Devi S Dance The Interweaving of Politic

Devs Dance: The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in
Kathmandu Valley
Jeffrey S. Lidke
On June 1, 2001, shots rang out from Nepals Royal Palace. Later that night Nepals home
minister reported to the world a crime of Shakespearean dimensions: the Crown Prince
Dipendra, in a state of drugged and drunken rage, had gunned down his father, mother,
sister, younger brother, and several other family members before turning the trigger on
himself and thereby extinguishing an entire dynastic bloodline. Immediately, a majority of
Nepalese asserted that this official-line was a cover-up.1 They pointed their collective finger
at new King Gyanendra and his son Paras claiming that they had orchestrated a coup with
the backing of the military and perhaps extra-national forces. Several powerful forces
would have likely had interest in the death of former King Birendra Shah Deva. The
Maoists, funded by terrorist forces outside Nepal, saw him as the symbol of the old regime,
a regime predicated on unjust and unquestioned hierarchies justified by superstitions and
religious ideologies. Hindu factions in India were deeply troubled by his open policy
towards their potential enemies, the Chinese, and were further angered by his commitment
to restricting Indian immigrants. The United Marxist Leninists, funded by Chinese Maoist
groups, resented King Birendras powerful hold on the Nepalese majority who still
regarded him as a god-king. Some speculate that King Gyanendras early taste of the throne
International Journal of Hindu Studies 10, 1 (April 2006): 0000
2006 by Springer
2 / Jeffrey S. Lidke
drove him to align himself with any possible combination of anti-Birendra forces in order
to fulfill his ambitions for power.2
My purpose herein is not to state what really happened on that night of June 1st.
Instead I wish to consider that tragic historical moment, together with its subsequent
multiple, conflicting attempts at interpretation, as a metonym for Nepalese Tantra. Let us
imagine the assassination of King Birendra and his family as a Katriya ritual of violence.
In the royal dining hall on the night of June 1st the entire royal family is together. King
Birendra with his wife Aishvarya, Crown Prince Dipendra, Princess Komal, the soon-to-be
Prince Paras, and the soon-to-be-queen are among those seated at the regal dining table. We
are told that a fight broke out between Dipendra and his mother-queen Aishvarya regarding
his choice of bride. However, all of those who would have witnessed such an event are
either dead or in the current line of succession and are either unable or plausibly unwilling
to tell us what really happened. All that we can say for certain is that bullets were fired,
blood was shed, and that from that violent sacrifice power transferred. In the wake of this
act, multiple voices now claim to state the truth.
The ha lineage is no stranger to violence. As Katriyas from the Gorkha hills of
western Nepal, the has are famous for their fearless and merciless fighting capacities.
From the time of Pthv Nrya~a has conquest of the valley in the eighteenth century,
the ha lineage has utilized kta Tantra ideology by which to orchestrate their regime.
The heart of this ideology is blood-sacrifice, the power to kill being the trademark and
sustenance of their chosen deity (iadevat), the goddess Tripurasundar who in Nepal
conflates both the benign (saumya) and horrific (ugra) aspects of female divinity. As such
she is at once Lakm, a goddess of beauty, wealth, and wisdom, and Kl, a goddess of
destruction. The combination of these two deities crystallize as Durg Mahimardin, the
goddess who slays the buffalo-demon. At once beautiful and terrifying, Durg is the
goddess of kings, created, the Sanskrit texts tell us, as the sum total of all the powers of the
gods. She is the ultimate military juggernaut. Invincible, forever demanding blood-sacrifice.
The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 3
Yet, she is simultaneously the abode of peace, the goal of yogins, and the ultimate condition
of purity. The living goddess, Kumr, whose virginal purity is honored by blood offerings
on the occasion of Navartri, the national holiday celebrated biannually during which blood
is offered as the lingua franca of the divine, concretizes these contradictions.
On June 1st King Birendra, an initiate and patron of kta Tantra, became himself an
offering of blood to the greater forces of the politico-religious institution that sacrificed him,
thereby fulfilling a prophecy made by Pthv Nrya~a ha two centuries earlier in his
Divyopadea. In the wake of Birendras death, the high officials of Tantra are left with
many questions. Will the living goddess, the Kumr, accept the new king? Will the
network of power places within the valley continue to energize its core, the cultural bindu
that the king represents? And, perhaps, most importantly, will Nepals various ethnic
groups accept the new king as the symbolic and ritual core of their complex cultural
network.
The answer to these questions depend upon the vantage point from which one views the
complex cultural ma~ala that is Nepal. In this essay I wish to stand from both the center
and the periphery to view Nepalese Tantra as an intersection of several traditions, a chorus
of multiple voices, a ma~ala of varied hues and multiple patterns. The center itself is the
institution of kingship. Kingship speaks in the language of Sanskrit and its Gorkha-birthed
dialect, Nepali. The peripheries are the Nevr and shamanic cultures, which dialogue with,
impact, and are in turn shaped by the politico-religious discourse of the center. In this
system the center is ever shifting. The relationship of the center to the periphery is dynamic,
fluid, and interchanging. At the center the king and his network of Tantric priests and gurus
speak both an elitist ritual language of Sanskrit and the local dialect Nevari. At the
peripheries numerous ethnic communities utilize a variety of vernacular languages and
distinct ritual patterns that are all linked to a shared notion of the goddess as a ma~alicemblem of kingship. These ritual patterns share in common the utilization of blood-sacrifice
as a technology for producing states of possession.
THE VIEW FROM THE SANSKRITIZED CENTER
One of the primary texts of the Sanskritic tradition of Nepalese Tantra is the Vmakevara
Tantra, which comprises both the Nityoaikr~ava (Sixteen-fold Ocean of the Eternal
Goddess) and the Yoginhdaya (Heart of the Yogin). Nepalese initiates of the
Vmakevara engage daily in visual and sonic technologies that encode the yogic body as
the body of the goddess. From this pan-Indian scripture, which entered Nepal at least by
the twelfth century,3 arose hundreds of ritual manuscripts, paddhatis, written not just in
Sanskrit but Nevari, Nepali, and Maithili, too. Itself a ritual manual, the Vmakevara takes
as one of its primary aims the establishment of guidelines for constructing the highest form
(parrpa) of the goddess, the r Yantra, which functions as an iconographic
representation of divinity as light-awareness-power (prakavimaraakti) and sound
(nda) resulting in the projection of the universe as a vibrating, sonic emission of
consciousness. As an iconographic image of this projection, the r Yantra is both absolute
and holographic. It is the totality of being with the potential to replicate itself indefinitely
within itself. The universe, as the embodied form of Dev, is a r Yantra. The human
body, the Vmakevara tells us, is likewise a r Yantra, being a microcosmic replication of
the whole. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the r Yantra is a mediating
sphere, a mesocosm, functioning to encode the microcosm with the complete power and
wisdom of the macrocosm.
This is precisely where the discourse of Sanskrit, spoken at the heart of Nepals cultural
ma~ala, becomes a potent discourse for orchestrating political agendas. Since at least the
eighth-century the Kathmandu Valley has been described as a ma~ala with the king
positioned as its lord (ma~alevara). At the very least, the political use of the ma~ala
theology was an appropriation of an effective ritual and theological system which enables
individuals to think and act as gods. Ma~ala-logic distorts the boundaries between the
inner and outer. Through complex ritual practices, initiates of ma~ala traditions inscribe
sacred geography into themselves. [The practitioner] simply reproduced, writes Mark
Dyczkowski (2001: 44),
the temple and the original wayfaring life in his imagination by means of symbolic
representations. These, and the sacred space he created to perform the prescribed rituals
and Yoga, he projected into himself. Accordingly, the sacred geographies of such cults
lay close to the edge of redundancy and were subject to considerable transformation and
assimilation into the greater encompassinggeographies.
Through the very same processes practitioners could likewise inscribe their inner
psychophysiology onto their external environment.
This kind of inside-out perspectivalism traces back to the Pur~as. In the Matsya Pur~a
(167.1325) we read a paradigmatic account of the origins of the cosmos. At the time of
dissolution, we are told, Vi~u sleeps atop the waters of his own creative potential,
containing the universe within himself as his own cosmic dream. When he awakens his
inner potency emanates through his navel as the god Brahm who in turn generates the
universe as a perfect ma~ala containing Mount Meru at its center, surrounded by oceans
and islands with multiple hells and heavens. This is the cosmic territory, the universal
ma~ala, over which Vi~u is lord (ma~alea). It is this same vision of absolute kingship
that Nepalese kings seek to appropriate and reconstruct when they proclaim themselves
incarnations (avatra) of Vi~u.4
This vision of Vi~u as the cosmic king is made directly relevant to the establishment of
the land of Nepal in the Neplmhtmya, a circa seventeenth-century Sanskrit text that
must be read in tandem with the Nityoaikr~ava if one is to understand the relationship
of idealized constructions of space (detailed in the Nityoaikr~ava) to kingship, war,

blood-sacrifice, and the goddess Durg (detailed in the Neplmhtmya). The
Neplmhtmya comprises thirty chapters of the 185-chapter Himavatkha~a Pur~a.
While the Himavatkha~a Pur~a claims itself to be part of the Skanda Pur~a, no extant
editions of the latter contain the former, suggesting strongly that the Himavatkha~a is an
independent Pur~a, likely written by Nepalese Brhma~as in service of their kings
(Acharya 1992: 3). The narrative of this Sanskritic text is an unrelenting glorification of
kingship, linking celestial heavens to the geography of Nepal.
Let us begin with chapter eleven. Herein we find the conflation of macrocosmic and
microcosmic worlds allowing for the identification of human kings as Vi~u and by
extension their earthly political domains with his cosmic heavens. One King Sryaketu, the
text tells us, desires to see Lord Vi~u (Neplmhtmya 11.2223). Towards this end and
with the sage Nradas approval he constructs an image of Vi~u and holds a festival. The
next morning he travels with Nrada to the abode of Lord Vi~u, prostrates before him, and
requests him to attend the wedding of his daughter. Pleased with King Sryaketus
devotion, Lord Vi~u responds by making a pilgrimage of the sacred sites of the
Kathmandu Valley and establishing the valley as the field of the most difficult attainment
(paramadulabhe) (11.121) to be seen as non-distinct from the world of Vi~u (11.101).
Those who visit this sanctified field will attain Vi~us eternal heaven (12.5), and those
who hear the account of its establishment will conquer their enemies and gain victory in
war (12.52).
Interestingly, we must thumb backwards in the text in order to move forward in time to a
point after Vi~u has established himself in the valley, and particularly on the hill of
Dolagiri, at a site now marked by the Cgu Nrya~a fort and temple complex. It was at
this site that Vi~u, a symbol of Indian Licchavian kingship (see discussion in Lidke 1996),
was attacked by the Daityas, likely the Nevr resistance forces. The Daityas, we read, were
about to conquer Vi~u and his army when at last he resorted to his ultimate weapon: the
great goddess (mahevar), support of all the worlds, she whose power has no end
(Neplmhtmya 3.6162). Assuming the form of Durg, seated upon a lion, she slays
the entire army of Daityas save their great leader, Dnava. Knowing that he is no match for
the great goddess, Dnava offers himself as a sacrifice and requests, After slaying me,
please abide here [in this place] (4.39). The Devs response is key for understanding
battle as sacrifice:
The daughter of the mountain (Prvat) said: O King of the Dnavas, you have achieved a
knowledge which is extremely rare. O best Asura, no animals live forever. O Dnava,
know everything that is visible or audible as perishable.O best Asura, killing you, the
sharp one, in battle, I will reside hereafter your name with the desire to favor [my]
devotees (4.4041, 44; Acharyas translation [1992: 50]).
Echoing the sentiments of another Sanskritic war-text, the Bhagavad Gt, the
Neplmhtmya here equates death in battle with liberation. The enemy, Dnava, is
likened to an animal as he is told that he like all beings is impermanent. Yet as a sacrifice to
the supreme goddess, Dnava attains immortality. From his slain body arises an eternal
shaft (liga) of light.
The demonic other is transformed into an aspect of the Dev, she who is the origin of
Sanskrit, through sacrifice. Death propitiates the goddess enabling her to re-establish
Vi~us divine territory as the earthly territory of those human kings who worship her as
the power of the godhead (see Harper 2002: 11531).
Epigraphic evidence reveals that the practice of establishing Nepal as a sacred field with
kings as its divine overlord traces back to at least the eighth century BCE. In a Sanskritic
inscription dated at 720 BCE the Licchavian king Jayadeva proclaims his political territory
to be Neplama~ala:
Om, hail! From Kailsaka palace, the Divine Lord, king of kings, conducting his
virtuous rule unblemished [strikes the sound of well being].r Jayadeva after asking
the people of Nepla ma~ala of their welfare issues the following orders to the
people:withyou, the highest in the hierarchy of castes, divinities of the earth, who
have been guiding their followers according to the tenets of the whole body of sacred
traditional beliefs and practices and having desired that these beliefs and practices would
continue to hold ground also in (the) futurewe have fixed the boundaries of the areas
concernedto the east of the said area.(Regmis translation [1983: 99]).
A ma~ala in words, Jayadevas inscription interweaves the geography of Nepal to the

Sanskritic textual and ritual traditions that proclaim human kings divine. The inscription
immortalizes Jayadevas status as divine lord. His kingdom is the extension of his own
divine nature. The status of his divinity is supported by his alliance with the Brhma~as, the
highest in the hierarchy of castes, (var~ottama) and gods of the earth (bhmideva) who
guide their people according to the body of sacred traditional beliefs and practices
(sasmrta str~m). Texts that are, of course, written in Sanskrit.
Jayadevas edict brings together several interrelated elements: the powers of a king, the
body of sacred texts and practices, and the land itself. The purpose of the decree is to
proclaim that the boundaries of the kings domain (ma~ala, viaya) have been established
and that this political act is itself an act of divine will. In order to successfully establish this
position, Jayadeva must align himself with the vast body of authoritative Sanskrit texts and
practices promulgated by the Brhma~ical elite. These texts and practices, rooted in the
Veda and including the numerous other traditions that fall under the rubric of authoritative
tradition (stra), provide the ideological discourse by which a king can proclaim himself
divine and his domain (viaya)5 a sacred sphere (ma~ala). Just as the godhead projects the
world as an objectification of the Self, so the king-yogin proclaims his territory a projection
of the Self. In this way, the outer world (jagat) and the internal perceptual field (viaya) are
conceived as one. This is why a kings territory is called a viaya, for the kingwho like
the godhead is a yogincognizes and thereby establishes his domain, knowing that it is
non-distinct from his perceptual field (see, for example, Abhinavagupta, Paramrthasra
101). In a Hindu kingdom operating according to Sanskritic conceptual categories, the
construction of power by a human king is thus ultimately viewed as a manifestation of the
divine power of consciousness. At least this is the view from the Sanskritized center.6 In
other words, when wielded by kings, the ma~ala functions as a powerful tool for
constructing and maintaining legitimate royal authority and power (White 2000: 26).7
Bearing this in mind, let us return to the events of June 1st, when King Birendra and his
family were violently slain in their palace home at the heart of the ma~ala. While King
Birendras political power had been reduced as a result of the Peoples Movement in 1990,
he nevertheless remained at the symbolic center of Neplama~ala, ruling over its
numerous ethnic communities, empowered by priests, and engaging in complex ritual of
royal behavior that linked him directly to the powers of the divine. The concrete
instantiation of this ritualized status was his daily consumption of the blessed remains
(prasdam) of a sandalwood r Yantra drawn on the upper face (urdhvamukha) of the
central ligam at Paupatintha temple. This consumption marked him a devotee of the
goddess at the heart of the ma~ala, Tripurasundar, the beautiful one whose pacification
requires blood.8 On June 1st, she who embodies Nepals sociopolitical history and cultural
productions, would drink Birendras blood.
OVERLAYING A VERNACULAR BASE WITH A

SANSKRITIC VISION
While the king is the extraordinary center point of power, he is also, to borrow a phrase
from David White, the protocosmic representative of Everyman and thus the link that
binds together elite and nonelite practitioners and traditions (2000: 25). The king, through
the agency of the mesocosmic ma~ala, links not only the macrocosm and the microcosm
but also the elite and the non-elite, locating himself at the base of the prime channel of
communication between upper and lower worlds (White 2000: 25). The king is both an
elite incarnation of godhead and an embodiment of everyman. As such the kings own
relationship to his territory suggests a paradigm by which those speaking vernacular
tongues can nevertheless negotiate and appropriate the ma~ala paradigm according to their
sociocultural circumstances. The kings ma~ala is not a static sociocultural construction. It
is transformed and reworked according to its context. Once implemented the ma~ala is
continually reinvented and transformed. The king sits at its center, but the beings at its
periphery illustrate a high degree of agency through the various cultural mediums they
utilize in participating in the ma~ala. To be effective, the ma~ala must link elite and nonelite traditions. And so, while much of the royal political ideology and practice have been
dominated by the elite traditions of kta Tantra, it has also been constructed by the nonSanskritic practices of various indigenous Nepalese traditions, which have colored the
ma~ala according to the hues of their own cultural heritage. Among the kings religious
specialists one finds not only purohitas and rjgurus but also shamanic healers called
jhkrs. The relationship of the elite traditions to these shamanic traditions is a
relationship that binds center to periphery, Kathmandu to Dolakha, Tantra to shamanism.
Among the primary links in this relationship are music, possession (vea), and blood
offerings, which are central to both Tantric and shamanic practice and, by inevitable
extension, to the ritual affairs of state.
One of the earliest representations of the Kathmandu Valley as a ma~ala is a sixteenthcentury painting called the r Yantra Ma~ala, which is currently on exhibit at the
Bhaktapur National Museum.9 In this stylized Nevr image, we find the pan-Indian r
Yantra designed meticulously according to the description of the Nityoaikr~ava and

other r Vidy paddhatis. Each of the triangles in the image contains a deity who is
situated in relationship to particular temples and power seats, ktaphas, within the valley
itself. The Nevr artist Narayan Citrakar, who lives behind the Tripura Bhairava temple in
Bhaktapur and who claims direct ancestry to the original painter of this image, claimed to
own manuals that explicitly relate each part of the r Yantra to their corresponding points
within the valley. Furthermore, he claimed, these manuals teach the painter to meditate on
the r Yantra within himself and thereby link his own Self (tman) with the divinities in
the valley. In this way, the act of painting becomes a yogic act that links the microcosm to
the macrocosm via a process of systematic identification with a sanctified landscape,
identified as the macrocosm. Narayan explained:
For me painting is yoga. Before painting I meditate on the deity I am painting. In the case
of the r Yantra, I meditate on Tripurasundar, understanding the many other deities of
the yantra to be forms of her. Each of these deities corresponds to a sound-syllable. I
must repeat these syllables as I paint those parts of the painting. Additionally, we
understand each triangle, each lotus, and each deity to be identified with a particular
sacred place in the valley (Oral Communication, Bhaktapur, May 22, 1997).
When I asked Narayan to correlate the various deities in the Bhaktapur National Museum
painting with actual sites in the valley, he replied that this knowledge was only for initiates.
However, he agreed to give me a basic interpretation that would show the general
correspondences without revealing every thing. The four gates (bhpura) of the r Yantra,
he said, are the four Nrya~a temples located in the four quadrants of the valley. The eight
dikplas of the outer square are situated at the borders of the valley together with the eight
mtks as the fierce protectors of Nepla-dharma, the religion of Nepal. Moving
towards the center, one comes to two concentric circles, both containing the sixteen nitys,
or manifestations of Tripurasundar as Ca~evar, the goddess of the moon, and the other
containing the eight mtks. These deities are represented by the numerous goddess
shrines that line the valley, and also correspond to the sixteen wooden struts at Cgu
Nrya~a temple in the village of Cangu. Moving still inward, we come to the concentric
rings of triangles, beginning with the outer ring of fourteen. Regarding these fourteen,
Narayan advised:
Do not try to connect these goddesses [in the painting] with temples in the valley. They
do have their temples, but they are also in all of the temples and beyond them. These
deities, whose names are found in paddhatis like Vidynandas Jnadpavimarin, are
the powers that fill us when we pray and worship the goddess. They, like the two inner
circles of ten, are emanations of the second to last circle of eight [triangles], which
correspond to the eight mtks, the primary goddesses whose temples are found in
numerous sites throughout the valley (Oral Communication, Kathmandu, April 17,
1990).
Narayans insistence that at a certain point we not try to correlate the specific places of the
r Yantra with specific sites in Kathmandu Valley suggest that we have entered a realm
wherein map is not territory. It also speaks to a history of invasion. The r Yantra is an
esoteric image of the goddess Tripurasundar whose tradition did not enter Nepal until the
twelfth century. Any attempt to link the r Yantra with specific points in the valley is a
forced superimposition linked to political agendas. This is why Narayan must invoke the
Sanskrit texts like Jnadpavimarin and not Nepalese texts. The presence of the r
Yantra in Bhaktapurs national museum registers the presence of a foreign vision of power
established through the rituals of kingship. Yet its unique construction by Nevr artists and
continued appropriation suggests that the ma~ala is not simply a vehicle of oppression.
Returning to the Neplmhtmya let us remember that Dnava welcomes the onset of his
self-sacrifice to the goddess, that process by which she appropriated him through a death
that brought from his being a pan-Indian symbol of power that was nonetheless specific to
that time and place.
BHAKTAPUR AS A NAVADURG YANTRA
Among the three cities of the Kathmandu Valley Bhaktapur in particular has been
represented as a ma~ala and more specifically as a Navadurg Yantra. One of the earliest
representations of Bhaktapur as a ma~ala is the Navadurg Yantra, a painting that, like the
Bhaktapur National Museum r Yantra, derives from the thirteenth century BCE. The
Navadurg Yantra depicts an eight-petalled lotus containing the eight mother goddesses,
aamtk, with Tripurasundar at the center. As a city map this Tantric image represents
the efforts of medieval kings to transform a conglomerate of pre-existing villages into a
singular urban center whose octants housed temples to each of the mother goddesses of the
Navadurg Yantra. In this way, ma~ala ideology was used to construct an urban
mesocosm that linked the individual microcosm and the wider universe (Levy 1990: 32).
This was precisely the intention of the regal institution that birthed this vision. In its
functions as a civic mesocosm, Bhaktapur is not unique. We find similar patterns in Hindu
communities throughout South Asia (Hudson 1993), in which urban centers are designed
according to the polyvalent symbols embedded in esoteric texts that are normally reserved
only for the inner circles of initiates. Constructed as lived space, the ma~ala is internalized
by the people who walk the streets of Bhaktapur. For them, the ma~alic pattern of their
city is a routinized spatial orientation that links them directly to the wisdom (vidy) and
power (akti) of a goddess who takes as one of her many epithets, the title, Mistress of the
King of Kings (rjarjevar).
Bhaktapur was established as a ma~ala-city in the twelfth-century by King nandadeva

of the Malla dynasty (ca. 11471156).10 As a show of his military conquest, he established
the eight mtk power-seats (ktapha) at the citys peripheries and Tripurasundar at the
center, thereby creating a Navadurg Yantra in which the city was divided into nine units
corresponding to the nine goddesses in the ma~ala. In each of these units one finds a
ktapha, a deity house (deoche) where a portable iconic image of the corresponding
goddess is stored, a Bhairava temple, and a Ga~ea temple. The mtks for each of the
octants are Brahm~ in the east, Mahevar in the southeast, Kaumr in the south,
Bhadrakl in the southwest, Vrh in the west, Indr~ in the northwest, Mahkl in the
north, and Mahlakm in the northeast.
Mary Slusser reflects on nandadevas decision to name his palace Tripura:
Widely employed in Indian mythology, the word Tripura signifies many things, any one
of which may have influenced nandadevas choice of the name. It is the name of a
palace made of gold, iron, and silver whose demon occupants iva destroyed; it signifies
the city in which dwelt the Brahmanical triad, Brahm, iva, and Vi~u; and as Tripurasundar, the Fair Goddess of Tripura, it is a name applied to Drga (1982: 125).
Certainly, nandadevas palace signified all of these meanings. The connection to Durg is
key: As we have seen, Durg is created as the sum total of all the powers of the gods. She
is a goddess of death, a slayer of demons, a symbol of the fearsome power of kingship.
The link between Durg, kingship, and Bhaktapur is no mystery: nandadeva was an
initiate of aiva Tantra who worshipped Tripurasundar/Durg as the akti of iva. At an
interview at his home in Bhaktapur in 1997 (November 16), the Nepalese scholar
Purusottama Srestha explained:
nandadeva was a aiva who worshipped Tripurasundar as the power of iva. He

enlisted her help to protect the nation. His palace, Tripura-rjadarbr, is the dwelling place
of Tripurasundar, who protects the nation from the center. There is much evidence for
this.In a paddhati called the Navaca~anyik, Tripurasundar is called Tripuravsin,
she who dwells in Tripura [palace]. She was the gan deity of the king. The palace
itself is an gan or sacred god-house. For this reason, the king must be an initiate. Thus,
divine power and political power are connected.To protect the nation one must have
divine power .11
In this brief description Srestha situates Tripurasundar as the kings tutelary deity at the
heart of his province, the ma~ala that is his extended selfhood. As such, the multiple
deities of the power-wheel are to be understood as aspects, or emanations, of the goddess at
the center. In this way, Tripurasundar functions as an epithet to refer to the supreme
goddess who emanates out as the multiple beings inhabiting her domain. Such ma~ala
systems have a totalizing impact in that they transform all things into manifestations of the
same thing, just as a king seeks to incorporate all peoples and cultural traditions within his
domain as extensions of himself.12 Levy writes:
The central goddess Tripurasundar isthe proper kind of dangerous goddess to be at

the center of the ma~alas power. She is a full goddess, and the peripheral forms are
partial and more specialized. She is represented at the center of the lotus or ma~ala
where power is concentrated and at its maximum, and sometimes to similar effect as a
point sending out rays of power in each of the eight directions of the compass to each of
the eight phas at the boundaries (1990: 16768).
In this description, Levy captures the Tantric understanding of the ma~ala as a akticakra,
or power-wheel, which presents the flow of power emanating from a central goddess out
through a ring of goddesses understood to be members of her kula and ultimately

projections of her own divine nature. The establishment of Tripurasundar at the heart of the
Bhaktapur ma~ala indicates that she was the lineage goddess of King nandadeva and
the means through which he would establish his power and protect his city. It is for this
reason that the Nevari word for king, juju, is often found next to Tripurasundar in local
diagram (Levy 1990: 168). By the twelfth century, Tripurasundar had become an epithet
for that divine power which poured through the king from his palace of Tripura in order to
ensure the security and protection of the town internally and externally (Slusser 1982:
34647).13
By constructing Bhaktapur as the yantra of his clan deity, Tripurasundar, nandadeva
transformed his political domain into a symbolic center replete with textual and ritual
formations of power. In this way, he aligned himself with a deity whose roots are traced in
multiple directions. nandadevas royal project constituted a critical aspect of the broader
project through which r Vidy kta Tantra became established as a dominant ideology in
Nepal in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The success of both of these projects hinged to
a certain extent on the ability to link the center of Neplama~ala to the periphery, to
connect the three cities of the Kathmandu ValleyBhaktapur, Kathmandu, and
Patanwith the peoples outside the borders of the valley, peoples whose ongoing
participation in Neplama~alas socioeconomic web made them crucial players in the
ongoing drama of social and political stabilization. These peoplesrepresenting a mixture
of Indic and Himalayan ethnicitieshad access to a number of goods and skills that up to
the present day remain critical to Nepals delicate economy. They were a constant reminder
that as abundant as its center was, the ma~alas vitality depended upon cohesion,
harmony, and balance between the Kathmandu Valley and its borderlands. One primary
means for establishing this balance was through the blending and amalgamation of the
classical forms of Indic Tantra with the indigenous shamanistic traditions that were spread
throughout Nepal. The result was a uniquely Nepalese form of Tantra that speaks with the
multiple Nepalese and Indian voices that constitute it. Consequently, one finds Nepalese r
Vidy kta Tantra not just in the classical texts and ritual patterns characteristic of Indian
r Vidy but also in the cultural productions of the Nevrs and other Nepalese ethnic
groups.14 The complex interweaving of these elements reminds us that religions are
multivocal, diversified, and ever-changing.15
THE DANCE OF POWER: VERNACULAR

APPROPRIATIONS OF THE MAALA
This intermingling of traditions in Nepal is vividly illustrated in cultural performances such

as the Navadurg dance, which occurs annually in Bhaktapur at the time of Dasa in
September/October. This tradition, well established by the fifteenth century, provides an
intriguing example of the appropriation and transformation of Indianized Tantric themes by
the indigenous actors inhabiting Neplama~ala. Moreover, the tradition of the Navadurg
dance reminds us that the notion that Bhaktapur is a ma~ala is not simply an esoteric
doctrine embedded in Tantric texts and historical chronicles, it is also a living cultural ideal
that has been inscribed in the plan of the city, instantiated in its architectural structures,
represented in paintings, and enacted in dance performances. Our study of the Navadurg
dance takes us to the heart of Bhaktapurs ma~ala and prepares us to look out towards the
hinterlands where we will find similar manifestations of Tantric practice that are likewise
rooted in technologies of possession based on dance and ritualized bloodshed.
On the ground, Nepalese indigenous traditions and Indian kta Tantra traditions begin
to look like birds of a feather. They both employ technologies of sound, rhythm, and
dance whose purpose is to facilitate possession (vea) by the deity. Once possessed, the
shaman or tntrika functions as a repository of a supranatural power that places him at the
heart of the ma~ala. As civic spectacle, the dance of the Navadurg brings these shamanic
technologies to the forefront of city life and announces to all through choreographed, highly
encoded ritual gestures that the kings power stems from a source that the vernacular
traditions have now appropriated by embodying the Navadurg, the nine goddesses. It is
these goddesses who mark and protect the citys center and periphery by abiding in their
respective power seats (ktapha), and it is they who disperse their power by dancing
throughout the citys streets and thereby possessing civic space and its inhabitants.16
One myth of origins regarding the Navadurg dance, which was conveyed to me by two
Nevr tntrikasSurya Lal Karmacarya, the head priest of Tripurasundar vidypha, and
Kedar Raj Rajopadhyaya, former head priest of the Nytapola templestates that in days
past human sacrifice was offered at a place northeast of Bhaktapur called Navadurg ol.
At this site human sacrifice17 was offered regularly to the original eight goddesses of
Bhaktapur. One day a tntrika was engaged in his daily rites when a new goddess,
Tripurasundar, appeared before him and demanded his life. Through the powers cultivated
from Tantric practice the Nevr tntrika was able to capture the goddess in his ritual vessel
(kalaa). He took the bound goddess back to his home and began to worship her. Once at
his home she appeared before him and said that she would teach him a new dance of the
nine goddesses and that through his dancing the goddesses would enter his heart.
This myth presents a fascinating illustration of the vernacular appropriation of Sanskritic
traditions. Tripurasundar, an Indian, Brhma~ic deity linked with Indian traditions of
kingship, demands human sacrifice, just as, no doubt, Indian kings like nandadeva would
have demanded the lives of all those who resisted their status as lord of the ma~ala. Yet
the Nevr tntrika captures her, making the tutelary deity of the king his embottled slave.
At this point the goddess must barter for her release. She promises to infuse him with her
power by teaching him the dance of the Navadurg. For the Indian ma~ala vision to be
effective, power must be negotiated with the vernacular traditions who must find their place
within the ma~ala. The image of the goddess entering the Nevr tntrika illustrates the
complex historical interactions by which Nevr traditions established their place in a

mesocosm that now placed a ninth goddess at the heart of their city.
The cultural tradition that enacts this myth appears to be uniquely Nevr. The dance gives
dramatic expression to the ma~alic tradition of the kings and other initiates of r Vidy
kta Tantra in a way that identifies the city-ma~ala as a symphony of both Sanskrit and
native tongues. For the dancers themselves it is a medium for psychosomatic alteration as
the dance transforms them into the goddesses.18 For the non-initiates the dance demarcates
social hierarchies delineating the various castes in their respective sections of the city and
situating them in relationship to the divine hierarchies that they mirror (see Levy 1987, cf.
1990: 23134, 50171). The enactment of this hierarchy re-establishes power relations, but
also allows for the unique expression of vernacularized voices. In this way, the dance
expresses several visions at once. For Sanskrit initiates, including the Karmcrya priests
who bless the Navadurg masks, the dance symbolizes the awakening of the power-wheel
(akticakra), which transforms the civic space of Bhaktapur into the ecstatic stage of Devs
dance. This level of the enactment is the great secret (mahrahasya), known only to those
who engage in the dance.
I visited Bhaktapur in 1997 on the ninth day of Dasa, also known as Mohan in
Bhaktapur. During this ten-day festivalwhich is celebrated throughout the subcontinent
as both the victory of Lord Rma over the demon king Rva~a and the victory of the
goddess over the forces of darknessthe multiple forms of the goddess are worshipped in
Bhaktapur through the Navadurg dance. The ninth day is the climactic day when the
Kumr gives a public darana and the nine goddesses appear in the form of the masked
dancers. Each of the previous eight days of Dasa is dedicated to the worship of one of the
eight mtks at her respective ktapha. By the ninth day, each of the eight Mothers of
the peripheryBrahm~, Mahevar, Kaumr, Vai~av, Vrh, Indr~, Caumu~a, and
Mahlakmhas received her day of worship. On the climactic ninth day, the focus turns
towards the center of the ma~ala, the place of Tripurasundar, whose power-seat
(ktapha) and deity house (deoche) stand at the heart of Bhaktapur marking the site of
the original royal palace, where Bhaktapurs founding kings ruled, empowered by their
lineage deity, the goddess of Tripura.
Our day began with a processional movement towards Tripurasundars crossing-point
(trtha) at the river Khware, just outside Bhaktapur. In Bhaktapur each of the goddesses
has her own ktapha, usually marked by a small shrine enclosing a rock that embodies
the goddess; deoche, where the iconic image is stored; and trtha, which symbolically
represents the transition-point from this world to the celestial worlds. Worship of the
goddess links these three sitesthe ktapha, deoche, and trthathrough jtr, the act
of walking to and worshipping at each site. In this way, major festivals like Dasa invite the
citys inhabitants to move towards the sacred points of the ma~ala.
From the river Khware I moved with the procession towards the ktapha and adjacent
deoche. On this ninth day of Dasa, the iconic image of Tripurasundar remained sealed
behind the locked doors of the deoche. However, according to Surya Lal Karmacarya,
Tripurasundars officiating priest, the goddess is fully present in the aniconic small rock
that marks her ktapha. I had viewed the iconic image of Tripurasundar earlier in the
month of April during the festival of Bisk Jtr, the one time of the year when the image
(mrti) is brought out of the deoche. On that occasion, the districts Kumr, or local
virgin goddess, sat next to the ktapha while the officiant offered goat blood. The
peaceful innocence of the Kumr stood in stark contrast to the blood dripping from the
lifeless goat whose blank stare of death marked the blood-red core of a cultural nexus
fueled by the shedding of blood.19
The iconic image of Tripurasundar in the deoche is made of brass and gold and stands
about twelve inches high. Like many of the valleys images this one is a replacement of the
original, which was stolen by members of the late Dhirendras international smuggling ring
and sold on the international market for a ritual-less life in a museum somewhere. The
replacement is said by local authorities to be an accurate duplicate of the original. It reveals
a unique Nevr depiction of the goddess. Here, Tripurasundar is ardhanrvara, halfmale and half-female. She stands with one foot on a lion and the other on a deer. Mukunda
Aryal, professor of Art, Culture, and History at Tribhuvan University, commented on the
meaning of these two divine vehicles (vhana).
The deer is a vehicle of iva. The lion is a vehicle of Dev. It [the lion] is a symbol of
power and is associated with the king. Tripurasundar is the supreme form of akti
(parakti). She is both male and female. She is the giver of enlightenment and the
source of power. She liberates and she conquers (Oral Communication, Kathmandu,
October 16, 1997).
In three of her four hands, this important image of Tripurasundarsituated at the heart of
the Bhaktapur ma~alaholds a trident (triula), water bowl (ptra), and jeweled rosary
(mundraml). The fourth is raised in the abhayamudr, the gesture of fearlessness,
signifying that all who honor the deity of the king having nothing to fear within his
territory. In her posture and iconography, the Bhaktapur Tripurasundar resembles
Vajrayogin, one of the seven goddesses of the Sarvmnya system and a primary deity of
the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon. As a deity within the syncretic Nevr Sarvmnya tradition,
Vajrayogin is identified with the northern transmission (uttarmnya)20 and is said to
reside within the power center in the throat (viuddhacakra). As Dyczkowski accurately
points out, her association with Tripurasundar is no accident. Like Tripurasundar,
Vajrayogin is characterized as a feminine embodiment of regal power. It is also for this
reason that she is identified with Guhyevar, the mistress of the secret, whose ktapha
is found at the Paupatintha complex (Michaels 1996: 317).21
I discussed the significance of Tripurasundars specific manifestation in Bhaktapur with
Bhakta Tvaynay, a tntrika who is a member of the Kasain caste. The Kasain caste is
associated with irreputable occupations such as street sweeping, public execution, and
supervision of cremation grounds (Slusser 1982: 340), making them ideal candidates for
left-handed Aghora Tantra practice. Bhakta Tvaynay used eloquent Nevari to speak of
Tripurasundars motivation for choosing to reside at the center of Bhaktapurs ma~ala.
Here in Bhaktapur, Tripurasundar is surrounded by the aamtk [eight mtks].

This is why she came. Who knows how long she has been here. I dont know the story
[he claims, but then proceeds to explain]. A demon loves the goddess and tries to capture
her. A war ensues. The demon is killed by the aamtk. At this site she prevents
diarrhea and cholera. Long, long ago, before the establishment of the goddess [in
Bhaktapur] many peoplesay six or seven per daywere dying of diarrhea and cholera.
Thats why in this locality there is less diarrhea and cholera in comparison to other areas.
When people are stricken by these ailments in Bhaktapur, they come to do Kam Pj
(Oral Communication, Bhaktapur, August 24, 1997).22
Bhakta Tvaynays account demonstrates his knowledge of the Sanskrit sources that link
Tripurasundar with Mahdev Mahisuramardin, a goddess who is celebrated in the
Pur~as as the slayer of demons and sum total of the powers of all the gods and goddesses.
However, at her Bhaktapur Tripurasundar ktapha and deoche the goddess
demonstrates her power through the healing of such widespread illnesses as diarrhea and
cholera. Created to destroy, the goddess now distributes her localized power through
vernacular legends that speak of her power to cure common ailments.23 In these oral
traditions, spoken in Nevari, Tripurasundar is not the abstract principle of light and
awareness articulated in the Nityoaikr~ava. Rather, she is a local goddess
administering specifically to the needs of the people of her precinct, bestowing medicinal
powers that produce everything from much-deserved sons and daughters to wealth and
well being.
However, her inseparability from the kings who are her earthly embodiment is made clear
in two inscriptions at the Tripura vidypha. The first, at the eastern edge of the structure, is
dated Nepla Savat 1015 (1895 CE):
On the eighth day of the bright half of the lunar month of Paua, Nepla Savat 1015,
my dying father, Indra-Nrya~a Karmcrya, who lived at the vidypha of Tulch
ol, the Tripurasundar district of Bhaktapur, put forth the intention (sakalpa) of
offering a bell. On the sixth day of the dark half of the lunar month of rva~a in the
same year his wife, my mother, Dhana Thak, died. On the eighth day of the bright half
of the lunar month of Paua of Nepla Savat 1017, Monday, their son, nanda
Karmcrya, offered this bell [to Tripurasundar] in the name of his deceased parents.
May all be well.
On the western bell is a second inscription, written in both Devanagari and Nevari scripts:
O, salutations to the goddess of the three cities, always pleasing her devotees. I bow to
you, the goddess of kula, mistress of the wheel. With the passing of Nepla Savat
1019, in the month of rva~a, on the eighth day of the bright half of the month, on
Vikh and Vajrayoga,24 on Monday, according to Kar~a and Muhrta, while the sun is
in Cancer and the moon is in Scorpio, the eldest son Kji and younger son offered this
bell in the name of their father, Mnvra Karmcrya, and mother, Lni Thak, desiring
that they may dwell in the realm of the lord (varalokavsa).
These inscriptions wed numerous textual worlds. The offering of the bells function as a
kind of permanent raddh or offering to ones ancestors. Phrases such as mistress of the
wheel suggest that the Nevr Kji knew the textual sources that link Tripurasundar to the
esoteric ma~ala cultures of Sanskritized Tantra. The closing line must be read as a double
entendre. It tells us that the bell has been offered so that Kji and the brothers parent may
dwell in the realm of the lord but also so that the brothers may dwell in the realm of their
lord, the king of the city of Bhaktapur. Operating within ma~ala-logic, offerings to the
kings tutelary deity are offerings to the king himself. As an initiate of Tripurasundars
textual sources the king embodies on earth a realm of power and harmony that mirrors the
goddesss macrocosmic ma~ala written across the nights sky. The numerous astrological
coordinates embedded in these two inscriptions return us to the Navadurg dance from
which their journey initially began. These zodiacal references echo passages from the
Nityoaikr~ava (particularly 1.1) that proclaim Tripurasundar a goddess of the stars,
which are identified as the infinite phones that comprise her cosmic, Sanskritized body. The
constellations and signs of the zodiac are the heavenly formations of her permanent r
Yantrathe nights sky. As the goddess of the upper transmission, Tripurasundars
ma~alic self is permanently etched across the vault of the heavens. The macrocosmic form
of her r Yantra is thus the ever-shifting pattern of interrelated constellations whose
movements directly impact the movements of the actors inhabiting the mesocosmic sphere
of Bhaktapur, where the decisions of the king and his subjects alike are enacted in
consultation with the jyotias, those who can read the stars. Festivals like Bisk Jtr and
Dasa place the mesocosmic yantra of Bhaktapur into motion in a way that mirrors the
movements of the macrocosmic r Yantra. In this sense, the Navadurg are the
navagraha, the nine planets that dance throughout the heavens moving through different
galactic territories and thereby transmitting powers that concretely shape human destinies.
In this regard mtk is associated with a specific planet as well as days of the lunar
calendar and is endowed with the power to cause wars, disease, and other unfortunate
circumstances. Hence the necessity of regular and proper propitiation (see Slusser 1982:
34445).25
This correspondence between the Navadurg and the navagraha announces the
dominance of kingship on all levels of the Hindu tricosmos. Just as Bhaktapur is an
octagonal mesocosmos swirling around the central figure of Tripurasundar who is the
kings symbolic self, so the heavens are themselves this very same ma~ala. The
navagraha influence individuals fate, yet by partaking in the Navadurg dance the Nevr
dancers appropriate this power.
Let us turn back from these theoretical reflections to Tripurasundars ktapha in
Bhaktapur. It is the ninth day of Navartra, and a band of Nevr musicians is approaching
the ktapha. They are playing a tyen kl, a pair of cymbals, and a dyakh, a Nevr drum,
which produces the sound, bhat thv. And they are singing Nevr Tantric songs. Their
music functions as the medium through which divine power is annually appropriated
through dance. The inebriated musicians are in a trance state. As I observe them I am
reminded of Niels Gutschows remarks:
Tyen kl, the sound of a pair of small cymbals, is high-pitched and of an extremely clear
quality, resembling a crystal or a diamond as symbols of permanence and immutability.
The sound permeates urban space, it virtually takes gradual possession of it.
Transformed into syllables and words, tyen kl imitates the pair of cymbals, while bhat
thv, the following sound of the drum of the gods, the dyakh, is understood as a pub
(bhati) where beer (thv) is served. Such a gloss serves to indicate that the Navadurg are
of this world, part of daily life. The gods, indeed, are not propitiated only symbolically,
the bearers of the masks being fed with beer, liquor and even blood. They absorb these
liquids (which bear qualities like fire, creativity and life) to such an extent that they may
collapse at any moment, ready to sleep anywhere until the sound of tyen kl signals the
next stage of their ritual journey (1996: 21213).
The dance is punctuated by a buffalo sacrifice to the Kumr at the main shrine to the Nevr
goddess Taleju, the goddess on high. The Kumr is always a prepubescent girl of the
Nevr Buddhist kya caste. She is selected to serve as the living embodiment of Taleju
who is equated with Mahdev, the supreme goddess. As such Taleju is commonly
identified with the eighteen-armed Mahiamardin. This conflation of Nevr and Sanskritic
identities concretizes the interweaving of cultures, languages, and peoples at heart of the
ma~ala. As dark red blood pours from the severed necks of the buffaloes who die to feed
the goddesss hunger one sees in that spreading blood the blood of all who have died under
the reign of fifteen-hundred years of Indian dynasties whose power in war is linked to a
goddess born to kill demons, be they divine or human, friend of foe, foreigner or even
ones own brother. The buffalo is the ritualized agent of the goddesss power to kill (Urban
2001). Within the ma~ala all must make offerings to the blood-drinking power at its core.
The ma~ala lives through death. During Dasa, blood pours out onto the streets from the
hundreds and thousands of temples where the goddess is propitiated.
On the ninth night of Dasa I left Bhaktapur and traveled to the hinterlands of the
ma~ala where I would again encounter a goddess linked to space, sound, sacrifice, and
possession. My destination was the Nevr town of Dolakha, home of an important
thirteenth-century Tripurasundar deity house (deoche). On this ninth night of Dasa,
Thm shamans would spend the night in the waiting room, just outside the womb-chamber
(garbhagha), and worship Tripurasundar with goat sacrifices, drinking the blood and
becoming possessed by the goddess beyond the three cities.
DOLAKHA: A VIEW FROM THE PERIPHERY
Dolakha is east of the Kathmandu Valley, although well west of the Sunkosi River. While
there are numerous Tripurasundar temples in western Nepal, Dolakha is the only eastern
site of her worship, a fact that suggests that r Vidy entered Nepal predominantly from
Ujjain and other western sites of r Vidy worship (Devakotta 1992). Although today
only a small Nevr village, Dolahka was once a major site of trade, facilitating trade
between Tibet and the three cities of the Kathmandu Valley.26
As far back as the Licchavi period, Dolakha was an important peripheral site of royal
power. According to the Goplarjavaval, King Harisihadeva of Mithil (fourteenth
century) died at Dolakha while on his way to Bhaktapur. It is speculated that he enshrined
his goddess at the existing temple, called Devkoa, the goddess fort. At this site the
identity of the goddess again combines two Sanskrit goddessTripurasundar and
Durgwith the Nevr deity, Taleju. The door to the temple is adorned with the eyes of
Tripurasundar, painted in red and gold paint, replete with the all-knowing third eye, much
like the Kumr is decorated. Moving inside the temple, on the second floor in the room
outside the garbhagha, one finds several images of Mahisuramardin. Before exiting the
temple I noticed an image of r Yantra, etched in pencil, framed on a pillar by the southern
window. This aniconic image of the goddess is the supreme political map in that it
constructs a vision of local space as the replication of a cosmic blueprint of power. Its
presence in Devkoa signaled that the goddesss ma~ala extended to the peripheries, that
here she had slain demons, establishing her ma~ala through the eternal cycle of bloodsacrifice.
On the ninth night of Dasa I stayed at the home of Sukh Bahadur Joshi, near Devkoa
temple. Around 10 p.m., two Thm shamans, or jhkrs, Man Bahadur and Ratna
Bahadur, entered the temple and ascended to the second floor waiting room, just outside the
inner shrine room. All night they worshipped Tripurasundar through drumming, chanting,
and blood-sacrifice. While these jhkrs worshipped Tripurasundar in Devkoa, two
other Thms spent the evening at the nearby temple of Bhimsenthan. These young men
were naris, mediums purportedly selected by Tripurasundar herself to be the vehicles of an
annual ritual of public possession that would take place the next morning. In his pioneering
study of Dolakha shamanism the social anthropologist, Casper Miller, describes this
process of selection:
How are the new ones [nari] chosen? The goddess Tripura-Sundari, whom the Thamis
usually refer to simply as Devi or Maharani, does the choosing. A few days after the
death of a nari she moves into the new man of her choice. This is manifested by a state of
trembling in the chosen one (1997: 67).
The next morning, the tenth day of Dasa, the two naris and the two jhkrs gathered at a
shelter adjacent to the temple. Around 10 a.m. they were summoned to the image of
Ga~ea, just south of Devkoa temple where a large crowd was gathered. The naris
stripped their clothes down to a small loincloth, already beginning to tremble. A Nevr
Kasain brought a buffalo and laid it down before them. The naris bent down in front of the
buffalo, with mouths open, preparing to receive the spray of blood that would come from
its severed neck. With a yell the Kasain slit the throat and released a powerful stream of
blood, which shot into the naris mouths for a few seconds before they turned away and
rinsed their mouths with water. At this point they began to tremble even more noticeably. A
second time they turned to the buffalo and allowed its flowing blood to enter their mouths.
After rinsing their mouths again, it was clear that they had entered a deep trance. They were
assisted in taking a third drink, which completed the rite. The naris had become the
goddess and drunk the blood of the buffalo-demon on her behalf. Tripurasundar had
conquered the forces of darkness represented by the buffalo.
The next day was ekda, the day of Khaga Jtr, when the Thms paraded the heads
of the sacrificed buffalo through Dolakha, wearing the khaga, or battle sword, a symbol
of royal power. The city of Kathmandu was designed as a khaga in the tenth century by
King Gu~akmadeva (9421008) (Hasrat 1970: 46). The presence of this symbol on this
final day of Dasa instantiates the links of the periphery to the center, where the king yields
his sword of power through rituals of identification with his divine mistress, the goddess of
the three cities, whose temples and images are found throughout all reaches of
Neplama~ala.
The case of Dolakha provides an interesting opportunity to reflect further on the
dynamics of power within Neplama~ala, particularly when we consider the complex
interrelationships between the Thms and the Dolakha Nevrs. The Devkoa pujrin,
who is a Nevr, is the only one allowed to enter the garbhagha. Even on the ninth night of
Dasa the Thm jhkrs must stay outside the inner sanctum. However, the Thms have
the power and privilege of being the mediums of the goddess. No one would dispute the
power of the naris, whose blood-drinking and trembling demonstrate their ability to
become Tripurasundars ritual vessels. Yet the naris do this as a service for the Dolakha
Nevrs, who annually request them to come, respecting their power but at the same time
calling them blood-drinking demons (betl).
Matters become even more interesting when one takes into account that Thms proclaim
themselves descendants of the original people of Mithil, who came with Harisihadeva to
Dolakha in the thirteenth century. According to Miller (1997: 11617) there is linguistic
evidence to corroborate this claim. If this is indeed the case, then perhaps it is the Thm
people who brought Tripurasundar to Devkoa and who are directly linked with the
lineages of royal power that propagate her worship. Yet, as evidenced from the Thms
exclusion from the inner sanctum, it is clear that the indigenous Nevrs have at least to
some extent usurped the Devs power.
Where does a goddess come from? Who owns and controls her? These are complex
questions whose answers are multileveled and paradoxical. As I contemplated this paradox,
looking for a simple answer, I noticed that one of the jhkrs was wearing a crystal r
Yantra around his neck. I had seen the image within the Devkoa temple. Here it was
again, around the neck of this Thm shaman, whose unique relationship with
Tripurasundar linked him in complex ways to the religious and cultural web I had traced
here from Kathmandu Valley. While it was rapidly becoming apparent that I would need to
heed the reality of differences, it was also true that in tracking the Dev from the center of
Neplama~ala to the periphery, I had discovered a certain number of persistent elements:
the r Yantra, sacrifice, techniques of possession through ritual consumption and music,
and complex dynamics of power linking human bodies to divine bodies in various
constructions of architectural and ritual space.
THE MAALAS NON-EXISTENT EVER-PRESENT CENTER
At an interview in Bhaktapur, the Nepalese kta tntrika, Yogi Naraharinath reflected on

the significance of the ma~ala:
For we tntrikas, the country of Nepal is a ma~ala, which is the emanation of the god
Vi~u. Within this Jambudvpa ma~ala the Kathmandu Valley is seen as the r Yantra,
which is Mount Meru at the center of the cosmic projection. This is the place of power.
To rule in this place is to rule from the center of the universe. How does one rule?
Through sacrifice, both symbolic and literal. The yogin sacrifices his ego. The king
sacrifices his enemies. The community sacrifices buffalo and other animals. Everywhere
in the ma~ala there must be sacrifice. Through sacrifice the Dev enters us and we
become her instruments.27
Naraharinaths quote describes Nepal as a sacrificial arena (see Hoek 1993; Hoek and
Shreshta 1992a,b) in which ma~ala ideology links kingship to blood-sacrifice and
possession. This act of seeing the nation as a ma~ala dates back to at least the time of
King Jayadeva in the eighth century, a period during which such practices arose throughout
the subcontinent in Hindu and Buddhist contexts alike.
In Nepal the idealized vision of space as a ma~ala was actualized concretely in the
twelfth century, when King nandadeva employed his artisans and craftsmen to construct
the city of Bhaktapur as a Navadurg yantra, with his kuladev, Tripurasundar, at its
center. During the thirteenth century, King Harisihadeva of Mithil went to Dolakha in
the eastern borderlands of Neplama~ala and brought with him his iadev, a Tantric form
of Dev identified variously as Taleju, Tripurasundar, and Durg. During the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries a crop of Tripurasundar temples also began to emerge in western
Nepal, in Dolpa, Dading, Baitadi, Sallyan Kot, and throughout Karnali in the far western
district of Nepal. At each of these sites, spatial configurations and power relations were
determined with reference to Tripurasundar, whose vibratory essence is depicted as the r
Yantra (Devakotta 1992: 3475).
The ma~ala provides a basis not only for visualizing the country of Nepal and
constructing its cities, it also provides an architectural template for the construction of
Nevr temples. As Ronald Bernier (1979) and Jeffrey Lidke (1996) have shown, the Nevr
Pagoda temple is constructed as a three-dimensional ma~ala, beginning from the bindu
seated in the heart of the central image in the garbhagha and moving out to the four gates
of the yantra, symbolized by the temple doors. Wherever one finds a Nevr temple
which is in thousands of places throughout the Kathmandu Valley and beyondone finds
the ma~ala. And therein one also finds an architecturalized statement of royal power. The
patron of such temples is inevitably a king, and that king is inevitably identified with the
deity in its womb chamber, that cosmic ruler whose inner power gives rise to the ma~aliccosmos. Arguably the most important architectural structure in the valley, the temple of
Cgu Nrya~a poignantly illustrates the link of ma~ala ideology to kingship and
sacrifice. This temple, erected by the Licchavi king, Haridattavarman, in the first century
BCE, houses a beheaded image of Garua-Nrya~a. In the daily worship of this image the
head is removed in a symbolic gesture of sacrifice that unleashes the deitys creative
powers and each day regenerates the temple ma~ala. That this process is a metonym for
the power and duties of kingship is announced clearly by the presence of a statue of Garua
facing the western entrance of the temple. This famous fifth-century statue is a self-portrait
of King Mnadeva, who reigned in the fifth century of the Common Era. Mnadevas
inscription on the adjacent pillar, which supported the Garua until an earthquake sent it
earthbound, reads:
Long arms of lotus shine, the personification of joy, the master of all the three worlds,
always active, Hari, the Vi~u residing on Doldri Hill, worshiped by the gods is the
greatest of all. Victory to him. Mnadeva was strong, full of patience and forgiveness,
loved the people without hypocrisy, always smiling and was first to express feelings, not
proud but powerful, an expert of worldly affairs, a good friend of the poor and helpless,
responsive to guests, destroyer of the enemys pride, famous for his skills on both
offensive and defensive weapons, having long and pretty golden armsof bright golden
complexion, broad shoulders, eyes like the lotus flower, resembling Kmadeva in
appearance and thus desired by lovely women. He marched towards the east. The
disloyal feudatories bent their head in surrender letting fall their festoons. The king reestablished them as his vassals who became obedient to him. In a shape of a roaring lion
the king now marched westward.
Like Jayadeva, Mnadeva utilizes the inscription to weave together multiple worlds. As an
act of supplication to the divine king Nrya~a, the engraved text proclaims Mnadevas
right to be a god-king on earth, on account of his good character, his beauty, his skill in
worldly affairs, and his recent success in battle. It is no accident that his inscription links
eroticism, evoked by Kmadeva, the god of love, with military conquest through the form
of a lion. The lion is the vehicle of the goddess, the slayer of enemies, she whose erotic
powers liberate through sacrifice. Mnadeva was an initiate of the goddess Mnevar
(Slusser 1982: 317), whom he identified with the beheaded goddess Chinnamast, now
enshrined in the southeast corner of the Cgu Nrya~a as the akti of the beheaded
Nrya~a. A royal emblem of self-sacrifice Chinnamast demands blood in an endless
cycle of regeneration (Lidke 1996: 13438). It is she whom the Neplmhtmya praises
for slaying the demon army at Doldri Hill, the site of the Cgu Nrya~a. And it is she
whose lion-form sheds the blood of enemies to empower her ma~ala. King Mnadeva
honors her as a statement of his own capacity to slay enemies and thereby harmonize all
discursive fields within the overarching symphony of his political ma~ala.
In the eighteenth century, at the royal palace of Gorakhpur in western Nepal, Pthv
Nrya~a ha once planned his conquest of the three cities of Nepal. Like his Gorkha
ancestors he sought refuge in the Tantric goddess, Tripur Bhairav, the horrific one of the
three cities. After praying to her, he offered blood-sacrifice on the occasion of Navartr.
The blood flowed from the severed necks of buffalos flowed down drains that carried these
royal offerings to the royal pond nearly a mile beneath the hilltop palace. Through this act
of sacrifice the young king channeled the power of his goddess directly into his own body
by meditating within a secret cave in the belly of the palace (Ghimire n.d.: 2533, cf.
Bouillier 1991). In just a few months this offering would bear fruit in the form of his
conquest of the valley. But it would not end the bloodshed.
Every day a sandal-paste r Yantra is constructed on top of the upper face of Lord
Paupatinthas central ligam in Deopatan. Before his assassination, a handful of this
paste was brought daily as a divine blessing (prasdam) to King Birendra Deva, who was
an initiate of r Vidy kta Tantra. This consumption substantiated Birendra as a member
of the family (kula) of the supreme goddess placing in him ritual authority to rule from the
center of the ma~ala as the instrument of divine power. During his reign thousands of
buffaloes were annually sacrificed to regenerate the ma~ala. Like his forefathers, his
political power was nourished by an ideology of sacrifice that channeled divine power into
his body. In the end, however, it was his own blood that would spill across the palace
grounds, releasing his inner-dweller (antarymin) to dwell eternally in the perfect ma~alic
heaven of which Neplama~ala, constructed by his predecessors, had been an imperfect

image thereof, marred as it was by their inability prevent the sacrifice of its ma~alevara
by a kula dissatisfied with his ability to negotiate a classical discursive field in a modern
world.
Notes
1. Based on my telephone conversations and e-mail communication with several Nepalese

scholars living in Kathmandu during these events.
2. One of the few publications to print these various views was Rjdarbr Hatyk~ako
Nlbel (Anonymous 2001).
3. The evidence for this dating is found in the Nepal National Archives, which houses
dozens of Vmakevara manuscript from this time. See, particularly, Tripurapaddhati
(Manuscript no. 1-10751, Reel no. B 28/2, aiva Tantra Series 164). This paddhati,
preserved on palmleaf, dates from Nepla Savat 209 (1089 CE). Written in Devanagari
script, this brief text details the worship of Tripurasundar through the Gyatr mantra. It is
bound together with a manuscript of the Nityoaikr~ava dated Nepla Savat 508
(1388 CE). Working at the Nepal-German Manuscript Centre I indexed fifty-five
manuscripts of the Vmakevara Tantra, with fifteen manuscripts coming from the Bhat
Scipatra catalogue, six from the 198491 catalogue, and thirty-four from the Private
Manuscripts catalogue. These manuscripts were written predominantly in Devanagari and
Nevari, but also in Maithili and Nepali. As a representative sampling of manuscript
collections throughout Nepal, these manuscripts indicate a strong presence of r Vidy
traditions within both Hindu and Buddhist communities in each of the valleys primary
cities since the eleventh century onwards.
4. The fourteenth-century chronicle, the Goplarjavaval, carefully traces the lineage

of Licchavi kings back to that primordial moment when at the end of the aeon, Brahm
emerged from the lotus-shaped navel of Vi~u (Vajracarya and Malla 1985: 122).
5. In the Yoginhdaya (1.920) viaya is identified as the object realm (prameya)
equated with the outer sphere of the ma~ala.
6. Toffins many writings on the city/kingdom as a cosmogram offer an excellent analysis
of the relationship between city-construction, kingship, and ideology (see 1979, 1991; cf.
Geertz 1980: 98120).
7. Compare Davidsons analysis of the rise of Buddhist Tantra in his Indian Esoteric
Buddhism (2002).
8. Within the unique Nepalese system of Sarvmnya kta Tantra, Tripurasundar
accepts blood in her capacity as Durg Mahiamardin. As Tripurasundar is identified as
parakti, the supreme power, capable of assuming all forms, so all goddesses are
recognized as emanation of her singular being (see Tripurasundarkramastava, NNAI
4/17, Stotra no. 178).
9. Oral tradition places the date of the origin of this image at the thirteenth century, shortly
after the time of King nandadeva who constructed Bhaktapur as a Navadurg yantra.
According to Yogi Naraharinath, the image is the esoteric form of the Bhaktapur Ma~ala,
revealing Tripurasundar as parakti (Oral Communication, Bhaktapur, August 11, 1997).
10. Slusser (1982: 124) lists his dates as CE 11471166.
11. During this interview, Srestha was mostly pulling data from his forthcoming book,
based on his dissertation, entitled Bhaktapur Raj Darbar. I was fortunate to receive an
unpublished manuscript. His other relevant publications include Srestha 1988, 1997.
12. For a comparative analysis of the political uses of the ma~ala ideology in China, see
Orzeck (1998). For a discussion of the ma~ala as one of the distinctive elements of the
Japanese Buddhist episteme, see Rambelli (1991).
13. The twelfth century is a watershed for Tripurasundar traditions in Neplama~ala. In

addition to the establishment of Bhaktapur as a Navadurg Yantra with Tripurasundar at
the center, we also find an important Tripurasundar paddhati, dated 1187, which
demonstrates with certainty that this form of the goddess had established herself in the
Kathmandu Valley (see Tripurasundarpaddhati, NNA 1-235).
14. When we speak of the relationship of the center to the peripheries we refer not only to
the relationship of the three cities of the valley to Dolakha, Manakamana, Gorkha, and other
regions outside the valley (a relationship that will be addressed below) but also the
relationship of those at the apex of power (bear in mind that the r Cakra is also Mount
Meru and that its central point is a point of ascension) to those below that apex.
Historically, we are referring to the relationship of Indianized and often Indian-based
sovereigns and their religio-cultural traditions to the peoples and traditions indigenous to
Nepal. This exchange between the center/apex and borderland/base suggests that power is
found at all points of the sociocultural ma~ala. If Tantra came to Nepal from India, then
that tradition was so effectively appropriated and transformed by the local peoples that they
quickly became the authorities and, even, creators of Nepalese Tantra. An alternative
perspective is that the tradition developed simultaneously throughout India and Nepal. A
third, and popular perspective among Nepalese kta tntrikas, is that Tantra originated in
Nepals Himalayan peaks.
15. It is for this reason that Holdrege (1990) reminds us to speak not of religions as
monolithic entities, but rather as numerous, interrelated, and historically specific traditions.
Holdrege defines herself as a scholar of Hinduisms in the plural, and not Hinduism in the
singular, to note that religious traditions speak through multiple voices and embody
multiple perspectives simultaneously.
16. I refer the reader to several excellent studies on the Navadurg dances. Gutschows
recent work (1996) provides an excellent discussion of the role of the nine goddesses as
territory markers and compliments his earlier study (1987). Teihets (1978) fine
anthropological study offers an important discussion of caste in relationship to the creation

of the Navadurg masks.
17. Toffin (1996) notes that a history of human sacrifice in conjunction with the worship
of the Navadurg is also found in the Nevr village of Theco, located at the southern end of
the Kathmandu Valley.
18. One dancer told Tielhet, When I wear the face of Bhairava or Maha Kali, I feel
different. I feel that I am a part of Bhairava and sometimes I will go mad.When I am
dancing, I will not see anybody. I dance for myself and the Nava Durga gods and
goddesses (1978: 94).
19. There are, however, several classical sourcesincluding the Kathsaritsgara,
Lalitmhtmya, and Mhtmyakha~a from the Tripurrahasyathat provide textual
justification for Tripurasundar manifesting her ugra, or horrific, form (see an excellent
study by Linder [1996]).
20. Vajrayogins association with the northern transmission is perhaps associated with
her point of origin, north of Nepal in the Tibetan Himalaya. The religio-cultural links
between Nevr and Tibetan culture stretch back well over a millennium and continue today
with the presence of Tibetan gomps throughout the valley, particularly at Bodhnath stpa,
northeast of Kathmandu City.
21. Such associations between Hindu and Buddhist deities are common throughout
Neplama~ala (see Lidke 1996). The fact that a tutelary deity like Tripurasundar is linked
with a Tantric Buddhist yogin is consonant with Sandersons (1988) thesis that high
Tantra arose as a synthesis of the Buddhist and Hindu lineages of goddess-centered
cremation-ground practices. Compare Englishs (2001: 9091) discussion of the links
between Guhyavajravilsin and Tripurasundar.
22. Kam Pj, also known as samaya, refers to the rites of the five forbidden
substances (pacamakra), which in the Nepalese sarvmnya system are meat, dried rice,
ginger, black soybean, and wine.
23. The complex historical links between powerful Hindu goddesses and diseases has
been carefully mapped out by White in his Kiss of the Yogin (2003).
24. Vikh and Vajrayoga refer to specific constellational transits.
25. While accurately noting that the movements of the Navadurg corresponds with those
of the navagraha, Levy inaccurately concludes that these astrological associations [have]
no contemporary meaning (1990: 26566). In actuality, the contemporary meaning,
especially for initiates, is very strong.
26. The best source on Dolakha is Vajracarya and Srestha (1974).
27. This description of the valley as a ma~ala forms part of Naraharinaths daily
practice and matches a similar description given to me by the rjpujrin, Kabijananda (Oral
Communication, Bhaktapur, November 21, 1997).
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JEFFREY S. LIDKE is Assistant Professor of World Religions at Berry College in

Mount Berry. <jlidke@berry.edu>

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Devs Dance: The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 3

THE VIEW FROM THE SANSKRITIZED CENTER

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 5

of idealized constructions of space (detailed in the Nityoaikr~ava) to kingship, war,

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 7

A ma~ala in words, Jayadevas inscription interweaves the geography of Nepal to the

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 9

OVERLAYING A VERNACULAR BASE WITH A

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 11

Yantra designed meticulously according to the description of the Nityoaikr~ava and

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 13

BHAKTAPUR AS A NAVADURG YANTRA

Bhaktapur was established as a ma~ala-city in the twelfth-century by King nandadeva

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 15

nandadeva was a aiva who worshipped Tripurasundar as the power of iva. He

The central goddess Tripurasundar isthe proper kind of dangerous goddess to be at

through a ring of goddesses understood to be members of her kula and ultimately

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 17

THE DANCE OF POWER: VERNACULAR

This intermingling of traditions in Nepal is vividly illustrated in cultural performances such

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 19

complex historical interactions by which Nevr traditions established their place in a

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 21

Here in Bhaktapur, Tripurasundar is surrounded by the aamtk [eight mtks].

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 23

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 25

DOLAKHA: A VIEW FROM THE PERIPHERY

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 27

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 29

THE MAALAS NON-EXISTENT EVER-PRESENT CENTER

At an interview in Bhaktapur, the Nepalese kta tntrika, Yogi Naraharinath reflected on

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 31

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 33

heaven of which Neplama~ala, constructed by his predecessors, had been an imperfect

1. Based on my telephone conversations and e-mail communication with several Nepalese

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 35

4. The fourteenth-century chronicle, the Goplarjavaval, carefully traces the lineage

13. The twelfth century is a watershed for Tripurasundar traditions in Neplama~ala. In

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 37

anthropological study offers an important discussion of caste in relationship to the creation

Anonymous. 2001. Rjdarbr Hatyk~ako Nlbel. Kathmandu: Pratiyogita.

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 39

Holdrege, Barbara. 1990. Introduction: Towards a Phenomenology of Power. Journal of

The Interweaving of Politics, Mysticism, and Culture in Kathmandu Valley / 41

Vajracarya, Dhanavajra and Kamal P. Malla, trans. 1985. The Goplarjavaval.

JEFFREY S. LIDKE is Assistant Professor of World Religions at Berry College in

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