1. Recall (see chap. 12) that we have included in our discussions and enumeration only those particular weekly, fortnightly, or monthly events that have some important differentiated annual significance. The remainder are generally of relatively minor civic importance, of concern only to particular individuals or households. We have also not included here ten melas not associated with the city's annual calendar, and four taking place in multiple numbers of years. If these events were listed, they would augment the number of days in any given year that are the occasion for some sort of calendrically determined event. [BACK]

2. The other is a memorial service for patrilineal ancestors held at the riverside during Dhala(n) Sala(n) [66]. [BACK]

3. This comparative optionality also means that public festivals are particularly vulnerable to social change, to alternative forms of entertainment and new pressures on the use of time and capital. [BACK]

4. These symbols are good examples of what Victor Turner called "bipolar" symbols. "At one pole [there is] . . . a set of referents of a grossly physiological character, relating to general human experience of an emotional kind . . . at the other . . . a set of references to moral norms and principles governing the social structure" (1967, 54). Thus in the Biska: story what is focally celebrated is the prince's overcoming of the potentially fatal snakes that issue from the princess's nose in order to establish a royal—or any other kind of—marriage. [BACK]

5. We have arbitrarily included optional annual visits [50] to the dangerous goddess Sitala by household members for protection against smallpox in our enumeration of "household" rather than "public" events. Sitala Puja does not entail worship within the house, and is not really an exception to this observation. The annual worship of Bhagavati during Mohani is a secondary participation in and reflection of the public worship of the period. It is a sort of invasion of the Goddess into the family circle, which is usually bounded against her. [BACK]

6. This nonrepresentation is similar to the way potential conflicts of the social groups within a twa: are deflected to the less consequential ritualized struggles of the city halves (chap. 7). [BACK]

7. The summary of the festival year, including its events, themes, and temporal relations given in appendix 5, should make the following discussion somewhat easier to follow. [BACK]

8. Bhisi(n), although a dangerous deity, is uniquely isolated from the other dangerous deities in both concept and use. [BACK]

9. The term "lateral" environment is meant to suggest a contrast with the bordering enviroment of the household in a different direction or plane, that is, the realms just beyond birth and death, beyond thresholds that individuals cross as they enter and leave the household in the flow of a lifetime. For individuals and households the city is "lateral" to this direction. [BACK]

10. The dormant period of the Nine Durgas is not the usual four-month absence characteristic of the periods of "sleep" of many other Hindu deities in South Asian tradition. [BACK]

11. The lunar harvest festival Mohani, coming about six months after Biska:, is thus an autumnal festival and the two focal sequences have a seasonal symmetry, but there is no reference in Mohani to the autumnal equinox equivalent to Biska:'s reference to the vernal equinox. [BACK]

12. We have commented on the "astral" qualities of Biska:'s symbolism in contrast to Mohani in chapter 14. [BACK]

13. Swanti, with the lunar New Year Day at the beginning of a bright fortnight as the fourth of its five days, thus includes a movement from a dark fortnight to a light one. [BACK]

14. Recall that this "ordinary death" contrasts with the violent destruction of the body at the hands and teeth of the dangerous deities, a destruction due to accidental encounter or some ritual error, a destruction which, once initiated, can only be avoided through instruments of power, not through exemplary social behavior. [BACK]

15. The exception is the Panauti Jatra, which is a mass visit to a focal festival of a town that previously was within the Bhaktapur kingdom. The main deities of that festival are dangerous ones. The jatra is a calendrical formalization of the visits to a focal festival of some nearby community that are common throughout the valley and that Bhaktapur does less formally to focal festivals of other nearby places on other occasions. [BACK]

16. According to the Satapatha Bramana^{[ *]} , both the gods and Asuras sprang "from the Creator Prajapati, [and] inherited speech—both true and false, but . . . finally the gods rejected untruth, whilst the Asuras spurned truth which led to their downfall Another tradition states that though the gods and Asuras were equally powerful, their power was divided, the gods exercising it by day and the Asuras by night. . .. Later the term asura denoted the hostile native rulers and tribes opposed to Aryan religious and political expansion" (Stutley and Stutley 1977, 23). [BACK]

17. The optional vratas of Mohani, of the Swasthani period, of Caturmasa and of some other customary occasions during the year are individual performances, but are most often regarded, as we have been in our discussion of the vratas of Swasthani and Mohani, as being immediately or ultimately for the good of the family. The individual vratas thus serve to enable an individual to overcome some obstacle in his or her full contribution to the family or to some larger unit. Similarly, the emphasis in acquiring personal skills during the Sarasvati festivals ([12] and [13]) is on the learner's dependence on the deity for acquiring a socially defined and useful skill, rather than as a quest for self-sufficiency. Learning in general in Bhaktapur is structured to emphasize the profound dependency of individuals on family, deities, and society as the originators and teachers of skills and knowledge [BACK]

18. Thar membership is only differentially signaled in the course of the annual cycle for those particular thars , of particular importance in the symbolic order of the city, which have special ritual symbolic functions in the city (see chap. 5). [BACK]