Major Gods: The "Dangerous" Deities

The major divinities that we are categorizing as "dangerous" have many features of representation, conception, and usage, that separate them from the residue of "ordinary" gods. We have borrowed a salient Newari verbal distinction where when it is necessary to refer to the set as a whole they are refered to as gya(n)pugu , "dangerous." When such distinctions are necessary, the "nondangerous" divinities are often distinguished from the gya(n)pugu ones by one or another term for "ordinary," such as the Sanskritic term sadharan .^[19] The contrast between the two sets, "ordinary" and "dangerous," responds to, reflects, and helps create important distinctions and complementarities. As we will see throughout this study, the two sets of deities are related to distinctions of inside and outside, of morality and power, of Brahmans and kings, of civil logic and dream logic, and of realms in which purity and pollution create distinctions and those within which they are irrelevant—in short, to some of the fundamental distinctions in Bhaktapur's conceptual world. The two sets not only represent these tensions and contrasts, they can be used to show relations of various sorts among them.

There are many more or less concrete markers of the contrast between the two sets of deities, their appearance, positions in the city, associated myths and legends. Some of these markers might (extremely rarely) be ambiguous; a benign deity may, for example, have a horrible form (such as Visnu's^[*]avatar Narasimha^[*] ). But there is one differentiating sign that people are forced to pay attention to, and that ensures the proper classification of any of these deities that they may have to encounter. This is what they are to be offered in proper worship. The dangerous gods should be given animal flesh and alcoholic spirits,^[20] the ordinary gods, (including Ganesa^[*] in his non-Tantric aspect) must never be given such foods. In ordinary speech the emphasis is on the "deities who drink alcoholic spirits," rather than on their acceptance of meat.

Alcoholic spirits in this context are specially named, nya (n ) rather than the usual term aela .

We will begin our discussion with the dangerous female divinities. Among the ordinary gods, the male gods are central and predominant and the female goddesses are peripheral to them; among the dangerous gods, the female divinities are predominant in quantity, complexity, and centrality in symbolic action.

The Dangerous Goddess and Her Transformations

Among the community of ordinary divinities are female divinities, various "ordinary goddesses" including Siva's consort Parvati. However, South Asia has had goddesses of a different sort who separate and coalesce in the course of history, in the course of individual mythic accounts, and in the conception and action of Bhaktapur. The coalesced figure is the Goddess, whose names, aspects, forms, and allies in Bhaktapur we will sketch in the following sections. In her most powerful and dangerous form as depicted in the Markandeya Purana^[*] , a scripture that contains one of the major sources of Bhaktapur's imagery of the Goddess (P. K. Sharma 1974, 46 [emphasis added]):

She is a goddess warrior, incarnating herself on earth by using various devices at various crucial moments m order to destory the demons who were formidable challenges to the denizens of heaven. Indeed, in her perfect nature, she has been described as the most beneficent; but her fierceness as a martial goddess, equipped with the sharpest weapons and reveling in her terror-striking war-cries, is definitely a different tradition from that of Parvati-Uma, whom we always find fir an altogether different setting .

The goddesses whom this goddess spawns or is ready to absorb are often represented as similar to the "formidable" demonic forms that they oppose, a similarity that helps explain their effectiveness in combating them. In some conceptions, such as the legends associated with the Nine Durgas (chap. 15), it is clear that the dangerous deities are sometimes, in fact, demonic entities that have been captured by "magical" power, often by some expert in Tantric spells, and then eventually forced into the service of the human community. As such, they may have fangs, cadaverous sunken cheeks and bodies, garlands of skulls or decapitated human heads around their necks, or cloaks of flayed animal or human skins over their shoulders. They have multiple arms, bearing weapons and carrying a human calvarium as a drinking cup, understood to be full of blood. Sometimes they are represented as beautiful, full-

breasted figures of an almost hallucinatory sexual desirability, but the many arms of these representations bear the same murderous weapons as the frankly horrible forms, and like those forms, they, too, demand blood sacrifice. The beautiful forms are simply another manifestation of the same dangerous kind of goddess.

There are at least twenty-five major temples and shrines devoted to these goddesses, who have eleven major forms and a number of minor ones, all systematically related in a number of conceptual schemes activated in various contexts. Classification is complicated in that the same manifest goddess may have different names (as do most important Hindu gods), and conversely by the fact that the same name (Mahakali, for example) may represent different aspects of the Goddess in different contexts. The goddesses' main usages in Bhaktapur's civic religion may be divided into four interrelated emphases, each with its centers, members, and ritual forms and each with its particular major implications for Bhaktapur's civic organization. We will designate them as (1) the goddesses of the mandalic^[*] system, (2) the goddesses of the Nine Durgas' annual dance cycle, (3) the generalized protective goddess usually referred to as Bhagavati, and (4) the political goddess Taleju and her related goddesses. Some individual goddesses, or at least some individual names of goddesses, may belong to more than one set, but much of their significance is largely determined by their membership in the particular set under consideration.

Each group of goddesses has a central member who represents a maximum concentration of what we may term "potential power." This goddess form is most general, full, and abstract. When there are other goddesses around her, they are more limited. Their manifestations, functions, and power are more shaped to the concrete needs of a particular event, a subsection of space, a particular set of ritual and symbolic functions. They are less omnipotential; they do some specific work in the world.

The Mandalic^[*] Goddesses

In the previous chapter we introduced the eight goddesses who protect the boundaries of Bhaktapur while also each one having a special segment of the city under her protection—the city being divided for this purpose into eight peripheral octants and a central circle with its own, a ninth, protective goddess (see maps 1 and 2 above). These goddesses protect the city, in the words of one humble citizen, from "ghosts, evil

spirits and diseases like cholera." Others add earthquakes, invasions, destructive weather, and other disasters. As do all the dangerous gods, these goddesses protect the city against those external disorders that threaten the ongoing life of the city. That ongoing life has within itself its own protective resources, resources that may most generally be thought of as "moral." We have discussed these goddesses in relation to space, here we will, with some overlap, consider them as members of the pantheon.

The eight peripheral goddesses are often referred to in Bhaktapur as the Astamatrkas^[*] , the "Eight Mothers."^[21] In less elegant Newari they are sometimes called the pigandya: ,^[22] the group (gana^[*] ) of gods (dya: ) living in the pitha , a special sort of open shrine. The ninth goddess at the center of the city when it is conceived as a mandala^[*] , is included or not in the set, depending on whether the emphais is on the outer protective boundary or on the internal space that is being protected.

The eight goddesses at the periphery have each the same basic function in her proper space, although some have additional specialized functions. They are, to introduce an important classificatory principle for the dangerous gods, all at the same level. The goddess at the center has the same protective function as the peripheral goddesses for her central mandalic^[*] section, but in addition, as we have noted in chapter 7, she concentrates their individual powers in an eightfold increase at the center of the mandala^[*] . She is thus, in this way, something more than any of them separately, she is at a higher level. This contrast is reflected in the traditional characteristics of the particular goddesses chosen for placement at the center and at the periphery. The central goddess, Tripurasundari, is (in contrast to the peripheral goddesses) not one of those goddesses designated as "mothers," matrka^[*] s, in the Hindu Puranic^[*] tradition. As we will see (below here and chap. 15), the legends and scriptural accounts of the Matrkas that are significant in Bhaktapur (and elsewhere in South Asia) treat the Matrkas as components or limited or lesser aspects of some complete, full, maximal form of the goddess, often called "Devi." Tripurasundari is a version of that complete, omnipotential goddess, characterized in some of the Upanisads^[*] (the Tripura Upanisad^[*] and the Tripura Tapini Upanisad^[*] ) as the "primeval embodiment of Sakti that gives birth to the world" (P. K. Sharma 1974, 21).

We will introduce the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses in the order in which they are worshiped during the succeeding days of the autumn harvest festival of the Goddess, Mohani, an order that begins with the eastern goddess

(map 2), follows the boundary of the city in the auspicious clockwise processional direction, and proceeds on the ninth day to the central summating central shrine of Tripurasundari.^[23] The goddess to the east, the first in the sequence, is Brahmani (Newari, Brahmayani); to the southeast, Mahesvari (Newari, Mahesvari); to the south, Kumari;^[24] and to the southwest, Vaisnavi^[*] (Newari Vaisnavi^[*] , often written and pronounced "Baisnabi"). The goddess of this particular location is on one occasion during the year—the complex spring solar New Year festival, Biska:—taken to be a quite different goddess, Bhadrakali^[*] . To the west is Varahi (Newari, Barahi:), to the northwest is Indrani^[*] (Newari Indrayani:), to the north is Mahakali, and to the northeast is Mahalaksmi^[*] (Newari Mahalachimi).

These peripheral goddesses are, with one only apparent substitution, familiar representatives of the various Puranic^[*] sets of "mothers" (P. K. Sharma 1974, 234), but are for the most part connected in their membership and in the exact order in which they are arranged to a particular traditional Hindu text, which is the basis for much of Bhaktapur's imagery of the Goddess, the Devi Mahatmya . In the account of the Devi Mahatmya the Saktis, goddesses emitted from the various gods of the pantheon, either fight as assistants to the goddess Candika^[*] , considered a transformation of Parvati, or become absorbed into her to augment her power.

In one passage of the Devi Mahatmya (VIII, 12-20), which we will discuss at some length below, the Saktis of various gods who come to join the full goddess, Devi, are listed in sequence. The first five goddesses in the protective ring formed by Bhaktapur's Astamatrkas^[*] (starting with Brahmani to the east and proceeding in a clockwise direction), are arranged in the same sequence: Brahmani, Mahesvari, Kumari, Vaisnavi^[*] , and Varahi. Bhaktapur leaves out the Devi Mahatmya 's sixth goddess (Narasimhi^[*] ) and proceeds to its seventh, Indrani^[*] . The Devi Mahatmya , like many of the Hindu sources, lists only seven mothers. Bhaktapur uses six of them and adds at the end two more, Mahakali and Mahalaksmi^[*] , commonly listed members of the Matrkas as given in other Puranas^[*] . Mahakali is also known in Bhaktapur as Camunda^[*] , a form of the goddess in her most terrifying aspect who also appears in the Devi Mahatmya as an honorific title given to the goddess form Kali as the slayer of two powerful Asuras Chanda^[*] and Munda^[*] (Devi Mahatmya , VII, 25; Agrawala 1963, 101). Mahakali and Mahalaksmi^[*] , among the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, are just two ordinary Matrka^[*] , although in other uses of the Goddesses in Bhaktapur, Mahakali's asso-

ciation with Kali-Camunda^[*] and some of the legendary attributes of Mahalaksmi^[*] are given some special significance.^[25]

Like several other divinities in Bhaktapur, the nine Mandalic^[*] Goddesses have "houses," literally, dya che(n) or "god-houses" situated within the city (map 2). Portable images of the goddess are kept at these buildings, and daily puja s are held there, conducted by a Tantric temple priest, an acaju . These dya che(n) images are carried in various processions during the year, particularly during the course of the solar New Year festival, Biska: (see chap. 14). Sometimes there is worship by a group of worshipers in the god-house rather than the pitha shrine, if the participants wish to keep the ceremonies secret, as is often the case in Tantric worship.

However, the proper and usual seats of the worship of the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses are their pitha s, open, roofless, imageless shrines, which are the mandalic^[*] markers. The nine mandalic^[*]pitha s are very vaguely associated with the idea of the Devi pitha s, the 108 places in South Asia where pieces of Siva's wife Sati fell to earth (cf. Banerjea 1956, 495n.; Mani 1975, 219). These places became sacred to the Goddess. While the mandalic^[*]pitha s are associated only by some metaphorical extension with the Devi pitha s, for the Newars the important "true" Devi pitha is that of Guhyesvari^[26] in the major Valley cult center Pasupatinatha, where in esoteric doctrine Sati's vagina fell to earth.^[27] There is no esoteric connection between the Guhyesvsari Devi pitha and the mandalic^[*]pitha s.

The mandalic^[*]pitha , as we have noted, are the required foci of attention and worship for families during important rites of passage, and for the city as a whole during the course of the Mohani festival sequence.

The Nine Durgas

Historically in South Asia, various groups of dangerous goddesses have been grouped together as the Navadurga, the Nine Durgas (Banerjea 1974, 500n.; P. K. Sharma 1974, 231-233). Slusser has written that, "in practice . . . the Nepalese Naudurga [Navadurga] are synonymous with the Astamatrkas^[*] , to which a variable ninth manifestation is joined to complete the set. Thus, when the Nepalese speak of the Naudurga, they in fact refer to the Astamatrkas^[*] " (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 322). This is not true for Bhaktapur, where the distinction is essential. There the Nine Durgas refer to a group of divinities, represented primarily as masks (see color illustrations) who possess the bodies of a group of

dancers during an annual sequence that each year begins at the harvest festival of Mohani and lasts for the following nine months. We will be concerned with this sequence at length in chapter 15. The Nine Durgas have close relations with the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, as they do with the other major forms of the goddess in Bhaktapur, but they have, as we will see, their own legends, meanings, membership, and iconography. Although they share some of the same names with the Astamatrkas^[*] and some of their reference to the Devi Mahatmya they differ in the meanings of the deities common to both sets, in other of their members, in their legends, and in their uses.

The Nine Durgas group share seven members with the Astamatrkas^[*] : Mahakali, Kumari, Varahi, Brahmani, Vaisnavi^[*] , Indrani^[*] , and Mahesvari.^[28] Of these the last five have very subsidiary roles, and are peripheral to the main actions of the cycle. The group also includes the male divinities Ganesa^[*] , Bhairava, and Seto Bhairava and the goddesses (often thought of, however, as a male and a female) Sima and Duma.^[29]

These twelve deities are represented as masks, and are worn by the dancers who through possession become the gods they represent. There are also two other gods associated with the group of the Nine Durgas. One is Siva, who is represented as a small mask without eyeholes that is carried by one of the dancers. He is not present as a possessed dancer nor as a performing god. Finally the entire group of gods have their own god, whose portable image they worship. She is generally known as the Sipha goddess, after the red leaves of oleander (sipha ) placed as a garland around her metal image. She is known to religious specialists as Mahalaksmi^[*] . Mahalaksmi^[*] is one of the equally ranked peripheral goddesses of the Asttamatrkas^[*] —although, as we have noted, she is not one of the Devi Mahatmya s "seven mothers"—and is placed in the eighth and last peripheral position. As the Nine Durgas' own goddess she is in a superior position to them, as Tripurasundari is to the Astamatrkas^[*] represents the "full goddess"; the other performing members of the group are special manifestations. There is another important hierarchical distinction within the Nine Durgas. As we will see when we discuss them in detail, the predominant form In the group of mask-gods is Mahakali, the "Goddess" in her most frightening form. We will return to these hierarchical relations later.

The Nine Durgas, in contrast to the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, are characterized by movement (map 14 [below, chap. 15]). Their original home (chap. 15) was, in legend, a forest outside Bhaktapur. They have now, however, an elaborate temple-like god-house in the city. During

[Full Size]

Map 14.
The sites for the sequential Nine Durgas dances dramas or pyakha(n)s within Bhaktapur throughout the year. The numbers
show the sequence in which the dances take place. Map courtesy of Niels Gutschow.

the nine months of their annual existence, the masks of the dancers and other ritual equipment are kept there when not in use in their sequential visits to the city's neighborhoods.

Taleju, Bhaktapur's Political Goddess

An integral part of Bhaktapur's Malla palace complex of buildings and courtyards^[30] is the temple of the goddess Taleju. The temple is approached through an elaborately decorated outer "golden gate" leading from Laeku Square, and is built around a set of inner courtyards which are closed to non-Hindus.^[31] Taleju was the lineage goddess of the Malla kings. As such, she was one of the many tutelary divinities of the bounded and nested units of which Bhaktapur is constructed, divinities chosen by individuals or "given them" by their guru s, lineage divinities, divinities of guthi and associations of various sorts, special thar deities, and so forth.

As the Malla king's lineage deity and located in his palace compound, Taleju became a dominant city deity as manifest in the various symbolic enactments centering on her temple, reaching a dramatic climax during the festival that most clearly and dramatically portrays the various aspects of the Goddess and their relations, the harvest festival Mohani. Taleju is the dominant goddess and, in fact, deity, of Bhaktapur in those contexts where the centrality of royal power is being emphasized. She has survived the replacement of the Malla dynasty by the Gorkhali Saha dynasty as, for Bhaktapur, a powerful symbolic representation of traditional Newar political forms and forces, one that persists alongside of the new symbols and realities of modern politics.

There are extensive legends about the introduction of Taleju into Bhaktapur combining aspects of history, myth, and explanatory speculation about local topography and about aspects of the symbolic enactments that are associated with Taleju. The sketch of a version of the story that follows is derived from a lengthy written version provided by a Bhaktapur Brahman who works as a public storyteller, and is based on his public stories. His account begins with a short summary statement situated within the secular realm, and having to do with power and politics. "The Sultan Gayasudin Tugalak," the account begins, "having gained power in Bengal, attacked the town of Simraun Gadh^[*] . The king of Karnataka^[*] , Harisimhadeva^[*] , having been defeated by Gayasudin, ran away to Nepal with his soldiers and captured Bhaktapur from King Ananda Malla, who had been its ruler. Then Hari-

simhadeva^[*] established the goddess Taleju in her [supernaturally determined] proper place in Bhaktapur. The place where the Goddess was ritually established is called the Mu Cuka [the main courtyard of the Taleju temple]. The goddess Taleju was brought by King Harisimhadeva^[*] from Simraun Gadh^[*] ."

Now the account abruptly shifts from legendary history to the mythic and epic realm of Hindu tradition. "Once the Yantra of Taleju had been kept in Indra's heaven. [The Yantra is the powerful mystic diagram that embodies the goddess in this account, and is the only way she is represented in this account aside from her appearance as an anthropomorphic form in dreams]. There the god Indra worshiped her properly [her proper worship is an issue in the account]." Now (to continue in a paraphrase of the account) Taleju was stolen from Indra by Meghanada, the son of Ravana^[*] , the demon king of Lanka, in the course of Ravana's^[*] attack on heaven. Taleju was taken to Lanka and worshiped there. When Ravana^[*] was defeated in Lanka by Rama, the hero of the Ramayana , Rama took Taleju, in the form of her yantra , to Ayodhya, his capital in India. In time the goddess Taleju appeared to Rama in a dream and told him that be must throw the yantra in the river Sarayu, which flowed past Ayodhya because no one would worship and sacrifice properly to her after his approaching death. After five or six generations a descendant of Rama, King Nala, found Taleju's yantra in the water, and brought it to his palace, but he did not worship her properly (which would have been with blood sacrifice), and had to return her to the river. Subsequent kings of Ayodhya, Nala, Pururava, and Alarka, had the same experience, each finally returning her to the river. The kings of this dynasty, the Solar Dynasty, were finally defeated by the Mlechhas (non-Indo-Aryan barbarians).

Now the story's mode shifts into a sort of fairy tale, as it is recounted how through wondrous signs the goddess comes into Harisimhadeva's^[*] possession, in a turn of events that will lead to Bhaktapur. Now, according to the story, King Nanyadeva, a king of the Solar Dynasty, had "lost his country" and become a servant of the Mlechhas. One day wandering restlessly here and there he happened to stop to rest at the bank of the Sarayu river. He dreamt there of a beautiful girl who said to him, "Oh, King Nanyadeva, your lineage god is in the Sarayu river. You must find her in order to worship her. I am she, your lineage goddess. Black insects will be flying around the surface of the river where I am hidden." The king awoke immediately and went to search for the goddess in the early morning. He found her by means of the black insects.

He found a copper casket. Inside it was a smaller box of gold. On the golden box was an inscription saying that it contained a hidden treasure that had been Rama's and Nala's and was to be Nanyadeva's. The treasure, contained m the box, was Taleju's yantra , that is, Taleju herself. The story then continues in its wondrous mode to recount how with Taleju's council given in a dream, Nanyadeva has encounters with wondrous serpents, hidden treasure, twelve architects, a host of workers, and a female demon (raksasi^[*] ), resulting in the magical construction in one night of a city that came to be called "Simraun Gadh^[*] ". The legend begins to correspond to history here.^[32]

The story goes on to recount that Nanyadeva worshiped Taleju properly, that is, with Tantric worship and with flesh-and-blood offerings, and that after his death she was so worshiped for another five or six generations. During the time of Nanyadeva's descendant Harisimhadeva^[*] , however, the Muslims were expanding their territories and thus came to Simraun Gadh^[*] . Then, following the orders of the goddess Taleju, King Harisimhadeva^[*] , having fled Simraun Gadh^[*] , entered Nepal through the forest carrying Taleju.

Now the story begins an attempt to explain certain aspects of Taleju's cult in Bhaktapur and to record and to account for her historical displacements within and near Bhaktapur. On their trip through the forest, Taleju informs Harisimhadeva^[*] that if no proper sacrificial animal can be found, such as a goat, then it would be permissible to sacrifice a water buffalo, an animal that had previously not been acceptable to her—and that is now the main sacrifice, along with goats, offered to her during Mohani.^[33] The king, having found a buffalo, then noticed a man defecating facing east (a sign that he was not of twice-born status) and selected him to kill the buffalo.^[34]

Then, the story continues, Harisimhadeva^[*] came to Bhaktapur and became king. He established the goddess Taleju in the "Agnihotra Brahman's" house in Bhaktapur. (This is her present site. "Agnihotra Brahman" refers to a particular Rajopadhyaya Brahman; see below here and chap. 9.) The story now moves backward a little in time to tell of the prior search for the proper location. Taleju has told the king that the proper place for the installation will be known when a hole is dug and the soil removed from it will, upon being returned to the hole, fill it exactly to the surface. The story tells of the various places where Harisimhadeva^[*] tested the ground unsuccessfully. First he tried in the village of Panauti (just outside the Kathmandu Valley, to the southwest of Bhaktapur). "He dug there in the Dumangala Twa:." The soil did not

fill the hole. Nevertheless he established a temple to her there (from the point of view of Bhaktapur and this story, a secondary temple). "The people of Panauti still say that the goddess Taleju came to Dumangala from Simangala, which is Simraun Gadh^[*] ." Next he began to dig in Bhaktapur, first at the Dattatreya temple area in northeastern Bhaktapur. This time the soil overflowed the hole. He then went to dig in a "garden," called "Megejin," but the replaced soil overflowed the hole. He went on to the Kwache(n) Twa: in eastern Bhaktapur (where there is now an important Bhagavati temple associated with Taleju), but this also proved not to be the proper place. Finally he went on to the home of the Agnihotra Brahman, in the area of the present Laeku Square. Here he dug, and the soil exactly refilled the hole. "Therefore the king established the goddess Taleju in that place."

The story now introduces another theme, which seems to echo some now obscure past events, perhaps the establishment of a new group of Royal Brahmans (see chap. 10). The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans who had lived in the place did not want to leave their homes. King Harisimhadeva^[*] gave them money and a substitute house. This substitute house still exists; it is still called the palisa che(n) or palsa che(n) , literally "substitute house." The Agnihotra Brahman (whose name in the story is "Agnihotra") was a Tantric practitioner. He did not want to leave his family land, even if he were given money and a substitute home, he was not a greedy man. He always sat on Chetrapal Bhairava's stone (an area-protecting "stone god" in the Taleju main courtyard) which was then bordered by four stone pillars, each with an image of Ganesa^[*] and Durga. The Brahman wanted to kill himself rather than leave his own ancestral home. King Harisimhadeva^[*] finally chased Agnihotra away from his ancestral home by force. Agnihotra committed suicide in his temple there, a temple of Siva (Mahadeva), because he had lost his public prestige. Agnihotra became a ghost (preta ) because he had killed himself. The ghost gave Harisimhadeva^[*] trouble every day. Thus, Harisimhadeva^[*] had the Siva temple entirely destroyed. He then did the necessary pacifying rituals.

Then, the story concludes, the four pillars with the Ganesa^[*] images were sent to various places. One, a dangerous form of Ganesa^[*] , was placed at the left side of the Golden Gate (the entrance to the Taleju temple complex). Another is at Bidya pitha (Tripurasundari's pitha ). Another was brought to the Indrani^[*]pitha .^[35] (Our story doesn't mention the fourth pillar.) Then, the story concludes, "In the Beko courtyard (the courtyard just outside the inner gate and compound of the Taleju

complex) the Bhairava Chetrapal stone where that Brahman used to sit exists, still, until now."

It seems likely that Taleju had, in fact, been introduced to the Kathmandu Valley from Mithila, although not by Harisimhadeva^[*] , who never reached it (chap. 3), and that the pressures of the Turkish Muslims on Mithila with the consequent movement of Maithili Tantric Hindus into Nepal contributed to the subsequent importance of the goddess and of Tantrism to the valley. Slusser summarizes the historical evidence as follows (Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 318):

That Taleju's cult in the Kathmandu Valley antedated Harisimhadeva^[*] is documented history . . . but Taleju appears to have been held in high regard in that country [Mithila], and it is not improbable that she was the tutelary of Nanyadeva's dynasty. She was almost certainly well-known to Harishimha's^[*] queen, the omnipotent Bhaktapur refugee, Devaladevi. It is abundantly clear that Taleju was favored by Sthitirajamalla [Jayasthiti Malla] and with his subsequent eruption into the affairs of Nepal Mandala^[*] , the goddess was apparently raised to an eminence she had previously not enjoyed in Nepal. As we know, on Sthitimalla's visit to Patan, the fractious nobles made haste to please the new Valley strong man by restoring the run-down temple of Taleju. . . . That many of the Newars associated with Taleju's cult claim Maithili descent [as do the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans of Bhaktapur] is also suggestive of the deity's ties with Mithila.

Whatever its historical relevance, the story as it is still told in Bhaktapur also suggests some special aspects and qualities of this particular goddess in the domain of Bhaktapur's goddesses. She is located first in a traditional Hindu heaven, in contrast, say, to the members of the Nine Durgas troupe whose legends identify them first as forest-dwelling demonic figures (chap. 15). She is the favorite goddess of a particular god; as a divinity's divinity, this places her in a hierarchy—her devotee is a figure remembered as the "king" of the gods. Her subsequent history is associated with invasions, thefts, and dynasties, and with politics and power struggles. From the start she is embedded, available for use by humans and quasi-humans, in a concrete form, a diagrammatic representation on a piece of metal. The form when properly worshiped is protective. The proper worship is Tantric with blood sacrifice. This captured divinity, with its history and functions relating it to power, belongs to a political dynasty, a legitimate form of power. The legend associates it not only with Indra, but with Rama, an avatara of Visnu^[*] , a divinity closely associated with Newar (and Hindu) royalty and with

civic moral order. When Taleju was established in Bhaktapur, she necessarily took precedence over other deities with similar political claims, which may perhaps be part of the significance of the displacement of the Agnihotra Brahman, the destruction of his Siva temple, and his suicide.^[36] We may note that in contrast to other forms of the Goddess, Taleju is not conceptually related to and in a sense dependent on Siva, but is the Tantric goddess as independent and self existing and fully powerful.

Taleju is kept in a secret inner part of the Taleju temple. The nature of her image is also secret. Only a very few Rajopadhyaya Brahman priests from households traditionally providing Taleju Brahmans, and who have special initiation are allowed to see the image. Outsiders generally follow the description in the legend and assume that it is a yantra . Hamilton was also told at the beginning of the nineteenth century that "there is no image of this deity which is represented by a yantra " ([1819] 1971, 210f.).^[37] In worship in the Taleju temple, Taleju is represented by various forms—yantra , the metal vase-like container called the Thapi(n)ca (or alternatively Ku(n)bha, a vessel that also represents the true Devi pitha goddess, Guhyesvari), sometimes by a metal vessel with a pouring spout (a Kalas), and sometimes by an anthropoid image.

Like most of Bhaktapur's component organizations the Taleju temple has its esoteric internal ceremonies and public external ones related to the larger city organization. The internal functions center around the worship of Taleju by her attendant priests^[38] during the course of the year. Many of these take place during city-wide calendrical festivals, but there are some thirty-five important annual internal worship ceremonies unconnected to external urban events. Many of these commemorate Taleju's functions as the Malla kings' lineage goddess. These acts of worship or puja s are called tha (Kathmandu Newari tha ) puja , or tha taegu , "elevation worship," or "elevation producing and maintaining" acts. Tha taegu is thought of as a kind of initiation, dekha (chap. 9). It lacks some features of a full Tantric initiation, and is sometimes thought of by those who have such full initiation as a baga dekha , a "half-full" initiation. Those tha puja s that commemorate the Malla king and, in fact, treat him as if he were still present, take the Malla king (represented by a priest) through three successive levels of initiation, during each of which he is presented new mantra s, new secrets, and new instruction on ritual procedures. There are other tha puja s as well as full initiations given at Taleju, all necessary for Taleju temple's internal functions. These are necessary not only for the staff and for the

"king" but also for all those for whom Taleju is in one way or another a special deity. Descendants of the Malla kings, that is, members of the present Malla and Pradhananga^[*]thar s, have Taleju as their lineage goddess, and male thar members have some of their initiations at the Taleju temple, although they do not receive the highest levels of initiation in Taleju's mysteries. Those are reserved to the chief Taleju Brahman. He is considered to be the surrogate for the Malla king in many rituals, and the king was entitled to higher levels of initiation than his male kin and descendants (who are furthermore now considered by the priests to be no longer "pure Mallas"). The Taleju principal priests who were the king's guru s, had even higher levels of initiation than the king himself, a fourth level, one beyond the Malla king's three. Taleju is also the object of special devotional rituals of the other temple priests. She is considered a sort of lineage goddess for them, in the limited sense that the temple priesthood is inherited in their families' lineage. All these priests also have in all other contexts another Tantric lineage divinity, for ordinary family rituals and rites of passage (see below and chap. 9).

In addition to the two thars of Malla descendants and three priestly thar s attendant at the temple, there are about twenty thar s throughout the macrostatus system, some of whose members (as we have noted in chap. 5) have some special assigned ritual function at some time or other during the year at the Taleju temple. Many of these people must be given tha taegu initiations, in which they must swear secrecy about their duties and about what they see in the temple.^[39]

Taleju's external function is uniquely important to the Tantric component of Bhaktapur's symbolic system. Through her priests and by means of her mantras , she is understood by initiated practitioners to empower all city-level legitimate Tantric procedures in Bhaktapur.^[40] The Brahman Taleju priest is in this context considered the ultimate guru of all who have Tantric power. Some of this power must be transmitted annually. For the rest, the great majority, such as the special knowledge and efficacy of various Tantric priests (chap. 9), or the effective ritual knowledge of the people who make religious paraphernalia, it is said that the special knowledge, initiation, and mantras were originally given to ancestors by a Taleju priest, but then passed down within the family or the thar from father to son or guru to student in repeated internal initiations.

Taleju's external relation to the city is manifested and enacted at length in the course of the harvest festival, Mohani. In the course of this festival Taleju, as we shall see (chap. 15), is brought into relation with

several forms of the Goddess—with all the Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, with Kumari (as another deity than the similarly named Kumari of the Mandalic^[*] group of goddesses), with the Nine Durgas group of deities, and with the Goddess Devi herself in her form as Bhagavati. In this festival Taleju is seen as participating in the basic myth of the Dangerous Goddess and, in fact, temporarily becoming Mahisasuramardini herself (chap. 15). During Mohani, Bhagavati/Taleju represents the maximally powerful and full form of the Goddess. This maximal Taleju then becomes manifest in certain ways, controlled and mediated by her temple priests. She possesses a maiden to become manifest in the form of Kumari, in which form she can give oracular advice to kings. She provides the mantra that empowers the partial forms of the Nine Durgas troupe to begin their annual nine-month cycle of manifestations of the Goddess throughout the city. Taleju is a central focus in the interrelated set of symbols and symbolic enactments associated with the dangerous deities of Bhaktapur.^[41]

Bhagavati

In her anthropomorphic representations Taleju is usually represented as a form of the goddess that people in Bhaktapur in other contexts identify as "Bhagavati." This is a female form with many arms, clearly a dangerous goddess, but lacking any further identification (through location or specific iconographic features) as one of the "partial" goddesses.^[42] The representation identified as Bhagavati is also very often (in both temple and household images) that of the Devi of the Devi Mahatmya account in the form of the slayer of the buffalo Asura, that is, as Mahisasuramardini.

Bhagavati is a traditional title for what we have been calling the full goddess. She is equivalent to "Devi," to "Sakti," to "Prakrti^[*] " (Mani 1974, 113). For people in Bhaktapur, however, Bhagavati is a separate goddess, a divinity in her own right. She has three temples. All of them have Taleju staff priests as temple priests, and are closely connected with Taleju's internal rituals. One of these is housed at the Natapwa(n)la ("Nyatapola") Temple (fig. 10), a large five-tiered temple, one of the most striking traditional buildings in Nepal. The Natapwa(n)la goddess is in the same square as the main temple of the city's major male dangerous divinity, Bhairava, with whom she has an esoteric connection for the purpose of "controlling him." The story of the temple is presented in one of the chronicles (Wright [1877] 1972, 194f.):

Bhupatindra^[*] Malla built [in Bhaktapur] a three-storied temple, the length of which ran north and south, and placed in it, facing west, a Bhairava for the protection of the country, and the removal of sin and distress from the people. This Bhairava gave much trouble, and the Raja ,n consequence consulted many clever men, who told him that if the Iswari [goddess] of the Tantra Shastra [texts], whom the Bhairava respected, were placed near him, he would be appeased. He therefore, at an auspicious moment, laid the foundation of a five-stoned temple. . . . The pillars were of carved agras wood, and there were five stones of roofs. This temple is the most beautiful, as well as the highest in the whole city. In building it the Raja set an example to his subjects by himself carrying three bricks, and the people brought together the whole of the materials in five days. When the temple was finished he secretly placed in it a deity of the Tantra Shastra, who rides on Yama-raj whom no one is permitted to see, and who is therefore kept concealed.

This goddess has a secret name and form, and is supposed by some experts to be "Siddhi Laksmi" However, she is known publicly as "Bhagavati." The two other Bhagavati shrines in addition to their use by Taleju Brahmans have some local worshipers.

Bhagavati has only one minor processional festival, which had been inaugurated in Bhaktapur only some ten or fifteen years before this study. In spite of this sparse representation in public space, however, Bhagavati is one of the principle divinities of Bhaktapur. She is the most common local name for the goddess in her full power, in the form where she has incorporated the power of all lesser forms of the goddess. She is thought of as a warrior goddess, as most clearly portrayed in her Mahisasuramardini representation and legend (see section on principles of classification of dangerous goddesses, below). Her main concrete presence is in the household. Bhagavati is the name and form of the household image in which the Dangerous Goddess is worshiped in home puja s as one of the group of household gods. She is at the focus of home worship during the important household ritual components of the Mohani festival. Bhagavati is also the main deity worshiped in many Tantric puja s. She is also the secret Tantric family goddess, aga(n) dya: , of the majority of upper-status households (chap. 9). For Bhaktapur's people Bhagavati is the city's main protective goddess when they are thinking of the city as a whole, rather than the protection of its boundaries. For the Taleju priests she is sometimes conceived of as "Taleju's older sister," because they believe she long preceded Taleju in Bhaktapur's history and in legendary status. But she is also alternatively conceived of by them as Taleju's "assistant," for she protects the city at Taleju's wish and direction.

Miscellaneous Dangerous Goddesses

There are some dangerous goddesses in Bhaktapur of circumscribed present importance. Some of these are auxiliary forms associated with Taleju in the Taleju temple, and others are goddesses located elsewhere in the city, where they have some specific and limited functions.

Taleju temple contains a number of Tantric images of various degrees of secrecy. These include Mahesvari (whom we have mentioned above) represented by a stone, Guhesvari considered as secondary to the major Guhyesvari Devi pitha goddess at the Pasupatinatha shrine, and Dui Maj.. Dui Maju is said to be the goddess of an internal pitha in Taleju temple, and to be "Taleju's own pitha goddess." In the Padmagiri chronicle Dui Maju is said to be the lineage deity of a "caste" of Maithili invaders, and to have helped King Nanyadeva take possession of Bhaktapur. In time, the account says, when Harisimhadeva^[*] in turn captured Bhaktapur as "he had received immense wealth from Dwimaju Deva whom he regarded as his Penate [lineage god] [he] established a Devali Puja [lineage puja ] to her" (Hasrat 1970, 50, 52). The dim reflection of some historical reality distorted in the chronicle, and the special esoteric position of Dui Maj. now in Taleju temple suggest something of her possible historical identity.^[43]

Another important esoteric form associated with the Taleju temple is Ugracandi, who is represented in some of the events there during Mohani, and who is thought by some to have an esoteric relation to the Nine Durgas.

There are some goddesses represented in the collection of shrines and temples built by the Malla kings in proximity to their palace, which we will discuss below as "gods of the Royal Center." The two goddesses in this group, who have no relevance to the rest of the city, are Baccala^[44] and Annapurna^[*] .

Of the few miscellaneous goddesses scattered throughout the wider city, some have special functions, and others had some past function and meaning and are now dimly remembered as a shrine or image that has some residual power. Kulachimi (or Ku Laksmi) (located in the Tulá che(n) twa: ), identified as Laksmi's^[*] "older sister," is considered to be a "bad god."^[45] She is worshiped daily by an assigned temple priest, probably, in a pervasive idea about such deities, to keep her from doing harm.

The Palu(n)palu(n) goddess, identified with Kumari and represented by a stone, is located in the Inaco Twa:. It was popularly used in the past as part of a curing ritual for children—rice held first to a sick

child's head, was then brought to this shrine and offered to the goddess.

Sitala (Newari Si:tala), a goddess of frightening mien whose vehicle is a donkey, is found at the river at Hanman Ghat^[*] . She is the goddess thought to have been efficacious for curing or preventing smallpox. On the twelfth day^[46] after the first signs of infection people went there to pray for cure and for protection from disfigurement. She is a well-known goddess in South Asia and can produce smallpox as well as cure it (Stutley and Stutley, 1977, 278; Slusser 1982, vol. 1, p. 328). Bhaktapur's Sitala has a broken nose, reportedly broken by a father whose son died in spite of his prayers.

Another goddess with curative functions is represented by a hole with a stone at its bottom in the Inaco Twa:, which is identified as Balkumari. People go here to pray for the cure of someone with a bleeding nose or who is coughing up blood.

In the Sukhu Dhwakha neighborhood there is a goddess called the "Durupo" or "Durupwa:" goddess, literally the "breast" goddess. She is also considered to represent Draupadi, the wife of the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata epic, and to be at the same time one of the ten Tantric goddesses of the Mahavidya. These varied attributions attest to her historical interest, but she now has no function or worship. Another such historical remnant is the Tantric goddess, Chinnamasta, also one of the Mahavidya, but of no present significance.

Dangerous Goddesses: Some Principles of Classification

After we have introduced the remaining classes of divinities, we will attempt to distinguish some of the important contrasts among the classes that are made use of in Bhaktapur to build a symbolic order. In this section we will introduce some of the "ordering potentialities" of the dangerous goddesses. They share most of these with the dangerous male divinities, but as the goddesses are a much more numerous and salient set and as they have some distinctive features of their own, they warrant discussion at this point.

Although Bhaktapur selects aspects of the goddesses as they are portrayed in South Asian tradition for its special purposes, it follows closely the ideas and specific forms (as we have seen in the placement of the Astamatrkas^[*] , for example) presented in the Devi Mahatmya .^[47] We can therefore begin with some passage from that text that convey these ideas. The Devi Mahatmya describes in various ways what we may call a maximal or full form of the goddess (see fig. 13) whose power is in the

[Full Size]

Figure 13.
The Goddess in her supreme manifest aspect.

concentration of other divine principles, principles that are partial in relation to the full form. (Devi Mahatmya , II, 9-17; Agrawala 1963, 45f.):^[48]

From the face of Visnu^[*] filled with intense indignation as well as from that of Brahma and Siva sprang forth fierce heat. From the bodies of other Devas also headed by Indra issued forth a resplendent luster. All this light became unified into one. The Devas saw in front of them a Pile of Light blazing like a mountain whose flames filled the whole space. Then that matchless light born from the bodies of all gods gathered into a single corpus and turned into a Woman enveloping the three worlds by her luster. Her face was produced from the light of Siva, her hair from that of Yama, her arms from the luster of Visnu^[*] , her breasts from that of the Moon; her bust from that of Indra; her thighs and legs from that of Varuna.

The Devi Mahatmya goes on to list the derivation of other parts of her cosmically inclusive body. In this particular description she is being generated to fight a demon who has also, significantly, concentrated power of other more limited divinities into himself, and is thus beyond the control of any of the ordinary gods. Mahisha, the king of the Asuras, had "taken over the authority of Surya, Indra, Agni, Vayu, Chandra, Yama, and Varuna^[*] as well as other gods. The wicked Mahisha has turned out all the gods from heaven who are now stalking their life like mortals" (Devi Mahatmya , II, 5, 6; Agrawala 1963, 45).

For another battle against the Asuras, the Goddess absorbs into herself the other dangerous goddesses, themselves the emanations or Saktis of gods, who had fought together in an earlier battle. The Asura Sumbha taunts the Goddess for winning a battle with the help of these other goddesses (Devi Mahatmya , X, 2-5; Agrawala 1963, 123):

O Durga, you are puffed up with the pride of strength. Do not be haughty, you are exceedingly proud but fighting with the strength of others. The Devi said: "I am all alone in the world here. What other is there besides me, O you wild one. See that these goddesses are my own powers entering into myself." The Rishi said: "Then all those Matrka^[*] , Brahmani and others, became absorbed in the body of the Goddess. Thereupon Ambika alone remained." The Devi said: "Through my power I stood here in many forms; all that has been withdrawn by me [into myself] and now I stand alone."

In still another passage the full Goddess is represented as springing directly from the body of Siva's consort, the benign goddess Parvati (Devi Mahatmya , V, 38-40; Agrawala 1963, 85):

O Prince, while the gods were thus engaged in invoking the Goddess through praises and m other ways, Parvati came there to bathe in the waters of the

Ganga^[*] . She of the lovely brows said to the gods, "Who is being praised by you here?" Then sprang forth from her physical sheath Siva Kausiki [an appellation of the goddess] who replied, "This hymn is being addressed m me by the assembled gods vanquished by the Asura Sumbha and routed m battle by Nisumbha." Because that Goddess came out of Parvati's bodily sheath, she is sung as Kausiki amongst all men.

It is important to note here that the benign goddess Parvati seems, as Lynn Bennett puts it in a comment on this passage, "unaware of her powerful war-like ego"—and that after the Dangerous Goddess appears "Parvati withdraws and has no part in the ensuing battle scenes" (1983, 268). The Dangerous Goddess seems, however, to be aware of Parvati. The Goddess as portrayed here can absorb other subsidiary goddesses into herself, can emit subsidiary goddess forms, and is capable of taking different forms at her own full level.

The Devi Mahatmya also deals with the Goddess in another and very different way as the ultimate creative force. Here she is no longer produced by Siva or the other gods, or through a transformation of Siva's consort. The Goddess as creative force is the subject of some of the stotras , the hymns of praise, to the Goddess, which introduce and intersperse the accounts of the heroic cosmic battles of the Devi Mahatmya . Here she is called simply Devi, Goddess, or sometimes Mahamaya, the generator of the concrete and illusionary forms of what is taken to be reality, who "forcibly seizes the minds of even those who have knowledge and leads them to delusion. . . . This animate and inanimate world is created by her. . . . She is supreme eternal knowledge being the cause of moksa^[*] [escape from delusion]. . . . She is eternal having the universe as her form . . . the supreme knowledge, the supreme power, the supreme mind, the supreme memory and the great delusion . . . the giver of manifest form to the gods Brahma, Visnu^[*] and Siva . . . the supporter of the world, the cause of its maintenance and dissolution" (Devi Mahatmya , I passim; Agarawala 1963, 37-43). Devi in this aspect has various titles or equivalences besides Mahamaya, such as Sri, Isvari, and Prakrti^[*] . These titles and names are different than those given to the "manifest" goddesses, either full or partial. This cosmic creator Goddess is referred to in Bhaktapur; for example, she is represented in the central point of the city as a mandala^[*] under her name of Tripurasundari. But much more salient to Bhaktapur is what we have called the "full goddess," the manifest form of Goddess, who is different from the creator Devi of the stotras .

This form, the central protagonist in the drama of the Devi Mahat-

[Full Size]

Figure 14.
The Dangerous Goddess in her horrible form.

mya , is manifest at a position in space and a moment in time, albeit mythic space and time. This is the goddess who combines the forces of all the other and separate divinities, who freely yield them to her for their defense. As she fights for the defense of the divine order, she is described as a warrior, "filling the three worlds with her splendor, bending low the earth with the force of her strides, scratching the sky with her pointed diadem, shaking the nether worlds with the twang of her bowstring and standing there filling the ten directions of space with her thousand arms" (Devi Mahatmya , II, 37-38; Agrawala 1963, 51). In the Devi Mahatmya this full form of Devi is most commonly called "Chandika." However, she is given various other names and titles, such as Ambika, Bhadrakali^[*] , Mahadevi, and Durga. She also shares some appellations with the creator Goddess such as Sri and Prakrti^[*] . The full form has as her vehicle a lion. In some battles Chandika fights as herself, but in others she emits another form, Kali, who has a terrifying aspect and who does the fighting. This special terrifying form has a description which is repeatedly represented in Bhaktapur's art, icons and masks, and which is of great ritual importance (Devi Mahatmya , VIII, 5-8; Agrawala 1963, 98):

Kali of terrible countenance [see fig. 14], armed with a sword and a noose, carrying a . . . skull-topped staff decorated with a garland of human heads, clad in a tiger's skin, looking terrible . . . [with] emaciated flesh, with a widely gaping mouth, . . . with lolling tongue, . . . deep sunk reddish eyes, and filling the quarters of space with roaring voice, she impetuously fell upon the great Asuras, killing them and devoured the army of those enemies of Devas.

In some passages Chandika fights alongside of Kali (e.g., VIII, 52-62). Yet, repeatedly in the Devi Mahatmya Chandika gives orders to Kali, and confers praise and titles on her. Kali in this account is not just an aspect of Chandika; she is a subordinate, a more limited, more specialized being.

A rank still lower than Kali, still more limited and discrete in their forms are the Matrkas, the gods' Saktis, who fight in one episode alongside the Goddess as Chandika. Kumari fights with her spear, Brahmani by throwing water that is given power through her mantras , Mahesvari with a trident, the boar-goddess Varahi with her tusks, and so on (Devi Mahatmya , IX). However, as the stotra that follows this account (which we have quoted above) insists, these various Matrkas are all aspects of the one Goddess, Devi.

These relations of whole to part allow for the two dimensions of

classification that we have suggested in relation to spatial units, and, following the approaches of others, in relation to social hierarchy. The whole includes the part, but may emit it in some way so that the part can be considered as a unit in itself. In this case the part and the whole are in a vertical relationship, share some of the same qualities, and are hierarchically arranged, with the whole superior to the part. Furthermore, the whole tends to be more abstract and less specified, whereas the parts is more concrete and more specialized in its function and meaning. This arrangement also allows for horizontal relations because entities at the same level of inclusiveness are equal to each other. We have noted a distinction in the Devi Mahatmya of the full goddess Chandika from a cosmic creative Goddess of a still higher order, the absolute divinity prior to all manifestation. The manifest form of the Goddess in her full power was differentiated from the cosmic form in name, and sometimes was described as a form created by the male gods in concert. Bhaktapur's city religion puts four goddesses in different contexts at the same highest level (and makes no use of a distinction between the rank of a cosmic and a full manifest goddess). Two are related in tradition to names of the creator Goddess, Tripurasundari and Mahalaksmi^[*] (who is a supreme goddess in her context as the Nine Durgas' own deity). One refers to the full manifest form of the Goddess—Bhagavati in Bhaktapur's usage. The fourth, Taleju, is both in her legend a god's god (and thus in a rank above "ordinary" gods) and also, through her participation in the symbolic dramas of the harvest festival, a version of the fully manifest warrior goddess.

Three of these goddesses, Tripurasundari, Mahalaksmi^[*] , and Bhagavati, show their equivalence by having as their identifying Vahana or "vehicle" the lion, as does the manifest Devi in the Devi Mahatmya . So do, significantly, the two goddesses within the Taleju temple who are thought to be royal or warrior deities absorbed by Taleju, namely, Dui Maju and Manesvari. Taleju is, however, popularly said to have a horse vehicle. This probably refers to the white stallion that is used during the procession of Taleju during the Mohani festival. Slusser suggests plausibly that this white horse derives from the "sanctified horse required in ancient Indian coronation ritual, as it was in ancient Nepal, and is in the coronation of the kings of Nepal today" (1982, vol. I, p. 317). Whether the horse is considered the vehicle of the goddess in her Yantra representation is dubious, but that vehicle is an esoteric secret.^[49] The other dangerous goddesses, like the other ordinary goddesses, have each their own particular vehicle. Vaisnavi^[*] has (like Visnu^[*] ) the half-bird Garuda^[*] ,

Varahi, a water buffalo; Indrani^[*] , an elephant; Brahmani, a goose; and Mahesvari, a tiger. The ordinary goddess Sarasvati, like Brahmani (because of her traditional associations with the god Brahma, whose vehicle it also is) has a goose vehicle.

There is one figure whom we encountered in the Devi Mahatmya as the special agent of the full manifest goddess Chandika. This goddess, Kali in the Devi Mahatmya , is in Bhaktapur called "Mahakali." She represents the most frightening form of the Goddess and is used as such in the powerful symbolic enactments of the Nine Durgas group. Here she is below the full Goddess (as the Nine Durgas' supreme goddess Mahalaksmi^[*] ), but in a superior position to the remainder of the goddesses in the group. This Mahakali is a flesh-devouring, blood-drinking, intoxicated, cadaverous form. She has a male equivalent, whose consort she is, the god Bhairava, whom we shall discuss below. Mahakali does not have the full goddess' lion vehicle. Her vehicle is an anthropomorphic male form, supine at or under her foot, which is locally identified as a Kali preta , a kind of dangerous spirit.

The lesser goddesses are thus distinguished from the full manifest form, the Devi, in several ways. They are sometimes literally described as a(n)sa (Sanskrit, a[n]sa ) Devi, as "partial Devis." "Partial," we must emphasize, has a particular meaning here. It does not mean imperfect, but more concrete and more specialized, and in being more specialized, therefore limited. The lesser goddesses as a group are generally of equal status, although in some domains, such as the Nine Durgas, some of them may have special salience. In a few contexts a form that is a full goddess in another context may be conceived of as a partial goddess. This is the case of Mahalaksmi^[*] as one of the peripheral Mandalic^[*] Goddesses, and of Tripurasundari when she is thought of as only the central mandalic^[*] area's protective local goddess, and not the concentrating center of the mandala^[*] . However, in these two particular contexts, while goddesses may be treated in more limited ways, the reverse, the treatment of a limited goddess as a full goddess, does not occur. Each of the full goddesses is located in a different context, within which are clustered her own dependant partial goddesses, in the cases where these exist. Relations and equivalences among the full goddesses in the various sets, horizontal relations, are signaled in various ritual actions. All of the relations between the full goddesses are enacted during Mohani, which is one of the reasons that the festival will be of special interest to us (chap. 15). Finally we have noted the barrier between Parvati and the forms of the Goddess we have been considering here. The same barrier

separates the other "ordinary" goddesses from the Goddess. They belong to a civic, although heroic, sunlit world, she to a peripheral world of shadows.

The dangerous goddesses are used in differentiated ways to create a structure to represent and create order in Bhaktapur. This must be emphasized in the face of a tendency within the Tantric segment of Newar religion to absorb and blend all divinities, particularly the goddesses, and such resulting claims as David Snellgrove's that "there is no need for us to follow the development of these different goddesses, for they all tended eventually to accord with one basic form, that of the Great Mother Goddess, in whom they all more or less lost their separate identities" (1957, 81).

Dangerous Male Gods

There are a few male divinities in Bhaktapur who must be offered meat and alcoholic spirits, and who have frightening representations. Compared to the female dangerous divinities, they are fewer in kind, much less systematically related, and of more limited civic function. In another contrast with both the dangerous female divinities and with the ordinary gods, the male dangerous divinities seem to be further from the classical traditions of South Asia, comparatively more locally adapted and transformed. For that reason we prefer to use their local names, rather than the names of their distant classical ancestors. We have already mentioned that Ganesa^[*] may be a dangerous divinity when he is used to "enter" and give siddhi to the worship of a dangerous divinity, usually in Tantric ritual. In addition there are three exclusively dangerous male divinities who are prominent in Bhaktapur's urban religion—Bhisi(n), Nasa Dya: and a somewhat complex category, Bhaila Dya:.

Bhisi(n) (Bhima)

Bhisi(n), or Bhisi(n) Dya:, "Bhisi(n) God (see fig. 15)," as he is usually referred to, is related tenuously to the Mahabharata's epic hero, Bhima or Bhimasena, one of the five Pandava brothers. He is included in most households' sets of gods (discussed below), but he is in Bhaktapur the special divinity of shopkeepers.^[50] He has three major city shrines, two of which are significantly located along that portion of the city festival route that follows the bazaar. The third one is just to the south of the

[Full Size]

Figure 15.
The merchants' special deity, the Bhisi(n) God.

city. Shopkeepers worship him at home and in his temples for good fortune in their commercial affairs. He is also the focus of one annual festival, centering on the temple of Suku Bhisi(n) Dya: in Dattatreya Square in the northeastern part of the city. Representations of Bhisi(n) show him as a powerful man with a full moustache, usually subduing a kneeling vanquished figure, said to be the epic's Kaurava King, Dussasana.

Slusser notes D. R. Regmi's claim (1965-1966, part II, p. 612) that the earliest reference to Bhisi(n) in the Kathmandu Valley is 1540 A.D. , and remarks that all of his images are works of the late Malla period, suggesting a relatively recent (in terms of Newar history), introduction of the figure as a separate god, independent of his position as one of the five Pandava brothers. How he became a god of commerce is unclear. Slusser surmises that he may have been "first associated with the fields as a heroic guardian figure, and later, by extension, guardian of the granary and of trade" (1982, 258f.). It is not clear whether any of the special characteristics of Bhima as portrayed in the Mahabharata, where he is a kind of marginally socialized figure of great strength, facilitate his semantic appropriateness for the merchants. One may, perhaps not entirely frivolously, note the following. When Bhima fought and killed the Kaurava King Duryodhana "the two were well matched, but when Bhima was losing he struck an unfair blow with his mace, thus disregarding an ancient rule that a blow should never be dealt below the navel. This blow broke his adversary's thigh, and hence his epithet Jihmayodhin, the 'unfair fighter'" (Stutley and Stutley 1977, 45). Whatever his specific appropriateness to commerce may be, there are considerations that make a dangerous god more appropriate to the sphere of commerce than an ordinary god, as we shall argue in the summary section of this chapter.

Nasa Dya: (Nrtya^[*] Natha)

Throughout Bhaktapur are a large number of shrines associated with a divinity locally called Nasa God, Nasa Dya:. Niels Gutschow mapped twenty-one of these shrines in a 1975/76 survey (personal communication). Of these, one in the southwestern part of the main festival route is considered the main one, and is a center for sacrifice and worship to him. Nasa Dya: gives skill and effectiveness to public performers; thus people who are to take part in dance or drama or musical performances pray and offer flesh and alcoholic offerings to Nasa Dya: before the

performance. Similarly people who are learning one of the performing arts, including those whose traditional thar profession is music of one kind or another, worship Nasa Dya: in the course of their training. Jugis, for example, on the completion of their formal study of their special musical instrument, a double-reed woodwind, make a flesh and alcohol sacrifice to Nasa Dya:" Nasa " means grace and skill in social as well as "artistic" performances. Someone who has nasa is "cultivated, delightful in social intercourse, . . . entertaining, the life of the party" (Manandhar 1976, 253). Thus people also worship Nasa Dya: for such social skill. Nasa Dya: is represented by holes in the wall of a shrine (or often in private homes). These may be single or in sets of three, and of various shapes, sometimes as triangles with the apices pointing downward. Brahmans identify Nasa Dya: with the South Asian Siva in his aspect as Nrtya^[*] Natha Raja, the "Lord of the Dance," but there are probably no shrine images of him in this form in Bhaktapur. Mary Slusser had identified one such image, of "exceptional interest" precisely because of its unusualness, in the Pasupatinatha shrine complex (1982, vol. 1, p. 233, n.76; vol. 2, pl. 356). She notes that most Nasa Dya:s "are inconsequential images . . . or they decorate the toranas^[*] [decorated arches placed above major shrine icons] of Siva temples" (1982, vol. 1, p. 233, n.76). Like Bhisi(n) Dya:'s relation to Bhima, Nasa Dya:'s to Nata Raja is very distant.^[51]

Bhaila Dya: (Bhairava)

Bhaila Dya:, "Bhaila God," the Newar version of the Hindu deity Bhairava (see fig. 16), is a divinity, or group of divinities, whose images, supremely dramatic in some of their anthropomorphic representations, are widely represented in Newar communities. In the Puranas^[*] Bhairava is sometimes a son of Siva and Parvati, sometimes an emanation emitted by Siva when infuriated. The Newar's Bhairava is associated with this emanation. In his anthropomorphic form he is represented with fangs, bulging eyes, dark blue or black coloring, carrying destructive weapons in his many arms, and wearing garlands of shrunken decapitated heads or skulls. He is thus an iconographic male equivalent of the Kali or, for Bhaktapur, Mahakali aspect of Devi. Bhaila Dya: is also present in a vague nonanthropomorphic form. Here he is a spirit-like creature who is located at or below the surface of the ground—in the cremation grounds or within the city in association with certain powerful natural stones. Finally he is theoretically related to the genesis and classification

[Full Size]

Figure 16.
An image of the dangerous deity Bhairava in front of the city's main
Bhairava temple.

of the other dangerous male deities who are in certain contexts considered as "kinds" of Bhaila Dya:s.

The anthropomorphic Bhairava has two main presences in Bhaktapur, Akasa (Sanskrit akasa ) "Sky," Bhaila Dya: and as the Bhairava of the Nine Durgas cycle. The Akasa Bhaila Dya: is housed in one of Bhaktapur's major temple structures located in Ta:marhi Square, a square located on the axis that divides the upper half of the city from the lower half, and which is one of the ritual centers of the city. This is the center that becomes the pivot of the drama of the division and reunification of the city during the spring solar New Year festival, Biska: (chap. 14). Akasa Bhairava and his consort, the dangerous goddess Bhadrakali^[*] , are one of the symbolic foci of the dramatic sequence of the festival that dramatizes in their separation and coupling—in concert with a variety of other vivid symbolic enactments—the conflict and unification of the divisions of the city. The Akasa Bhaila Dya: temple has several representations of Bhairava. In front of the temple, in a recess on its front wall, is a small frightening figure (see fig. 16), sometimes given the name of Kala Bhairava or Kala Bhaila Dya: (because, in one explanation, "even Kala, the Lord of Death trembles before him" [Sahai 1975, 119]). Within the temple are images used in the festival procession, and the major fixed temple image, which is a head without a body. This image is related through various legends (chap. 14) to a headless image of the god in Benares (Varanasi) in India.^[52]

Akasa Bhaila Dya:'s vehicle is Beta Dya: (from the Sanskrit Vetala). In those Puranic^[*] accounts where Bhairava is the son of Siva and Parvati, Vetala is Bhairava's brother (O'Flaherty 1973, 69, 106), but in Bhaktapur he approximates more the South Asian idea of Vetala as "a class of demons, ghouls or vampires who frequent burial grounds, and are said to re-animate the dead" (Stutley and Stutley 1977, 331), a conception that is related to Bhairava's attributes as a stone god (below). Beta Dya: himself is conceived as a sort of agent for Bhaila Dya: in the exercise of his powers. Like many other deities in Bhaktapur, Akasa Bhairava is balanced by another deity. In this case it is the goddess "Bhagavati" in the nearby Nyatapwa(n)la^[*] temple as we have discussed above. In the account of the building of the temple and the installation of "a Bhairava for the protection of the country, and the removal of sin and distress from the people" it was the Bhairava itself that gave people trouble (which is a general potential of the dangerous gods), and it was necessary to balance him with a complementary dangerous goddess. This conception of the goddess of the Nyatapwa(n)la^[*] temple as calming the

dangerous Bhairava is still the popular explanation in Bhaktapur for the juxtaposition of the two temples.

The anthropomorphic Bhaila Dya: has a second dramatic presence in Bhaktapur's civic symbolism and ritual in the Nine Durgas sequence (chap. 15). Here he is represented in his fully powerful and frightening form, as a mask that is the symmetrical complement of the mask of the sequence's most frightening goddess, Mahakali (see color illustrations). Among the group of divinities who make up the Nine Durgas group, Bhairava and Mahakali have the predominant roles. In some of their performances he is the most prominent character, particularly in his presiding over certain animal sacrifices. In the most important of their performances, however, the calendrically determined sequential twa : performances, Bhairava is peripheral to Mahakali. There is also in the Nine Durgas troupe of divinities a god form called "Seto Bhaila Dya:," the white Bhairava, who is in his relation to the female deities of the group a clown-like, ineffectual figure. In his iconographic representation the mask of this Seto Bhaila Dya: is a transformation of Siva, who is also represented as a mask in the performance (see color illustrations). He reflects Siva's ineffectiveness in relation to the Saktis, who have become independent dangerous goddesses.

Bhairava as a vague demonic spirit inhabits the cremation grounds. He is found sometimes located in buried stones under the cremation pyres and is the focus of some Tantric pujas , and in popular assumption, at least, of pujas by spirit doctors, Tantric magicians, and witches. This sort of Bhairava is also thought to be the power in certain stones that "protect" the areas in which they are located. He is related both to ghosts and spirits and to the divinities of such stones, and we will return to him and some of the details of his cremation ground and stone habitations in a later section. Gutschow and his associates have reported eight Bhairava shrines in the city that appear on some paintings as part of a set of mandalic^[*] circles in Bhaktapur's city space (Kö1ver 1976, 69-71; Gutshow and Kö1ver 1975, 21f.; Auer and Gutschow n.d., 38). These are all natural stones. The same set is represented by anthropomorphic statues within the Taleju temple complex. These Bhairavas are considered as consorts of a corresponding set of goddesses.^[53] They have no meaning for public urban symbolic enactment, and little for contemporary Tantric esoteric religion.

The other dangerous male gods of Bhaktapur are vaguely related to Bhaila Dya:. Nasa Dya: is said by some to be an emanation of Bhaila Dya:, and Bhisi(n) Dya:, with his human attributes, to be a sort of ava-

tar of Bhaila Dya:. In spite of such ideas, however, they are treated for the most part as independent divinities.^[54]

Bhairava/Bhaila Dya: encompasses a fairly diffuse class of beings in comparison with the elaborately formulated relations among the dangerous goddesses. There are fewer forms, and many of them are quite vague, which, as we will argue, give those aspects of Bhairava some of their semantic force. While the frightening form of the Goddess, most clearly exemplified by Mahakali, is only one of the forms of the Dangerous Goddess, Bhairava exists only in his frightening form and is in many ways a lesser figure than the Dangerous Goddess. She may be the supreme deity, whereas he never is. Furthermore, his theoretical relation to Siva is even more vague than the relation of the Dangerous Goddess to Siva, for even if in many contexts she has separated herself from Siva, in Tantric theory and practice the relation of Siva and the Goddess as Sakti are obsessively investigated and enacted. And, finally, while the Goddess as Bhagavati is a usual member of collections of household gods, Bhairava is only very rarely included, and that only by upper-status households who have special Tantric initiations and, therefore, powers. These asymmetries are significant.