Sila Ca:re (Sivaratri) [15]

The following waning fortnight, Sillaga (in February) has only one festival event, of moderate importance for Bhaktapur as a city—although of major importance for all Shaivite Hindus.

This ca:re , the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight, is—like all ca:re —special to the Goddess, and there are as on other ca:re s special ceremonies for the Aga(n) Gods and at the temples of the Tantric deities. This particular ca:re is also devoted to Siva.^[22] On this day the major valley shrine complex of Pasupatinatha becomes a center for Shaivite pilgrims from India and Nepal. Bhaktapur's Dattatreya temple is a secondary pilgrimage center at this time. Many Shaivite pilgrims from India and elsewhere in Nepal—both "householders" and sadhu s—come to Bhaktapur at this time. Some of the sadhu s are housed at one or another of the city's matha^[*] s, "monasteries," for wandering Hindu renouncers, built as acts of piety by Malla kings. As we have noted, neither Dattatreya temple nor the matha s have "Newar" priests. These pilgrims (and others during the course of the year) come to Bhaktapur in a sort of benign invasion of interest to its citizens, but they are not, as such, part of the Newars' own city-centered symbolic life.

People in Bhaktapur may go themselves to the Dattatreya temple,

and, as pilgrims themselves, to the fair-like mela at Pasupatinatha. Within Bhaktapur in the evening fires are made along the roadside and in the main neighborhood squares. Many men—from thar s throughout Bhaktapur's social structure (except the untouchables)—sit by the fires all night chanting the name of Siva, some of them smoking cannabis, which is commonly smoked by Shaivite pilgrims during the festival, and which was, at the time of this study, sold by stall keepers at Pasupatinatha during the mela . The legends told to explain the fires are variants of a widespread Hindu tale associated with the day (cf. Kane 1968-1977, vol. V, p. 255). In summary, the legends recount that once upon a time a hunter caught in the woods at night sat shivering under the particular kind of tree whose wood is supposed to be burnt for the fires made that night. Siva, hearing the sounds "sh, sh" made by the shivering man, thought that the man was calling his name, and manifested himself to offer the hunter a boon. The hunter requested that he be able to stay forever with Siva in his heaven, and Siva granted his wish. The salvation of the shivering hunter under his tree, is said by some to be associated with the approach of spring when trees are beginning to bud again and that Siva who periodically destroys and recreates the world is bringing it to life again in its annual cycle of death and rebirth. There are no feasts or special household activities on this day.

This is one of the calendrical events in which the borders of the domestic moral realm is represented by means of the ideas and images associated with the benign deities. Siva responds, in his absentminded but recognizably human way, to the needs of the hunter. That response is produced by a misunderstanding, a kind of trickery, for the hunter^[23] has done nothing in the dharmic moral realm to earn it. The legend, the fires in the public spaces in whose warmth some men spend the night, the smoking of cannabis, the references to and mimicking of the absent-minded and yogic Siva probes at the human outer boundaries of the moral realm.

In the day's explorations of the "benign margins" of the moral realm, neither the household nor the integrated city are directly referred to but are present as that which is being, for the moment, escaped. (Moderate.)