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Shantipur Cave and the painting
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Newar Culture in Nepali Society
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The Ritual Composition of Sankhu
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Vajrayogini and the Kingdom of Kathmandu
 
   
   
   
   

 

 

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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