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.