The Tenth Day: The Taleju Jatra, and the Transfer of Power to the Nine Durgas
On the morning of this day people dress in their best clothes, the women if possible wearing one of their most beautiful saris , and go
for the last time from their neighborhoods along the jatra route, joining in a great mass of people to visit one of the protective Mandalic[*] Goddesses of the city. This time they go once more, as they did on the first day of Mohani, to the eastern pitha , that of Brahmani, stopping as they had on the first day to wash or sprinkle themselves with water at her tirtha . Even people who might not have gone previously join in on this day, and large numbers of people from surrounding villages and towns also join in,[84] so that many thousands of people converge. Seated near the pitha are scores of music groups, playing—each group its own music—at the same time. At the pitha the corpse of the Kha(n) Me: is lying. The Gatha, dressed in their Nine Durgas costumes, which are now splattered with blood, stand close to the buffalo's corpse. Their masks, which have been marked with monhi and other sacred pigments lie on the ground. As people file by the pitha they worship not only Brahmani as they did on the first day but also the Nine Durgas group, represented by the masks. Each person is given a bit of meat from the buffalo carcass, which they eat as prasada , thus sharing in the killing of the buffalo, and in Devi's victory over Mahisasura[*] .
This morning is the major time for the fulfillment of the pledges for the "offering of lights" vrata (see fig. 33). This is the sitting or lying supine of young men for many hours on end, supporting burning oil lamps, which we described in our discussion of the first day. On this tenth day another, a much more strenuous way of fulfilling such pledges is also done. The devotee will move starting from his home, and then join and proceed along the city jatra route to the Brahmani pitha in one of two ways. He may move forward by lying on the ground, and then alternately rolling himself up into a ball, then extending his body forward, and then rolling it up again by bringing his legs up toward his head while keeping his most forward position, slowly proceed along the jatra route. Another way of proceeding is by alternatively kneeling, prostrating himself, moving his knees forward, rising on his knees, making a gesture of respect, standing up, and then kneeling again. In this latter method a friend or family member may help support a burning oil lamp on his head as he proceeds. These vratas are performed for the same kinds of purposes as we have described for the much more ordinary offerings of lights, but are usually motivated by more severe problems. The devotees, dressed in loincloths, and wearing turbans, have their knees and elbows heavily bandaged to protect them from injury.[85]
Figure 33.
A vrata, an offering of light at the Brahmani pitha on the tenth day
of the Mohani festival.
As people leave the Brahmani pitha and enter the main city festival route again, many of them proceed to the Taleju temple. When they pass Sukuldhoka on their way to that Temple they encounter the living goddess, the Ekanta Kumari, seated there at the side of the road. People stop and worship her and give her small offerings and take prasada from her (see fig. 32). When they reach the temple they enter the main courtyard. The fifteen buffalo heads have been arranged in three rows of five each just in front of the closed inner Golden Gate behind which is the jatra image of Taleju. The head in the center of the row just adjoining the gate is considered to be the Nikhuthu. People circumambulate the buffalo heads, walking along the raised ledge just in front of the inner gate in order to do so. The people will now return to their homes for their final activities in the household Na:la swa(n) rooms.
At Taleju the true Taleju image has been in the temple's Na:la swa(n) area, the Kumari court. The activities that will take place there must take place during the proper astrologically determined sait , one of three such saits that are important to the temple's activities during this tenth day. Two of these saits are locally determined by the Taleju Josis; one of them, the taking up of the true Taleju image is, like the two earlier saits of the Mohani period, determined by the central government's astrologer. The first event is a visarjan , a "taking leave" ceremony. During the proper sait the Taleju priests will now complete their reading of the Devi Mahatmya , and do a final puja to the combined Taleju-Bhagavati in the Kumari courtyard. At the end of the worship the goat heads are removed. They will be distributed to members of the Taleju staff, to be cooked and distributed as siu in their next household feast.[86] All the other objects in the room are left in place until the second of the day's saits , the "tika sait ." This may come immediately after the "taking leave" worship, or may be some hours later. At this time the king gives a tika (a pigmented mixture that is placed on the image or specifically on the forehead if the offering is to an anthropomorphic representation or to a person) to Taleju. He also presents her with barley shoots brought from the Na:la swa(n) rooms in the homes of each of the Taleju priests. These shoots, conceived of now in part as swords, represent Devi's great victory. Then each of the priests takes back some of the tika mixture and barley shoots from the Taleju image. They are now prasada . Each priest then gives tika and some of the barley shoots to each of the others. The barley shoots in the temple's own Na:la swa(n) room are left undisturbed for the time being. During this tika sait the non-priest members of the Taleju staff and members of their families, as well
as the families of the priests, wait in the Taleju main courtyard, outside of the Kumari courtyard. The Taleju priests then leave the Kumari courtyard and give Taleju prasada to them.
Meanwhile the people who have returned from the Brahmani pitha , perhaps via Taleju, go to their Na:la swa(n) room for the final worship there. A puja is held for the representations of Devi, that is, for the kalasa and the Bhagavati image. During the course of this last puja the worshipers do something that is usually restricted to Tantric worship. Using a special oil lamp, often in the shape of a reclining skeleton with the lamp bowl over its genitals, they prepare the lamp-black pigment, monhi , which the worshipers then apply to their foreheads in a straight vertical black line. In esoteric Tantric practices, that monhi mark is used to facilitate the entrance of a deity into the worshiper's body, but here it is a routine ritual gesture. People take pieces of red cloth, which had been brought into the room on the eighth day, and tie them around their necks in another sign of Devi's victory. The blades of barley are now pulled out of the soil and offered to the Devi images, and then some of them are taken back by the worshipers who decorate themselves with them. On the eighth day a pumpkin-like gourd, a bhuiphasi ,[87] had been placed in the Na:la swa(n) room to represent the Asura. Now the men and young boys in the household take the bhuiphasi out of the Na:la swa(n) room, along with one or more of the swords that had been kept there, and "kill" it by giving it three slashing cuts. They jokingly brandish the swords, pretending to be Ksatriya[*] warriors. This little domestic victory parade is a forerunner of the goddess Taleju's public victory jatra that will take place later in the evening. Now the men and boys, carrying the swords, return to the Na:la swa(n) room, and they and the other family members take prasada from the goddesses. The bhuiphasi will then be cut up and distributed to all people in the household to eat and once again to share in the killing and the victory.
The Na:la swa(n) worship, which has lasted throughout Mohani, is now over. The remnants of the barley plants are placed on the household pikha lakhu . The soil, the special kalasa , and the Bhagavati painting are left in the room until the fifth day following the end of Mohani, that is, until the next full-moon day. Then the soil is sent to be thrown into the river, the painting hung on a wall, the kalasa stored, and any metal Bhagavati image that might have been used returned to the household puja area.
On this or one of the immediately following nights many households
hold feasts. Married-out household women and their families are invited to the house for these feasts and offered various prasada items from the household Na:la swa(n) room.
Meanwhile in the Taleju temple the priests await the third sait of the day, which will be the proper time for Taleju's jatra . This consists of an internal jatra first within the temple, and a subsequent external one that moves out through the city. In both of these the details of the movements of the goddess Taleju are determined by the position of the moon at the time of the sait . She must be carried in such a way that the moon is either in front of her or at her right in the first movements of her procession.
Just before this sait an esoteric form of Devi[88] in her warrior manifestation, which had been placed on the soil before the barley seeds were planted, is removed and taken to her quarters in the temple, and the remaining barley shoots are taken up. People have come to the Taleju temple and wait in the inner courtyard to watch the "taking up" of Taleju, the internal jatra . At the proper time a procession leaves the Kumari court. This includes seven people carrying swords, and three others carrying secret objects wrapped in cloth, and covered with flowers, jewels, and barley shoots. Among them is the true Taleju image. The procession goes through the main court and enters the inner Golden Gate. It is led by the king carrying one of the bundles in his hand. He again stops at three points within the main courtyard and turns in a movement that designates a yantra . The exact movements are determined by the position of the moon. The procession then proceeds to carry the true Taleju goddess upstairs again to her room, where she will remain until the next year's Mohani.
The final phase of Mohani is a literal and symbolic moving outward, both into the city and into the new cycle, which begins at this time of harvest. This is enacted in the public victory procession of the goddess Taleju, and is called "Paya(n) Nhyakegu." Nhyakegu means to "cause to move," "to be put into motion." The word "paya(n) " is now used only in this context in Bhaktapur, and its meaning is unknown to our informants.[89]
The procession assembles in the main courtyard of the Taleju temple. The Taleju jatra image is taken from behind the inner Golden Gate, where it had been left since the previous night. The king takes the jatra image, covered with cloths and ornaments, and goes to an external
courtyard of the temple, the Bekwa (or "zigzag") courtyard. He stands there holding the goddess, and now there begins a conventionalized little drama which takes its context from the legend of the origin and movements of the goddess Taleju, which we have presented in chapter 8. The king, "played" by the chief Taleju Brahman, now represents Harisimhadeva[*] , the exile from Kanauj who—according to local history—became king in Bhaktapur and established his lineage deity Taleju, whom he had brought with him, as the city's protective "political" deity. The king is met in the courtyard by a Jyapu who plays the part of a merchant visiting from the Indian city of Simraun Gadh[*] , the city from which Harisimhadeva[*] had come. The merchant has a carrying pole over his shoulder with baskets at either end, which is identified as "the Newar style" of carrying loads. The king asks the merchant where he comes from. The merchant tells him that he has been sent from Simraun Gadh[*] by the king Nandideva, who sends his respects and good wishes to the king of Bhaktapur and the goddess Taleju. Now in what is to all local people including the actors an incomprehensible part of the sequence, one that is believed to be a comic interlude, the king asks the merchant whether one can still buy nine pathi of rice for a one-dan coin in Simraun Gadh[*] . The messenger answers that one still can. The king then asks, "Everything is still cheap and untroubled there?" The Merchant answers affirmatively. He answers with a farcical double-meaning phrase. "Everything is fine; things are well up into other things," a sexual reference that makes the king and bystanders laugh. The king then asks him whether he brought anything with him from Nandideva in Simraun Gadh[*] . The merchant says he has, and then shows and presents some ta:syi fruits, a kind of citron, to the king and to Taleju. The little drama is then over. This episode, although vaguely naturalized into Bhaktapur's legendary history, is a mystery to the people of Bhaktapur.[90]
The Taleju jatra procession forms in front of the temple. First in order are two Jyapus, who will walk abreast carrying representations of Bhairava. Next comes a Pa(n)cthariya who carries a sword. He is followed by the two other high-status sword bearers, the second a member of the Chathar Ta:cabhari thar , and the third a Brahman. Each of the three sword bearers represents an esoteric warrior form of Devi. At the center of the procession is the Taleju jatra image carried by the king, and followed by a white horse, Taleju's vehicle. And, now, at the end of the procession come the Gatha, dressed as the Nine Durgas. The Nine Durgas have their own order in the procession. The portable shrine of
their own deity the Siphadya:, identified with Mahalaksmi[*] , is carried first. It is followed, in order, by Bhairava and Mahakali, the group's dominant deities, and they, in turn, by Varahi. The next group comes in the order of the sequence (in both their position around the city and their respective days during Mohani) of the peripheral Mandalic[*] Goddesses (except for Mahakali and Varahi, who have already appeared). This sequence is Brahmani, Mahesvari, Kumari, Vaisnavi[*] , and Indrani[*] . These goddesses are followed in turn by Sima, Duma, Seto Bhairava, and finally Ganesa[*] .
The direction that the procession will take was determined by the sait , which also determined the way in which the true Taleju image was carried within the temple. In this case the procession will go to either the upper or the lower part of the city depending on the position of the moon so that, as in the earlier procession within the temple, the moon will in the first out-moving phase of the procession, be either at Taleju's right or in front of her.[91]
Whichever route the procession takes, it loops back via Ga:hiti Square, the spatial focus of much of the Biska: festival. Here the focal point is the stone deity Swtuña Bhairava. When the procession reaches the stone, the entire procession circumambulates it. The Brahman carrying Taleju then stops at a designated point at the right side of a Siva temple[92] in the square. It is at this point that the Nine Durgas will demonstrate their submission to Taleju. The members of the group, in the same order in which they have marched in the procession, come to "say farewell" to Taleju. They come to the wrapped image, bow and embrace it twice. In esoteric understanding it is through these embraces the power of the Nine Durgas is raised, each one in its turn, to their full power.[93] Now the Nine Durgas, having said farewell, leave the procession and return to their god-house, stopping to perform formal dances at certain places along the route. Taleju, her work for this elaborate festival being completed for another year with the empowering of the Nine Durgas, returns directly to her temple. On their return there Taleju and her entourage are met just inside the external Golden Gate by a Brahman who had remained behind. He performs a welcoming and purifying laskusa ceremony, and leads the image back into her room in the inner temple, where it will be kept until the next Mohani.
While Taleju is being returned to her inner chamber, her white horse vehicle, which had left the procession at the entrance to Laeku Square and had been met there by a Taleju Acaju, is decorated with an offering of swaga(n) . Then it is led by the Acaju—who runs while leading it by a
rope—in three movements, first to the Golden Gate, then back to the entrance to the square, and then, finally, back to the Golden Gate, where it is taken into the temple.
Now the Devi cycle, insofar as it is a set of events within the annual lunar calendar, is finished. The cycle is continued now in the wanderings of the Nine Durgas over the next nine months, as they move throughout the entire city and many of its hinterland communities.