implication in the whole mesocosmic symbolic system that they represent and protect. People are tempted by all kinds of oppositions to the full moral life of the city—memories of their

own childhood, the life of the lower thar s, and the freedom of the hill people. But these are also dirty, chaotic, animal-like. Sacrifice acts as a kind of continuing rite of passage, which emphasizes commitment to the costly order of household, phuki , and city. As we will see in chapter 15, the ritual performances of the Nine Durgas make the social implications of sacrifice quite clear—the wrath of the Goddess in her most destructive representation as Mahakali is aroused by violations of respect due to her by an inferior, that is, by a violation of the fundamental hierarchical social order. She threatens the hapless violator, and can be appeased only by the substitution of an animal, a cock, whose head she tears off and whose blood she drinks.

After their leading male member kills the animal, the corporate group eats it. This common and much discussed aspect of sacrifice has evoked various explanations—such as shared guilt and the absorption of the substance of the representative "totemic" animal—to explain the solidarity that presumably results from this. The Newar feast is a joyful event, usually associated with drinking as well as meat eating in a further participation in the Goddess's realm. The atmosphere of the feast is joyous and communal, a mild sociable softening of the proprieties of hierarchical order and of ordinary dietary restraints. The communal feast humanizes and socializes further the sorts of procedures which Tantrism performs as esoteric rituals. The act of sacrifice is modulated down into a dinner party. The ritual murder (which in some societies might be in the realm of mysteries, of black magic, of evil, of Satan) is conveniently and typically captured by the city and transformed and given a paradoxical propriety in the realm of the dangerous deities and their worship.

Secrecy and Mystery

Secrecy is a pervasive and fundamental aspect of Bhaktapur's life. Its major symbolic representation is in the worship of the dangerous deities—above all in the Tantric mode with its emphasis on esoteric secrets, swearing of oaths to keep those secrets, and levels of initiation into progressively deeper ones.

Secrecy is clearly associated with the cellular units of Bhaktapur and is, in fact, a condition of their cellularity.^[45] What separates their affairs from outsiders is, in large part, the confidentiality of those affairs. In

large part this confidentiality is to protect each unit from the moral scrutiny of larger units, to allow the unit to regulate its own affairs as far as possible. The moral scrutiny of a larger unit is liable to be censorious and carries a serious and consequential risk of the loss of the public prestige, the ijjat , of the unit.

On the religious level the secrecy is focused on the name, form, nature, and proper worship of the unit's tutelary deity, and on the special craft and professional knowledge of a thar . The revealing of any of a group's secrets by one of its members, usually implying a violation of an oath taken during an initiation, would be a very serious breach of an individual's relation to the group and, more generally, of his or her general status as an adequate "person." Secrecy makes the unit equivalent to a mandala^[*] , a circle in which some sort of religious potency can be bound, collected, and isolated to some purpose. The boundary, which can be represented in space by a line, can in the life of a group be represented by a boundary of secrecy. In analogy to the mandala^[*] , secrecy is similarly associated in the affairs of the units that have it with the concentration, boundedness and possession of some kind of "power" within the unit itself.

Many component units contribute elements to larger ritual or symbolic performances. Mask makers, ritual dancers, potters, image markers, astrologers, Brahmans, Acajus, and so forth may all contribute objects and/or actions. As we have repeatedly emphasized, it is essential that their outputs into the ritual or festival be effective. These outputs are public. However, the way that the mask maker gathers the proper clay, forms the mask in traditional ways, and brings the preliminary stages of siddhi into the mask are secret. It is essential that the cell perform properly, but the details hidden by secrecy are not the concern of the larger group.^[46] But the fact of the secrecy in itself, the knowledge that a group has its required initiations and hidden rituals, gives outsiders a conviction and a confidence that proper, effective, and powerful actions are being done within a unit to produce the efficacy of their contribution to the public city. This means that it is essential to know that there are secrets. A completely hidden secret, hidden so well that no one knew that a group had any would not convey this sign of corporate siddhi to outsiders. In Bhaktapur, knowledge by others that a group has secrets, or more precisely has the secrets it is supposed to have, is a sign that it is an effective and necessary component of the larger system .^[47]

The secrecy of a group becomes a mystery for those who know there is a secret, but do not know what it is. To turn a secret into a mystery

means that there often have to be ways of signaling, of advertising the presence of secrets. While it is common knowledge that corporate groups have special mantra s, deities, and hidden rites, and that there are parts of temples and houses where no one but the initiate can enter, there are other ways of advertising secrets. One is to warn people to avoid stumbling on them, for they may, it is typically said, be dangerous to an outsider.^[48] People know, for example, that the Nine Durgas perform important secret dances in various parts of the city late at night during certain phases of their annual cycle and, knowing where they will dance, avoid these areas. For, it is said, if they are seen, the person who saw them would then have extremely bad luck or might die. We have noted the related idea in Tantrism that if improperly initiated and qualified people try to learn Tantric secrets and procedures, they would become blind or insane or would die.

Thus secrecy has to be advertised in order to be effective in the larger system and, sometimes, to prevent outsiders from stumbling on it. The advertisement sometimes takes flamboyant forms. During Biska:, the solar New Year festival (chap. 13), for example, where an image of a secret dangerous deity is to be brought out of its temple to some other part of the city, there is also a false secret image. While people are watching a procession carrying the portable public image of the deity, a priest will run through the crowd carrying something wrapped in cloths. People will say, with an air of special knowledge, that what is being carried is the "real" and secret image. The bundle that the priest is carrying is, in fact, just a decoy; the "real" image is being carried in true secrecy. This device of a false secret has the virtue of advertising the presence of a secret and at the same time protecting it.

The symbolically constituted dimension of Bhaktapur's life, its mesocosm, is in part structured through bounded information. These areas are the property of various corporate groups, and are organized into the larger hierarchical system of statuses. Secrecy is the means by which these bounded areas are maintained; and the possession of secrets is equivalent to the possession of economic and political force in the "material" realm. To tell the secrets is to destroy them as secrets essential to the special functions of differentiated, interrelated units, and thus is to destroy much of the effective structure of the city.^[49]

The system of secrecy has one unintended consequence. It makes loss of traditional knowledge through time, knowledge located in a multitude of bounded groups, very much more likely than the loss of a widely

shared knowledge would be, and at the same time it may prevent an awareness that some aspects of cultural knowledge have, in fact, disappeared. People assume that the esoteric meaning of various symbolic forms is known by "someone" within some one of the city's units. Experts, not knowing the meaning of some form or the details of some ritual technique, will assume that it is known to someone elsewhere. Thus, for example, the nature and meaning of certain faces placed in the headband of some of the masks of the Nine Durgas dancers are thought by Brahmans, mask makers, and the Gatha dancers (see color illustrations) themselves to be known to one of the other of these three concerned groups, but the knowledge is apparently lost.

In Sum

The presence of Tantrism as a legitimate, socially integrated component of Bhaktapur's marked symbolic life, like the legitimate and integrated presence of the dangerous deities, has transformed both Tantrism and Bhaktapur. Esoteric Tantrism and the exoteric religion of the dangerous deities allow for the representation of emotions and ideas that are not represented in—and are often in opposition to—the ordinary moral order of the city. Because of this legitimate and central representation, the ideas and emotions are not totally relegated to such peripheral forms as ghost beliefs, witches and shamans, or to the "imaginary" world of fairy tales and wonder stories, or to private fantasy. All these modes exist in Bhaktapur, although some of them seemed played down in comparison with some other Nepalese groups. (Bhaktapur, for example, uses mostly hill tribe shamans for spirit healers; it treats sadhu renouncers as a "non-Newar" tradition.) The dominant alternative supernatural mode is not only legitimate but also, in some contexts, at the apex of the social system.

Tantrism is intimately connected with the meanings of the dangerous deities who are the objects of its worship, and it shares their implications and uses. Those implications are apparently contradictory to ordinary social order, but they are related to that order in an elaborate, mysterious higher unification. Tantrism and the dangerous deities represent amoral forces and the force that controls such forces, and thus the possibility of using this force to protect the moral system itself; they represent the possibility of escape from the civic system in both its dangers and its attractions and yet, at the same time, a tool for binding the members of a corporate group to the group under the shared protection

and threat of a dangerous deity; they represent danger and chaos, but also fertility and creativity, a realm that can destroy but that is necessary to the life of a community.

Tantric practice and the exoteric worship of the dangerous deities—although some of their symbolic forms may become routine and probably mostly empty of meaning for some or many of its practitioners—are nevertheless able to bring many of these meanings to repeated life, in ways that we have tried to suggest. Tantric practices, albeit somewhat timidly, violate some of the moral laws that are central markers of reputation and status in the public society. Blood sacrifice (less timidly) does this not only in Tantrism but also in the worship of the dangerous deities throughout the city.

Blood sacrifice and Tantrism's other antinomial moves have, among other meanings, a potential epistemological implication for people in Bhaktapur. The violations of the ordinary dharma which must necessarily be done in the worship of the dangerous deities are at the same time violations and not violations. They are "not violations" because they are done in the special transcendent contexts of Tantrism and sacrifice. The city's moral laws are thus valid only in a certain context. This is an important addition to Bhaktapur's large assortment of socially defined paradox-generating contexts, and of different kinds of realities which individuals experience. Tantra, however, in its doctrinal alliance with mysticism, carries the implications of shifting rules and definitions toward the implication that all contexts may be arbitrary and illusory. This is another way—alongside the direct category dissolving possibilities of the experience of meditation—that may lead to a sense of things in which an enlightened or "liberated" individual may come to see through (or, at any rate, peek through) the veil of illusion, maya , in which the moral world and ordinary logic exist.^[50] That is, the results of experience will support philosophical doctrine. The purposes of Tantric puja are conceived as either powerful action for the sake of the corporate group involved, which may in some cases be the whole city or, alternatively, personal "escape" as a transcendence of samsara^[*] , the ordinary moral world. Power and escape may look to an outsider as different matters, but in the context of Bhaktapur (and Hinduism) they are strongly unified, for they both represent an escape from and a transcendence of the ordinary moral system, the network of pressures, limitations, and relations of ordinary life.

It is this transcendence of the ordinary moral and social world that makes Tantrism significant both for the renouncer (the sadhu or yogi )

and the upper nonpriestly strata^[51] (the Ksatriya^[*] kings, court officials, and warriors). For this latter group, their power consists, or consisted, precisely in that they have, on proper occasions, to rise above and violate the ordinary dharma in the performance of their necessary protective functions (chap. 10). The alliance of aristocracy, royalty, power, mystic renunciation, and the social legitimacy of Tantrism and the dangerous deities is characteristic of Bhaktapur.

Chapter Ten
Priests

Preliminaries: Priests and Kings—The Relations of the Symbolic Order and Power

Bhaktapur—with its hallucinatory memories of its Newar king, its persisting Ksatriya-like^[*] social segments, its continuing relation to the "new" centralized Saha royal dynasty, its elaborate collection of priests and quasi-priests, and of the other "nonpriestly" traditional social role players who may be contrasted with them, all placed within or in relationship to a traditional dharmic moral order—throws some light on the Hindu peculiarities, variously described and emphasized in the scholarly literature, of the relations of the conventional moral order and "power," of religious and political realms, of priest and king.

In this chapter we will be concerned mostly with details of the types and functions of Bhaktapur's priests and their auxiliary helpers, as well as with those thar -based social roles and functions that are priest-like in one or another more or less covert way. The priestly realm has not only its significant internal divisions but also external contrasts with non-priests which are essential for understanding how Bhaktapur's community life is organized. Those external contrasts are epitomized in the relation of Brahman and king.

It has long been evident to Western scholars that the realms and relations of king and Brahman in South Asian society were different

from those of similar functionaries in most other societies. As Kolenda (1978, 31) put it in a summary review:

As early as the eighth century B.C. , Hindu thought had separated worldly power from other-worldly power. Since then, the two realms have been in the hands of different specialists—worldly power in the hands of the king, other-worldly power in the hands of the priest. In the Hindu ideology, the ritual power of the Brahman priest was more important than the secular power of the king, who was expected to protect and depend upon the priest. . .. Indeed, it was the duty of the king . . . to protect the populace, to ensure conformity to the class system of the time, and to wage war—always under the guidance of his Brahman . . . preceptor. The king was carrying out the religious law (dharma) that was in the keeping of the Brahman priest.

The Hindu king and his fellow Ksatriya^[*] allies, counselors, and warriors protect and enforce the dharma , but their relation to that customary law was, and is, ambiguous. In Robert Lingat's (1973, 210-211) epitome:

The kingship . . . belonged to him who possessed ksatra^[*] ["warlike force," plus "sovereignty"] de facto, . . . i.e. the power to command, whatever might have been his birth and whatever might have been the circumstances which brought him to the throne. Ksatra^[*] confers on the king independence, the right to act to suit himself without depending upon anyone else. The king is independent of his subjects, as is the spiritual preceptor of his pupils and the head of the family of the members of his household. . .. By contrast, Dharma is essentialy a rule of interdependence , founded on a hierarchy corresponding to the nature of things and necessary for the maintenance of the social order. To break away from it is to violate one's destiny and to expose onself to the loss of one's salvation. The peculiar dharma of the king is the protection of his subjects. If he is free to act as he pleases without having to account to anyone for his acts, he acquires merit only when acting in conformity with his dharma . . . . So finally the destroy of the king depends on the way in which he has been able to protect his subjects.

Although it is recognized that some kind of moral responsibility, some kind of "meta-dharma," must guide the king's freedom, his activities as king must, if they are to be successful, violate and transcend, and escape from that "ordinary" Hindu community dharma that is, it is worth repeating, "essentially a rule of interdependence, founded on a hierarchy corresponding to the nature of things and necessary for the maintenance of the social order." In his warrior's relation to the city's external enemies, his manipulative relations to the city's allies, and in his use of violence and power to enforce those internal violations of the civic dharma which that dharma 's sanctions of moral disapproval and karmic retribution cannot in themselves fully control, he must ignore

the morality of interdependence and must perform acts which within the ordinary civic order would be sins.^[1] In contrast, the king as citizen and as person operates within the ordinary dharma and, importantly for our present purposes, within the ordinary civic religion.

In Louis Dumont's statement contrasting the Indian king with kings in other ancient traditional societies where the king was either at the same time the supreme religious functionary or else superior in his status to "his" priests, the Indian king (1970, 68 [emphasis added]):

loses . . . hierarchical preeminence in favor of the priests, retaining for himself power only. . .. Through this dissociation, the function of the king m India has been secularized . It is from this point that a differentiation has occurred, the separation within the religious universe of a sphere or realm opposed to the religious, and roughly corresponding to what we call the political. As opposed to the realm of values and norms it is the realm of force. As opposed to the dharma or universal order of the Brahman, it is the realm of interest or advantage, artha. . . . All [the implications that follow from this] can, m my view be traced back to this initial step. In other words, they would have been impossible if the king had not from the beginning left the highest religious functions to the priest.

These classic discussions of king and Brahman and the "realms" epitomized by their functions illuminate and yet at the same time tend to obscure the relations and functions of king and priest, and the actual internal divisions and interrelations of realms of "religion" on the one hand and "force" on the other. They obscure the different kinds of religion and priestly functions that in Bhaktapur and many places historically like it in South Asia were differentially related to "values and norms" and to "force," and they do not take account of the wider implications of "force" for characterizing a vertical social segment of Bhaktapur's society, within which the king and his paradoxical dharma is a special case.

The hierarchical system of thar s in Bhaktapur assigns roles and functions of two sorts. The roles are sorted into two hierarchical segments of the macrostatus system. One segment—ranging from Brahman to untouchable—is concerned with the manipulation and maintenance of the dharma -supporting symbolically constituted civic social system, whose central organizing metaphor is purity and impurity. This is the nexus of the interdependent life of the civic community. Its proper religion is the religion of the ordinary deities. Its functionaries, grouped as priests in an extended usage suggested by Hocart ([1950] 1960), are the subject of this chapter. The other segment, ranging from king down via farmers through the lowest-status craftsmen, have their representative

functions within another realm that may be disentangled from the symbolically constructed, hierarchical, civic dharma . They deal, in comparison, with a more material world, and with symbolic forms other than those characteristic forms that organize the dharmic community—purity and impurity, karma , and the moral imperatives of the dharma itself. These are the potters, farmers, traders, wood carvers, dyers, and so on, as well as the king and other political and military functionaries. The cultural forms and symbols that shape and give meaning to their functions (in distinction to their status as citizens) have some qualities and relations different from those of the primary symbol technicians. The relation of their roles to hierarchy, and their work to the dharma , is a secondary addition. As citizens, their religion (like the king's) is the ordinary dharmic religion. However, as operatives in a world that has its own independent realities, forces, and forms, and which is necessary for the support, maintenance, and protection of the city's realm of values and norms, they share, in part, the classic situation of the king. Insofar, then, as they deal in "power," in one sense, and not in "norms and values," their realm is complexly related to the larger "religious universe." In relation to the dharmic religion of the ordinary deities, they perform "secular" functions. However, their relation to the religion of the dangerous deities is different. Those deities have the same sort of relation to the civic dharma as do the activities of the king, farmers, and craftsmen. They, and their special worship and meanings, express the realm of value-transcendent power in which the king and others like him operate, and they can be and are used in attempts to augment and protect that power. We have discussed the function of the dangerous deities and of their worship in earlier chapters; the chapters on symbolic enactments that follow will further indicate what they do, and how they do it. But for now we must note that these deities are precisely not "in the realm of values and norms" but, like the city's segment of "material technicians," are within the "realm of force," a force put to the service of those values and norms.

Bhaktapur's priests, including its Brahmans, operate in both these realms, both as the exemplary pure (and, in fact, exemplary impure) priests of the ordinary moral realm, the world of the dharmic , hierarchical, civic order and also as priests of the realm of power, where purity and impurity and the civic values of interdependency are irrelevant. In these two worlds the relations of Brahman to king, of priest to client, are basically different—and, thus, so is the meaning of the priest and his function.

Preliminaries: Kinds of Priests and Priestly Functions

The priests of Bhaktapur's civic moral realm have a central concern with correct moral behavior and the structuring efficacy of purity and pollution; the priests of the extramoral realm deal with a more direct power, a power that transcends morality as well as purity and pollution. The extramoral religion dealing with powers which transcend that civic moral realm, while at the same time ensuring its protection, is the special religion of Bhaktapur's version of the Ksatriyas^[*] as Ksatriyas^[*] , but has its echoes and uses throughout the city.

The Newar Brahman, the Rajopadhyaya Brahman, is at the summit of both these religious realms. Within the realm of civic ordering he is allied with a whole set of manipulators of purity, and thus of social order and of salvation-producing dharmic order. These allies are auxiliary priests and what we will call "para-priests," as well as various pollution-manipulating priest-like functionaries—purifiers such as barbers and collectors of impurity such as, above all, the untouchables.

In his role as Tantric guru and priest the Rajopadhyaya Brahman presides over that other world in which purity is not an issue, where the priests and practitioners of the world of the dangerous deities manipulate through those deities the extramoral world of physical events—a world of rain and drought, disease and cure, earthquake and war. Such priests manipulate the deities through devices of power, and the deities, in turn, manipulate the nonmoral world. The Rajopadhyaya Brahman's essential priestly ally in this realm is the Acaju, the priest who performs in public those actions that the Brahman can do only in secret.

The two sorts of religion—the socially constructive dharmic religion and the religion of power—converge once again, as they had in the Rajopahyaya^[*] Brahmans, on the untouchable Po(n), and the near-untouchable Jugi. These are the ultimate collectors of impurity, facilitating the purity of all above them. Yet, their ability to do this, whatever the enormous stigma to their social status may be, is a sign of a power to transcend some, at least, of the implications of that impurity. This is clearest in the ascription of Tantric knowledge to the Jugi, but is also a latent aspect of the meaning of the Po(n).

We have been proceeding as if the term "priest" in itself were unproblematic. It was not problematic in the discussion of the priest's contrasts with the king insofar as the "priest" has been the idealized

figure of the Brahman. The Brahman in such discussions is subsumed comfortably under summary characterizations of "priests"—where the problem in characterization is usually to delineate the "priest" in contrast to other mediators with the "supernatural"—shamans, diviners, magicians, and prophets. Among these the "priest" is someone who "has a special and sometimes secret knowledge of the techniques of worship, including incantations, prayers, sacrificial acts, songs, and other acts that are believed to bridge the separation between the divine or sacred and the profane realms. . .. Because the priest gains his special knowledge from a school for priests, he is differentiated from other religious and cultic leaders . . . who obtain their positions by means of individual efforts. . .. As a member of the institution [the priesthood] that regulates the relationship between the divine or sacred and the profane realms through ritual, the priest is the accepted religious and spiritual leader in his society" (E. O. James 1974, 1007). Such an account emphasizes the social centrality and "routinization" of the institutionalized priesthood in making the priest the accepted "spiritual leader" of the community. In the terms of such a definition, we can discriminate among the functionaries who mediate between the sacred and profane and who belong to the central institutionalized civic order, certain "priests" who help the Brahman in conducting rituals or who act in lieu of Brahmans in rituals or who work for clients where Brahmans can or will not officiate. These are auxiliary priests . We are now left with one further distinction. In chapter 11 we will discuss activities, most particularly purification, that are "at the margins of the sacred." These activities are for the purpose of putting individuals in a proper state to enter into the sacred realm, the realm where priests operate, and do not in themselves entail "techniques of worship." The experts who perform these activities are not properly priests themselves. This is clear in the case of the vitally important purificatory work of the Nau, the "barber." The same claim may be made regarding the astrologers, the Josis. We will call those whose functions are to prepare people for their encounters with the sacred para-priests .

Bhaktapur's Brahmans

The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans

In the general perspective of modern Nepal the "Newar" Brahmans of Bhaktapur are a problematic group of Brahmans, in some sense second-

ary to those Brahmans associated with the ruling Gorkhali dynasty. In Bhaktapur, as in other Newar communities, the dominant Brahmans, who share the surname "Rajopadhyaya," must differentiate themselves not only from the Partya: or Khae(n), that is, the Indo-Nepalese Brahman, but also from two other kinds of "non-Newar" Brahmans—the Bhatta^[*] and the Jha Brahmans—who live and work in Bhaktapur. For the most part they identify themselves in contrast to other Brahmans by their thar name, Rajopadhyaya,^[2] which identifies their connection with the Malla dynasty as the "king's counselor" (see fig. 20).

In their own legendary history the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans came from the great ancient Indian political, religious, and cultural center, Kanauj (also called Kanyakubja), in North India, the same city that they believe to have been the earlier seat of what became the Malla dynasty. Kanauj was in the area of India from which successive Muslim invasions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries drove many Hindus into nearby Nepal.

The Rajopadhyaya's historical legend tells how in the distant past two Brahman brothers came to Nepal from Kanyakubja. Their names were "Alias Raj" and "Ullas Raj." Ullas Raj settled in the mountains, while Alias Raj settled in the Kathmandu Valley. Ullas Raj became a Partya: (literally, a "hill dweller") because he settled in the mountains. Alias Raj became a Newar because he settled in the Valley. Ullas Raj mixed with the Partya: people. As he had done farming in Kanyakubja he remained in the hills, where his descendants continue to be farmers.^[3] His children spoke the Partya: language (Nepali). Alias Raj mixed with the Newar people, and thus his children spoke Nepal Bhasa^[*] (Newari). Alias Raj and Ullas Raj had no more relations with each other because they now had different languages and customs. They did not keep up their family relations. After a few generations their descendants did not even know each other. When Harisimhadeva^[*] came to Bhaktapur he brought new Kanyakubja Brahmans with him. Harisimhadeva^[*] gave those Kanyakubja Brahmans who had been in Bhaktapur prior to his arrival a "substitute house,"^[4] which is now still used by the Rajopadhyayas^[*] . As the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans who came with Harisimhadeva^[*] from Kanyakubja and the Rajopadhyaya descendants of Allas Raj were the "same kinds" of Brahmans, they mixed very easily with each other. They both became Rajopadhyaya Brahmans.

However, the account continues, Harisimhadeva^[*] also brought other Brahmans with him, these were Maithili Brahmans from the nearby area of Mithila whose descendants are the Jha Brahmans (one group

Figure 20.
Rajopadhyaya Brahmans in a purification ceremony at the river.

of Bhaktapur's "non-Newar" Brahmans). He brought them "because they came from a place close to his town of Simraun Gadh^[*] ," but his own royal priests were the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans from Kanyakubja. As the Kanyakubja Brahmans did not have enough Kanyakubja Brahman families to marry with in "Nepal" (that is, the Kathmandu Valley),^[5] Harisimhadeva^[*] repeatedly brought in new Brahmans from Kanyakubja. Even now, this particular account concludes, the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans have a barely adequately sized group for marriages.

The legend that we have paraphrased reflects some historical reality. It seems generally accepted by historians that the Rajopadhyaya are of Kanyakubja origin, that they were associated with the Malla court, that they were dominant in that court among other Brahmans, and that they were centrally associated with the worship of the royal tutelary goddess Taleju. As a result of the integration of the new Malla dynasty with the preexisting society of the city into the historical synthesis that Bhaktapur looks back on as "Newar," this group of Brahmans were to become the Newar Brahmans, the only one of the various kinds of Valley Brahmans to become the focal Brahmans of the integrated Newar caste system.^[6]

From the earliest records of the Kathmandu Valley communities who were to become the Newars, there have been reports of Brahmans. Thus in the seventh century A.D. , the Chinese traveler Hiuen Tsang wrote that the Licchavi Valley society was ruled by a Ksatriya^[*] dynasty, and that it had so many Brahman priests that he was unable to ascertain their exact number (D. R. Regmi 1969, 271). Inscriptions from Licchavi times refer to the "leadership" or eminent position of Brahmans (ibid., 272). What happened to these earlier Brahmans on the advent of the Kanyakubja Rajopadhyaya Brahmans? It is tempting to think of them as having become some of the lower-status auxiliary priests of Malla Nepal, but our own materials are silent on this.

Bhaktapur's Rajopadhyaya Brahmans consider themselves to belong to one exogamous lineage.^[7] There are two major groupings of this lineage within Bhaktapur, named in accordance with the areas in and close to which they live or, in the case of now scattered households, once lived. These are the Ipache(n) and the Cucache(n) branches. The Ipache(n) group are those who live in proximity to the Laeku or Durbar Square, and thus to the Taleju temple (map 6; above). Both of these sections contain certain families who have the hereditary rights to be Taleju priests. These "Taleju families" also are the ones whose jajaman s include those upper-level Chathariya families traditionally associated with the royal administration.^[8]

The city's two geographically based groups of Rajopadhyaya Brahmans are partially separated lineage groups. They worship at the same Digu god shrine but at a different time. They have two different Aga(n) Houses for many purposes (but on some occasions make use of the same one). Their separation implies that they are not affected by each others phuki birth and death pollution, but the degree of relations they do have means that they cannot intermarry. Because there are no local Rajopadhyaya families into which they can marry, all Bhaktapur Rajopadhyaya men have to find their wives elsewhere, usually among the Rajopadhyaya women of Patan or Kathmandu. Similarly, all the Bhaktapur Rajopadhyaya girls have to leave Bhaktapur for marriages in Patan or Kathmandu.

At the time of this study almost all of the adult male Rajopadhyaya Brahmans of Bhaktapur did traditional Brahmanical work, in contrast to Brahmans elsewhere, whom they characterized as often being "only Brahmans through their descent."^[9] The Brahmans' internal religion is a variant of orthodox Brahmanical practices. In contrast to "Sanskritized" Brahmans elsewhere, the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans do eat certain meat, that of the goat and duck, but other kinds of meat and certain foods (such as garlic or mushrooms) are improper for them. They deviate from such Sanskritized Brahmans most markedly because of their participation in the Tantric aspects of Bhaktapur's religion, as we have described in chapter 9. Within their own group the Brahmans must provide their own priests, a situation they share with the lowest thar s in Bhaktapur, those below the level that one or another kind of external priest will serve. A Rajopadhyaya Brahman's family priest or purohita must be someone who is not a patrilineally linked member of the family, and thus he must be linked through marriage to one of the family's men, with the important exception that the paju , the mother's brothers, or their sons are also not acceptable.

Rajopadhyaya Brahman boys learn Sanskrit, the reading and chanting of the Vedas, traditional philosophical and scriptural aspects of Hinduism, and how to conduct ceremonies and the like from their fathers and uncles, beginning with a three-month orientation instruction at the time of their Upanayana initiation to full Brahman status. Until about fifteen years before this study, there was also a special school in Bhaktapur where the Brahman students received extra training in Sanskrit and the Vedas from scholarly teachers. Much of their training came more informally from observations, instructions, and discussion—first on the practice and meaning of the worship that took

place in their own houses, and later, after their Upanayana initiation, while accompanying and helping their fathers and uncles as they performed ceremonies for others.

The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans have various functions as priests in Bhaktapur. Some are narrowly related to specific client families; others to the religious and symbolic life of the larger civic system. They act as domestic priests, purohita s, to a wide span of unequivocally "clean" thar s; one definition of being fully "clean" is precisely that a Brahman will serve as the thar' s family priest. Those thar s whom the Brahmans will serve as purohita are generally those at and above the status level X, in our listing of social levels m chapter 5, that is, from the lowest levels of the Jyapu thar s and above. In another socially circumscibed function, they serve the Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya thar s, as well as other families within the Brahman group, as guru s in the transmission of Tantric knowledge and in the conducting of some kinds of Tantric worship.

In addition to these services for client families, the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans have public functions. These include their essential representative position in the city at the summit of the purity-ranked aspect of the status system. In the terms of this system they represent the exemplary highest position. They help define, by means of contrast, king, aristocrats, and technicians of the ordinary, physical world in one kind of opposition, and the maximally impure, the untouchables, in another.

In the course of the public symbolic enactments of the annual festival calendar two major "focal" festivals (as we will call them) have as one central reference the royal palace in association with its temple complex, the king's tutelary goddess Taleju, the Malla king himself (represented by Taleju's chief Brahman), and the king's Rajopadhyaya "Guru-Purhohita. " The Taleju Brahmans are focal actors in these two major festival sequences Mohani and Biska:. In Mohani Taleju's chief Brahman presides over the sacrifices and the rites that bring the Goddess to her full power at the time of the agricultural harvest for "the protection of the city." In the Brahman's association here with king, palace, and Taleju, he is a focus of attention for the whole city. This royal context of power in a sense protects and isolates him as he represents publicly his role as a priest of the dangerous deities, a role that, as we saw in chapter 9, he usually performs in private arenas.

Some Rajopadhyaya Brahmans work as temple priests, pujari s, a function that, as we will note below, they share with other kinds of priests. Some also earn part of their living as public storytellers, re-

counting the stories of the Hindu tradition that form an important interpretive background for many of the city's ritual and festival activities.

In his central roles the Rajopadhyaya Brahman is a complex priest. On the one hand he is the exemplary pure figure of a "Brahmanical religion"; on the other he is the powerful priest of an extramoral religion of power.

Lakhae Brahmans

There are three or four families in Bhaktapur who have the thar name "Rajopadhyaya," but are considered to be of a separate and somewhat lower category. They are referred to as "Lakhae Brahmans," and do not seem to exist in other Newar communities (see chap. 5). They are interpreted in the way that intermediate-level thar s are usually interpreted as being the descendants of improper marriages, in this case of a Rajopadhyaya Brahman man to a Rajopadhyaya widow (these widows are not supposed to remarry) or to a previously married but separated Rajopadhyaya woman. The Lakhae cannot marry with the Rajopadhyaya proper and must find wives, with some difficulty, among village Brahman families. Their own priests are the ordinary high-status Rajopadhyayas^[*] . They themselves are family priests for certain of the thar s at and just above marginally clean status—the Dwi(n), Nau, Gatha, and Kau.

Bhaktapur's Non-Newar Brahmans

As we have noted the Malla kings were said to have brought other Brahmans from India in addition to the Rajopadhyayas^[*] . Since the Malla period there have been two such groups of Brahmans in Bhaktapur, who have lived there in separation from both the Newar Hindu and Buddhist community life. In this they resemble other such cultural isolates in Bhaktapur—the Muslims and the Matha^[*] priests (chap. 5). These two groups of Brahmans do not consider themselves to be either Newars or Newar priests. They are the Jha Brahmans (whose family name is "Misra") and the Bhatta^[*] Brahmans. Some Jha Brahmans work as temple pujari s and public storytellers in Bhaktapur, but most of them are professional workers in the modern political and economic sector of Bhaktapur and Kathmandu.

The Bhatta^[*] Brahmans, whose origins were in Maharastra^[*] , are found

in many Newar towns and villages. In Bhaktapur most of them are teachers and professionals, while members of some families are temple priests. Some work as purohita s for other Bhatta^[*] families. Members of two Bhatta^[*] Brahman families, however, have a closer, and in some respects curious, relation to Bhaktapur's Newar Hindu community life. They act as auxiliary priests to one group of families, a section of the Chathariya Kayasta^[*]thar called "Nakanda." In certain Brahman-conducted puja s held to cure illness or misfortune thought to be due to bad planetary influences, a mixture of different kinds of grain are held to the head of the sufferer. The families in this group then have the option of sending the grain to a Po(n) untouchable so that he may absorb the misfortune (which is what families other than those in this particular group would do) or else to send it along with valuable gifts to a Bhatta^[*] Brahman as an offering, a dana . Although the transaction may be phrased as a gift, a dana , it resembles in nature and function the offerings to lowest-status thar s, offerings that signal the inferiority and dependence of those thar s, and which serve to transfer pollution, as is suggested in the option of choosing either a Bhatta^[*] or Po(n) here.^[10]

This equivalence of Po(n) and Bhatta^[*] Brahman here suggests the polluting implications of many priestly services, and is typical of the situation of the "auxiliary priests," to whom we will now turn.

Overt Auxiliary Priests and Para-Priests

Rajopadhyaya Brahmans in Bhaktapur in discussions of "religious work" identify a group of "Karmacari," that is, "workers" or in this context "religious workers," whom we will group as "overt auxiliary priests and para-priests." These make up an important segment of traditional Newar society. Their services as a group are to all the clean or marginally clean segments of that society. They perform services necessary in the performance of various religious rites, and usually do these services for hereditary patrons, jajaman s, as the Brahmans themselves do. The various types of Karmacari listed are all members of thar s whose distinguishing traditional and hereditary function are these services even though many of their members now do other things. They perform either priestly functions during the course of rituals, or in the case of the Nau and the Josi (in their major functions), activities that are preparatory and prerequisite to participation in rituals. The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans often describe those auxiliary priests who

perform ritual work (as opposed to the preparatory functions of the "para-priests") as "kinds of Brahmans," and often claim that their powers are, or were originally, passed on to them through Rajopadhyaya Brahmans as the guru s who provided esoteric teaching and mantra s. This group of workers assist the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans in three ways: (1) the preparation for rituals, (2) assistance in doing rituals, and (3) the performance of rituals or aspects of rituals that would be polluting to the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, and which would compromise their ideal status. We will call this group of religious workers overt auxiliary priests, in distinction to the very low polluting thar s, whose essential priestly function is relatively covert and submerged and obscured by the more salient symbolic meanings and actualities of their traditional roles. We also find it useful to distinguish "para-priests" whose functions, in the terminology of the next chapter, are at the margins of the sacred.

Josi

There are presently in Bhaktapur two thar s whose name indicates that their members' traditional professions were astrology. The thar s and thus their members' surnames are "Josi" (often written in Newari as "Josi"), a name derived from "astrology," jyotisa^[*] in Sanskrit. One of these thar s is in the highest segment of the Chathariya group. The other is at the Pa(n)cthariya level. As is true of most upper-level thar s, with the exception of the Brahmans, most members no longer follow traditional occupations. There are, however, a few families at each level, some of whose members perform astrological work for individuals, and who transmit professional knowledge about jyotisa^[*] to new generations within their family. Some families in the Chathariya group have members who traditionally serve the Taleju temple, working there not specifically as astrologers, but for the most part as assistant priests.^[11] As astrologers, the Josis serve middle-status and upper-status people.^[12] They prepare a written record (jata :) of the time of the birth of children, an indication of their relation to the Nine graha , or "Planets," at their birth. The jata : in later life will be used by Josis in the determination of the proper sait , or astrologically proper time span, within which important activities should be initiated or avoided. The Josi's advice based on his interpretation of an individual's jata : is of particular importance in the determination of saits for rites of passage and also contributes to judgments regarding proper marriage partners. The Josi can also advise

on procedures for mitigating the ill effects of astrological conditions, and can help supervise the proper ameliorative worship. Finally, Josis help in determining the proper positioning and timing in propitiating the disturbed local forces when a home, temple, or other building is to be constructed.

Bhaktapur's Josis make their predictions and decisions for individual clients by comparing the information on an individual's jata : with a patra , an annually published astrological calendar. This generalized calendar, used throughout Nepal, is a reminder, in fact, that the Josi is concerned with worlds that are beyond Bhaktapur's civic mesocosmic system. He is concerned with the macrocosm represented by the graha s and with the individual microcosm. His function is to adjust those two realms so that the individual starting from his idiosyncratic position is able to periodically realign himself with the macrocosmic forces. In so doing he can then successfully fit into the ongoing moral, social, and religious patterns of Bhaktapur, the middle world properly presided over by the Brahman. The Brahman explains unfortunate events in terms of improper relations to the city's deities, or to bad karma caused by some moral error in this life or a previous one. The Josi ascribes unfortunate events most characteristically to a dasa , an astrological condition that can produce good or bad "luck," usually the latter.^[13] This luck, being astrologically produced, does not derive immediately from moral sources as bad karma usually does,^[14] nor does it derive from relations to the civic deities.

In his function as an astrologer the Josi is not, properly speaking, a priest. He puts individuals into a proper relation with a macrocosmic world whose divine representatives, the "astral deities" (chap. 8), have the most minimal meaning as "gods," being rather impersonal forces, and he characteristically does this through advice on timing and choices, which is not "worship" in any sense, not an attempt to influence the divine. He advises corrections and adjustments that allow people to get on with their ordinary lives, one aspect of which is the timing of puja s and ceremonies, the realm of the true priests. In his rectifying and enabling activities, he is like another "para-priest," the barber, who "mechanically" purifies people in a nonsacred procedure and prepares them for worship. As astrologers, the Josis do have second ary priestly functions. When bad fortune, or the possibility of bad fortune, is produced by a violation of order of certain types—those having to do with some reference to an astral deity, or, in the construction of a house, with the preexisting order of the space around and

under the house (symbolized as a disturbance of the supernatural serpents, naga s), the Josis advise on and often lead special restituting worship. They also act as auxiliary priests in some elaborate Brahman-led ceremonies, such as ceremonies for the cure of illness of high-status clients, and they participate as auxiliary priests to the Brahmans in the major Taleju ceremonies. In such helping roles they are not astrologers, but simply assistant priests.

Rajopadhyaya Brahmans claim that Brahmans could do astrological work (as they do in many parts of South Asia), but that they "have given this right to the Josis." Josis are considered by Rajopadhyaya Brahmans to have been derived by some sort of downfall from the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans.^[15] It is pointed out that they belong to the same gotra as the Rajopadhyayas^[*] , the Bharadvaja gotra . This puts them into a more intimate relation with the Brahmans than some of the other priests who are distinguished as "a kind of Brahman" in terms of their function but not in terms of their descent. The theme of fall in status, for the Josis from Brahmanical status, recurs in a variety of ways, as we will see, in regard to other auxiliary priests.

Acajus

There are in Bhaktapur two thar s with the that name Karmacarya, one among the Pa(n)cthar^[16] and the other among the Jyapu. The traditional profession of the men of these thar s is as a kind of priest called "Acaju" in Newari (from the Sanskrit Acarya , "spiritual guide or teacher," plus the Newari honorific particle ju ). D. R. Regmi, in a discussion of the Josis and Acajus in Malla Nepal, gives a useful orienting account of their still persisting functions (1965-1966, part II, p. 715):

The Acaju functioned as an inferior priest in all Brahman led households. They accepted daksina^[*] (gifts m money) as well as food m their host's house. . . . But they could not chant the Vedic mantras and also could not conduct the [Vedic] rituals. These were done by the Brahmans alone. The Acajus and Josi, however, were indispensable for any ritual. The Josi was concerned with the task of finding out an auspicious time for any kind of rites to be performed. The Acaju helped to arrange methodically the requirements of the ritual performance. He prepared the ground work for the actual rite. It was left for the Brahman priest to use them.

As the Josis, in addition to being assistants to the Brahmans, have their independent function as astrologers, the Acajus also have an independent function. The Acaju are Tantric priests in public settings. This

has lead to an impression in certain accounts of the Newars that only the Acajus work as Tantric priests and that the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans never do. Like many of the auxiliary priestly performers, they undertake tasks that would be improper for the Brahmans, at some cost in status for themselves. However, in this case it is not the function itself from which the Brahmans are protected, but, as we have discussed in chapter 9 in the Tantric context, its public performance. The Acajus also serve as surrogates for members of upper-status households in Tantric rituals in those cases where household members do not have the proper initiation or, sometimes in recent years, the available time to perform them. They also conduct ordinary Tantric puja s for their clients. In elaborate rituals with Tantric and sacrificial components (for example, the major rites of passage and rituals for the establishment of a new house), the Acaju is required, for well-to-do upper-status and middle-status families, at least, as one of the priests in the ceremony. Here he is not only an assistant to the Brahman priest but also (in keeping with the public nature of the sacrifice) the performer of the sacrificial part of the ritual.

Among the Pa(n)cthariya Karmacaryas there are approximately eight groups, who are differentiated in part according to where in the city they live and according to the particular kind of traditional work that they do. The Jyapu Karmacaryas are unique in the Jyapu group in that they, alone, have the right both to wear the sacred thread and to have Tantric initiations and practices. In spite of this they are not ranked in the upper levels of the Jyapus, and the thar s that are in those levels (and cannot wear the sacred thread) will not marry them. When people in the lower levels of the status system were asked to rank Bhaktapur's thar s, they usually placed Brahmans, Josi, and Karmacarya, in that order, at the top, because of their priestly status. In fact, among their peers the Pa(n)cthariya and Jyapu Karmacarya both have what would seem to be a more depressed status than their priestly status accords them in the point of view of those well below them.

Like many other kinds of priests, including the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, members of the Karmacarya families also work as temple priests at many of the city's temples and shrines.

Tini

In Bhaktapur's status hierarchy there is one thar placed below the Pa(n)cthariya level and above the great mass of Jyapu or farming thar s.

This is the Sivacarya ("Acariya of Siva") thar , whose members are priests, in Brahmanical phrasing, "a kind of lower Brahman." The priests of these families (and their members in general) are called "Tini."^[17] It is said that the Tini exist only in Bhaktapur and in some surrounding villages. In the other Newar clues their special functions are performed by Karmacaryas.^[18] In Bhaktapur a Tini priest is required during two important rites of passage. He is necessary for the performance of a purificatory fire ceremony, the gha:su: jagye ceremony, among middle and upper thar s, performed (depending on the particular thar 's customs) on the eleventh or twelfth day after a death (app. 6). The Tini priest makes a fire on the cheli of the house. Offerings to the fire are considered as offerings to Siva (which is sometimes given in partial explanation of the thar name of the Tini, "Sivacarya"). In the course of this fire ceremony the Tini makes a meat-containing offering of samhae to the fire. It is believed that the smoke of the fire will penetrate the house and drive out the evil influences of illness and death.^[19] Members of the family and at least one representative from each household of the extended phuki (who have shared in the death pollution) hold their hands over this fire to purify themselves and the members of the households whom they represent. In the course of the gha:su: jagye ceremony the Tinis have (in contrast to Karmacarya priests) the right to read verses from the Veda, which they possess in a simplified version in manuscripts passed on in their families. They also have the right to transmit, know, and use Vedic mantra s. The other important general community use of the Tini is as one of the necessary assistant priests to the Brahman (the others being Acajus and Josis) during the mock-marriage ceremony, the Ihi ceremony (app. 6).

The Tinis are the purohita s, the family priests, of the families of the Bha thar , a thar of borderline clean status, whose members have, as we will see below, their own contaminating priest-like function. In terms of their right to know Vedic mantra s and read the Veda, their status, by traditional criteria, would approximate the Brahmans. Tinis are explained as being a "kind of Brahman" probably "fallen" because of some irregular marriage, although in contrast to the Josis with their Taleju functions, the connection to the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans themselves seems much vaguer. In contrast to the work of the Josis as astrologers, which Brahmans say that they could do but delegate to others, Brahmans say that they themselves could not perform the gha:su: jagye ceremony without losing their Brahman status. This is because that ceremony has to do with the removing of pollution, a pro-

cedure that always depresses the status of those who do it. This illuminates both the anomalously low status of the Tinis—they are lower than any of the other upper-status sections—Brahmans, Chathariya, and Pa(n)cthariya—and their protective or surrogate function for the high-status Rajopadhyaya Brahmans.

Purity Technicians With Limited Functions

The four Newar thar s we have considered so far—Brahmans, Josis (in the priestly component of their traditional functions), Acajus, and Tinis—are "priests" in the sense that they have the legitimate right and proper traditional knowledge to perform services for their clients that mediate for these clients in their relations with deities. Although, as we have argued, their statuses are depressed in their relation to the highest segments of the social hierarchy, their statuses are still high in the larger system and their polluting force and meaning for others is overtly simply the usual relations of higher and lower in the macrostatus system.

There are a number of other thar s whose traditional activities are necessary for the religious life of the city—both for that led by priests and for individual or household worship. Some of these are craftsmen, producers of objects necessary in worship. These include the Pu(n), painters of religious images and mask makers; the makers of images in metal (Tama: and the "Buddhist" Sakya), stone (Loha[n]ka:mi) or wood (Ka:mi); the growers of flowers for religious use (Gatha); and the potters (Kumha:). There are also shopkeepers whose shops sell supplies and equipment necessary for performing puja s. These craftsmen and suppliers occupy a span of statuses, and are not apparently differentiated from other craftsmen or suppliers—either elevated or depressed in status—because they happen to make or deal with religious objects as one of their services.

There is another group of thar s whose status is what we have called "marginally pure"; that is, they are all polluting to the highest thar s who will not accept water from them, although the middle groups will. They are in the same level in the macrostatus system (level XIII; see chap. 5), a level that is intermediate between the clearly clean thar s above them and the clearly polluting ones below them. There are miscellaneous justifications given for the low status of the various thar s in this level. Three of them, however, Bha, Nau, and Kata:, perform neces-

sary services for higher thar s that allow for the restoration of purity or in the case of the Bha a human form for the soul after death, and in so doing acquire pollution themselves. A fourth, Cala(n), carrying a torch and a pair of cymbals, walks at the head of funeral procession to warn people because of the danger of crossing in front of it.^[20] These four groups are included by Brahman informants as Karmacari, religious workers in contrast to the craftsmen and suppliers on the one hand, and the lowest thar s whose "priestly" functions are covert, on the other. Insofar as they may be defined as enabling , through their actions, the ritual states and behaviors presided over by priests, we may call them, as we did the Josi, "para-priests." In addition to the Bha, Nau, Kata:, and Cala(n), there was in the recent past an additional such group in Bhaktapur, the Pasi, whose function was to wash and thus purify the clothes of a family's "chief mourner" on the day of his purification after ten days of ritual mourning (app. 6).^[21]

The Bha

The Bha, or Bha(n), have the thar name "Karanjit." In the course of death rituals for upper-status thar s, during the first ten days following death a Bha acts as an instructor and assistant to the chief mourner (the kriya putra , usually the oldest son) in a bereaved client household, and constructs some of the objects used during this period (app. 6).^[22]

On the tenth day, the final day of the mourning period, the family makes a presentation of substantial gifts to the attending Bha for the special work he must now do on that day. During the ten days after death the spirit of the dead person, which has been in the dangerous and marginal form of a preta , has been forming its "spiritual body" piece by piece in a definite sequence, and by the tenth day that body is completely formed (app. 6). The relation of the Bha to this formation, and one of the reasons be is given substantial gifts on this day is not discussed publicly, in part to protect the public reputation of contemporary members of the thar and thus to ensure that the custom will continue.^[23] Chattopadhyay (1923, 468) quotes from Brian Hodgson's early nineteenth-century descriptions of the functions of the various Newar thar s that

The Bhat [Bha:] are also connected with funerals; they accept the death gifts made on the eleventh [now, for Bhaktapur's upper thar s, at least, the tenth] day after the funeral of Newars of any caste (excluding outcastes) [now in Bhaktapur only for Pa(n)cthariya and above]. In the case of the Ksatriyas^[*]

[Pa(n)cthariya and Chathariya] it is mentioned that a piece of the brain of the deceased is kept covered with sweetmeats, the rest of the body being burnt, and this is eaten by the Bhat on the eleventh day as he accepts the death gifts.

The death gifts that the Bha is now given include such substantial items as clothes, shoes, hats, mattresses, kitchen pots, drinking vessels, and substantial quantities of food. The Bha, it is said, is now often given a bit of ordinary food to eat, rather than a part of the dead body, but this "ordinary food" may, in at least some, perhaps in most, high-status cases, be boiled rice previously touched to a fragment of one of the corpse's bones. This ingestion by the Bha is said to ensure the preta 's eventual reincarnation in a human rather than an animal form. Another possible function (and alternate explanation for the Bha's action) may be to ensure that the spirit itself has completed its change from preta to human-like form (app. 6).^[24]

Brahmans say that if a Brahman were to go to the house of a mourner on the tenth day and were to eat anything, or to accept any offering, he would lose his status as a Brahman. In other parts of South Asia, similar ingestion is or was done by a Brahman himself on the death of people of very high status. The Brahman was then very highly compensated, but had then to live in exile outside of the community.^[25] The Bhas relieve the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans of such unpleasant responsibilities. The Bhas are said by Rajopadhyayas^[*] to be a fallen Brahman group, and they are, in fact, referred to in some texts as Mahabrahmana^[*] , "Great Brahmans."^[26]

The Cala(n)

Members of the Cala(n) thar are placed second in upper-status funeral processions where—carrying a torch in one hand and small cymbals, which they clang together, in the other—they warn people that a funeral procession is coming, and thus prevent them from crossing in front of it at a crossroads, which would produce misfortune for all concerned.

The Kata:

The traditional function of the Kata: for upper-status families, performed by women of this thar , is to cut and tie the umbilical cord after birth, and to remove the polluting placenta and bury it outside of the city boundaries.

The Nau

The Nau are the barber thar . The men of this thar work as ordinary barbers, but both the men and women of the thar are necessary for the major purification procedures required by the middle-level and upper-level thar s following periods of pollution (usually the result of death or births within the phuki ) or in preparation for some major puja or rite of passage. The Nau's functions, as we will argue in the next chapter, are outside of the realm of priestly ritual as such. However, they, like those of the other para-priests, belong to the larger symbolic context of purity and impurity within which those rituals exist. The Nau remove impurity as an essential precursor to ritual action.

Hindu Use of Buddhist Priests

The Newar Buddhist Vajracarya priests have sometimes been referred to as "Buddhist Brahmans" (e.g., Greenwold 1974), but this is misleading. The roles they play within the Newar Buddhist community itself differs from that of the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans for the Hindu community in important respects. The Vajracaryas perform many of the functions (astrology, Tantric sacrifice, aspects of death ritual, etc.) that the non-Brahman priests and para-priests do in the Newar Hindu system, and they also perform healing procedures done in Hindu Bhaktapur by special thar s of healers. The fact that the Vajracaryas can perform these functions without compromising their status indicates an important difference between the Hindu Newar system and the "Hinduized" Buddhist Newar system. The Hindu Newar opposition and interplay between the traditional system of purity, headed and symbolized by the Brahman in his protected public image on the one hand and the "nonmoral" supernatural transactions, particularly those of the Tantric system, on the other, is blurred in the Newar Buddhist system, altering, among other things, the comparative significance of Newar Buddhist Tantra and of the Newar Buddhist high priests.^[27]

There are various ways in which the Vajracarya participate in the Hindu-centered system. People in the middle and lower thar s may use Vajracaryas as astrologers or healers. Toffin (1984, 230) has reported of Newar communities elsewhere in the Kathmandu Valley that some thar s use Vajracarya priests in the purifying (and contaminating) gha:su jagye ceremony to remove the contamination of a death from a house, a ceremony that is performed by Tints in Bhaktapur. Some thar s in Bhak-

tapur (chap. 5) use Vajracaryas as family priests, either exclusively, or, in the case of middle-level thar s, in some combination with a Brahman purohita . These clients include both the more properly "Buddhist" thar s and marginally clean thar s. Some marginally clean thar s are served by the Vajracayas as family priests, as others are by Tini and Lakhae Brahmans. This service is, perhaps, in large part, an opportunistic profiting from an economic opportunity left open to Vajracaryas and these other priestly thar s by the purity constraints preventing the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans from working with families below the Jyapu level.

We must include one residual service of Buddhist priests to Hindu Bhaktapur. An important segment of one of Bhaktapur's major Hindu festivals, the climactic festival of Mohani, centers around the "living goddess" Kumari, incarnated in an upper-status Buddhist girl (chap. 15). Certain Vajracarya priests play a part in the selection and maintenance of that child deity.

Covert Para-Priests: The Pollution-Accumulating Thars—Po(n) and Jugi

The sector of Bhaktapur's symbolic civic order in which the Brahman has a supreme and ideal position is ordered through the idiom of purity and pollution. The auxiliary priests and para-priests in this system protect the Brahmans' position by performing the polluting and other unseemly actions that the civic ritual system requires. The ritual and enabling functions of these "religious workers" are clear, and centrally define their differentiated traditional thar duties. In contrast to this group are those lowest thar s in the city, whose polluting power is centrally and obsessively emphasized (see fig. 21). These groups, locally conceived in some contexts as the antithesis of the Brahman, can hardly be conceived of in Bhaktapur as "kinds of Brahmans" and in contrast to the other figures we have been discussing, including the Buddhist Vajracarya, are not included on Brahmans' lists of "religious workers." Their functions as "religious workers" are ideologically hidden. In an analytic view, however, they are clearly para-priests, essential enablers of ritual action.

It is now widely recognized, following Hocart ([1950] 1960), that an important function of the lower castes is to absorb pollution from the higher ones, and thus to maintain their relative purity and the hierarchical system dependent on it. Hocart notes the remark of a Tamil in-

Figure 21.
Untouchable Po(n) children.

formant about the barbers' traditional function in cremations that the barber is "like a priest on the cremation ground." Giving other examples of such funeral functionaries, Hocart concludes, "The barber and the washerman, like the drummers, are not so much technicians as priests of a low grade, performing rites which the high-caste priest will not touch" (ibid., 11). Gould has called the whole class of low-status Sudra jati s "contra-priests." These were the groups "at the bottom of Hindu society who practiced such defiling occupations as washing clothes, barbering, sweeping, removing dead animals, midwifery, and cremating the dead. As it were, they absorbed the defilement in dealing with blood, death, and dirt so that the rest of Hindu society could be free of it and partake of the rituals that prepared the ground for rebirth into ever purer occupational categories" (Gould 1971, 11; see also Gould 1958). Gould notes Dumont and Pocock's remark that what is specifically Indian in the attempt to control defilement is "the employment of specialists who take upon themselves a part of the impurity, and to whom it remains permanently attached" (Dumont and Pocock 1959, 18; quoted in Gould 1971, 12).^[28] Such "contra-priests," "by virtue of their specialized ritual functions, live permanently in that state of impurity which they help others to abandon as rapidly as possible" (Dumont and Pocock 1959, 18).

Many of the auxiliary priests and para-priests perform polluting tasks, and this is related to their relatively depressed statuses. The polluting entailments of their tasks are secondary to the importance of those tasks, however, and seldom are salient; they are, in fact, usually muted in public discussions. If their statuses are relatively depressed, they are still found in all the clean ranks of the status system. The "impurity" of these people is simply the relative impurity that distinguishes each stratum of the macrostatus system from those above it. But there are some low thars whose "permanent state of impurity" is their major defining characteristic, their most salient meaning to others, and whose priestly functions are secondary or covert.

For all people in Bhaktapur the dramatically polluting thar s are represented by two, the Po(n) and the Jugi. There are other low thar s that are near them in status. The Nae, the butchers, are just above the Jugi in status, and in principle almost as polluting, and the remnants of some very low thar s—the Do(n), and Kulu—intermediate in status between the Jugi and the Po(n)—are also found in the city. However, these other thar s are almost never discussed in talk about the impure. That talk, often full of feeling, focuses on the Jugis and most emphatically on the

Po(n)s. People are deeply concerned (in ways that will be presented elsewhere) with the conditions of life and the nature of these two groups in an orienting and defining contrast with their own way of life and their own nature.

The Naes (like the borderline clean thar ) are unclean because of what they do, the necessary service they perform, namely, killing water buffaloes as the main source of meat not derived from family sacrifices. However, the central service that the Po(n)s (and, secondarily, the Jugis) perform is to accumulate pollution in particularly dramatic and—for the Po(n)—multiple ways, in short, to be unclean . The various polluting services that are assigned to them are in part justifications and attempts at objectification of their theoretical uncleanliness.

The Po(n)s in Bhaktapur have many of the functions that were classically associated with untouchables throughout much of South Asian history. They are fishermen; as the Naes kill water buffaloes, they kill fish, the fish being (traditionally) bartered and now often sold to other thar s for food The Po(n)s, in Malla times, were executioners, and thus also takers of human as well as animal life.^[29] Most saliently now the Po(n) are "sweepers." They clean the streets, which entails the cleaning of much human and animal feces, and they remove excrement from house latrines and from the special fields used in the city for defecation by people without access to latrines. Traditional Indian untouchables, the Candala^[*] , in addition to being executioners, had "as their main task . . . the carrying and cremation of corpses" (Basham 1967, 146). Bhaktapur's Po(n)s have a narrower funerary function. They must remove the mats and cloths with which bodies are covered during funeral processions from the cremation grounds, after which it is generally believed they use them as ordinary cloths and mats in their houses. As elsewhere in South Asia (e.g., Stevenson, 1920, 352) the Po(n)s are prominent after eclipses, when they go throughout the city receiving alms from anxious householders, thus drawing on themselves the bad influences associated with eclipses. Similarly, as we have noted in conjunction with the Bhatta^[*] Brahman, an offering may be made to a Po(n)—equivalently to the offer to the Bhatta^[*] Brahman—in order to remove astrologically produced misfortune.

The Po(n) have the vital function of making the city's organizing pollution system real , in the sense that they bring it into contact at its lowest point with a sensorially accessible world of real pollutants, and with the most dramatic of these, feces. In their degraded conditions of life they also make real the penalties of bad karma , and they thus vali-

date the whole system of community dharma and help motivate people's adherence to it. Uniquely among the accumulators of pollution the Po(n)s must, as untouchables had to in South Asia since very early times (e.g., Basham 1967, 146), live outside the city, the city boundaries being in part defined by their external residence. In Malla and Rana Nepal they were not supposed to enter the cities after sundown, and there were strict limits on the kinds of houses they could build and clothes they could wear.

The Po(n)s were clearly marked and distinguished as those beyond the community who helped to define that community. However, in contrast to other images of the outside and beyond—other kingdoms, non-Newars, wild beasts—the Po(n)s are integrated into and controlled by the city, they are part of the city system, essential for its symbolic ordering. They belong to the defining, bordering outside. When people variously placed in Bhaktapur's social system talk about the Po(n)s, it is evident that the Po(n)s represent in a fantasy augmented even beyond the unpleasant reality of their condition what would happen if one ceased to follow the sometimes onerous duties and restrictions of the ordinary daily religious and moral code. Life would be disgusting, impoverished, without decency. People sometimes say, "Without the protection of the dharma we would all be like Po(n)s." The Po(n)s, in their maximal accumulation of poverty and social disability, represent the realization of the important sanction of the bad rebirth resulting from violations of dharma , as well as the "state of nature" resulting from the rejection of social order. While people tolerate and understand and feel helpless to prevent other groups rejecting their traditional stigmatizing thar duties, there is widespread and passionate agreement that the Po(n)s must continue their work, and stay in their proper place. They are (as reflective citizens of the city articulate) as essential to the organized city order as are the Brahmans. Their function in this order is, then, not only in their particular necessary cleaning (and, traditionally, murderous) activities but also in the general meaning, value, and emotion, which accrues to them, which is strongly supported by the realities of their life, and which helps maintain and make sense of the city system. The Po(n)s not only are the "contra-priests" par excellence to the Brahman but also are joined with him in a special segment of Bhaktapur's symbolic order, the realm of the priests and the ordinary civic dharma .

"Po(n)," the ordinary term used to refer to this group, has a pejorative quality. The members of the group use the relatively neutral term

"Pore" (in Kathmandu Newari, "Poriya"; in Nepali, "Pode^[*] ") to refer to themselves. This term is also often used by others alternatively to Po(n). There is, as there is for almost all low thar s, an "honorable" and polite term that can be used in reference or in addressing them, namely, Dya:la. This refers to their activities at the Astamatrka^[*]pitha s outside the city. "Dya: " means "deity," and "la " is of uncertain reference for our informants.^[30] Members of the Po(n) thar are assigned by their thar council in rotation to attend the pitha s, where they gather remnants of food offerings made to the deity and bring them to their households for food. The Po(n)s here, as the Jugis do for some food offerings within the city (see below), join the other protective absorbers of food offerings to deities that must be discarded—crows, dogs, the goddess of the crossroads or chwasa , and the river. They also have a responsibility for caring for some of the mandalic^[*]pitha s and cleaning them.^[31] This has sometimes been interpreted as a duty in which the Po(n) is a guard or a "keeper" (e.g., Manandhar 1976, 222), or even a "priest" (D. R. Regmi 1965-1966, part II, p. 576), but now, at the least, it resembles the Po(n)'s other functions, the cleaning up and absorption of polluted materials.

The Po(n) is a para-priest in that he performs functions that permit the priest's activities, functions that are defined in the religious theory of the city. However, there is a final implication to his role, suggested, for example, by his alliance with the crows, dogs, the goddess of the crossroads, the river, and the Jugi in the absorption and rendering harmless of food offerings. In these functions the dogs and crows are often thought of as quasi-deified agents of Yama, the ruler of the underworld, and the river as the goddess Ganga^[*] . As some Po(n)s as well as others are aware the Po(n) is very much like that class of deities who operate outside of the realm of dharma and pollution, who operate through power. While degraded in the moral world, there is present in the ideas and emotions about the Po(n) the uneasy sense that he has the power to transcend it.^[32]

Inscriptions from the Malla period already indicate the presence of the "Jugis" in the kathmandu Valley society. The Jugis (Kathmandu Newari, Jogi), also known as "Darsandhari^[*] ," their thar name, and as "Kapali" and "Kusle,"^[33] are believed (by themselves and others) to be descendants of followers of the Natha yogi Gorakhnath who may have been members of the Kanphata^[*]yogic order (cf. Briggs 1938; Das Gupta 1969, part III).^[34] Bhaktapur's Jugis now consider Gorakhnath to be

their main deity, and their traditions and legends of their ancestry reflect something of these origins. Uniquely among Bhaktapur's Hindus they are not cremated but, in the ideal practice for Hindu renouncers, both men and women are buried in a sitting meditating position. Whatever dim remnants of their traditional practices still remain, they are an important part of Bhaktapur's craft and symbolic organization, and in the latter rank with the Po(n) as obsessively considered examples of pollution. One of their special thar professions within Newar society is that of tailors, work generally assigned to groups of very low status in traditional South Asia. They are also the traditional players of a musical instrument of special ritual and festival importance, the mwali , a double-reed instrument closely resembling the medieval shawm.^[35]

The Jugi's main traditional function for the city is in connection with the ceremonies that take place at the time of a death and also (depending on the customs and status of the particular thar ) on the fifth or the seventh day after it.^[36] Immediately after death while the body is being prepared in the family house for cremation, clothing is removed from the corpse and is brought, often by a daughter-in-law or a member of the funeral guthi , to the neighborhood crossroads, the chwasa . If a person is wearing only a small amount of clothing at the time of death, sometimes another article of his or her clothing is touched to the corpse and then discarded on the chwasa . A man of the Jugi thar^[37] must go to the chwasa and gather the clothes, presumably for his own family's use. On the fifth or seventh day after death a daughter of the bereaved household who has married out of the household returns. She boils rice on the cheli of the house. The rice is divided into three portions and worshiped by the household's chief mourner. One portion is placed under the eaves of the house and is later taken and thrown into the river, a second portion is offered to crows (messengers of the god of death) at the riverside, and a third portion is given to a Jugi, the same one who took the dead person's clothes earlier (see app. 6).

The Jugi's function here is clearly to receive and absorb death pollution and to dispose of problematic materials. As we have emphasized, in contrast to the "enablers of ritual purity" above him, he is, along with the Po(n), a focus for ideas and emotions about polluting thar s, whose person and conditions of life are disgusting. Upper-status discourse about pollution discriminates (or did discriminate in the years preceding this study) fine distinctions in the conditions in which Po(n) and Jugi could cause pollution, and the differences in purification procedures required.

The purifying workers above the Jugi and the Po(n) become polluted in the course of other activities. The barber, for example, in his cutting of hair and paring of finger and toe nails, helps separate those parts of the body, leaving the trimmed individual more "pure." The barber's low status is related to this work, but when he has finished, he discards the residues of hair and nails. The Jugis and Po(n), in distinction, must eat the polluted food that they collect and wear the death clothes. The pollution literally enters their being, accruing directly to their persons in a much more direct way than those above them.^[38] They are terminals for pollution.

The contrast between the Jugis and the Po(n)s, the classical untouchable, is, in part, quantitative—the Po(n) not only absorbs a part of the death pollution in taking the funeral clothes but also executes a wide range of polluting and sinful actions of use to the community. However, there are significant differences other than quantity. The Po(n) must live outside of the city (see map 4), which is an important part of his meaning. The Jugi not only lives within the city, but in contrast to many other groups who live in one or more enclaves in the city, the Jugis are widely scattered and distributed throughout the city (see map 10). Their contact with the clothes of a corpse is throughout the city at the chwasa s found in all the city's neighborhoods. In their outside/inside contrast the Po(n) and the Jugi reflect a difference we have seen in the placement and uses of the dangerous deities and, most particularly, the stone deities (chaps. 7 and 8). Some of those deities are located close to the outer borders of the city and represent the environing contrasts of the immediate exterior to the internal city as a whole. The pitha s of the Astamatrkas^[*] —where the Po(n) are, in fact, Dya:la—are the main physical representation of these outer deities. The other placement of dangerous deities is within the city as markers and protectors of many of the significant nested spatial units within which moral communities of various kinds—neighborhood, phuki , and household—carry on their dharmic moral relations. One of these is the neighborhood chwasa , the site of a goddess who moves pollution out of the area into some other realm, the place where the Jugi collects the death clothes.

The Jugi and the Po(n) also represent the ambiguous similarities and contrasts of the historical renouncer, as the Kanphata^[*] Yogis once were, and the outcaste. Both were beyond the civic dharma , beyond the differentiating system of pollution and hierarchy. It is not clear to ordinary folks at least (and that includes Bhaktapur's Brahmans in their attitude to visiting Sadhus from India, for example) whether the renouncer,

although he "transcended" pollution, might not be polluting to others. At the very least, people say in discussion of this issue, they are—as a result of their way of life—disgusting.

Po(n) and Jugi draw some of their meaning from groups that were "outside" the dharmic system but in different ways: the Po(n) from the untouchable groups beyond the moral pale of the traditional caste system, who became drawn into intimate and essential relations of service and meaning to it; the Jugis from the renouncers, who, rooted in the system, went beyond it, becoming ambiguous to those who remained "behind." The echos of these two contrasts to the city's ordinary citizens may be found in their contemporary similarities and contrasts.

The Jugis' main sources of income are as tailors and as musicians, playing instruments and music that are their thar specialties. Some families specialize in one or the other activity. Within the civic religious sphere the Jugis have thar rights and duties that are in contrast to their role as collectors and exemplars of pollution. The Jugis are thought to have their own Tantric tradition, knowledge, and initiation,^[39] and each year during a certain period (chap. 13) one Jugi dons a bone apron associated with Tantric "magicians" (both among the Newars and in Tibet) and walks around Bhaktapur accepting offerings and prayers as an incarnation of Siva as Mahadeva. Like the stone deities who accumulate and destroy pollution (among whom is the chwasa itself), the Jugi has the power to transcend the effect of pollution, and thus the system of ordinary dharma . At its lowest point, untouchable and renouncer become joined with king and Ksatriyas^[*] in opposition to those trapped in the interdependencies of the city.

Temple and Shrine Priests

At the time of this study there were approximately 119 temples and shrines in active use in the Newar Hindu system throughout the city.^[40] Thirty-five of these had no attending priests. The others had priestly attendants, pujari s, whose duty, for the most part, is to worship the deity twice a day, in the morning and the evening. Those temples whose deity may be the focus of an annual festival (chaps. 12-16) will have an additional image, a jatra image, which may be carried in a festival procession or otherwise shown to the public by the pujari . In the larger temples, above all in the Taleju temple, there may be a staff of priests with more elaborate responsibilities.

At the time of the study the pujari s included twenty-four Ra-

jopadhyaya Brahmans, one Lakhae Brahman, twenty-one Jha Brahmans, two Bhatta^[*] Brahmans, thirty-six Karmacaryas, and one Shaivite ascetic.^[41] The Karmacaryas are pujari s at those temples where blood sacrifice is required—the temples of Ganesa^[*] , and the temples and god-houses of the dangerous deities. The other pujari s serve the temples and shrines of the various benign deities in a seemingly random way as far as their relations to particular deities are concerned. The relations of particular priests to particular temples is a matter of the history of each temple—who built it, and for what purposes, and what happened subsequently. Shrines and temples built by the Mallas or Chathariya often have Rajopadhyaya pujari s, even if they are now of minor use. Some temples reportedly had Rajopadhyaya pujari s in the past, but as relations with patrons and the economic desirability of the position changed, were given over to one of the other groups. Some other temples were built by farming-level thar s, notably the Kumha:, the potters, and had Jha pujari s from the time of their establishment. Most of the temples with Jha pujari s are minor ones whose deities do not have jatra s. The most important temple they officiate at is the Dattatreya Temple, whose major importance is as a pilgrimage site for non-Newar Hindu pilgrims. The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, although they serve many presently unimportant temples of the benign deities, still also serve most of the important ones—important in terms of either the status of their builders or their ongoing city-wide importance.

Some Remarks on the Status Of The Rajopadhyaya Brahman In Bhaktapur

For Newar Hindu Bhaktapur, the Rajopadhyaya Brahman is the Brahman. Other priests, including other kinds of Brahmans, serve to enable his functions in one way or another, and to protect his status. Most of these other priests and priest-like figures protect the Brahman's status by performing necessary services for the management of pollution and thus the restoration or protection of "ritual purity" (chap. 11). One priest, the Tantric Acaju, also protects the Brahman's status, but in this case not directly from pollution itself, but rather from the publicly visible performance of the morally equivocal act of blood sacrifice, an act that is permissible in esoteric Tantric contexts but not in public contexts where the Brahman must be the exemplary priest of the ordinary, purity-based dharmic civic system.

The civic elaboration of auxiliary and para-priests, both overt and covert ones, is derived in part from the Brahman's vulnerability to impurity. This vulnerability is reflected in an ambiguity and ambivalence regarding the Brahman's status both in his own view and the views of others, particularly upper-status people.

Lynn Bennett makes an observation about Indo-Nepalese Brahmans, which describes what is also a widespread South Asian pattern. When Indo-Nepalese Brahmans become economically and politically powerful, they "tend to give up their priestly work. They expressed the view that accepting dana and daksina^[*] [as purohita s] was somehow demeaning, like accepting charity" (1983, 251n.). It has been argued (and debated) that the acceptance of dana , a gift, is more demeaning or problematic than the acceptance of the ritually prescribed routine "offering" of daksina^[*] (see discussion and references in Fuller [1984, chap. 3]). Whatever the problems of the purohita , the salaried temple priest had, in other parts of South Asia, even lower status among Brahmans themselves. As Stevenson wrote of Kathiawar^[*] , although a temple priest in a big temple might become a wealthy man, "because he takes pay, he is not held in high esteem by other Brahmans" (1920, 377).

The reason why the dana or daksina^[*] may somehow compromise the Brahman is variously explained. Receiving payment for a service implies servitude. And what the Brahman may be paid for may be thought of as including the removal from the client of some substance-like sin and impurity, as well as simply guiding the client in that removal. This implication is clear in similar gifts elsewhere within the Brahman's realm. Why the Brahman is, or should be, somehow impervious to this is the subject of much Hindu apologetics.

All this has been taken to be problematic for statements that associate the Brahmans, "supreme rank" with their priestly function^[42] "For Brahmans themselves, as well as in the Brahmanical tradition as elaborated in the classical texts, the general notion is that priestly Brahman subcastes rank below non-priestly Brahman subcastes, and that Brahman individuals or families engaged in the priesthood are considered demeaned or degraded by their caste-fellows who are not" (Fuller 1984, 49). The argument (summarized in Fuller [1984, 62ff.]) is that Brahmans represent an ideal of purity that is, in fact, compromised by their priesthood, that the Brahman as priest is in a paradoxical position.

In Bhaktapur the Brahman cannot escape his priestly functions. The Rajopadhyaya Brahman, proud of his aristocratic historical alliance with royal power, boasts of his commitment and restriction to priestly

work in contrast to non-Newar Brahmans. In a traditional community such as Bhaktapur the Brahman must fulfill his priestly responsibilities, although when conditions change, motivated by the contradictions in his role he may try to escape them. But within that traditional context, in Bhaktapur's version of a climax Hindu community, the ambiguities and paradoxes in the Brahman's role help generate an elaborate system of social roles and of complex actions, ideas, evaluations, and symbols that are the very stuff of traditional Hinduism.

Chapter Eleven
Purity and Impurity: On the Borders of the Sacred

Introduction

In our discussion of space, deities, Tantrism, and priests we have been concerned with elements of civic symbolic action in what we may as well call the "religious sphere" of Bhaktapur's life. In later chapters, adding time to these other elements, we will examine the city's integrated "symbolic enactments." The symbolic elements and enactments we are concerned with are for the most part, as we have asserted m chapter 1, "marked" in Bhaktapur as being extraordinary, somehow different from the banal, the "natural," the everyday. The dangerous and benign deities are creatures of that marked realm. In their proper homelands they inhabit mythic and transcendent space and time. Occasionally—and this is a major motif of many legends associated with annual festivals—they appear and wander in this world as ambiguous and uncanny violations of the ordinary, in historic encounters with kings and heroic citizens that have enduring significance for the city. In the ongoing civic actions in which the deities are encouraged to become immanent, and where they are repeatedly encountered by all of Bhaktapur's people, however, a separated arena is constructed for them, the arena of the "sacred." That arena's proper spaces are the temple or shrine, the purified, bounded, and isolated puja areas in houses, the ideal spaces of the city carved out through the positions and festival movements of the deities; its expert workers are the priests; its time is the calendrically determined eternally recurring times of festival

or that of rites of passage or of crisis-generated or prophylactic ad hoc worship; and its proper action is in ritual and the traditionally specified actions of the festivals.

But there is much activity at the margins of this sacred arena. There are things that must be done to prepare sacred objects and officiants and to prepare the worshipers themselves. Thus, icons of the deities must be properly made; sacred force or "life," as it is often phrased, must be put into them, the deity himself or herself must periodically be brought into them, ritually pure areas must be prepared for their worship, new temples must be consecrated, and so on.

We have differentiated "priestly" from "para-priestly" activities by differentiating the performance of a "religious" activity in itself from the necessary preparations for such an activity. Among the para-priests, so defined, we included the Naus, the members of the barber thar , one of whose traditional duties was to aid in what is sometimes (and we will argue misleadingly) called "ritual purification"—for the act of purification, in which for middle and upper thar s the Naus are of major importance, is not within the sacred realm but within the realm of the ordinary. The ordinary has its own symbolic construction, its "embedded symbolism," but that symbolism, in contrast to the marked realms, is naturalized as part of the locally constructed common sense everyday world.

In this chapter we will discuss purity, impurity, contamination, and purification as aspects of Bhaktapur's "natural" world in their relation to the expression, ordering, and motivation of that city's mesocosmic symbolic order. Essentially, their meaning and use among the Newars in Bhaktapur is no different from those in traditional Hindu societies elsewhere in space and time. Relative purity is related to hierarchical social ordering; some impurity is or is made to seem unalterable, and some may be rectified through purification, thereby supporting the order associated with purity and/or preparing individuals for ritual action. Various attempts have been made to define the central or "essential" import of purity, impurity, and purification in their South Asian elaborations, and the result is a tangle of interpretations. But we may use Bhaktapur's "climax community" and our particular approach to it to encounter some of these and to make some discriminations regarding the power, uses, and limitations of the "purity complex" in Bhaktapur's public and private worlds.

A Tangle of Interpretations

Bhaktapur has inherited in one form or another most of the concerns and ideas about purity set forth in the Hindu codes for proper behavior, the Dharmasastras^[*] . The subject is, on the surface at least, diverse. "Suddhi (purification) is a very comprehensive topic including within it purification after asauca (impurity on birth and death), purification of a person after contact with an impure object or on account of certain occurrences, purification of pots, wells, food, etc., after they are polluted" (Kane 1968-1977, vol. IV, p. 267). Because among these, birth and death pollution make their carriers unfit for most worship and were traditionally "the most important subject under suddhi . therefore the Suddhi-kaumudi defines suddhi as the state of being fit for or capable of performing the rites that are understood from the Veda" (vol. IV, p. 267). The Sastras also refer to the impurities accrued by contact with the lowest social classes (included along with a multitude of other pollutants) and differentiate the required actions and tempos of purification by hierarchical social status, thus taking account of a "caste-differentiating pollution."

Anthropologists concerned with social structure and organization have selectively treated the complex of purity, impurity, and purification (which we may term the "purity complex") in its external relation to caste segmentation and hierarchy. Dumont, in an influential statement, argued that the opposition between "pure" and "impure" gives the caste system its "intellectual coherence." The opposition is the "single true principle" that underlies those features, which Bouglé's classic formulation (1908) proposed as the "essence" of caste, but which for Dumont are "analytic distinctions introduced by the observer" (Dumont 1980, 43). "It is by implicit reference to this opposition that the society of castes appears consistent and rational to those who live in it . The opposition underlies hierarchy, which is the superiority of the pure to the impure, underlies separation because the pure and the impure must be kept separate, and underlies the division of labor because pure and impure occupations must likewise be kept separate" (ibid., 43 [emphasis added]). Dumont's phrasing—"intellectual coherence," "consistant and rational" appearance, and the like—allows him to avoid giving any precise explanatory force to this intellectually satisfying opposition of pure and impure in the origin or, more relevant to our purposes, maintenance of caste.

Other writers, still centrally concerned on the one hand with Hinduism's exotic social order and on the other with an intellectualistic and cognitive approach to purity and impurity, emphasize the semantic or metaphorical force of purity and impurity: "Physiological pollutions become important as symbolic expressions of other undesirable contacts which would have repercussions on the structure of social or cosmological ideas" (Douglas 1968, 340). "Caste pollution," which is a special case, "is a symbolic system, based on the image of the body, whose primary concern is the ordering of a social hierarchy" (Douglas 1966, 125). For Douglas "pollution is the symbolic expression of an intellectual problem." She suggests that "we treat all pollution behavior as the reaction to any event likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications" (1968, 338 [emphasis added]). Purity keeps categories separated; in the Hindu case, hierarchically ordered categories. Impurity is the blurring and the threatened collapse of categories.

One problem for Douglas's formulation is that although the blurring of any category is by definition problematic for order, "pollution" in its restricted sense of "dirtiness," as suggested by "physiological pollutions," applies only to some cases of the confusion of "cherished classifications." The problems, metaphors, uses, and rectifications of some other categories of confusion are quite different. Veena Das, following Douglas in asserting that "the symbolism of impurity serves basically as a metaphor for liminality" (1977, 115), makes one necessary (and fundamental) distinction. "Liminality" in Hindu social organization is not only the blurred, unpleasant, and polluting mess of contaminated social differentiation; it also represents the "creative transcendence" of the given categories of the social system, as in the religious life of Hindu ascetics. Here liminality and the destruction of "cherished classifications" results in a "transcendence" in which the purity complex is no longer an issue.^[1]

Transcendence aside, "liminality," the state of being out of ordinary social categories, is not sufficient in itself to characterize (or explain) impurity. In certain liminal states, such as the early stages of rites of passages, individuals are in heightened states of purity, not in impurity. More problematically, as we have argued, only some kinds of confusion or collapse of categories are "polluting." If "pollution" is not to be endlessly extended in metaphor, many states of confusion, liminality, or mixture are neither pure, impure, nor "transcendent." The question of what kinds of confusion, of what kinds of "cherished classifications" is still open.

The escape from or blurring of social categories has another powerful metaphoric implication. "To have been in the margins is to have been in contact with danger, to have been at a source of power" (Douglas 1966, 97).^[2] Bhaktapur uses the different implications of the delineation and blurring of categories—purity and safety, impurity and danger, membership in the ordinary system of social categories or transcendence of it—in a differentiated way, isolating various implications of categorization for complex differentiated meanings and uses. The purity complex has its meaningful position in this larger context.

Various positions have been taken about the relations of the purity complex to the religious and sacred spheres of South Asian and other societies. Here much depends on the definition of "religious" and "sacred," but we are again in a tangle of assumptions and pronouncements. Thus Dumont proclaims flatly that "in reality, even though the notion [impurity] may be found to contain hygienic associations, these cannot account for it, as it is a religious notion" (1980, 47 [emphasis added]). Srinivas (1952) similarly ascribes impurity to the realm of the "sacred," albeit the "bad sacred" in opposition to the "good sacred." Such statements reflect the attempts made by such earlier social theorists as William Robertson Smith ([1889] 1927) and James Frazer ([1890] 1955) to include ideas regarding pollution and ideas about the sacred together within some larger encompassing "supernatural" realm to which the two sets of ideas were thought to belong.^[3] The claim that pollution and purity—that is, the aspects of pollution and purity that were of interest to these theorists—are within a "religious" or a "sacred" or a "supernatural" sphere encourages the implication that their manipulation through purification is a ritual act. Thus Sherry Ortner writes in an article summarizing the literature on the sociocultural aspects of pollution beliefs and practices in various cultures, "Because lost purity can be re-established only by ritual and also because purity is often a precondition for the performance of rituals of many kinds, anthropologists refer to this general field of cultural phenomena as 'ritual purity' and 'ritual pollution'" (1974, 299 [emphasis added]). The procedures used to "reestablish lost purity" in Bhaktapur are conventional but hardly rituals. Furthermore, although purification procedures are in a general sense "preconditions for rituals" in that a person has to be pure to participate in some (but by no means all) religious action,^[4] in some cases purification is a direct and immediate preparation for important rituals, while in other cases the immediate

motivation is to free people from the general social restrictions of birth and death impurity, or to remove the contamination produced by contact with a member of a low thar . Such purification is necessary for the eventual later performance of rituals, but is not directed toward a particular one. Later ritual performances will, in fact, require, in addition, the specific purification that always proceeds such rituals.

What Is Polluted, And What Is Polluting?

The Sastras traditionally treated polluted human bodies and polluted inanimate objects separately.^[5] There were proper cleansing procedures of various types for purifying objects; the proper procedure depended on the object or material that was to be purified. Ashes, soil of various kinds and water were the main purifying materials. Various other materials (mustard-seed paste, ground-up fruit, cows' urine and dung, whitewash, etc.) were also used for cleaning certain polluted materials (Manu V, 110-126; Bühler 1969, 188-191). The materials and objects whose purification are discussed in the Sastras are the materials and objects of everyday life—worked metal, stone and clay, cloth of various kinds, foodstuffs, houses, land, vessels for holding food and liquids, spoons, cups and so on. These are the materials and objects that are the unavoidable context of life, which must be touched, which envelop the body, which are foods, or which hold the foods that must enter the body through the mouth. Their purification is prophylactic, at the service of a central concern—the protection of the condition of the individuals that these objects and materials surround and with whom they may come in contact. The cleaning procedures are technically specified. "A man who knows (the law) must purify conch-shells, horn, bone and ivory like linen cloth (i.e., with mustard-seed paste) or with a mixture of cow's urine and water." This is all technical, mechanical, and mundane, whatever its distal religious justification might be. These materials and objects are in that segment of a person's world that the concerned person can control; they are extensions of his or her self, his or her body, and can be purified like the body itself. The impurities that threaten from outside this easily controllable circle of possessions can be produced by animals, by events (above all, birth and death of family members), or by other persons (above all, by those of lower and low status). These agents of pollution cannot be purified by scrubbing with an appropriate cleansing agent. Sources of pollution must be avoided

if possible, but in those cases where avoidance fails or where they cannot be avoided, then procedures for purification of the self become essential.

For objects and materials impurity is something that adheres to them, like the physical "dirt" that is one of the sources of the idea, and can be scrubbed off or (in the case of liquids) removed by filtration. The nature of the impurity produced by birth and death is more problematic; we will return to this. But what about the person who is concerned about the problem of pollution? What becomes polluted? Where does his or her pollution exist?

According to Kane, many Sastras differentiated "body" impurity into "external" and "inner" kinds (1968-1977, vol. IV, p. 310). The "inner purity" refers to the "mental attitude." For some commentators the inner "mental attitude" was more significant than "external purity." Kane states: "The Padma emphasizes that it is the mental attitude that is the highest thing and illustrates it by saying that a woman embraces her son and her husband with different mental states" (ibid., 310). Manu's Laws include references to this mental or spiritual purity. "Among all modes of purification, purity in the acquisition of wealth is declared to be the best; for he is pure who gains wealth with clean hands, not he who purifies himself with earth and water." "The body is cleansed by water, the internal organ is purified by truthfulness, the individual soul by sacred learning and austerities, the intellect by knowledge" (Manu V, 106, 109; Bühler 1969, 187f.).

The reference to "inner impurity" seems to be a "philosophical" extension. The major traditional emphasis, and the present emphasis in Bhaktapur is on the "external impurity." In relation to the organization of a community such as Bhaktapur, a primary emphasis on internal purity and impurity would, in fact, have a revolutionary implication. Like Bhakti religion, it represents the possibility of a detachment from and transcendence of the network of the interrelational controls of the civic dharma, a kind of movement to a direct, individual, "Protestant," encounter with an altered view of the divine, an escape from the control of the Brahmanical mesocosm.^[6] A Newar Brahman, queried, for example, as to what is affected when an individual is impure (asuddha ) replies that it is the mha , the physical body. The atma , the soul, he says, cannot be affected, it is always pure. Asked about the manas , the "mind," he says that mind is not affected directly ,when a person is asuddha —although it is affected indirectly insofar as a person is concerned about his state.

The body and its "physical impurities" is also an important reference in the traditional explanation of the sequence of rites of passage, samskara s, which entail, among much else, the progressive transformation of individuals to higher and purer states throughout their life. "Manu says, 'By performing the Samskaras [those dealing with] conception, birth-rites, tonsure, and Upanayana [full initiation into his caste group for a male], seminal and uterine impurities are washed away, . . . Yajna-valkya also endorses the same view. Some kind of impurity was attached to the physical side of procreation and lying in the womb. Therefore, it was thought necessary to remove that impurity from the body by performing various Samskaras" (Pandey 1969, 29f.).

Bodily pollution is usually thought of as "external," in part because of its contrast with "internal mental pollution," and also because of the emphasis on the surfaces of bodies and of objects to which impurity adheres and that can be purified by washing, scrubbing, and so forth. But bodily pollution itself can be "external" or "internal." The implications of external or surface and internal bodily pollution for any given individual differ. The external surface pollution has to do with an individual's presentation of self, his or her social meaning, as mediated by the elaborate uses the city makes of pollution as a condition for proper relations and social position. The internal aspect of pollution relates in part to the meanings of one's status and the threats to it, but here something else is added; namely, the meanings of the oral incorporation, the ingestion of pollution. These meanings, associated with feelings of abhorrence and disgust, not only help motivate adherence to the public system of relations ordered by purity but also add important aspects of "intellectual coherence" to it.

Pollution, Ingestion, And Disgust

In an attempt to differentiate the meaning of pollution to Hindus from other kinds of "dangerous contact" as conceived elsewhere, Louis Dumont argues for an "essential difference between the Indian and the tribal case. Elsewhere, the dangerous contact acts directly on the person involved, affecting his health for example, whereas with the Hindus it is a matter of impurity, that is, of fall in social status or risk of such a fall. This is quite different, although traces of the other conception can be found in India" (1980, 49). This assertion, tacitly based on and restricted to surface pollution, is misleading in its claim that impurity "does not act directly on the person involved." It is also misleading

insofar as it treats the implications of Hindu impurity of interest to Dumont, the risk of fall in status, as the predominant personal motivation for behavior in relation to purity and impurity. Although Hindu pollution may differ from "tribal" forms (such as the Polynesian fear of contact with a superior's mana , which is dangerous to one's physical state but not "polluting" in the Hindu sense) it acts very powerfully and directly on the "person involved," and does so in ways independent of and prior to the risk to status.

Pollution takes its meaning from the kind of contamination involved, a distinction blurred by structuralist attempts to put all contaminations in the same class. There is a difference in the personal meanings of swallowing, say, ground glass and swallowing feces, or contemplating food "contaminated" by one or the other. Both are "contaminating"; both are "matter out of place" (Mary Douglas's definition of "dirt"). However, glass is dangerous and is a "clean contaminant," while feces are disgusting and a "dirty contaminant." Similarly, someone whose body, self, or mind is disturbed by the adherence or entrance of such "contaminants" as a spirit, or disease, or "sin" is affected by something that we may designate by the oxymoron "clean contaminant."^[7] Clean contaminations in Bhaktapur have explanations, induce emotional responses, and call for techniques of rectification, all of which differ from those associated with pollution in its usual sense. The usual designation for someone who is polluted through "dirty contaminants" and who needs one of the sorts of purification used in such cases is that he or she is "not pure ," asudha (Sanskrit asuddha ). This term rarely is used for the other, the "clean contaminations," except occasionally in a rare metaphorical extension. The emphasis on being touched by "dirt," and above all by ingesting it, is precisely what gives the socially elaborated pollution beliefs their compelling special personal force, a force that is both emotional and conceptual.

According to some Newar Brahmans from the point of view of traditional law, the dharma , it is permissible for a high-caste person to accept water from wandering ascetics. It is, they say, nevertheless, a disgusting prospect. Private feelings and dharmic revelations usually converge, however; the case of the ascetic is an interesting and illuminating exception.

The impurity that may derive from birth and death, and from contaminated things, animals, or other people, and which then can affect one's body (and, secondarily and in varying ways, one's status) in an

unpleasant way, is conceived and dealt with as if it were a transferable substance of some kind, which can adhere to the body or some intermediate object, which can be often conducted through or flow through some intermediary object, and which can be removed through physical cleansing procedures. Pigs, nondomesticated carrion and feces-eating dogs, feces, clothes that have been in contact with a sick or dead body, and food that has been in contact with the saliva of others, are salient examples of sources of pollution that are both dharmically impure and sensed as repulsive. Other ideas about pollution, such as birth and death pollution, whose polluting substance is puzzling to contemporary informants, are intellectually associated (with more or less conviction) with ideas and feelings aroused by such directly disgusting and repulsive substances.

The "elementary" experience of dirtiness is vividly conveyed in traditional writings on pollution and its removal. "Food which has been pecked at by birds, smelt at by cows, touched with the foot, sneezed on, or defiled by hair or insects, becomes pure by scattering earth over it." "As long as the foul smell does not leave an object defiled by impure substances, and the stain caused by them does not disappear, so long must earth and water be applied in cleansing inanimate things" (Manu V, 125, 126; Bühler 1969, 190f.). Much of classical and contemporary discussions of pollution centers around foodstuff, and the possibility of ingesting polluted substances in contaminated food or drink. Here the powerful emotion of disgust in its core sense of "strong distaste for food or drink, nausea, loathing," becomes centrally salient.

The status-regulating aspects of purity and pollution are clearly related to eating, to food, and thus to the possibility of ingestion of pollution. To be touched by a polluting person while eating requires a higher degree of purification (for an upper-status person) than simply being touched, and prohibitions about contact with inferiors are connected with an elaborate doctrine about the various kinds of food (which have different vulnerabilities and resistances to pollution) that may or may not be accepted from them. Thus, foods, particularly boiled rice, are central markers of hierarchy, of social exclusion, and inclusion. If a high-status person is polluted through contacts with a low-status person or a contaminated object, purification must be accomplished before the ingestion of any further food. Even without special contamination, the failure to wash before a meal (on the assumption that one has inevitably incurred some kind of impurity) is a papa or "sin." An insistence that they must now wash before eating is one of the relatively few abrupt

changes required of boys who have undergone their Kaeta Puja , their movement into full ritual membership in their thar s.

The idea of disgusting substances that would be repellent to the body if ingested has an inverse, palatability, which implies and depends on the absence or the overcoming of disgust. Bhaktapur's entire status system—that of both the city and the family hierarchy (chaps. 5 and 6)—is, typically of South Asia, conceptualized and acted out in the rules and practices related to cipa , food that has been touched by someone else. It is considered proper to take cipa from superiors, but if taken from someone of lower status, the idea of ingestion of dirt becomes salient. Ideally this ingestion of cipa signals the acceptance of a protected incorporation and dependency in the organic system of hierarchy. The inferior takes of the substance of superiors as a baby takes its mother's milk. However, the ideologically suppressed contaminating and status-depressing implications of the acceptance and ingestion of the superior's substance, represented by vulnerable food such as boiled rice touched by him in the act of eating is perfectly clear to the lowest thar s, at least, who are frequently aware of such usually covert aspects of the hierarchical system. As an untouchable Po(n) put it, "Cipa is dirtier than feces. . . . When we hear that the sahu [merchants] have a feast we Po(n) , we poor people who have nothing to eat, go to the houses of our own patrons, and take their cipa , the food that has come out of their mouths, their leftover food. They collect the leftover food after they have eaten and give it to us. While they ate they mixed everything by hand, and when they chew the food they drop some of the food from their mouth. They mix and gather that kind of food for us, and we have to eat it. It may even have been on the floor. Their thrown away things are our meal, in which we get dust and hair, and everything. The main point is that we eat dirty food."

The Po(n) is expressing an implication of the flow of cipa down the system, which is usually muted. But he is consciously or unconsciously satirizing the conception that is associated with the prohibitions about the flow of foodstuffs, of cipa , in the reverse, the upward direction. What he describes as the disgusting characteristics of the food he takes from his superiors is, albeit here in broad overtness, what everyone fears—including, by the way, the Po(n) himself in relation to his inferiors, the Cyamakhala:—may characterize vulnerable food touched by inferiors.

The lowest thar s stand for pollution, and are its concrete manifestation. The pollution of low jati s is sometimes described in the literature

as being a "kind of inherited defilement" (e.g., Kolenda 1978, 65), often thought to be the result of some ancestral member's sinful behavior in the legendary past. This produces a kind of permanent pollution in contrast to the temporary pollution acquired, for example, following the death of a phuki member or the contamination due to encounters with an impure person or object. Yet, whatever karmic theory—made use of in Bhaktapur for certain important but delimited purposes—may argue, in most discussions of the lowest levels both by members of higher thar s and by members of the unclean thar s themselves, their lower status is explained not in terms of their history or karmic state, but of their various ongoing pollution-accumulating behaviors.^[8] Pollution-accumulating activities—such as by the Po(n) and Jugi in relation to death, by the Po(n) in relation to human and animal feces, by the Nae butcher in relation to killing animals for meat, by the Nau barber in cleaning bodies, and so on—not only keep higher thar s clean (and as such are "para-priestly" services) but also ensure, in conjunction with other regulations that once controlled their living places, dress, their possible accumulation of capital, their access to other kinds of work and so on, that their dirtiness, disgusting qualities, and pollution will be continually maintained and thus real in the natural world , as that world is understood in Bhaktapur. "Inherited substance," an idea that suggests racial theories of status insofar as the resulting social position is thought to be based on some permanent inherited substance, is misleading insofar as it does not take into account the overwhelming importance of continuing action in generating and maintaining the impurity of the unclean thar s. The continued performance of degrading action is ensured by the vigilance and application of sanctions by the middle and upper thar s.

Bodies and Corporate Bodies and Their Exuviae

Erudite Hindus in Bhaktapur, like other such Hindus elsewhere, frequently use the classically rooted metaphor of a human body and its component organs and members for the interrelated, interdependent, and hierarchically arranged elements of the social system. Another, more covert and less idyllic model of the body may be discerned, one that has both social and private symbolic force. The cipa system, with its unidirectional flow, suggests this. In this model one belongs to the group whose food can be unproblematically shared. In some cases these

are groups of relative equals, but as a member of the larger city social hierarchy, one can share the food of all above oneself, and belongs to an upper segment of the hierarchy, while one is at the lowest position within the segment. The food of the upper segment, so to speak, flows into, and succors the individual. One accepts not only succorance, but in respecting these upper groups, accepts their authority. One is a member of such a group in an intimate way, a way having some metaphorical resonance with the idea of palatability of food and the sense of one's own body boundaries.

Vulnerable food from people below an individual is forbidden, and becomes more and more clearly disgusting as the social distance increases and the bottom of the system is approached. The separation between an individual and these lower-status people is not mutual, however. They accept the upper-status person's cipa , or leavings—and are theoretically sustained by them (if covertly degraded)—but he or she would not take theirs. There is a valve in the system, sustenance, and—when things are working properly—pollution only flow downward.

If the incorporation of food into the body represents and enacts solidarity with the upper segment to which one belongs, the casting off of exuviae from the body represents not only a social opposition but a rejection of aspects of one's own self represented in the meanings given to the lower segments of the status system. Exuviae are "caste-off" bodily materials that are unproblematic while they are parts of the body but that are thought and felt to be more or less polluting and disgusting (as well as dangerous objects for the performance of "contagious magic" in some cultures) once they separate from the body. Newar Brahmans provide lists of polluting exuviae (including materials such as "dirt" on the teeth and the umbilicus, which seem closely related to the idea of exuviae) for which they use the Sanskrit word "mala, " "dirt, bodily excretion." These include spittle, nasal mucus, feces, urine, dirt on the teeth, ear wax, dirt in the umbilicus, and in some contexts finger and toe nails and hair. Nails may be considered polluting where they separate from the underlying skin at the ends of the fingers. A similar list in Manu (V, 135; Bühler 1969, 193) of the "twelve impurities of the body" does not include hair or finger nails, materials that can, in fact, be considered peripheral but integral parts of the body, and which are important loci of major purification procedures in the course of which they are trimmed.^[9] Hair and fingernails are detachable, rather than detached, and are not offensive in their attached

state (unless they harbor dirt and are allowed to grow beyond a certain length, as in the case of ascetics).

Exuviae are not problematic or disgusting while they are parts of one's own body. They become problematic when they appear at the surface, characteristically at the exit of bodily orifices. Cleanliness consists of separating such materials from the surface, and once separated, they are alien and usually become disgusting; that is, there is a deeply felt disinclination to bring them into new contact with the body, and above all to ingest them.

What Is Polluted and Polluting in Birth and Death?

The emphasis on dirt and cleanliness, on disgust and palatability, and on the boundaries of bodies—an emphasis that is central to hierarchy and solidarity and to procedures for removing pollution—is problematic in discussion of an important class of acquired pollutions, asauca , impurity caused by birth or death and in some thar s by menarche^[10] to the household and to the patrilineal extended family, the phuki .^[11] A Newar Brahman attempting to explain why family members become impure after births and deaths says (of death) "After a death and during the period of mourning the condition of the body is not right. People feel heavy and sad." It is, he says, this bodily condition which must be remedied by purification.^[12] As to birth pollution (which starts for the phuki members at the moment that the umbilical cord is cut and the infant has been separated from the mother), he says, "who knows who it [the infant] is, or where it comes from." Dirt and disgust is not the central issue here, and the reason for pollution is not intuitively obvious and requires philosophical speculation. As Kane writes in his review of birth and death pollution in the Dharmasastras^[*] , "A question arises why birth and death should cause impurity to the members of the family or to relatives. Only a few [of the texts] have anything [to say] on this question. Harita says: 'The family incurs death impurity because by death the family feels overwhelmed (or frustrated), while when a new life appears the family increases (and there is gratification of joy)"' (Kane 1968-1977, vol. IV, p. 269f.). This echoes the uncertainty of the Newar Brahman's explanation, and its seeking for a naturalistic, physical, mechanical, and nonmoral explanation. Kane writes, as we have quoted, that the Mitaksara^[*] defines "asauca ," birth and death pollution, "as an emergent attribute attaching to a person, which is got

rid of by lapse of time or a bath and the like . . ." (ibid., 268.) The "pollution" is dealt with in part as if it were dirty pollution, but it is only amalgamated to dirt by a kind of vague metaphorical extension.^[13]

The Management of Pollution in Bhaktapur: Avoidance, Surrogation, and Cleaning

The large complex of ideas and feelings, of public doctrines and personal responses, of contradictions and rationalizations associated with the purity complex are very diffusely embodied in action in various aspects of the city's life. The area in which they are, perhaps, most focused, represented, and standardized in public action in Bhaktapur is that of purification and the management of pollution in general.

Pollution is managed by various combinations of avoidance, of absorption by surrogates, and of cleaning procedures. Food taboos, rules regarding what is unclean, and the status-structuring rules about what kinds of social contacts are permissible and impermissible in various contexts to people of various social statuses are made clear in traditional texts and in Bhaktapur's ongoing social dharma . A clear set of proscriptions for avoidance and for ways of life facilitating that avoidance become elaborated on the basis of these clearly defined and more or less avoidable class of contaminants.

Surrogate Absorption of Contaminants—Both Dirty and Clean

We have discussed the idea of the surrogate accumulation of pollution as a service to others as a priestly function in chapter 10. Surrogation has two distinct aspects. First, there is the performance of an essential act—the purification of a house after death, the execution of a criminal, the moving of feces from latrines out of the city—which would be uncongenial or status-threatening in one way or another to the higher-status people who use their status to avoid and delegate the action. However, lower-status people not only are delegated status-depressing actions, which then maintain their own lowered statuses, but in some services are clearly doing something else; they absorb into themselves a contaminant, freeing others from it. The idea of helpful surrogate absorption is widespread in Bhaktapur. What is absorbed is often a dangerous but not necessarily impure (in the sense of dirty) substance.

Thus animals placed "under" the house (on the cheli ) in Bhaktapur are said (according to Vogt [1977, 94]) to help protect the inhabitants of a house by contracting diseases that otherwise would affect the human inhabitants of the house. A piece of iron is sometimes used to draw dangerous spirits to it—for example, from the body of a bride who is to be newly introduced into a household. The special uses of the lowest thar s to absorb and draw to themselves the portentous dangers signaled by an eclipse or those inherent in the clothes and funeral objects of the dead involves the accumulation of more than "impurity." When the untouchable Po(n) begs, as he is traditionally required to do, for gifts from others following an eclipse, and, as he does on some other occasions of astrological trouble, he takes on not their status-threatening dirty impurity but their health or economically threatening astrologically produced "bad luck." In this and the other examples of the surrogate absorption of a dangerous substance, there is the implication of a limited quantity which can be moved from one locus to another.^[14] The idea of flow of quantitatively limited powerful substances is found in the idea of sakti in Bhaktapur's religion of the dangerous deities. Thus when Siva's power or sakti flows into his Goddess consort, he is emptied of it, and left as a corpse.

The idea of pollution—in the sense of dirty pollution—as a substance that flows, that has quantitative aspects, that can often be avoided, and that can be deflected and absorbed into others is thus a subcase of a larger category. The inverse idea of partaking of the substance of superiors through eating the prasada of deities and the cipa of superiors is in this larger group. So is the complex of ideas and feelings centering on dangerous and unpleasant substances other than dirty, status-affecting pollutants. Many of the ideas, feelings, and experiential resonances connected with this nondirty dangerous class are associated with another set of moral issues—danger, punishment, evil, sin, guilt, and fear—rather than those centrally germane to the purity complex. These nondirty transferable substances are also closely related to the world of power and magic, which in a sense lies under and at the edges of the ordinary world expressed and stabilized through purity.

Purification

The third aspect of the management of pollution is its removal once it has accumulated. Here the major emphasis is not on the management of the flow or ingestion of some sort of substance but on mechanical pro-

cedures for the removal of dirt from surfaces and, in more extensive personal purifying procedures, the trimming of hair and/or nails. These procedures are extensions of the ordinary cleaning of foodstuffs, cooking utensils, living and dining quarters, clothes, and the body. For inanimate objects, water collected to ensure its purity, ashes, mixtures of cow dung and soil, and so on may be used following traditional prescriptions.^[15] Such ordinary cleaning and scrubbing becomes loosely formalized into sets of procedures of various potency. The proper procedures are generally understood by ordinary people for most occasions, with the occasional advice of a Brahman. They depend on status, the kind of pollution undergone, and the goal of the purification (e.g., primarily for the removal of a pollution to restore ordinary purity, or for the removal of ordinary purity to prepare for a ritual, or the removal of asauca impurity). Thus such purifications must be done in particular ways, and their neglect, like the neglect of any aspect of the dharma of ordinary life, is a moral violation, a papa .^[16]

Formalized procedures for purification of the body are called bya(n)kegu —alternatively written be(n)kegu —meaning literally "to cause to become untied" and thus to become loosened or freed. The term is not used for the purification of objects nor of ritual equipment or areas, where the ordinary Newari term for "to clean or to arrange neatly," "sapha yagu ," is used. "Bya(n)kegu " is generally divided into two kinds, which Brahmans sometimes distinguish as "ordinary" (sadharan ) or "special, important" (visesya^[*] ). For the latter group of bya(n)kegu , the unequivocally clean thar s, that is, those above level XIII, require the services of a man (nau ) and woman (nauni ) from the Nau, or "barber" thar .^[17]

In the usual course of events the main motivation for a major purification is after death in the phuki in all thar s, and after birth within the phuki for high-status groups—low-status groups performing only an ordinary bya(n)kegu . Major purification was traditionally required by the highest status thar s in preparation for all major puja s and for all rites of passage for family members, but in recent decades minor bya(n)kegu procedures have been used for most of these. In addition, Brahmans and devout upper-status Chathariyas purified themselves with major purifications following contaminating contacts with low thar s. For lower-status thar s such purifications were perfunctory.

For an ordinary or minor bya(n)kegu there are three common procedures used in Bhaktapur. One is bathing in or at the edge of the river with river water, in the course of which a person first washes his or her

feet, and then hands, then rinses the mouth and spits out the water, then washes the face, and finally washes the whole body or submerges it into the water. Another procedure is to use khau , mustard seed from which the oil has first been pressed. Khau can be used with nonriver water taken from wells or taps. Water is first used to clean sequentially the feet, hands, mouth, and face. Then khau is rubbed on the feet, the hands, the face, and then the rest of the body. Finally the body is rinsed with water again. A third procedure is to take tulsica , the earth (ca ) from around a basil plant (Ocimum sanctum ), tulsi ,^[18] and use it in the same way as khau is used.

In a major bya(n)kegu extra procedures are added to the basic washing and scrubbing activities that characterize all purifications from dirty pollution. For such procedures a nau and a nauni come to the house of the person or (as is usually the case) persons who are to undergo the purification. Occasionally people may go to the workplace or house of the nau . In a client's house the purification procedure is done on the cwata or mata(n) floor. In the case of a man, "new water," na:na ,^[19] is used to wet his head, which is then shaved.^[20] The nauni pares his toe and finger nails, and colors the tips of his toes with a red pigment, ala :. For women there is no hair cutting; the major bya(n)kegu consists only of having their nails pared by the nauni , and the ends of their toes painted with ala :, which is applied more extensively than for men. Unmarried women may have a wider area of the tops of their feet adjacent to their toes painted, a procedure that is interpreted as cosmetic as well as purificatory. The cut-off hair and nails are supposed to be thrown into the river,^[21] but they are often disposed of as ordinary waste. Following these pocedures by the nau and the nauni , the person must wash in the river or clean himself or herself with khua or tulsica in the manner of an ordinary bya(n)kegu .^[22] The entire procedure—the services of the nau and nauni , followed by the prescribed washing and cleaning—constitutes the major bya(n)kegu . These simple procedures are sufficient to remove dirty pollution.^[23]

The Purity Complex: Psychological Resonances and Social Order

The purity complex weaves together complex sociocultural and personal meanings. It helps anchor Bhaktapur's realm of extraordinary religious symbols in a reality sensed both as natural and compelling.

We have noted that certain features of the purity complex place it

in a larger field of "contaminations" where socially and experientially defined objects are compromised. The ideas of contagion, of flow, of transformation, of ineffectual bounding conditions that characterize or are implied by all contaminations contrast with conceptions of "uncontaminated" or unblurred or cleanly presented and represented bounded persons and objects, fixed order, and the kinds of meanings derived from the existence and relationships of such fixed persons and objects. The first set of conceptions is closer to reverie, dream, magic, child-like understandings; the second, to the more fixed and bounded categories of everyday logic, a logic in which social definition and categorization play a large part, the realm of ordinary events. Considerations of impurity are, so to speak, at one, but only one, boundary between order and disorder. The approach of that boundary results in psychological discomfort that serves to keep people within those social boundaries. On the other side is an altogether different kind of world. At the margins of Bhaktapur the untouchables serve to keep the clean citizens within the city. Yet, just beyond them is not the disgusting mess that the ordinary dharma and its associated benign moral deities threaten, but a world for whose ordering, uses, and relationships, impurity is no longer relevant.

There are various procedures for trying to keep oneself and others in the ordinary social and mental universe. Procedures for the management of purity are among them. The purity complex helps to ensure the definition of individuals as socially defined persons , and emphasizes the body as the sign and locus of that person. It makes use of the idea of the clean body as a sign of that individual's perceptible, sensible, acceptable adequacy to others, and thus that person's acceptability as a unit in the hierarchical system of human and divine relationships. Purity as a marker of personhood is associated for any individual with a complex of ideas and feelings about his or her social definition—reputation and face, embarrassment, and shame. The purity complex is related to only one segment of moral emotions and ideas. People who have become contaminated have committed no moral error, no papa , unless they became contaminated through some mistake on their part.^[24] They have no cause to feel guilt. Guilt and repentance, their social sources, their personal meanings, and the procedures for rectifying them, in spite of their occasional labeling as inner impurities, have significantly different relations to social and personal order.

The uses of the delineation of body surfaces through purity and purification to define persons within the hierarchical system, echo a

traditional system of sumptuary laws and other external markers of status. They are in contrast to systems of defining status and person by differences in inner essence, such as racism. Such efforts at fixing categories through surface delineation and marking take much of their significance from and contribute to local doctrines and experiences of a shifting, context-dependent selfhood.^[25]

The purity complex makes use not only of the imagery of the surface of the body but also of the flow of foods into it to be incorporated in it, and of exuviae—above all, feces—flowing out of it, to be separated and rejected. This imagery of flow is not related to the exterior surface of the body—the body as a sign of a person—but to its interior composition and to the acceptance, incorporation, excretion, and rejection of substances into and out of that interior. This imagery is not related to the static bounded category of the person as represented by that person's surface presentability, but rather to the dynamics of the construction of a socially defined individual in systematic relation to the larger hierarchically inclusive and exclusive social "bodies" to which he or she belongs. In this field of the purity complex, ideas and feelings associated with palatability, thirst, hunger, and thus desire on the one hand, are opposed to disgust on the other. Things that do not belong to one's extended body, particularly if they have been cast off by it, flowed through it—as so many of the substances that are passed down through the status system seem to do—risk being marked as repulsive. Palatable versus disgusting substances, desire versus disgust, add to the concerns about proper surface appearance (and thus conformity) a dynamic of flow, and encourage the maintenance of structure by countering the anarchic desires (and available cultural doctrines, which are potentially subversive to the social order) of being equal to all^[26] or else unrelated to all.

Interpretation of body symbolism and its cultural extensions is a particularly dangerous enterprise unless it is carefully related to its expression in particular peoples' personal discourse and experience—which we cannot do here. We can, however, offer a preliminary improvisation. The formula that determines the direction of flow, "palatable from equals and superiors, impalatable from inferiors," has a metaphorical implication that the body is in part constituted of substances flowing from above. Exuviae pollution is based on an opposition of inside and outside the body in which substances that are within body boundaries are unproblematic but once outside those boundaries become disgusting, that is, not to be reincorporated through eating. A corporate group

such as phuki or thar —extensions of the basic household group defined by sharing one cooking area—is a group most of whose food can be shared without concern about pollution. They are in that sense one body.^[27] However, the hierarchical cipa system adds further psychological resonance and social order to the more static group-defining shared commensality. It is during their infancy and childhood that people first encounter in the household cipa system the idea that all food is acceptable from all people higher in status. Feeding by others in the family begins, of course, in nursing, with its presumed experience of the infant's unbounded union with its mother whose milk and later feedings it shares, the two belonging in some sense to a single body. The model of the group within which cipa , "contaminated" by their substance, becomes sustaining food echoes not only the sustenance and support and dependence of such early experience with the mother but also, perhaps, a perception of one body within which all is acceptable, nothing disgusting.

This is the view looking up the system; looking down however something changes. You have a "maternal" relation to all below you because you feed them, and they are dependent on you. However, as such dependence moves out of the household, and to successively lower depths of the status system, an implication of the system that is muted elsewhere in it becomes more and more clear. The flow of substance and sustenance throughout the system is not only sustaining, it is progressively degrading and polluting. The excretion metaphor now gains an ever-increasing strength over the feeding metaphor. We may speculate that another of the many vital functions served by the lowest thar s is to isolate the stigmatizing implications of the cipa system, and to deflect them from the relationships in the upper reaches of the system onto themselves.

The pollution that affects surfaces, and the pollution that may enter into the body by ingestion have each their own specific clusters of personal meanings and public uses.

The purification procedures that restore the purity compromised by birth and death pollution and (for upper-status people particularly) contact with low status people,^[28] and which prepare people to remove "everyday" pollution in preparation for religious acts, are all bya(n)kegus —that is, purification is directed to "dirty contaminants," and, among these, to dirty contaminants on the body surface.

The rectifications of surfaces relates people to one aspect of the social

order—that segment symbolized by the polarity of Brahman and untouchable, the specific segment ordered by the symbolic resources of the dharmic order. Purification relates people in the realm of the deities to the moral gods, the representatives of that civic order. The moral gods are themselves subject to impurity—purification prior to worship, and the purification and care of the images of the deities and of the "sacred" area in which puja s are held protect the definition of the moral gods as well as the worshipers.^[29] One important legend in Bhaktapur (chap. 15) tells how that city's major group of dangerous deities, the Nine Durgas, are impervious to the impurities of feces and pig flesh, which would pollute a god such as Visnu^[*] . Similarly, during worship the dangerous deities are offered foods (meat and alcoholic spirits) that if not "dirty," are nevertheless forbidden to Brahmans and would threaten their status.^[30]

In the case of the dangerous deities power overcomes the importance of purity. The dangerous deities escape from the constraints ordering the civic moral dharma ; that is why they are dangerous, and that is why they are useful. This transcendence is allied to creativity and fecundity (as the agricultural meanings of the dangerous deities witness), to the protection of the perimeters of the civic system, and to danger. Even within the hierarchical order of separated and ranked units of Bhaktapur's city system, however, purity is of differentiated importance. Although the entire system of thar s is arranged in a hierarchy of purity with the Brahman and Po(n) at its extreme ends, it is possible, as we have argued in chapter 10, to discern two vertical divisions of that hierarchy. One segment—characterized by the Brahman, the untouchables, and the set of priestly functionaries, is central to that system. Not only are their functions related to the manipulation and uses of purity and impurity, but in their lives and status they are the representation of the socially constructive effects of the purity complex. A Brahman who becomes impure would no longer effectively be a Brahman, and were an untouchable to become pure he would no longer be an untouchable. But a farmer is a farmer and a king is a king no matter what their state of purity. The other vertical segment of the status system deals with realities beyond the construction of the mesocosmic symbolic order. Sometimes their effectiveness requires, as was clear in the case of the king, going beyond that order and contradicting it. Not only the king, but also the craftsmen, farmers, merchants, and others are fitted into the system by a kind of unstable tinkering. Their hierarchical position, rationalized into the purity system, is based in part on other often more

obscure factors, deriving from history and power and class. In this perspective the king is closer to the farmer than to the Brahman, and the Brahman is closer to the untouchable than to the king.

Placing the purity complex in the realm of the sacred is misleading in various ways. On the one hand, there are essential components of the religious sphere, the realm of the dangerous deities and that of the ascetic, for example, where purity is not at issue, although its transcendence helps define that realm. On the other hand, where purity is related to religious conception and action (and to social order), it is in itself within the realm of the ordinary. It is precisely this seemingly natural aspect with its powerful intellectual and emotional implications which is made use of to anchor, motivate, and preserve the constructions built of it.

The idea of impurity as a natural substance, not a natural essence, is associated with complex ideas about the nature and management of that substance, how to avoid it, and how to get rid of it. Because it is not an essence, because the status implications of the purity complex are not biological and racist, the conditions of life of individuals at various social levels must be constantly arranged to ensure that they have the proper amounts of impurity. It is precisely this open interactive aspect between pollution and social structure that does more than rationalize and justify the social order; it motivates action in that order insofar as it must constantly struggle actively to maintain the congruences between the ways of life and the order-constructing states of pollution of its members.