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.