The Idealization of Space: Bhaktapur As A Yantra
In map 1, a schematic illustration of the location of the shrines of the nine guardian goddesses of Bhaktapur (those who protect its boundaries and what we shall refer to as its "mandalic[*] sections"), one of the city's Rajopadhyaya Brahmans represented the goddesses' locations as points in a symmetrical diagrammatic city. The drawing is labeled "Yantrakara khwapa dey'"—"Khwapa dey'," "the city of Bhaktapur," portrayed as a "yantra ." The diagram shows Bhaktapur's boundary as a circle, a mandala[*] , a pervasive South Asian representation of a boundary and its contained area within which "ritual" power and order is held and concentrated.[2] The circumference of the mandala[*] separates two very different worlds, an inside order and an outside order, and suggests the possibility of various kinds of relations and transactions between them. Within the mandala[*] in the drawing is the yantra , "a mystical diagram believed to possess magical or occult powers" (Stutley
Map 1.
Idealized symbolic form. A drawing by a Bhaktapur Brahman of Bhak-
tapur as a yantra with the nine Mandalic[*] Goddesses represented at the eight
compass points and at the center. The actual spatial location of the nine god-
desses is given in map 2.
and Stutley 1977, 347), typical of Bhaktapur's imagery (chap. 9), here made up of two overlapping triangles, representing the relation of opposites, of male and female principles, unified in a point at the center of the diagram. At that central point is written the name of one of Bhaktapur's nine protective goddesses, Tripurasundari. Toward the periphery, at the circular boundary are the names of the eight other protective goddesses. They are exactly arranged at the eight points of the compass, with the top of the diagram conceived as representing the north.
These goddesses exist in the actual space of Bhaktapur (map 2), but
Map 2.
The spatial positions of the pithas of the nine Mandalic[*] Goddesses. These are the actual spatial locations of the idealized
points of the symbolic yantra and mandala[*] in map 1. The numbers designate the deities in the sequence in which they are worshiped
when treated as a united collection of deities: (1) Brahmani, (2) Mahesvari, (3) Kumari, (4)Vaisnavi[*] , (5) Varahi, (6) Indrani[*] , (7)
Mahakaili, (8) Mahalaksmi[*] , and (9) Tripurasundari. The dense band of dots in this map and the following maps indicating the extent
of the city represents the edge of the presently built-up area of the city, the "physical city," and does not necessarily correspond to the
city's symbolic boundaries. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.
the central shrine and the ones at the boundaries are only approximately at the eight points of the compass and at the city center (cf. Auer and Gutschow n.d., 22). One of them is even further displaced from where it is "supposed" to be, being physically within the symbolic boundary of the city instead of at or beyond its outer border as are the other boundary protecting shrines. As Mary Slusser speculates of that shrine, that of Mahalaksmi[*] , in the course of the construction of a boundary-marking city wall "the sanctity of the [preexisting] old shrine forbade moving it to an optimal location outside the wall; engineering or other considerations dictated the latter's course, thus enclosing the . . . [shrine] within the city walls" (1982, vol. I, p. 346). In accordance with the struggle and the dialogue between the given on the one hand and the ideal symbolic form on the other, Bhaktapur had to construct and imagine a yantra and its encompassing mandala[*] as best it could.
This imaginative process takes features of real space, many of them constructed under the impetus of that imagination, and perfects them—the city becomes a bounded circle instead of a flattened irregular oval. Simultaneously in a dialogue of imaginative and actual space city halves, "mandalic sections"—various axes and centers—have been constructed. Those imaginatively perfected forms exist in real space like a geometric image reflected in a distorting mirror. But people have no trouble finding their ways about in one or the other kind of space or, for that matter, in both at the same time.