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Chapter Fourteen The Events of the Solar Cycle
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4. Human actors.

In Biska:'s parallel events individuals throughout the city participate as members of households, of mandalic[*] sections, and (less systematically) as members of twa :s and neighborhoods. At the level of the public urban performance, the city's central interactive narrative, The Adventures of Bhairava and Bhadrakali[*] , we have as our cast the Newar king, the chief Brahman, and representatives of the Josi, Acaju, Bha, Jugi, Po(n), Maha(n), Sa:mi, Ka:mi, and various Jyapu groups. Many of these personages are gathered into the Bhairava chariot, which is pulled and tugged at by men of various clean thars


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subdivided, however, at the chariot's two ends into representatives of the upper city and the lower city. The selection of thar s in the interactive public performances effectively samples and represents the city's traditional macrostructural, ritual, and productive structure. The two city halves represent by summation its entire space, but this particular way of representing it (rather than, say, by the sum of the mandalic[*] sections that represent the space of the city in Mohani) has special implications.

In Biska:'s action the king, priests, and thar representatives do not, in fact, act. They are passively moved. They are moved through the city on fixed routes, at fixed times, at the mercy of the tugs of war that represent the tensions in the city underneath the order that the chariot riders represent. They represent order, but they are not the active agents of that order. In Mohani they act, and the power of the Ksatriya[*] and of the Brahman as a Tantric practitioner are explored. While in Biska: the passive adventures of king, Brahman, and their company are in the public routes and spaces of the city, in Mohani, their actions are for the most part confined to the sacred and royal enclosure of the Taleju temple.


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Chapter Fourteen The Events of the Solar Cycle
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