City Halves: Ritually Organized Antagonism
The bounded units we are considering are in part defined by their contrasts with their adjoining units, in a contrast where that adjoining unit is often an encompassing one (the city and its environment, the house in its twa: or neighborhood), although it may be, as in the case of adjoining mandalic[*] sements, a contrast of units at the same level. For the most part any antagonistic implications of these contrasts are mitigated by a pervasive Hindu metaphorical move, an emphasis on the organic unity and interdependence of the contrasting units to form some higher vital synthesis, the various units being metaphorically related (like the ancient four Varnas[*] ) as being like the parts or organs of the body. Neither the high head nor the lowly feet, although different and of different status, can live without the other; they are joined into something superior on which they are dependent, on which their very lives depend.
However, there is one symbolically marked division of the city, its halves, where the major emphasis is precisely on conflict, albeit a conflict periodically and tenuously resolved in symbolic acts. This emphasis on the antagonism of the halves seems to deflect other more dangerous antagonisms within and among smaller city units.
Bhaktapur is divided into halves, an upper half (cwe , or up, or tha:ne , above, upward) and a lower half (kwe , down, or kwane , below, downward) (map 5). As D. R. Regmi wrote, the division may have been a general feature of all Newar settlements and "obtained in every case whether it was a town or townlet" (1965-1966, part I, p. 554). The division has been described for Kathmandu (Regmi 1965-1966, part I, p. 554; Slusser 1982, 90-91), for the Newar village of Theco (Toffin 1984, 186ff.), and for the large Newar town of Panauti (Barré et al. 1981, 46). As Barré writes, the division into upper and lower city is "a characteristic common to Newar settlements whether urban or rural."
It is often stated that the upper and lower segments are designated in relation to the flow of neighboring rivers (e.g., Toffin 1984, 200) with upstream locating the direction of cwe , downstream of kwe . Inhabitants of Bhaktapur attempt various explanations of the designations "up" and "down." Bhaktapur's "upper half" for some is upper because it is more northerly, for others because it is in the direction of the high Himalayas, in contrast to the progressively lower, that is, less elevated southern regions. This north-south interpretation of "upper" and "lower" is reflected in a use of "kwane " among Valley Newars, at least until the last generation, to indicate India. Other speculations are that the upper half, cwe , was the earliest part of the city settled (as was, in fact, true for Bhaktapur), followed by a later settlement, kwe . (Here the usage corresponds to the temporal terminology for ancestors [cwe , up] and descendants [kwe , down].) Still other people give the upstream/ downstream, explanation. It is possible, at least, that the upper/lower contrast is basic to the social organization of all Newar settlements, and that a variety of relations to physical space and settlement history can be used to choose between the terms of the distinction or to justify them. Bhaktapur's upper and lower cities are divided by a line perpendicular to the long (the southwest-northeast) axis of the city, and thus consist of a somewhat northerly eastern portion, and a somewhat southerly western portion, which are respectively upstream and downstream in respect to the Hanumante River (see maps S and 11 [below]).[14] As D. R. Regmi writes, in contrast to Kathmandu, where the royal palace was at the central position in the city and provided a locus
for the division of the city into upper and lower halves, "the [Bhaktapur] Royal palace was situated at the western extremity of the town and the center dividing the city was the courtyard surrounded by the Nyatapola [Natapwa(n)la] and Bhairava temples" (1965-1966, part II, p. 554). This square, Ta:marhi (also pronounced or written Tamari, Taumadhi[*] , Taumarhi, etc.), is conceived as at the center of the city division in one of its most important ritual expressions, the struggle between members of the two halves of the city to pull a huge chariot positioned there into their respective halves of the city during the Biska: festival at the time of the solar New Year, a struggle sometimes marked with considerable violence (chap. 14). At that time the square is considered the neutral center between the halves, but ordinarily it is considered as belonging to the lower city and the people living around it consider themselves at all times to be members of the lower city. Guts-chow and Kö1ver note that the Ta:marhi Square has a "profuse endowment" of religious buildings and is the site of the highest temple (and building) in Bhaktapur, the Natapwa(n)la temple (fig. 10). They argue that this profusion of monuments may be understood as a device for unifying the town by installing a mediating center and affirming the unity of the city (1975, 50). Although the old Malla Royal Palace, the square in front of it, and the adjacent residential area of the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans (maps 5 and 6) is, like Ta:marhi, in the lower half of the city, during the struggles of the city halves in the course of the Biska: festival that area is also said to belong to neither the upper nor lower city. It is often said that the Malla kings encouraged the division and conflict between the two city halves, which they transcended, to strengthen their power and divide any potential opposition. Thus, if Ta:marhi Square acts as a neutral ritual center between the upper and lower cities, the royal central area, in spite of its peripheral western positions, is in its own way also a neutral point.
In recent years conflict between members of city halves has also sometimes broken out at certain other festivals, but these rare and recent struggles are considered to be accidental and unintended disorder and breakdown. The peculiarity of the Biska: festival is that it includes as one element in its complex dramatic structure a prolonged struggle between the two city halves, a struggle that eventually comes to a resolution.
Ritualized struggles (that is, struggles induced and regulated by traditional forms and conventions—which does not prevent them from having, sometimes, serious consequences) between socially organized
Map 5.
The struggle of the upper and lower halves of the city and its resolution. The routes into the upper and lower halves of the city
contested in the struggle to pull the Bhairava chariot during the Biska: festival (chap. 14). The arrows in the upper and lower segment
of the city show the ideal termini of the chariot and the acceptable shorter termini if there is not time to reach the ideal ones. The
southerly arrow shows the chariot's ultimate "central" route into Yasi(n) Field, where it must witness the raising of the Yasi(n) God to
mark the solar New Year. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.
Map 6.
Space and status. Households of Rajopadhyaya Brahmans. The greatest concentration is just south of the Taleju temple and
the Royal Palace and represents a center of the city. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.
halves or moieties of a community—are reported for traditional South Asian communities as they are elsewhere in the world. Dubois, for example, remarked on the struggles between the "left-handed" and the "right-handed" factions in the Deccan and Madras areas in the early nineteenth century, factions to which "most castes" belong, which "proved a perpetual source of riots, and the cause of endless animosity amongst the natives" (1968, 24f.). He also remarks on something that has a bearing on the conflict in Bhaktapur, that "in the disputes and conflicts which so often take place between the two factions it is always the Pariahs [the untouchables] who make the most disturbance and do the most damage" (ibid., 25). And, he states, also in an echo of Malla Bhaktapur, "the Brahmans, [and] Rajahs. . .are content to remain neutral, and take no part in these quarrels. They are often chosen as arbiters in the differences which the two factions have to settle between themselves" (ibid., 25).
Hamilton cites a report for the turn of the nineteenth century by a Colonel Crawford, which describes a "vile custom" of the Newars of Kathmandu, who had previously been described by Hamilton as being an otherwise peaceable people ([1819] 1971, 43f.):
About the end of May, and beginning of June, for fifteen days, a skirmish takes place between the young men and boys of the north and south ends of the city. During the first fourteen days it is chiefly confined to the boys or lads; but on the evening of the fifteenth day it becomes more serious. . . . [A fight then takes place which] begins about an hour before sunset, and continues until darkness separates the combatants. In the one which we saw, four people were carried off much wounded, and almost every other year one or two men are killed: yet the combat is not instigated by hatred, nor do the accidents that happen occasion any rancor. Formerly, however, a most cruel practice existed. If any unfortunate fellow was taken prisoner, he was immediately dragged to the top of a particular eminence in the rear of his conquerors, who put him to death with buffalo bones. . . . The prisoners are now kept until the end of the combat, are carried home in triumph by the victors, and confined until morning, when they are liberated.
There has been speculation, deriving from a further remark of Hamilton's (1971, 44) that some people alleged that the Kathmandu battle reflected some old division of the city into two towns under two Rajas and first arose as skirmishing among their respective followers, and that the division in Kathmandu, at least, and perhaps in other Newar towns may have reflected some earlier antagonistic political segments later merged into the towns (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 91; Toffin
1984, 201f.). Yet, the ubiquitousness, persistence, and evident usefulness of the division in Newar communities would suggest that such historical explanations would only apply to some towns, and would only help explain the location of the halves, not their existence and persistence.
In some ways the upper and lower cities in Bhaktapur are two different cities. it is said that people usually marry within their own half of the city. In many contexts, they identify themselves as belonging to one or another hall Significantly, when there are crimes or disturbances in the city whose perpetrators are unknown, it is common to hear remarks by people from the lower city that it must have been someone from the upper city, and vice versa. Although the lower city has the main concentration of Brahmans and high-status Chathariya, and the upper city the main concentration of upper-status Buddhists, for the most part each city half has a full representation of important social and occupational units.
For ordinary considerations of residence (where we can ignore the mandalic[*] sections), the city halves are the next largest segment after the village-like twa: s (see discussion below). It is our impression that the antagonism directed toward the relatively distant other city half, out of and away from one's own closely interdependent area, deflects intra-twa: resentments that would affect relations between families, phuki s, thar s, and macrostatus levels—relations whose disturbance would be disruptive to the basic integration of the social system—to the other city within the city where they can be expressed in comparatively very much less disruptive and dangerous ways. Members of lower thar s who are annoyed and resentful of their treatment by higher groups find it easier, like the pariahs in the quotation from Dubois, to help precipitate a fight against members of a disliked group in the other half of the city, where it would be interpreted as a spatial struggle rather than one within the social system.