1. They had capured a pig and drunk its blood, thus making it impossible for the Brahman to take them back into his home. [BACK]

2. One upper-status interview respondent, a noninitiate, described such uses of Tantrism as "traditional Hindu science," which was falling into disuse because it was being replaced by Western alternative techniques of power such as medicines. [BACK]

3. The low Jugi thar , which has some customs and traditions relating it to an historical yogic sect (chap. 10), has some rudimentary Tantric aspects in its initiations. Some of the Jugi's public functions, notably their performances as Siva, are interpreted by upper thar s as having some Tantric meaning and power, and members of the upper thar s imagine that the Jugis have private Tantric knowledge. [BACK]

4. There are Tantric elements or references m Bhaktapur's ordinary pujas . The sukunda (see below) with its references to Siva and Sakti is used in many Newar pujas , and aspects of the diagrams on which puja equiment is placed, some of the hand gestures used m the pujas , and so on, are understood by the priests, although not by uninitiated participants, to have some Tantric references. This is thought by local Brahmans to represent a difference between Newar ordinary pujas and Indo-Nepalese ones. [BACK]

5. Beyer (1973) devotes an entire long volume to a detailed description and exegesis of a Tibetan Tantric puja . Van Kooij (1972) provides a detailed discussion of Hindu Tantric worship. For other sources on Tantric procedures, see Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan (1979). [BACK]

6. " Aila " is renamed " nya(n) " in Tantric ritual contexts. [BACK]

7. A "right-handed method" was associated with the "purely internal worship" of Sakti. Such worshippers "abhorred the use of wine and other unconventional ritual items. The term Vamacara . . . became established for the time-honored Sakta use of wine and meat, and perhaps also other antinomian elements in their ritual" (Gupta et al. 1979, 44). [BACK]

8. The significance of mudra as one of the five makaras is generally assumed to be in reference to the supposed aphrodisiacal power of the substances usually used as mudra , parched grain and kidney beans (see Stutley and Stutley 1977, p. 195). They note that m Buddhist Tantrism, the word may be applied to a female adept. In Gupta et al. (1979), Hoens has a comment on this latter use. " Mudra sometimes denotes the sadhaka 's female partner or [the] wife of a deity but in that sense it is almost exclusively confined to the Buddhist Tantras. Mudra is the fourth of the five makaras used in Kaula types of Tantric rituals, where in modern times it stands for parched rice, some other cereal or savory titbit. Nevertheless one wonders whether originally it did not mean a female partner" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 117). [BACK]

9. "Kaula Tantrics always follow the most orthodox form of esoteric rites involving the practice of drinking alcohol, eating meat and fish, and having sexual intercourse with a chosen partner during puja . The partner is sublimated to the position of the goddess and is called "Sakti. " She is initiated m the sect and, at the time puja is consecrated and worshiped. Her face, breasts and sex organ are specially revered. The Tantric exerts himself to please her with food, drink and gifts" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 147n.). [BACK]

10. As we will see in a later section, there is evidence that human sacrifice probably once existed m Bhaktapur as part of the worship of the dangerous deities. The killing would have been a sacred act, having been done in the correct ritual context, and the victim would have received liberation, or mukti . This is the sort of transformation of what would otherwise be a crime or a "great sin," a mahapapa , into a positive religious action that otherwise illicit sexual practices in a Tantric context would have represented, and suggests a climate in which they may have been more likely than in recent decades or perhaps centuries. [BACK]

11. Gopal Singh Nepali remarked that the Indo-Nepalese Brahmans of Nepal refused to accept the Newar Brahmans as their equals because they are priests to the Newars "whose domestic ceremonies are similar to those of the Sudras. An additional reason is purported to be the influence of Tantrism on them, involving use of liquor" (1965, 152). [BACK]

12. A Tantric puja may, for example, be required, on the advice of some religious expert, in response to some offense to a Tantric deity, particularly to the Aga(n) God itself. [BACK]

13. Non-Tantric pujas are not necessarily less expensive than Tantric ones, and some of the Brahman-assisted dhala(n) danegu pujas (app. 4) may be quite expensive. [BACK]

14. The shift from Tantric to non-Tantric pujas seems to be part of the weakening of the phuki group and a consequent emphasis on the household, and is allied with other recent shifts toward a more "modern" type of Hinduism. [BACK]

15. When the mandalic^{[ *]} pitha is a center of worship, people first go to the twa: Ganesa^{[ *]} temple, then to the Aga(n) God to make a perfunctory offering, and finally to the pitha for the main puja . In the case where Aga(n) House pujas are at the center worshipers again go first to the twa: Ganesa^{[ *]} temple, but then to the mandalic^{[ *]} pitha to make a perfunctory offering, and finally to the Aga(n) House for the main worship. An Acaju can be delegated to do the early parts of the sequence. [BACK]

16. The comparative meanings and uses of Digu Gods and Aga(n) Gods are different in Newar villages, which lack the social complexity of Bhaktapur (cf. Toffin 1984, 76-81). [BACK]

17. The people who m legend brought Tantric forces into the city, such as Harisimhadeva^{[ *]} , who brought Taleju, and the Brahman Tantric expert, who introduced the Nine Durgas, are very high-status people. The presence of Tantric Aga(n) Gods within the city in the possession of high-status families is consonant with this association of high status and legitimate Tantric power. [BACK]

18. In the case of need a family section of a relatively poor phuki sometimes moves into the Aga(n) House, relegating the worship area to an isolated section. [BACK]

19. The expenses of the Aga(n) House are sometimes supported by the proceeds from family-owned farmland set apart as a special land grant. The farmers who farm the land pay rent or give some of the land's yield to the phuki . The famers also have some responsibilities toward the protection and maintenance of the Aga(n) House. This system of support, like others based on upper-status land ownership, has begun to disappear because of land reform and the changes in the famers' socioeconomic status. [BACK]

20. Some texts on the Newars refer to the Aga(n) Room as the "Agama Room," and the Aga(n) House as the "Agama House." This is said in Bhaktapur to be a "Nepali" or a "foreign" usage and is not used locally. The Aga(n) image itself is reportedly sometimes called ''Aga(n)ma,'' said to be a contraction of Aga(n) maju , " maju " being an honorific appellation of some dangerous goddesses. The term Aga(n)ma has been confused with the term "Agama", which designates traditional Tantric and non-Vedic texts. [BACK]

21. Slusser gives as alternate names "Degu," "Deguli," "Dehuri," "Digu," and "Devali puja ." "Dugu," meaning "goat," refers to the animal often sacrificed to the Digu God. It is a common "vulgar" term for the deity in ordinary usage in Bhaktapur. [BACK]

23. Building a new Aga(n) House is an expensive undertaking, and sometimes the same Aga(n) House may continue to be used for some period of time by two or more split- phuki groups who use it at different times. [BACK]

24. In some South Asian contexts istadevata implies a personal deity m a modern sense, often in the context of Bhakti religion. Thus, the choice a person makes of an istadevata "is a radical, ultimate choice, an act of faith involving his total person and life. It also has the aspect of a 'voluntary association,' and he enjoys a 'freedom' to make his choice m worshiping a deity, regardless of group, family, caste, and other ties, including the kuladevata" (T. K. Venkateswaran 1968, 159). This description is alien to traditional Bhaktapur, however, where one's istadevata is one's family deity. [BACK]

25. Those Rajopadhyaya Brahmans who are attached to the Taleju temple usually become initiated into this stage at much younger ages than other high-status candidates. In addition to the three levels of dekha , the Taleju Brahmans must undergo further initiations to understand and participate in Taleju worship. These are not properly dekha , but are called "elevations" or tha taegu (see chap. 8 on Taleju). [BACK]

26. This is not to say that there may not be some individuals in Bhaktapur who may have this belief and who, indeed, may not know more profound Tantric meditative techniques, and who may not have experienced the more profound personal experiences that are the ideal goals of the practice. However, such virtuosi, if they exist, are hardly representative of what, to all accessible evidence, seems to be experienced and believed even by advanced Brahman practitioners. [BACK]

27. Their main images are at the household shrine near the cooking area on the top floor. [BACK]

28. Goudriaan, in listing the constituents of Tantrism, includes as one of them the "realization of the supernatural world by specific methods of meditations ( dhyana ), involving in the first place the creation of mental images or pictures of gods and goddesses who may be worshiped internally. The deity thus created may be invoked for social, especially medical, aims" (Gupta, Hoens, and Goudriaan 1979, 8). [BACK]

29. We will consider the royal and aristocratic implications of Tantrism for Bhaktapur in conjunction with the relation of king and Brahman in later chapters. [BACK]

30. The last chema puja prior to this study had been some ten years earlier, in 1962, when the astral grahas had all been in conjunction, a sign of great danger portending perhaps a major earthquake. Ceremonies lasted about two weeks throughout the entire city. [BACK]

31. The various specialized craftsmen who contribute to the masks and other images of the Devi cycle and the people who are possessed by and who perform as the Nine Durgas (chap. 15) are enabled to do this because of the powerful Tantric mantras that are (or were in the past) transmitted to them by high-status, initiated Brahmans. [BACK]

32. When considered in relation to function the clapper of a bell may be considered as sakti in relation to the bell itself; when considered in relation to sexual imagery, the clapper would be male, Siva, and the enveloping bell itself would be Sakti. [BACK]

33. All this is related to the issue of the differences in the relations between male and female deities among the benign deities and the dangerous deities, which we discussed m chapter 8. [BACK]

34. They cannot be ranked by some unifying scale of purity, for the benign gods are supremely pure, while the dangerous gods belong to a realm where conditions of purity and impurity are irrelevant. [BACK]

35. As we will see later, in the public religion of the city most vividly and clearly in the Nine Durgas performances (chap. 15), much of the "message" of sacrifice is specifically directed to male citizens of the city. The preferential sacrifice of male animals was general m South Asia. Kane quotes the Kalika Purana^{[ *]} , which after an extensive listing of animals proper to be sacrificed to Devi (the list including human beings and "blood from one's own body"), adds that ''females of the species specified . . . were not to be offered as bali and the person who did so would go to hell" (1968-1971, vol. V, p. 164). Whatever additional meanings that Hindu or Newar emphases on male sacrifice may have, since neolithic times the sacrifice of male rather than female animals has been everywhere more prevalent m large part because of the critical relation of the number of female livestock to the quantity of births and thus new stock. [BACK]

36. As Kane puts it, "The convenient belief from very ancient rimes has been that a victim offered m sacrifice to gods and pitrs^{[ *]} went to heaven. . .. Hemadri quotes verses saying that all the animals such as the buffalo that are employed for (gratifying) Devi go to heaven and those that kill them incur no sin" (1968-1977, vol. V, 168). [BACK]

37. Stevenson reported of Kathiawar^{[ *]} that when "non-Brahmans are about to offer a goat at Dasera [the Newars' Mohani] the shaking and quivering of the goat is a clear sign that it is acceptable" (1920, 122). She implies that this is associated with an idea of the possession of the goat by the deity. [BACK]

38. In some Bhaktapur households which are relatively modernized, secularized and, therefore, closer to general Nepalese culture, animals that are sacrificed primarily for feasts—and therefore with perfunctory ritual—are sometimes decapitated. [BACK]

39. In contrast to the killing of animals for food, the killing of wild "game" for sport by Ksatriyas^{[ *]} has generally in South Asia been considered a nonstigmatizing aristocratic activity, like the killing of foes in warfare (compare the discussion of king and Brahman in chap. 10). [BACK]

40. The highest-status public sacrificer is the Acaju, who performs the sacrifice for, "in the name of," the leading client. Sometimes when an animal is dedicated and offered at a mandalic^{[ *]} pitha , or at a local temple of Ganesa^{[ *]} , the killing may be done by some member of one of the low castes, a Po(n), Jugi, or Nae, who may be attached to the temple as a "guardian," a dya: pala . [BACK]

41. K. B. Bista notes, without giving details, "festivals of the head" among at least two non-Newar Chetri groups, in which the head of the sacrificial animal is shared at a special feast for the leading male members of the family group (1972, 104, 107). [BACK]

42. Among the Po(n)s there are occasions, such as following the birth of a child, when a pig sacrifice is made and the siu is distributed m hierarchical order among family women only. [BACK]

43. This and the following quotations are from tape-recorded interviews. R. L.'s questions in the interviews are given in parentheses. [BACK]

44. As Kierkegaard put it in relation to Abraham's imminent sacrifice of Isaac, unless Abraham doubted the meaning of his act and thus suspected that the sacrifice of his son might possibly be only a common murder—and of an exceptionally reprehensible sort—his faith had no significance. "The ethical expression for what Abraham did is, that he would murder Isaac; the religious expression is, that he would sacrifice Isaac; but precisely in this contradiction consists the dread which can well make a man sleepless, and yet Abraham is not what he is without this dread" (Kierkegaard [1843] 1954, 41). I have previously used this quotation (1973, 352) to suggest the kind of ethical dilemmas that Tahitian village society tries to avoid, and is generally able to avoid, but which, in contrast, proliferate in complex societies such as Bhaktapur's, giving rise to new problems, solutions, and sensibilities. [BACK]

45. The secret religion of the cellular groups corresponds to Fustel's conception of the cellular aspects of family religion in the ancient Indo-European city. "Each family has its religion, its gods, its priesthood. Religious isolation is a law with it; its ceremonies are secret" (Fustel de Coulanges 1956, 113). [BACK]

46. This cellular privacy also greatly reduces the number of things that any competent citizen must know about. Thus, aspects of information management in a complex traditional society are also at issue here. [BACK]

47. In other kinds of societies and historical conditions full secrecy may, of course, exist (alongside of groups who will, like the groups in Bhaktapur, advertise that they have secrets), and its symbolic implications will be directed entirely toward the members within the unit which holds the secrets. [BACK]

48. Of course, the danger is also to the holders of the secret, who, like the Wizard of Oz, may lose the power of the secret if it becomes public knowledge. Insofar as this brings about the collapse of the sociocultural system organized through secrets, however, it is also a genuine threat to the violator. [BACK]

49. The loss of the secrets of an urban unit with a resulting loss of the differentiation of information is analogous m part to the social uses, conceptions, emotional implications, and metaphorical extensions of "purity" and "impurity" (chap. 11). [BACK]

50. As we have discussed, this escape from the constraints of ordinary logic and fixed social relations and physical forms is an important part of the legends, classification, appearance, and behavior of the dangerous deities m contrast to the ordinary ones. [BACK]

51. Newar Brahmans, because they are both "ordinary" priests and Tantric gurus , embody the opposition of being guardians of the moral realm and guides to its proper violation. [BACK]