The Period Between Bhagasti [40] and Gatha Muga: Ca:Re [45], Human Sacrifice

Bhagasti is the time when the first rains of the summer monsoon are expected. The Nine Durgas are dormant. Now if the city is lucky, the rains will come, the rice fields will be flooded, and the rice seedlings will be replanted into the mud of the paddy fields to begin their growth into

mature plants. This is a period of risks—the danger of too much or too little water and of violent storms that may disrupt the planting. It is also a time of illness, particularly the gastrointestinal diseases that are common during the summer. It is said that because of the absence of the Nine Durgas, evil spirits freely enter into the city and are responsible for disease and troubles.^[16] Some nine weeks after Bhagasti the spirits will be driven from the city during the vivid and dramatic festival of Gatha Muga: Ca:re at which time the rice transplanting from the seed beds into the paddy fields is ideally completed—although it often may last for some more weeks depending on the weather conditions.

During the period between Bhagasti and Gatha Muga: Ca:re is the time when the Gathas who will later once again incarnate the Nine Durgas are believed to capture the human skullcaps or calvaria that they use as drinking vessels (patra ). They need three such skullcaps each year, one for their god-house, one for their dance performance, and one as an extra reserve "in case one of the others break." They take these skullcaps from living men by means of mantras. They are significantly never taken from women. Furthermore, the men from whom they take them must show auspicious signs, similar to the signs that were said to have characterized people who were taken for human sacrifice in earlier periods. When a man's skullcap has been removed by the Gatha's magic, the person dies within six months. This echoes the legends' Nine Durgas' random murderous activities before they were transformed into servants of the city; the tenuousness of this transformation is, as we will see later, an essential part of their civic use. In one sense, because the Nine Durgas are out of the city and no longer protecting it, the inside of the city develops, during this unprotected period, some of the qualities and dangers of the outside. Yet, these dangers of disease and disorder are the sorts of dangers that the Nine Durgas symbolize as well as protect against, and the Nine Durgas persist as shadowy representatives of dangers in the fantasized magical murderous activities of the Gathas at this time—who could have such powers only in some still active association with the now "dormant" Durgas.

These magical human sacrifices may very well be an echo of something else. Hamilton, in the early ninteenth century, reported information that he had obtained from a Gatha informant. According to his informant (Hamilton [1891] 1971, 35 [original parentheses]):^[17]

From those who come to worship at the temple, the Got [Gatha] that represent these deities [the Nine Durgas] accept of spirituous liquors, which they drink out of human skulls until they become elevated, and dance in a furious manner, which is supposed to proceed from inspiration. In the same manner,

they drink the blood of animals which are offered as sacrifices. In these temples the priests (Pujaris) are Achars, who at the sacrifices read the forms of prayer (Mantras) proper for the occasion, but retire when the animal is about to be killed by the Got who represents Bhairavi. The shrine, in which the images of the gods are kept, is always shut, and no person is allowed to enter but the priest (Pujari) and the Gots, who personate in masks these deities. Once in twelve years the Raja offers a solemn sacrifice. It consists of two men, of such a rank that they wear a thread; of two buffaloes, two goats, two rams, two cocks, two ducks, and two fishes. The lower animals are first sacrificed in the outer part of the temple, and in the presence of the multitude their blood is drunk by the masked Gots. After this, the human victims are intoxicated, and carried into the shrine, where the masks representing Bhairavi cuts their throats, and sprinkles their blood on the idols. Their skulls are then formed into cups, which serve the masks for drinking in their horrid rites.

Hamilton then goes on to report that other informants denied that such human sacrifices took place. Newars in Bhaktapur do believe that human sacrifices were performed in the past, and may still be performed on certain occasions in remote Newar towns and villages. Whatever Hamilton's story has to do with a possible historical reality (and his other details are quite accurate), they point to the important psychological reality that the Tantric control of the Nine Durgas by no means meant the end of their threat to innocent humans, and that behind the animal sacrifices that are of central importance throughout the Devi cycle is, as we have argued in chapter 9, an essential reference to human sacrifice. We will return to this in our summary discussions of the meanings of the Devi cycle and the Nine Durgas.

During the period beginning after Bhagasti and coming to a climax at Gatha Muga: Ca:re, obscenity is extensively and publicly licensed and used. Obscenities are called out loudly by male farmers working in the fields and in public areas of the city, and by young men and boys of various social statuses. The remarks are grossly sexual, and at any other time of the year they would be considered (particularly for people of middle and upper status) extremely bad behavior. Obscene remarks are made loudly to others at a distance so that they can be heard by an audience, thus indicating the essential public significance of the behavior. The remarks are made mostly by young men, from roughly sixteen to forty, and only very rarely by a girl or woman, who would be considered to be particularly brazen and uncaring of her status. Like all of Bhaktapur's other ritualized behavior of the special sort that collapses and disturbs ordinary social order and conventions (such as the

public role switching that occurs during Saparu [48] and the otherwise forbidden activities represented and licensed in Tantric rituals), there are strict limits to the license exhibited. While the obscene remarks are addressed by young men to young women, they would not properly address them to an older woman, a high-status woman, or an acquaintance. Above all, they would not address these remarks to any girl from their immediate or extended family. Within the limits of propriety for obscenities they say such things as "Hello, you girl over there who is holding my penis in your hand" or "A penis put into you is going to make you pregnant and then you will eat a lot of beaten rice (a food that is thought to have special value for pregnancy) and that will give you diarrhea." Sometimes the remarks are directed by young men and boys to other young men and boys (again within the limits of propriety), and they would say such things as "go lick a vagina" or "go lick your mother's vagina," although the latter may be considered too strong, and may well offend the recipient of the insult. There is, then, a "safe" area of conventional obscenities, a forbidden area that would represent a violation of proper behavior, and a risky borderline area where differences in individual daring and judgment operate. There are many more such phrases, and they are usually followed by a conventional phrase "pae hwa, " which forms a kind of refrain and which is derived from the very strong and shocking term "paegu " for the act of intercourse and "hwa, " which means a hole.

What is being expressed during this period is not only erotic sexuality but also, in the use of obscenity, a violation of status restraints that in other contexts would be extremely aggressive and insulting. This all has a special force in view of Bhaktapur's extensive (in comparative perspective) controls on sexual talk outside of its proper limited familial forms—above all, in public arenas where family ijjat or reputation is crucially at issue.

The period of obscenity comes to a climax and conclusion in the events of Gatha Muga: Ca:re, the day by which the Gathas' searching for human victims also ceases.