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This page contains the interesting
articles regarding Newars, Newari values & Newari beliefs.
Please do contact me if you would like to add your
article in this site.
Shantipur Cave and the
painting
Rajmile Shrestha
Published
in 'Manigal' Monthly
Translated by Nabin Bajra Bajracharya
Nepal is
an agricultural country from the beginning. There are many natural resources
here but due to a geographical reasons and lack of skill more than 94%
people are depending upon agriculture. For this reason, if there is no
rainfall at the time of sowing, a crisis arises. There was a crisis arosed
here like this three hundred years before. The rainy season passed but
there was no rainfall that's why sowing could not be possible. At that
time king Pratap Malla was ruling the country. For the welfare of people,
the king consulted with the Bajracharyas and Brahmans from the capital
and held pujas in Pashupati, Guhyaswori, Swaymabu, Vajrajogini, Changu,
Gorkaneswor etc, though there was no rain. The crisis further spread over
and suspicion arose.
At that time
the old and experienced people gave an advice "there might be rainfall
if the painting (painted from the blood of Nagaraja) and books which is
kept inside Shantipur cave in Swaymabu could be brought out and kept in
the sun". Hearing this, the king gave a permission to Bajracharyas
to bring out the painting and books from Shantipur but they could not
do that as it was matter of life and death. For this reason, the king
himself decided to enter the cave and bring out the paintings and books
for the welfare of people, he kept his life in risk. The description of
this event when he entered the cave is inscribed in the stone which is
remaining till today in Shantipur. According to that inscription, to enter
the gate one should walk trampling over the snakes, and demons disturb
the way, so it is important to be saved from them. This fearful cave is
three storeyed and there are total twenty seven rooms, nine in each floor.
The third floor is most dreadful, there are many bats and many demons
dancing. They take the lives if they are not satisfied at the time. And
in this floor, at the western corner there are fearful snakes and they
would wrap up if they are not specially worshiped. But it is in scripted
in the stone that if these snakes are specially worshiped, they would
help and guide us. For the welfare and benefit of the people the king
Pratap Malla went inside this dreadful cave. He entered the Northern room
of third floor and in the center of this room" Shantipur Acharya
is sitting in Smadhi yoga, there is no skin and flesh in his body only
the skeleton, but the vital air of the life was remaining". The king
took a permission from him and opened the copper box which is kept in
that room and took out the painting and books in the date ' Nepal sambat
778 Ashad krishna chaturthi' and kept in the sun. Soon after then the
clouds spread over the sky and also there was a rainfall. Even today when
the rainfall is delayed in rainy season, people remember the king Pratap
Malla's great help and the paintings of Shantipur Cave.
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Newar
Culture in Nepali Society
Organizer: Katharine N. Rankin, Cornell University
Chair: Lauren Leve, Princeton University
Discussant: A. W. van den Hoek, Leiden University
Newars occupy a complex position in the Nepal nation, and in relation
to academic scholarship on it. Though they comprise just one of the many
ethnic peoples who make up the country today, Newars were once the independent
rulers of the wealthy Kathmandu Valley, which is now the capital of modern
Nepal. For many Western scholars and visitors, from the British Resident,
Brian Hodgson, to the many tourists who visit Kathmandu each year, Newar
culture is perceived to offer a precious glimpse into an archaic world
that no longer exists outside of the remote Himalayas. With its many gods,
goddesses, castes, and rituals, understanding the richly coherent aspects
of Newar culture long proved a fascinating and rewarding task. But recent
interest in the politics of representation, combined with increasing ethnic
and political unrest in Nepal, have led to new moves to integrate this
dominant trend in scholarship with critical questions about how these
worlds have been constituted. The papers on this panel continue to draw
on long-standing interests in Newar studies such as kingship, religion,
ritual, and characteristically Newar guthi associations, but they are
newly attuned to questions of power and historical agency, and to Newar
life today as the product of a dialogue between inherited tradition and
modern influences, local forms of order and the Nepal state. Together,
they constitute an argument for bringing diachronic interests to the study
of ritual, meaning and society in Nepal and offer a glimpse into recent
scholarship on Newar culture.
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The Ritual
Composition of Sankhu, an Ancient Newar Town in Nepal
Bal Gopal Shrestha, Leiden University
Sankhu is an ancient Newar town situated about twenty kilometers northeast
of Kathmandu, whose people (about 10,000) mainly live from agriculture
and from employment in greater Kathmandu. This study of Sankhu focuses
on the ritual composition of the town as the key to its system of values.
The main hypothesis of this study is that the distinct entities in this
urban oriented society are not defined by socio-economic features but
by their ritual composition. Royalty played the most important part in
turning a settlement into a cultural center. The legendary history of
Sankhu also starts with its establishment as a kingdom, comprising the
town and the valley surrounding it. The foundation of that kingdom is
attributed to the goddess Vajrayogini, whose shrine is located in the
forest above Sankhu.
The temple of Vajrayogini is an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists
and Hindus alike. The yearly festival of the goddess is also the main
event in Sankhu's ritual cycle. It can be viewed as a re-enactment of
the town's foundation. The study takes into account the complete festival
cycle of the town and its connection with the network of ritual relations
in the Kathmandu Valley at large. This new perspective on Sankhu's ritual
composition ultimately deals with the relation between Hinduism and Buddhism,
with the interrelationships between the town's 17 castes, and above all
with the myriad of socio-religious associations (guthis) which uphold
its ritual life.
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Vajrayogini
and the Kingdom of Kathmandu: Constructing Polity in Seventeenth-Century
Nepal
Bronwen Bledsoe, University of Chicago
So rich is the cultural wealth of the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley that
scholarship to date has largely confined itself to documenting the traditions
that live on there with a continuity unmatched elsewhere in South Asia.
Such studies have, however, largely ignored history as such, looking past
the ways in which real historical agents have knowingly ordered their
world.
This paper examines the late medieval annexation of the territorially
disjunct township of Sankhu by the kingdom of Kathmandu, a move initially
impelled by economic advantage, but consistently articulated as participation
in encompassing cosmo-political order. Texts from both the center and
the periphery of the emergent polity construed the move in terms of a
special relationship between Sankhu's premier deity, the goddess Vajrayogini,
and the king of Kathmandu.
Most notably, the Poet-King Pratap Malla celebrated Sankhu's integration
into his realm in an elaborate Sanskrit inscription of devotion and patronage,
likening the local goddess to the supreme deity at the heart of his theist
polity. Pratap ordered the social world on the principle of "participation"-sharing,
deference, and devotion-to create the paradigmatic Hindu kingdom of his
times. Vajrayogini's liturgy was, however, in the hands of Buddhists.
These religious specialists independently recorded the terms of Sankhu's
participation, royal deference to and support of their own knowledges
and procedures for maintaining political and cosmic order.
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