The Undercity

The chwasa is a stone embedded in the ground. In some places it is below the surface. It belongs to a class of "stone gods" to be considered in the next chapter which share among themselves a number of features. They require blood sacrifice, and many of them in one sense or another absorb polluting materials, often by "eating" them. In some cases the deity whose position is indicated by such stones is conceived as being beneath the surface of the ground. This subterranean realm is also the territory of the naga s, the supernatural serpents that may be disturbed as we have noted, by excavations for buildings. We note these fragments here as a reminder that one of the boundaries of the city in its relation to what is outside itself is the boundary with the underneath, the earth. This realm for Bhaktapur does not have developed and clearly characterized chthonic gods (with the possible exception of Yama, the king of the realm where the dead are judged, who is of negligible cultic significance for the city in itself), and is thus in strong contrast to the developed representations of other aspects of the "outside" and "beyond" of the city. It is outside of the city's circumferential boundaries—where the city's farmlands are—that the earth as a basis for fertility is assimilated to the symbolism of the Tantric goddess and to that sustaining and problematic outside beyond ordinary civic controls.