Source:
Between Veda and Tantra: Pachali Bhairava of
Kathmandu
(Towards an Acculturation Model of Hindu-Buddhist Relations)
(Towards an Acculturation Model of Hindu-Buddhist Relations)
by
Sunthar Visuvalingam and Elizabeth
Chalier-Visuvalingam
to appear in
Robert Brown and Katherine Harper Lorenzana
eds.,
The Roots of Tantra
(New York: Mellen Press, 1992)
A
Between Veda and Tantra: Pachali Bhairava of
Kathmandu
(Towards an Acculturation Model of Hindu-Buddhist Relations)
(Towards an Acculturation Model of Hindu-Buddhist Relations)
Despite his supreme position in a number of tantric
schools including the very brahmanized and prestigious currents of Kashmir
Shaivism, Bhairava, the protector of the local territory (kshetrapal),
seems, at first sight, to have a modest place beside the other gods of bhakti
in the Hindu pantheon. But in Nepal, where the tribal substratum is still very
visible in the social organization of the Newars, this savage god is probably
the most popular and omnipresent of the pantheon. Among his singular
manifestations, Pachali Bhairava is not only the most important but also the
one which best illustrates the indigenous character of his worship and his
penetration into Nepalese culture. His temple, beside a cremation-ground on the
Bagmati river, is above all frequented by (twelve families of) Hindu farmers
(and earlier by Buddhist oil-pressers) living in the southern part of Kathmandu
for whom he serves as the clan-deity. The annual festival, celebrated during
Dasain, provides the occasion for the transfer of (the jar of) Pachali Bhairava
from one farmer family to the next and also requires the specialized
participation of members of several Buddhist castes. The twelve-yearly
festival, which takes place on the day of Vijayadashami, just after the annual
festival, is characterized by an exchange of swords, supervised by a
"brahmin" Vajracharya, between the Hindu king and a low-caste
gardener possessed by Bhairava (or by his consort Bhadrakali). Through their
nine-month long Nava Durga dances at various strategic points in the Kathmandu
Valley, these Buddhist gardeners universalize the king's ritual identity and
ensure the renewal of his power and kingdom. The primordial role of the tantric
Bhairava in the cosmogonic festivals finds its counterpart in the fact that the
Vedic Indra, "the king of the gods," still retains his ancient
privileges in Newar religion. Though the worship of the various gods of the
Hindu pantheon is tantric in content, the symbolic articulations of the
different levels and moments of their cult during the annual festival of the
royal Bhairava make no sense except in terms of the transposition of a Vedic
sacrificial schema. From a structural perspective, the brahmanicide Bhairava,
the tantric god par excellence, simultaneously represents the
consecrated "pre-classical" sacrificer (dikshita) who
regresses into an embryonic state charged with death, evil and impurity, and
the "shamanizing" adept endowed with magico-religious powers while in
a state of possession. Instead of attempting to retrace the "roots" of
Tantra back to an extra-Vedic textual or sectarian tradition, this
anthropological study approaches the phenomenon as deriving from the
translation of Vedic symbolic structures into a parallel, alternate and even
counter-tradition that would have facilitated the acculturation of tribal
communities to the caste-society. The real force behind the Buddhist challenge,
which in this way also assured its own identity in the face of the enveloping
Hindu order, derived from its privileged relations with cultures alien to
brahmanism. The religious struggle, which was intense in India, paradoxically
saw Buddhism adopt the structures of Hinduism which, in turn, interiorized
Buddhist values and innovations. Newar civilization is a "hinduized"
sacred world where Vedic, Buddhist and tribal elements are fused together in a
mythico-ritual synthesis that has never been seriously challenged by
renunciation. The Tibetan cycle of the subjugation of Rudra, in which a
transgressive Tantric adept is made to undergo a salvific death by a
Bhairava-like divinity, can even provide the framework for deciphering the
soteriology underlying the public representations of death in Banaras,
"the great cremation ground" of the Hindu universe. It is no doubt
this homology between the esoteric psycho-physical practices of Tibetan
tantricism and the Hindu sacrificial ideology, that is expressed in the Newar
belief that Kathmandu is the halting-place of (Pachali) Bhairava in his
frequent flights between Lhasa and Banaras. In the final
analysis, however, the "tantric" Bhairava would have conserved a
shamanic experience of transgressive sacrality within the very heart of Indian
religious culture.
Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam
B. The King and the Gardener: Pachali Bhairava
of Kathmandu
"The
mysteries of Nepal Mandala have only begun to be explored by means of a
hitherto neglected but major source, the oral traditions and customs of the
Newars themselves" (SLUSSER:122-3).
(Dedicated
to the memory of Punya Ratna Vajracharya)
Representations
of Bhairava, the terrible aspect of Shiva, are numerous in the Kathmandu
Valley, where his cult is much more alive and important than in India. Images
of Bhairava can be found in Buddhist monasteries as well as in Hindu temples.
Bhairava dwells also in houses, fields, cremation grounds, wells,
street-crossings, the four wheels of the chariot of Macchendranatha at Patan,
and so on.... Specialists of Nepal have remarked this omnipresence of Bhairava,
the scope of his festivals and, sometimes, also the peculiarities of his cult
with regard to India. Safe from the devastating Muslim invasions from the
twelfth century and from Western influence since the seventeenth century, Nepal
has maintained to the present day certain characteristics of the cult of
Bhairava which have long since vanished in India. The Newar genius has also
elaborated the cult of Bhairava by adapting it to its own cultural context; a
prime example of this is the royal dimension of Bhairava.
The
identification of Bhairava with the Hindu king is already present in India, but
it seems to have been largely eclipsed by his function of guardian of the local
territory (kshetrapala) and by his opposing role of transgressor god
among extreme sectarian groups such as the Kapalikas or the Kaulas. In his
native land, this "popular" god has been defined especially in
relation to classical Brahmanism. The Puranic origin myth, which describes the
decapitation of Brahma by Bhairava (Chalier-Visuvalingam 1989:160-3) is much
less important in the Newar tradition. This explains why the Bhairavashtami,
the festival celebrating the manifestation of Bhairava as brahman-slayer is not
celebrated. Through a slow evolution—no doubt assisted at first by values of
non-violence (ahimsa), later by the puritanism of Islam, and finally by
the rationalism favored by the West—Bhairava worship in India has been
gradually taken over by purity-minded brahmans. In this way, his principal
temples in holy cities such as Banaras, Ujjain and Haridwar are almost all in
the hands of brahman priests. It is they who manage the eight main temples of
Bhairava in Banaras and the temple of Kala Bhairava at Ujjain. In these temples,
they present only vegetarian offerings and, exceptionally, meat coming from
animals which have been sacrificed elsewhere. Most devotees of Bhairava come
and worship him on an individual basis, singing his praises just as they would
for any bhakti god. In fact, this "religion of love" (bhakti)
is largely responsible for the "normalization" of the public
aspects of Bhairava worship in India.
The
importance of the royal cult is connected with the conservation of a social
"infra-structure" that comes from the autochthonous substratum of the
Newar culture (TOFFIN 1984:585-93). G. S. Nepali (173-4,299,304) notes, for
instance, that the almost untouchable and hardly civilized Dunyiyan, who live
on the geographical fringes of Newar culture, have Akasha Bhairava as their
main deity. They call him "Sawa Dya" or "god of the
tribes" (New. Sawa, Skt. Savari), and it is they who provide
the dancers (Sawo Baku) to incarnate Bhairava during the Indra Yatra,
the royal festival par excellence in Nepal. Such considerations have led this
pioneer of Newar anthropology—with whom we had the privilege of studying the
Pachali Bhairava festival in October 1988—to affirm that Bhairava is a tribal
god. He is right, if this means that Bhairava played a primordial role in the
Hinduization of tribal divinities (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1989:191-99). But this
process was so successful in India that the antecedent stages are almost beyond
recognition, at least in the social organization, even where the tradition
affirms explicitly that the god—like the Orissan national god, Jagannatha, the
focus of pan-Hindu pilgrimage—has a tribal origin. On the other hand, the
system of clans directed by "elders" (thakali) is still
operative among the Newars, and Bhairava is above all the
"ancestor-god" or "grandfather" (Aju Dya). Several
dynasties of Newar kings, in spite of their Aryan sounding names, must have
surely been of tribal origin. They would have adopted Aryan religious values
and social customs not only because of their cultural prestige, but also in
order to extend and affirm their political power well beyond their own
communities of origin.
The
Nepalese chronicles attest to several precise identifications of kings with
Bhairava. The king Shivadeva (1099-1126)—son of
Shankaradeva (ca. 1069-1083 A.D) who restored the Vedic ritual of Agnihotra at
Patan—is said to be the incarnation of a Bhairava from Assam. The most
famous king of the Licchavi period, Amshuvarman (605-621 A.D), whose mastery
over brahmanical culture was renowned as far as India, is said to have burnt
human flesh as incense before a particular Bhairava (SLUSSER:25-7, 337,339). In
the Newar context, the king is the center of gravity for the socio-religious
community and the bloody side of the sacrifice, rejected by classical brahmanism,
is very much in evidence. The festivals of Bhairava in the Newar tradition are
intimately linked to kingship and involve the participation of the entire
community. Participation is not in an individual capacity, but a function of
caste, royal delegation or specialized knowledge. The public worship of
Bhairava is above all in the hands of tantric priests, be they
"aristocratic" Karmacharyas (of kshatriya status), Buddhists,
farmers or of low-caste like the Kusles (former Kapalikas). The relative
smallness of the community of Rajopadhyayas
("court brahmans") should not mislead us into underestimating the
extent of their influence on the religious life of the Newar society. The
ritual purity that guarantees them their rank at the summit of the Newar
hierarchy does not prevent them from eating meat. They are, in effect, the
depositaries both of tantrism and Vedism, and their gurus unite the two
traditions in their own persons (TOFFIN 1989:19-34). "The Thakali, i.e.
the eldest in the kinship unit, is the preferred choice for this duty. The
Thakali is the central figure in the socio-religious life of the Newars,
connected with the deepest level of the non-Indianized substratum of the
population, and is perhaps an ancient tribal priest" (ibid., p.33). They no
doubt played a primordial role in the elaboration of the royal cult where these
two crucial aspects of Hindu religion are brought together. After all, even the
brahman Shrotiya is not only the pure being par excellence, he is above all the
one who incarnates the ritual knowledge of the Vedic sacrifice. It is because
of this sacrificial background, inhabited by all the high gods of Hinduism,
that the royal Newar festivals remain deeply brahmanical and even Vedic.
Buddhism,
the most important contestant of the Brahmanical model, is still a major
component of Newar society, in contrast to India where it has long since
disappeared. Tibet adopted tantric Buddhism from India, and Vajra Bhairava is
particularly venerated by the Gelugpa school, which represents the orthodox
religion. The Tibetan influence, reinforced by the commercial exchange between
Kathmandu and Lhasa, played a determining role in the flowering of the Bhairava
cult in Nepal. This is evident, for instance, in the "confusion"
between the iconography of Buddhist divinities such as Mahakala or Samvara and
that of the Hindu Bhairava. Vajrayana was already present in Nepal by the reign
of Amshuvarman, and (Vajra-) Bhairava, another name for Yamantaka, is mentioned
in a Licchavi inscription of Shivadeva II (circa 694-705 A.D.). Among tribes in
the process of assimilation to the "great tradition", lamas compete
with officiating brahmans for their place beside the shaman priest. But Newar
Buddhism, which thus distinguishes itself from Lamaism, has mostly abandoned
the ideal of renunciation and is integrated into a social life governed by
Hindu norms with their strong concern for purity. On account of their monastic
past and, above all, of their mastery of Vajrayana tantrism, the Vajracharya
priests enjoy a religious prestige (nearly) equal (even among the Hindus) to
that of the Rajopadhyaya brahmans.
Whereas the latter are afraid of too openly displaying their knowledge of
radical tantrism—which would only confirm their loss of status with regard to
the Parbatiya (Indo-nepalese) brahmans—the Vajracharyas, for whom the tantric diksha
is the central and the highest point of their religious life, seem to be the
true depositaries of the royal secrets of Bhairava. On the other hand, even
within the Hindu community, there is strong competition between the Karmacharya
and the Rajopadhyaya for the officiating role at tantric ceremonies
(TOFFIN:1981). But whether it is mediated by a Karmacharya or a Vajracharya,
this is a tantrism that fits into the sacrificial framework of classical India
while at the same time guarding a certain autonomy with regard to the brahmans
themselves. There is de facto collaboration among these ritual
specialists in maintaining a brahmanical model of society, in the face of the
centrifugal tendencies of its communal components. And in spite of the
opposition between Brahmanism and Buddhism on the religious level, such Newar
phenomena can teach us a great deal about the true role of Buddhism in the
great process of acculturation that gave birth to Indian civilization.
In
this way, the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, the Buddhists included, explain
with a remarkable unanimity that Bhairava came (as a king) from Lhasa, or more
often from Banaras, so much so that Bhairava is often called Kashi Vishvanatha.
The
Banaras-Kathmandu-Lhasa axis is a constant in the ethnography of Bhairava in
Nepal and, in order to demonstrate its conceptual value, we have even used
Tibetan tantrism to interpret the significance of Bhairava in the "great
cremation ground" which is Banaras. The royal cult is still so much alive
among the Newars that it is possible—through a global study of their cosmogonic
festivals (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1989:183-91)—to reconstruct the royal dimension
of the cult of Bhairava in his own native city beside the Ganga. What is more,
by confronting the position of Bhairava in the Hindu pantheon with the Vedic
sacrificial paradigm, with the core-structure of the Mahabharata, and
with more general data from the anthropology of India, we have outlined an
ambivalent model of Hindu kingship based on a theory of transgression
(ibid., 199-205). The present ethnographic study will have the supplementary
interest of illustrating the role of tantric Buddhism within the same acculturation
thesis, but this time through a detailed yet totalizing analysis of a single
Newar cult focused on the temple of Pachali Bhairava beside a cremation ground
at the southern extremity of Kathmandu.
2. Pachali Bhairava Temple and the Dualist
Structure of Kathmandu
The word Pachali
could be a corrupt form of the Sanskrit word panchalinga. During the
reign of the Mallas (13th-18th century), this god was known under the name
Panchalingeshvara (Lord of the five Lingas) or Panchamurti Lingeshvara. It is
even said that there are five lingas hidden under the stone that
everybody can see today on the altar. But for Slusser (pp.235, 239; cf.
pp.47-8), Pachali Bhairava would have been rather the god of a panchali
of Dakshinakoligrama, a village that corresponds roughly to the southern part
of modern Kathmandu. The Licchavi (3rd-9th century) institution of panchali
or panchalika —precursor of the modern panchayat—was an administrative
subdivision whose members feasted together in the name of their divinity. This
practice is still conserved in contemporary associations called panchi guthi
that have charge of several Bhairava statues. Thus the underlying socio-ritual
conceptions do not seem limited to the cult of Pachali Bhairava, nor even to
Bhairava as a particular god. In the Mahabharata, legitimate
"kingship" is expressed by the hierarchical internal structure of the
five Pandava brothers whose union is symbolized by their common wife,
Draupadi-Panchali (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1989:174-7). In Nepal, this
"black" (krshna) heroine is identified with the goddess
Bhadra-Kali, the wife of (Pachali) Bhairava. Her most favored husband is
Arjuna, model king and son of Indra. He incorporates the totality of the five
brothers, as is also clear from the fact that his conch is called 'panchajanya,'
term derived from 'five tribes' (pancha-jana). The ritual paradigm
perhaps dates back to the tribal origins of Vedic culture, when the five tribes
still had a social reality.
The
opposition between the lower (south), Yangala, and the upper (north), Yambu,
halves of Kathmandu dates back to the Vedic Licchavi dynasty, when the village
of Dakshinakoligrama was still a distinct entity, apparently more important and
more populated than the rival village of Koligrama to the North
(SLUSSER:87-95). "From the 11th to 13th centuries, three distinct
dynasties, all bearing the same name of Thakuri, succeed one another. First to
come are those who claim to be the descendants of Amshuvarman, and who reign
until about 1050. Then come the Vaishya Thakuri of Nuwakot, who reign until
1082. Under these first two dynasties, the institution of the double kingdom, dvairajya
or ubhayarajya, is in full force. The kingdom is a single entity, but is
divided into two parts, each managed by a different king... The two kings were
united by kinship; they were two brothers, a father and a son, or a maternal
uncle, and his nephew, etc.... This institution, which is briefly mentioned in
the Arthashastra (VIII.2), is historically attested only in Nepal. It is
doubtless to be connected with the partition into a kingdom of the North and a
kingdom of the South of the Licchavi times.... It perhaps still survives, in a
manner, in the dualist structure of the Newar agglomerations of the Kathmandu
Valley" (TOFFIN 1984:35-6); it is only in 1200 that "the king of
Thakuri origin, Ari Malla, founds a new dynasty: the Mallas who will reign till
1769."
The
vestige of this politico-ritual dualism, which also provides the underlying
structural paradigm of the Mahabharata (war; VISUVALINGAM 1989:454,462
note 69), is found in the continuing existence of two Newar "kings" (juju)
residing respectively in the south and north of Kathmandu. Man Sing Malla belongs
to the sub-caste of the Thaku-juju, descendants of the ancient Vaishya Thakuri
kings, who live primarily in the Bhimsen-than (south) and Thamel (north) in
Kathmandu. The Juju is the direct descendant of Gopushya Thakuri. The role (of
the ancestor) of the Juju in the time of the Mallas was most probably very
similar to his present role under the Shah dynasty. The southern part or the
lower part of the town (New. kotva) is, in this way, opposed to the
upper part (TOFFIN 1979:69). The Juju of the North has no connection with the
worship of Pachali Bhairava. Under the Mallas, the Thaku-juju were still very
important in the political life of the Valley. After the unification of Nepal
by the Gorkhas, however, they lost all their power. Nevertheless, the ancestor
of Man Singh received the authorization from Prthivi Narayan Shah to continue
celebrating the annual festival of Pachali Bhairava. For the Thakuri, who claim
that their ancestors founded the cult of Pachali Bhairava, the god is also
their Aju Dya ("grand father"). Man Singh Malla lives in the Kva Baha
near the Bhimsen temple which belongs to him. In his temples, Bhimsen is
flanked by his younger brother, Arjuna, and by their common spouse
Draupadi-Bhadrakali. While the "ideal king" receives only vegetarian
offerings, Bhimsen, whom the Newar explicitly identify with Bhairava, receives
blood sacrifices (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1984). The worship of Bhimsen, so dear
to the Thaku Juju but also popular among the tribal people (NEPALI:322), is
therefore not foreign to the cult of Pachali Bhairava and its royal dimension.
Most
of the chronicles, for example the Bhashavamshavali (MALLA:5-6), explain
that it was the king Thakuri Gunakamadeva (924-1008 A.D.) who established the
worship of Pachali Bhairava. The god is very much associated—at least in the
Newari imagination—with the founding of Kathmandu, because it was this same
king who is traditionally believed to have founded both the town and the
festival. He would have brought the Nava Durga to the Kathmandu Valley, would
have started the festival of Indra Yatra, the Lakhe dances, and so on. He would
also have instituted, on the advice of the god Karttikeya-Skanda, the ritual
conflict—including human sacrifices—that took place between the north (Yambu)
and the south (Yangala) of the town during the festival of Sithi-nakha,
precisely in order to prevent his subjects from revolting (ANDERSON:66-71;
SLUSSER:339). The political institution of the double kingdom was abolished by
1484 at the latest, when Ratna Malla made Kathmandu his kingdom, but the
socio-ritual structure and the practices derived from it are still preserved
(SLUSSER:91). I was repeatedly informed that the kings of Patan were involved
in the annual festival of Pachali Bhairava and that a puja tray is still
sent by their descendants, living in Mangala Bazar at Patan, who are called
precisely Bhairava Malla. This would correspond quite well to the historical
role of the pitha as a neutral place for diplomatic exchanges between
the rival kings of Kathmandu and its twin town of Patan (SLUSSER:239).
Gunakamadeva
himself would have come from Pharping and the god Pachali Bhairava would be no
more than the hypostasis of this Thakuri king. The cult of Pachali Bhairava,
involving the annual rotation of a pot among the Jyapu families, does indeed
exist in this village at the southern rim of the Valley. Even today, if
somebody from Pharping is found among the spectators of the Malakar dances of
Kathmandu, he is immediately promoted to the rank of Thakali for the duration
of the dance. Pachali reigned in the past over Pharping with the goddess
Dakshinakali as his queen, and it is said that he will come back to his native
village when the road from Kathmandu to Pharping is full of houses. It would
seem that the Vedic paradigms of Pachali worship at Kathmandu had been
established by the Licchavis. Amshuvarman, whose palace seems to have been in
the modern district of Jaisideval, where the Jyapus of the south live
(SLUSSER:119-23), was already a devotee of Bhairava. The first Thakuri of
Kathmandu claimed to be descended from Amshuvarman, though his name had been
removed from the Licchavi genealogies, doubtless because of his suspect origin
(SLUSSER:25,30,42). The "Thakuri" king Gunakamadeva, who is the real
architect of the modern form of Pachali Bhairava worship in Kathmandu, could
well have been of equally humble origins.
The
first reference to Pachali Bhairava is an inscription of 1333 A.D that was discovered
in the Maru Sattal or Kashthamandapa at the center of Kathmandu (SLUSSER:147).
This wooden building, which marked the northern boundary of Yangala, seems to
have been the royal council chamber and the temple of Pachali Bhairava. The god
is invoked as witness to a political treaty and as the guardian of certain
funds deposited as a pledge in this temple. Towards the beginning of the
twelfth century, this part of the city was called Kashthamandapa from which is
derived the modern name of the city, Kathmandu. In 1379, the king Jayasthiti
Malla gave this Sattal to the Natha ascetics connected with the worship of
Bhairava (ibid., p.367). Their descendants, the Kapalikas or Kusle Yogins,
continued to live there until recently (1966), when they were turned out so
that restoration of the building could be begun. The Kashthamandapa still
provides shelter today for a statue of Gorakthnatha and is still associated
with the worship of Pachali Bhairava. Locke (p.434) adds that "customs
still current among the Buddhist Newars of Kathmandu indicate that the building
also had had Buddhist associations."
Table of the different
castes participating in the cult of Pachali Bhairava
|
Participants (by caste-affiliation,
from daily cult to twelve-yearly festival)
|
Daily
Cult Pachali
Bhairava pitha
|
Annual
Festival
Pachali Bhairava Yatra |
12
Yearly Festival
khadgasiddhi |
|
Maharjan (Jyapu) Hindu farmers
12 families of the Dangol sub-caste: guardians in turn of pitha and dyahche |
Eldest
(Thakali) in clan is temple priest (Achaju) for a year
|
His
nephew incarnates Ajima
Day when family changes & children undergo tonsure |
[Bhairava
jar has rotated through all 12 Jyapu families]
|
|
Manandhar
(Salmi)
"oil-pressers"
Hinduized Buddhists |
[May
have been involved earlier]
|
Children
underwent tonsure,
erected pole & carry torches |
|
|
Sakya Buddhist caste of
goldsmiths, etc., who have received first initiation.
Provide 5-year old boy-Bhairava for the royal Indra festival |
Clean
the Pachali jar 3 times a year
Family regularly sends offerings |
|
|
|
Juju "king"
descendant of ancient Vaishya Thakuri M. Man Singh |
Sends
puja plate on Saturdays. [Has own temple to Bhimsen.]
|
Patron
of festival: steals jar from Jyapus, performs kasi puja, mamsahuti,
etc.
|
Just
carries the royal fan for the current
Shah king
|
|
Karmacharya
tantric
priest
Lava Ram Karmacharya Shreshtha (division Chathariya) |
|
Directs
all the tantric rituals (puja) for the Juju [role formerly assumed by
a Joshi]
|
Mere
observer
|
|
Sthapita
(sub-division
of Buddhist Tuladhar merchant caste) Ratna Panna
|
|
Assists
the Juju and the Karmacharya / co-patron?
|
Mere
observer
|
|
Kumari "virgin goddess"
from Buddhist Sakya caste |
|
Impassibly
witnesses buffalo-sacrifice before royal palace
|
|
|
Chitrakar 3 groups of Buddhist
painters
a) Yoga Raj Chitrakar (1st day) b) Mane Bahadur Chitrakar (3rd day) c) Prem Chitrakar (4th day) |
|
All
3 groups participate:
Jar sent to Jaisideval home Cleans jar with a dried fruit Feeds Pachali & repaints eyes |
Prem
Chitrakar prepares masks for Malakar dancers 9 months before
|
|
Malakar (Gathu)
"gardeners"
(Buddhist group directed by) Lakshmi Narayana Malakar Live at foot of Svayambhunatha Stupa |
|
Play
special music sacred to Bhairava during the rituals, and follow the
procession of the Pachali Bhairava jar to the door of the royal palace
|
Bhairava
(or Kali) dancer exchanges swords
with
king /
perform Navadurga dances for 9 months
|
|
Kasai (Khadgi) Hindu
"butchers"
Purna Bahadur Ganesha |
[Participates
in rituals of Juju's Bhimsen temple]
|
Incarnates
Ganesha to carve sacrificial victims in his arms
Enters trance with Ajima |
[no
longer perform sacrifices as before]
|
|
Rajopadhyaya "court-brahman"
(originally from Hindu Bhaktapur) Lives now at Brahma tol (quarter) |
|
|
Sponsors
comic dance of vegetarian Sweto Bhairava
|
|
Vajracharya
(Gubhaju)
Buddhist priest
a) Badri Ratna Vajracharya b) Babukaji Vajracharya |
Performs puja |
[Puja for individual families] |
Directs khadgasiddhi |
|
Shah Gorkha royal dynasty
ruling since Prithvi Narayan's conquest of the Kathmandu Valley from Mallas
in 1769.
Birendra Bikram Shah (1972 till now) |
|
Sends
royal sword from the old Malla palace in Hanuman Dhoka & provides young
male buffalo for sacrifice
|
Funds
Navadurga dances / exchanges swords with Bhairava
( or Bhadra-Kali)
|
4. Rotation of Pachali Bhairava Jar during the
Annual Festival.
During
this annual festival, the Pachali Bhairava jar that is usually kept inside the
closed temple is moved on the fourth day to the open temple (pitha). At
the end of the festival, on the night of the fifth day, the Pachali Bhairava
jar will be put into a different closed temple where it will stay for one year.
In all, there are twelve closed temples (dyahche), all belonging to the
Jyapu of the southern part of Kathmandu. On a rotation of twelve years, the
Jyapu are, first of all, guardians of the open temple of Pachali Bhairava for
one year. They then take guardianship of the Pachali Bhairava jar in the closed
temple. This heavy bronze jar, on which is engraved an image of Pachali
Bhairava, measures over 20 cm. in diameter (photo 5). The eldest male member
(Thakali) of the Jyapu family that keeps it must perform a daily ritual in the
closed temple throughout one year.
The
annual festival of Pachali Bhairava starts on the first day of the waxing
fortnight of the month of Ashvina (September-October). The jar is carried by
the Jyapus from the closed temple to the house of the Chitrakar (painters) in
the Jaisideval quarter, where it will remain until the fourth day. On the third
day, the painters of Votu tol (quarter) come to clean the jar with a dried
fruit (New. phaka). On the fourth day, the painters of Bhimsen district
come to feed the god, following which the ritual offering of wine and beer
(New. galpay thanegu) is performed by the Juju. There are thus three
groups of painters, all Buddhists, involved in this annual festival. The
principal role goes to the painters of the Bhimsen district, who must paint (or repaint) the eyes (New. drstikam negu) of
the divinity who is engraved on the jar (cf. Slusser:237). They are also
responsible for decorating the door of the new dyahche of the Hindu
Jyapus.
The
Juju still plays the role of the sacrificer or the patron of the sacrifice
(Skt. yajamana) in the annual festival, an essential role in which this
Hindu "king" is assisted by the Buddhist Sthapita or
"carpenter" (New. Sikhami). On the first day of the festival,
it is Sthapita Panna Ratna who receives the farmers of the dyahche in
order to give them the authorization to carry the jar from their home to the
painters. His is the responsibility of preparing all the ritual materials for
the annual festival of Pachali Bhairava, and it is he who is responsible for
the Mamsahuti (see below). Among other duties, he must ritually position the
Pachali Bhairava jar on the altar. The obligation of participating in the
annual festival was first laid upon the Sthapita by the Malla dynasty. It is a
hereditary duty, passed from father to son, involving only himself and not his
community. His role exceeds that of simple assistant of the Juju, and one often
gets the impression that this Buddhist of the sub-caste of Tuladhar merchants
is as much the patron of this festival as the Juju himself. This is in spite of
the fact that Pachali Bhairava is neither his lineage divinity nor his personal
divinity. Punya Ratna Vajracharya told me how the Malla kings of Patan became
linked to the worship of Pachali Bhairava after the arrogant but futile attempt
of their ancestor to fill the Pachali Bhairava jar with gold coins. In the
"sacrifice" called tuladana, which was very popular till Malla
times, the patron used to give his own weight in gold and in jewels to the god
(SLUSSER:74, 217). This Tuladhar (lit. "the one who holds the scale")
could easily have been the intermediary who weighed the king for such a "sacrifice
of the self" (atmayajna).
A
ritual of invitation (Skt. nimantrana-puja) is performed late in the
night of the third day by the Karmacharya accompanied by the Juju and the
Sthapita. The Karmacharya performs rituals to invoke gods both surrounding and
within the pitha, like Ganesha and Sweto Bhairava, before proceeding to
the platform (New. phalca) where the Pachali Bhairava jar will be put
first. The Sthapita and the Juju must participate in a more elaborate ritual
performed on the altar itself which is covered with flowers of a particular
plant (New. kanasva). The Sthapita must, among other things, wash the
gods that are around the altar with (a pot of water which has been consecrated
with) three uncut lemons (New. tasi). Having finished, the Juju, the
Sthapita and the Karmacharya proceed northwards from the Bhairava pitha
to perform the ritual of leave-taking (Skt. visarjana puja) inside the
Macali-pitha. Macali is, in fact, Matsyeshvari or
"The Goddess of the Fish" who is identified also with one of the
three Siddhilakshmis. In Nepal, there are three Siddhilakshmis: this one,
another in Bhaktapur near the Akasha Bhairava temple and a third one,
Purnacandi, at Patan. "The Newars, who maintain the early traditions of
the region, preserve [Guhyakali's] link with the Northern Transmission. For
them Guhyakali is the embodiment of that branch of Kaulism. Linked with her in
this role is the white Goddess Siddhalaksmi (always written Siddhi-Laksmi in
Nepal) one of the apotropaic deities (Pratyangira) of the Jayadrathayamalatantra
and the patron goddess of the Malla kings (1200-1768) and their
descendants" (SANDERSON 1988:684). During the full moon of the month of
Magha (January-February), the Manandhars of the southern part of Kathmandu,
along with the Juju, perform their puja to the ancestors (divali)
inside the Macali temple. There is no doubt a close relationship between Macali
and Pachali Bhairava for the puja manual (paddhati) used by the
Karmacharya is entitled the "Macali Pachali Yajna Vidhi". This
communal worship of Pachali/Ajima/Macali-Siddhilakshmi would be an exoteric
cult, as opposed to the esoteric tantric cult of Svacchanda
Bhairava/Aghoreshvari.
The
evening of the fourth day, the jar is brought from the painters' house to that
of Juju, who is said to have "stolen" the jar. Having performed a
ritual of welcome upon its arrival, the Juju later leaves his home accompanied
by the Karmacharya and an assistant who carries a big red umbrella, a royal
attribute of the Juju. This group heads towards the Atko Narayana temple, the
most important temple of Narayana in the southern part of Kathmandu, standing
to the south of the Kashthamandapa. At the precise
moment when the Indra pole is erected at Hanuman Dhoka, the Juju used to have a
pole raised inside the precincts of Atko Narayana, the same that would later be
raised at the entrance to the Pachali Bhairava pitha. It is also
said that Atko Narayana is the son of Pachali Bhairava. The real priest of this
temple, Narayana Gopala Rajopadhyaya,
does not play any role and does not participate in the regular worship of
Pachali Bhairava. Narayana is, after all, the pure and brahmanical form of
Vishnu.
After
the Karmacharya has performed a simple ritual before the closed temple gate
(photo 6), two porters bring a huge brass vessel called a kasi (photo
7), which belongs to the Juju. The kasi is "a small earthen pot
used for storing grain or various kinds of food" (according to
MANANDHAR:27). The Karmacharya draws a diagram, on top of which he places the kasi
and performs a ritual while the Kasai play some music. The two porters then
carry the kasi towards the Kashthamandapa, where they must
circumambulate the Bhuteshvara three times. This "Master of Spirits"
is a stone in front of the Kashthamandapa, which is considered to be a
manifestation of Pachali Bhairava (cf. p.*).
They must also go on to circumambulate the Sweto
Bhairava stone in Brahma tol while the Juju pauses for them to rejoin him
at a specific spot on his way to the pitha of Pachali Bhairava. It is
here that the clay jar of Pachali Bhairava was broken, which prompted the king
Shivasimha Malla to have it remade in bronze. "But the actual festival
starts on the fifth, with the ritual of
Ka(n)-Joshi-Bwake-gu, in which a copper vessel, Kasi, large enough to
accommodate four persons, is worshipped by an Achaju priest. In the former days
there was a strange custom of selecting a Joshi who was one-eyed. The Joshi was
carried in the copper vessel to a place known as Bhutisa, near the Gorakhnatha
temple, in the heart of the city. Bhutisa means the dwelling place of ghosts
and spirits. From Bhutisa, the one-eyed Joshi was carried to the temple of Pachali
Bhairava at the southern end of Kathmandu town... Nowadays only the copper-pot
is worshipped during which streams of water are kept flowing into it from four
clay vessels called Ampah" (NEPALI:347-8). When the Juju arrives at the pitha,
the jar of Pachali Bhairava has already been put upon its platform (phalca)
under the shelter. While the Juju was performing the ritual to Atko Narayana
and the kasi puja, the Jyapus remaining in his house had
"stolen" back the jar. On the phalca there is therefore the
Pachali Bhairava jar and, on its left (if you face the jar), the small silver
dish (patra khola) that represents Ajima. Following on the heels of the
Juju, the porters throw the kasi brusquely on the Vetala in human form.
Lava
Ram Karmacharya, the tantric priest has fasted and shaven his hair in order to
participate in the festival. He belongs to the high ranking Chathariya
sub-division of the Shreshtha caste who had ancient royal or governmental
functions. His duties belonged previously to the Joshi, a fact that seems to be
confirmed by the role of the one-eyed Joshi in the kasi puja. The Joshi,
also of Chathariya caste, are astrologers. They are composed of a combination
of brahman and farmer (vaishya) elements, and they consider themselves
to be "fallen brahmans" (NEPALI:156-7). There are no more Joshis at
Kathmandu to officiate at the annual festival, and that is why the Juju resorts
to the services of the Karmacharya (photo 6).
After
the arrival of the Sthapita, his assistant from the Buddhist merchant caste of
Tuladhars, and then of the band of Malakar musicians led by Lakshmi Narayan,
the Karmacharya, seated in front the altar, begins a ritual with the Sthapita
on his right and the Juju on his left. The Sthapita washes all the divinities
around the altar three times, using a different pot each time, and the third
time he puts a lemon (tasi) into the pot.
The Malakars continuously play a musical routine consecrated to Bhairava.
Thereafter, the jar is brought from the platform to the altar along with the
small bowl representing Ajima, which is carried by the Thakali of the temple
guardians. The vetala is covered, except for the head, with kanasva
flowers (photo 2). A specific repertory of songs is sung in honor of Pachali
Bhairava. It is at this moment that the change of guardians takes place: those
who have tended the open-air temple (pitha) throughout the year, now
take charge of the Pachali Bhairava jar, again for a full year, while other
guardians assume responsibility for the open-air temple. It is the Sthapita who
must ritually put the jar on the altar. Nepali (348) has already noted that
Pachali Bhairava must await the arrival of the Ka(n)-Joshi-Bwake-gu procession
before being installed on the altar.
After
the ritual without the Pachali Bhairava jar on the altar of the pitha,
the Karmacharya, in the presence of the Juju and the Sthapita, now performs a
ritual with the jar on the altar. At the end of this second ritual, the new
guardians of the pitha put some wood in the sacrificial area for the
fire-offering (homa). Before this, the Sthapita must fill the jar with
beer and a mixture of rice and meat (New. samay). According to Slusser
(238), the contents from the previous year have been emptied at Panchanadi
(literally "five rivers"), one of the nine auspicious places on the
Bagmati river where pilgrims come to bathe during Dasain. The Pachali Bhairava
jar is then sealed by the Sthapita. All kind of virtues are attributed to this
ambrosial mixture.
Photo
8 [Chalier-Visuvalingam]. Ganesha (Purna Bahadur)
sacrificing a goat in his arms before the sacrificial fire.
It
is the early hours of the morning now, and there is a huge crowd. The Sthapita
lights the homa fire. Ganesha Purna Bahadur (kasai), who that
night incarnates Ganesha, son of Pachali Bhairava and Ajima, starts to
sacrifice the goats. He must sacrifice them in his arms while the music is now
played by the Kasai (NEPALI:245). With the animal in his arms, he first cuts
the jugular vein of the animal, and then cuts off its head. This is given to the
Sthapita, who puts it onto a rice-filled tray beside the Karmacharya. Two goats are sacrificed, and there are therefore two heads
put beside the Karmacharya. But according the devotees of Pachali Bhairava—who
cannot explain it to me—there will, in fact, be three heads of sacrificial
victims. These heads are the last to be thrown into the fire. As the
butcher carves the victims, the Sthapita throws the pieces of the sacrificial
victims into the fire (photo 8). Hence this homa is called "mamsahuti"
(offering of meat). The Juju throws only some grains of rice. While meditating
on the instruments of the homa, the Karmacharya finishes it and puts a tika
made of soot from the sacrificial spoon onto the foreheads of the Juju, the
Juju's son, the Sthapita, and the anthropologist! The ashes of the homa
are thrown in the Bagmati river. At the same time, some blood sacrifices are
performed on the Vetala by the new guardians. The Juju then gives a dakshina
to the Karmacharya. The Sthapita gives some rice pancakes to the Juju and the
Karmacharya. According to Ganesha Purna Bahadur, the homa fire is
"stolen" by the Jyapu to be brought to the temple of Sikali at
Khokana near Patan. According to Anderson (160), it was once a buffalo whose
blood was shed on the jar, on the sacrificial area, and all around the altar,
as an offering to Pachali Bhairava. The detached head was offered to Agni, the
Vedic god of Fire, and the other pieces were thrown into the fire, one by one,
on behalf of the other gods.
While
the Indian Ganesha has remained an auspicious and brahmanical divinity, the
Newar Ganesha regularly and publicly receives blood sacrifices during the
course of their festivals. All the same, the fact that Ganesha is incarnated by
a Kasai finds some justification in Hindu mythology where the birth of the
elephant-trunked god is generally considered to be marked by impurity. As
revealed in their origin myth, it is the impurity of the Kasai—the result of
his profession of blood-letting—that gives him the right to kill the sacrificial
victim (NEPALI:175-7). The Kasai, who were known previously under the name of
Khadgi (sword-bearers), claim to be descendants of the Shahi Thakuri, the clan
to which the current royal family of Nepal belongs. The Kasai formerly
performed sacrifices during the twelve-yearly festival, but they no longer do
so now. Ganesha's dyahche, as opposed to that of Pachali Bhairava, does
not change each year but remains on the same site in the Hyumat district, where
these members of the impure butcher caste live.
The
fifth day (called Panchakom), which is the day of the change of family
among the guardians (dyah-palah), is also the occasion for the
initiation of the Jyapu children into the adult life in their community. On the
morning of the fifth day, the Jyapu bring their children, above all their sons,
into the pitha to perform the same tonsure-ceremony described for the
children of the Manandhars, who have stopped performing it some ten years ago.
The Jyapu make various offerings to Pachali Bhairava, asking protection for
their children. The Jyapu guardians of Bhairava sacrifice on the Vetala the
poultry offered by the devotees, while the Kasai continue to sacrifice goats
all day long.
On
the night of the fifth day, a huge crowd is assembled in the pitha when
the Gorkha infantry arrives escorting the sword of the king, normally kept in
the Malla palace at Hanuman Dhoka.
Then
comes the group of Malakar musicians directed by Lakshmi Narayan Malakar.
Finally the Kasai musicians arrive accompanying Ganesha, the son of Pachali
Bhairava and Nay Ajima (Nay New. = Kasai Nep.), incarnated by
Ganesha Purna Bahadur. Ganesha is also called by the name of Nay Ajima, the
concubine of Pachali Bhairava. Ajima is the general word, in Newari, to
indicate the feminine aspect of the divinity. The Kasai procession stops before
going inside the pitha and awaits for the astrologically auspicious
moment for the meeting of father and son. When the moment arrives, the Malakar
musicians come to welcome the Kasai and accompany Ganesha to his father. The
ritual manifestation of
jealousy
between the "true" (patra khola) Ajima, dressed in black, and Nay Ajima, dressed in white, is expressed
by altercations between the Jyapu and the Kasai, followed by the inevitable
reconciliation. The Pachali Bhairava jar is violently shaken when the small
statue of Ganesha takes his place beside it, a sign that Ganesha (or Nay Ajima)
has finally arrived. Purna Bahadur takes his place on the altar near Bhairava,
and sits next to the stone representing Ganesha.
After
some time the sword of the king is put on the altar, and the Thakali of the
Jyapu receives a tika from the representative of the king, as do all the
other members of the guthi. Ajima, with half-closed eyes and evidently
in a trance state, is then carried to the altar from a nearby building (photo
10). The Jyapu, who the day before had taken on the year-long charge of the pitha,
put a mixture of rice and meat (New. samay) under the armpits of Ajima
and Ganesha, who also enters at this time into a trance. It is repeated that
Ajima is not the real mother of Ganesha, but only his step-mother. Ajima is
impersonated by the sister's son (New. bhincha), that is to say the
nephew, of the eldest male member (Thakali) of the Pachali Bhairava guthi.
If there is no nephew, the role is assumed by the husband of the Thakali's
daughter. He must fast the whole day from the morning of the fifth, so that he
can enter into a trance. His body is completely shaven, his fingernails are
cut, and he takes a bath to purify himself. He must hold firmly to his chest
the patra khola, that seems to be symbolically assimilated to a skull (kapala),
and thus becomes possessed by the goddess Kali.
The
procession—led by the Gorkha infantry and followed by the representative of the
king carrying the sword, by Ganesha, by Ajima carrying the patra khola
and, finally, by the jar of Pachali Bhairava carried by the Jyapu—moves off
towards Hanuman Dhoka. It is the group of Malakars who are at the very end of
this procession. They never stop playing, as their music is a part of the
ritual and essential to Pachali Bhairava. The path of the procession is the one
shown on map 2 (page *).
During the procession, the Manandhar and the Jyapu of the southern part of
Kathmandu station before their houses statues of Bhairava doing a ritual [hathu-haye-gu] to make rice-beer flow from
Bhairava's mouth. Those who catch the small fish previously placed in the beer are
considered particularly blessed by the god (NEPALI:368; ANDERSON:135). The
Jyapu, the Kasai and the Manandhar drink enormous draughts of alcohol
throughout the festival. The participants are naturally very drunk and
aggressive.
The
procession arrives at Hanuman Dhoka, where the ancient Malla palace is located
(photo 11). A crowd has already gathered before the statue of the monkey-god
Hanuman. We note the discreet arrival of the Kumari or virgin goddess, draped
as always in red, the incarnation of the tutelary divinity of the ancient Malla
kings (ALLEN 1975; TOFFIN 1984:474). Ajima and Ganesha pause for a long moment
before the closed doors of the palace until a very young buffalo is offered on
behalf of the king. The guards of the palace throw it very brutally through the
door of the palace which they shut immediately thereafter. The buffalo is
straight away sacrificed by the Kasai, and the blood is made to spout over
Ajima. A violent quarrel erupts between the Kasai and the Jyapu over the
carcass of the animal. The Jyapus exultantly seize it, succeed in keeping the
head, and drag away the buffalo in great haste, leaving a trail of blood along
the street up to their new dyahche. The Jyapus exploit this occasion to
settle old scores
with
their enemies with impunity. Those Jyapus who are still carrying the jar
of Pachali Bhairava, stop for a moment in front the Kumari and venerate her
(photo 12). Then the Kumari, the "daughter" of Bhairava, goes back to
her nearby house. The heavy jar of Pachali Bhairava is slowly carried back
towards his new dyahche in Jaisideval, where the eldest male member of
the Jyapu family charged with the closed sanctuary for this year performa the
welcoming ritual upon receiving the jar and the patra khola. This family
must give some wine to the Malakar and rice to the Sthapita, four days after
the festival.
5. Twelve-Yearly Empowerment of the Royal
Sword (khadgasiddhi)
and the Nava Durga Dances
and the Nava Durga Dances
The
last twelve-year festival took place on 2 October 1987 (Ashvina 16, Bikram
Samvat 2044). The most important event takes place during Dasain in the night
of Navami to Vijayadashami of the month of Ashvina (September-October) during
the waxing fortnight, four days after the annual festival. The Hindu king
exchanges his sword with a Malakar who incarnates Bhairava. This ritual
"empowerment of the sword" (khadga-siddhi) is officiated by a
Buddhist priest, Badri Ratna Vajracharya. The Malakars of Kathmandu, who are
all Buddhists unlike their counterparts in Bhaktapur, play the principal role
in this Hindu festival. These Buddhist gardeners live at the foot of
Svayambhunatha Stupa. They claim an equality of caste with the Hindu Jyapu, a
status denied to them by the latter (NEPALI:169). Slusser (348) even suggests
that, originally, the Malakar dances also may have been annual events. The
government must give quite a lot of money—one lakh (i.e., a hundred thousand)
rupees in 1987—to the Malakars who have to suspend their normal work for nine
months. The Malakars dance as much for Bhadrakali, their lineage deity (Nep. kuladevata),
as for Pachali Bhairava. Bhadrakali's most recent empowerment of the king's
sword took place on 18 October 1991. (The dancer
representing) Bhadrakali is dressed in blue—like Bhairava—during her own
khadgasiddhi but in his/her usual red during that of Pachali Bhairava
(photo 13).
It
is interesting to note that the ritual calendar is the same for the Hindu
gardeners who likewise incarnate the Nava Durga at Bhaktapur (cf. GUTSCHOW and
BASUKALA 1987:140-152). Everything begins with the festival of Ghantakarna on
the fourteenth day of the waning fortnight of the month of Shravana
(July-August). On this day, the Malakar go to the royal palace and present the
king with some coins and betel before proceeding to the dyahche of
Pachali Bhairava. The guru of the dancers, Lakshmi Narayana Malakar, performs a
ritual with the members of their guthi and the dancers. There are altogether
thirteen dancers: Bhairava (always in blue), Simhini, Vyaghrini, Ganesha,
Kumar, Camunda (Ajima), Varahi, Indrayani, Vaishnavi, Kaumari, Mahalakshmi,
Brahmayani and Rudrayani. This troop is referred to in Newari by the general
term gathu (gardener) pyakha (dance). The dancer who incarnates
Bhairava will become the guru of the dancers at the next twelve-year festival.
After Ghantakarna, there is a two-hour daily instruction in the dances at the dyahche
where rituals are performed on Saturdays and on the 14th day of each fortnight.
Ghantakarna is the demon whose grotesque effigies are used to expel evil from
all the quarters of Newar towns (NEPALI:377-9; ANDERSON:72-6; TOFFIN 1984:518).
His is also one of three festivals when the Pachali Bhairava jar is cleaned
inside his dyahche (supra p.*).
At the Asan Tol crossroads, it is the mask of Akasha Bhairava which temporarily
plays this scapegoat role before going back to its temple. The symbolic role of
"scapegoat," so closely associated with the divine king, seems to be
inscribed into the very calendar of the khadgasiddhi.
During
the ninth day (Navami) of the waxing fortnight of the month of Ashvina, the
Malakars sacrifice a buffalo to Pachali Bhairava in the dyahche. Then
the dancers go to the pitha to perform a ritual on the altar. They are
accompanied by the "five virgins" (panchakanya) who are, in
fact, the wives of the guru of the dancers, of Bhairava, of Kaumari, and of the
two musicians. The role of the panchakanya seems to correspond to that
of the royal Kumari in the annual festival, and the importance of a mystic
"virginity" explains the inclusion of the wife of the dancer who
incarnates Kaumari. There is, in fact, in the Newar pantheon another goddess
called Panchakaumari (Five Virgins)—often identified with Balakaumari
(Child-Virgin)—who is represented by five stones and who seems to be very much
connected, conceptually, with Pachali Bhairava (SLUSSER:334-7). Tika Bhairava
in the south of the Valley, for instance, has Bala and Jaya-Kaumari as wives.
The numeric base of five is fundamental to the conception and the worship of
Pachali Bhairava. Kumara-Karttikeya, whose feminine power (shakti) is
incarnated by (the different forms of) Kaumari, is the god of war par
excellence, which accords well with the martial significance of the
festival of Vijayadashami for the Hindu king.
At
twilight, the Malakars visit the painters of Bhimsen tol to receive their
masks. Prem Citrakar began the fabrication of the masks nine months before the
ritual exchange of swords and at a time that had been astrologically
calculated. The painters of the Bhimsen district made these masks from some
earth collected near the dyahche of Pachali Bhairava and brought to them
by the Malakars, who also pay for the same. The dancers then return to the open
pitha and place their masks on the altar.
The
Malla kings had two appointed priests, a Hindu Purohita and a Buddhist
Vajracharya. Tales are still told today of the legendary exploits of Lambakarna
Bhatta and Jamana Guvaju, the two tantric priests in the entourage of
Pratapamalla (SLUSSER:74, 290,292,359). Badri Ratna Vajracharya is responsible
not only for the khadgasiddhi of Pachali Bhairava but also for the khadgasiddhi
of Bhadrakali. The latter also takes place every twelve years during the early
hours of Vijayadashami (photo 13), but at the Simha-dvara, the lion-door near
Indra Chowk, one of the 18 gates that had surrounded the ancient Kantipura
which is now Kathmandu. The khadgasiddhi of Pachali Bhairava is more
recent than that of Bhadrakali, and this primacy of the Shakti or feminine
aspect is also attested in the Bisket Yatra at Bhaktapur: it is only after his
decapitation that (Kala) Bhairava (Kashi Vishvanatha), drawn by curiosity from
Banaras, would have been integrated into a festival originally consecrated to
Bhadrakali alone. The hereditary charge of performing the ritual exchange of
swords is reserved for Badri Ratna's family alone, as it was their ancestor who
would have brought Bhadrakali from Assam to Kathmandu. The Buddhist priests
would have chosen the Malakars as dancers because they are easily possessed by
the divinities. Badri Ratna Vajracharya is the official priest of the Malakars
of Kathmandu. He performs all the life-cycle and other rituals of these
avowedly Buddhist gardeners.
Late
in the night Badri Ratna Vajracharya arrives to consecrate the masks, and then
proceeds to purify the dancers. Then he, this Buddhist priest, performs a homa
in the sacrificial area of the pitha. After this homa, he puts a
"vase of plenty" (purnakalasha) in the sacrificial area and
another pot called "nasa kalasha" in front of the altar. The nasa
kalasha represents Nasa dya or (Shiva-) Nataraja, the god of dance (TOFFIN
1984:488). The spirit of the divinities must first enter the purnakalasha.
Then Badri Ratna Vajracharya must "stabilize" Pachali Bhairava in the
sword of the Bhairava dancer as follows. Holding in his right hand a vajra,
he grasps in his left hand a cord that ties the purnakalasha to the
sword, which has been placed on the altar. He invites Pachali Bhairava into the
sword using various sacred formula (mantra). The dancers then put on
their robes and go up to the altar. The Bhairava dancer seizes the sword and
the entire troupe goes directly to the Kashthamandapa, where the khadgasiddhi
takes place. It is already the "tenth (day of the waxing fortnight
consecrated to the Goddess), the day of Victory" (Vijayadashami), which is
the culminating day of the Dasain celebrations (TOFFIN 1981:55-81).
The
exchange of swords takes place during the early hours of the Vijayadashami in
front of the Kashthamandapa, precisely at Bhuteshvara. The King's sword (mula-khadga),
usually kept in the Malla palace at Hanuman Dhoka, is brought by Tej Ratna
Tamrakar, the head of the palace's administrative affairs (hakkim), to
the Kashthamandapa. The Hakkim takes his place behind the chief priest (Skt. mulacharya)
of the Taleju temple, but in front of other guthis carrying their own
swords. Upon the arrival of the king (accompanied by the queen in 1988), the
Malakars begin to dance and the royal sword is handed over to the king. Badri
Ratna Vajracharya intervenes at this point and orders the Bhairava dancer to stand
up on the Bhuteshvara stone (photo 14). Having
exchanged his own sword for that of the king, Bhairava dances at the four
corners of Kashthamandapa, all the while brandishing the royal sword and making
it understood through his gestures that he is conferring upon it a very special
power. This exchange of swords between the king and the Bhairava dancer
standing on Bhuteshvara is repeated three times to the accompaniment of very
potent music played by the Malakars. The Nepali king and his kingdom are thereafter
under a very special protection. The khadgasiddhi is in many ways
reminiscent of a similar ceremony during the ancient Vedic sacrifice of
"engendering a king" or Rajasuya (HEESTERMAN 1957:133; cf. TOFFIN
1979:62 note 13).
Even
if the cult of Pachali Bhairava, strictly speaking, involves only the
inhabitants of the southern part of Kathmandu, where his dyahche is
located (SLUSSER:91), all Nepalis consider themselves in some way devotees of
Pachali Bhairava. The current king of the Shah Dynasty participates in the khadga-siddhi—as
an integral part of the Hindu festival of Dasain—just as he participates in
other Newar royal festivals, above all the Indra Yatra. He is merely carrying
on with a religious policy adopted from the beginning by his ancestor Prithivi
Narayana Shah. This unifier and founder of modern Nepal captured Kathmandu in
1768 during the Indra Yatra just as the Kumari was about to give the
legitimizing tika to the last Malla king. Instead it was Prithivi
Narayan who received it amidst popular applause (TOFFIN 1979:61). The Shah king
and his Indo-Nepalese brahman counsellors seem to have very well understood the
ritual meaning of the Newar festivals, despite the "strangeness" of
these festivals with regard to the norms of classical Hinduism. Even before his
conquest of the Valley, Prithivi Narayan had been a devotee of the Newar
Bhairavi of Nuwakot—to the north-west of Kathmandu—whence he had launched his
attacks against the Mallas. The Dhami of Nuwakot, a Jyapu of the
Dangol sub-caste, still wears royal insignia given by the Shah king of
Kathmandu, and enters into a trance each year in order to incarnate Bhairava
and renew the whole kingdom (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1984 and 1986b:44-65).
The
dances of the twelve-year festival continue for nine months, and end during the
month of Ashadha (June-July) on the eighth day of the waning fortnight (krshnashtami),
exactly during the night called bhalabhalashtami. In this way, the
Malakar dance, among other places, in the inner courtyard of the southern Juju's
house, in front of the northern Juju's house (in the quarter called Asan) and
above all in Nasa Cok inside the Malla palace at Hanuman Dhoka (photo 15). The
dancers must dance thirty-three times in all, of which ten take place outside
Kathmandu, including at Patan and at Bhaktapur. The Malakars can also be
invited to dance in individual homes.
The
second to last dance is a very particular and comic one, the dance of Sweto Bhairava, in which the well-known
theme of nyalakegu (New.) "catching fish" recurs (LEVY
1987:127-9). During the Nava Durga dances of Bhaktapur, for example, this
"white (Sweto) faced" Bhairava "must try to empty out a
basket of fishes over the heads of the spectators. Such an act is a very
bad omen, and so the people scatter in front of Bhairava, all the while
taunting him" (TOFFIN 1981:66). But behind this "semblance of
humor" lies the symbolism of human sacrifice in which Sweto Bhairava has
the role both of victim and of sacrificer. The dance takes place in Brahma tol
where there is a stone corresponding to the representation of Sweto Bhairava
inside the pitha of Pachali Bhairava. It may be recalled that during the
annual festival the kasi must make a detour in order to circumambulate
this stone before rejoining the Juju at the place where the clay jar
representing Pachali Bhairava had been broken (p.*).
The procession to the royal palace also circumambulates the stone, which had
been established by a Rajopadhyaya from
Bhaktapur who is also the patron of this dance. Pachali Bhairava, the
meat-eating god, becomes Sweto Bhairava in the house of the brahman, accepting
only vegetarian offerings. No blood sacrifice is allowed. The Rajopadhyaya, however, does make some meat
offerings to the other dancers. We recognize here very clearly the brahmanical
pole of the cult of Pachali Bhairava, the pure pole that forbids blood
sacrifices even on the altar of his pitha.
The
last dance, which takes place in the Jaisideval quarter in the Bhusa Nani Baha,
is a puja representing the death of the divinities. Bhairava, Ajima
(Bhadrakali) and Varahi are arranged to form a triangle around some sija,
rice offered to the dead. The importance accorded to (Vajra) Varahi in this
last dance is probably connected to the fact she is the consort, among others,
of Chakrasamvara, the Vajrayana Buddhist equivalent of Bhairava. While the
Malakar play music, the dancers throw sija into the triangle three
times. On the second throwing, all the divinities die except these three, who
will wait to die at the last casting of rice. The Malakar, holding their masks
in their hands, circumambulate a fountain (hiti) near the
Kashthamandapa, and then head towards the pitha of Pachali Bhairava.
Showing signs of great weakness, the dancers place their masks on the altar.
Lakshmi Narayan Malakar starts a puja during which he puts meat
offerings onto the altar and gives drinks to the dancers. The drinks revive
them, so that they are able to participate in the puja. Finally they
proceed to the cremation ground of Tekudoban. While the Malakar play music for
the dead (si baja), the Bhairava dancer burns the masks. The ashes are
not conserved to make new masks, as in Bhaktapur, but are thrown into the
Bagmati river. There is no period of impurity after this incineration: the
dancers must only wash their faces and hands before taking wine and a mixture
of meat (samay) inside the pitha. The dresses are torn into many
pieces, which become precious relics for the devotees of Bhairava. After four
days, they must perform a last puja on the altar, to which all the
members of the guthi of Pachali Bhairava are invited. These dances merit
an entire study by themselves, but it is already evident that death—real or
symbolic—is at the center of the cult of (Pachali) Bhairava.
6. Socio-Political Levels in the Sacrificial
Schema.
The
annual festival of Pachali Bhairava is based on the Hindu sacrificial schema,
where there reappears the ancient theme of the theft of the Fire and Soma
(ambrosia), represented in the present case by the jar of beer. The three roles
of Vedic sacrifice remain: the patron of the ceremony, the divinities and the
officiants. It is possible to distinguish three socio-political levels that
correspond to the daily ritual, the annual festival and the twelve-year
festival. At the daily level, Pachali Bhairava is a lineage deity belonging
particularly to the Jyapu of southern Kathmandu while also playing an important
role for the Kasai, Manandhar, etc. The Juju does no more than offer a puja
tray every Saturday, and the current Nepali king does not participate at this
level at all. In the twelve-year festival, Bhairava reveals himself to be a
royal divinity, and it is a Buddhist Vajracharya who supervises the exchange of
swords. By dancing in front of the house of the northern Juju and elsewhere in
the Valley, the Malakars extend the symbolic power of the king far beyond the
southern part of Kathmandu. The Rajopadhyaya,
who is the patron of the dance of Sweto Bhairava at Brahma tol, comes from
Bhaktapur. Although centered in Kathmandu, the symbolic kingship of Pachali
Bhairava seems to extend even beyond Patan to the whole Valley and, now,
embraces the modern state of Nepal. The Jyapu have no role in this festival. In
their annual festival, however, the Kasai, the Sthapita, and the Citrakar all
take part; the Malakar continue to play an important role and the ritual sword
of the ancient Mallas is brought to consecrate the pitha of Pachali
Bhairava with the seal of kingship.
What
seems problematic is this intermediate level, which is also the richest, in
which the Juju—acting as "sub-king"—is seconded by the Sthapita. To
the minor role of the Juju during the khadgasiddhi corresponds the
Sthapita's role of "co-patron" in the annual festival. Having
received his charge from the Mallas, he probably represents the king at the
Juju's side during the annual festival. The Sthapita must be present at the
twelve-year festival, and it is perhaps the direct participation of the king—be
he Malla or Shah—in the khadgasiddhi, that reduces his role to that of
mere witness. By centralizing the politics of the kingdom, the Malla apparently
sought to integrate the ancient dualist structure through an adaptation of its
ritual basis. That is why the patron of the annual festival is not only the
southern Juju, but also the real king, represented by his sword and above all
through the person of the Sthapita.
But
the annual festival is also, and above all, the occasion for the transfer of
(the dyahche and pitha of) Pachali Bhairava to a new Jyapu
family. We see a rotation among the "elders" (Thakali) of the twelve
families that constitute this particular clan of farmers. The fact that
Bhairava is often referred to as "ancestor" or
"grand-father" (Aju Dya) among the Newar supports the conclusion that
this Hindu god has served in the assimilation of lineage divinities deriving
from the tribal "infra-structure" (or rather, origins) of Newar
society (cf. TOFFIN 1984:589-90). Even the north-south partition of Kathmandu
(and of Bhaktapur and other Newar villages) corresponds well to the dualist
organization characteristic of tribal societies. The institution of the "double-kingdom"
already in Licchavi times, and its legitimization by the Arthashastra,
suggest that this "political" process of Hinduization, which would
have commenced from the very beginnings of Nepalese history, was in the past
important in India as well. The imposing figure of Bhimsen-Bhairava flanked by
Arjuna seems to reflect the transformation of a tribal leader into an exemplary
Hindu king. The maternal uncle / uterine nephew relationship between the
Thakali and the person representing Ajima finds its parallel in the
relationship between the two kings. It would seem therefore that, like the Juju
and the Sthapita, the Thakali also represents the sacrificer.
Though
"coopted" by the Hindu sacrificial system, the Jyapu who incarnates
Ajima still maintains the state of possession that is so important in the
tantric worship of Kali and of Bhairava. This function of trance is
institutionalized at the properly royal level in the person of the Malakar who
incarnates Pachali Bhairava. The choice of the Malakar to incarnate the impure
god seems to be dictated by two conflicting requirements. The three castes
responsible for the annual festival of Pharping—the Kusle, the Kasai and
especially the Pore, among whom the mask of Pachali Bhairava circulates—are all
untouchables. In principle, the "possessed" should belong to the
lowest castes of untouchables. But this would prevent the exercise of his
public functions, which put him in physical contact not only with the king—to
whom he gives the tika—and the Juju, but also with the totality of the
other higher castes, including the Rajopadhyaya.
The task of representing the Nava Durga at Bhaktapur was given to the Malakar
only after the divinities shredded a pig into pieces in order to prevent their
tantric master, a Rajopadhyaya brahman,
from catching them (LEVY 1987:110). The choice of a marginally pure caste to
incarnate Bhairava is thus the result of a compromise between the requirement
of impurity—the source of power—and the requirements of the public context that
does not allow the explicit valorization of the impurity. In the final
analysis, the Bhairava-Malakar represents nothing less than the hidden
transgressive dimension of the Hindu king himself.
The
Buddhist Malakars, who claim to equal the Hindu Jyapus, seem to represent the
latter in some way at the royal level. The Jyapus may also have been Buddhist
until fairly recently. This would be confirmed by the role still played by the
Sakyas, Chitrakars and the Vajracharyas even at the level of daily worship. In
spite of the Shaiva (re-) assimilation of Vajrayana tantrism during the Malla
period, two thirds of the Newar population remained Buddhist even into the 19th
century (SLUSSER:286-93). The process of Hinduization is particularly visible
among the Manandhar, who are still Buddhists (supra p.*).
This would explain the choice of the Buddhist Sthapita to represent the Hindu
Malla king among his Jyapu subjects. The Hindu nucleus of the Pachali Bhairava
cult is found rather at the intermediary level around the Juju and (his
relations with) the Kasai. The well-known "conservatism" of the Jyapu
would consist rather of their having maintained, first under a Buddhist and
then under a Hindu facade, the tribal infra-structure of their socio-ritual
organization. What matters is that this "Buddhist" cult of Svacchanda
(Lalita) Bhairava has remained deeply Vedic in its sacrificial structure and
already profoundly Hinduized in its contents. It is on this basis that the
Malla and the Shah Kings—always directed by a Vajracharya—have been able to
play the role of the royal patron in the cult of Pachali Bhairava.
The
choice of a Buddhist priest to officiate at the essentially Hindu worship of
Bhairava—and especially at the royal level—is not an isolated fact. For
instance, it is a Vajracharya of Kathmandu who conducts the Bhairava Yatra at
Nuwakot, a festival very much connected, on the symbolic level, with Nepalese
kingship (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1986b). The fact that the king—even one who
calls himself "Hindu" in public—transcends sectarian differences, is
not enough to explain this phenomenon. It seems that these Vajracharya
brahmans, more numerous among the Newars than the Rajopadhyayas,
have preserved certain esoteric traditions much better than their Hindu
counterparts. It is thus Asakaji Vajracharya who gave me the details concerning
the eight cremation grounds associated with the eight Bhairavas of the Valley
(cf. p.*).
Vajrayana Tantrism has borrowed a great deal from left-handed Shaivism, and
some of its divinities such as Heruka, Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, were
conceived after the model of (Vajra) Bhairava and of Kali. The ritual paradigms
are unchanged (Sanderson 1990). Tantric consecrations (abhisheka)—both
on the Hindu and the Buddhist sides—are charged with connotations of kingship.
Even when Bhairava is not, strictly speaking, the personal divinity of the
Vajracharya concerned, it is only a question of adapting the Buddhist rituals
to the Hindu context of their patrons. It is precisely
during the Vijayadashami that the "sword-processions" (Khadga Yatra)
take place, during which the Vajracharya priests, trembling in a state of
trance and accompanied by the "eight mothers" (Ashtamatrkas),
brandish swords charged with divine power and (pretend to) attack the
spectators (ANDERSON:153-4). The khadgasiddhi itself may be understood
as the exteriorization of the trance state experienced during transgressive
rituals performed secretly in extreme left-handed tantrism.
What
is striking, however, is especially the manner in which the three
socio-political levels have been integrated—by superposing the three
sacrificers (yajamana), namely the Thakali, the Juju and the King—in
order to constitute a single all-inclusive cult. It is worth noting that the khadgasiddhi
coincides with a complete rotation of Pachali Bhairava among the twelve Jyapu
families, as if this clan constituted in itself a mini-kingdom. This
integration of top and bottom is revealed most fully at the intermediary level,
which explains the importance still accorded to the Juju today. It is the same
sacrificial schema that underlies both the renewal of the political power of
the king and the accession of the Jyapu children to their full communal rights.
The theme of "stealing" is common to the Jyapu and the Juju and even
a Westerner like Gehrts Wagner was required literally to steal a goat in order
to complete his initiation into a musicians' guild in Bhaktapur. The myths
about Pachali Bhairava do not hesitate to draw parallels between the Jyapu
Bhairava of the annual festival and the royal Bhairava of the Indra festival (supra
p.*).
That is why the rotation of the jar among the houses of the Thakali must
necessarily make the "detour" not only through the house of the Juju
but also before the Hanuman Dhoka palace. Thus, what seems to be at the center
of the festival is not so much the political power of the king—be he Malla or
Shah—but rather the "king" as a symbolic locus shared in a hierarchic
way also by the Juju and the Thakali, not to mention the other actors who take
part in this great ritual drama which is the cult of Pachali Bhairava. The king
is, after all, only the yajamana par excellence, and his pre-eminence at
a political level could have been contested at any moment by historical
vicissitudes. The king-dominator—who is also, let us not forget, the
king-victim—is, above all, the symbolic knot tying together the invisible
threads which unite the whole of Nepalese society (cf. TOFFIN 1984:592-3).
7. Pachali Bhairava in the Hindu Pantheon:
Kingship and Transgression
Kingship and Transgression
In my essay
"Bhairava's Royal Brahmanicide: the problem of the Mahabrahmana"
(CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1989), I have borrowed the theory of
transgression—elaborated by Sunthar Visuvalingam (1985,1989) on the basis of
the semiotics of the clown of the Sanskrit theater—to frame a sacrificial model
of Hindu kingship that converges on essential points with the problematic posed
by two articles by G. Toffin (1979,1986). These articles not only call into
question the overly static and linear social hierarchy of Louis Dumont, but
they also raise the question of the well attested identification of the Newar
king with Bhairava. One may nevertheless wonder how the royal Bhairava can be
integrated into the Hindu pantheon amidst such sovereign gods as Indra, Shiva
and Vishnu. I shall conclude my section of this essay by showing how the cult
of Bhairava can be deciphered precisely on the basis of the respective claims
of these sovereign gods to kingship.
The festivals of Pachali
Bhairava—and perhaps the ritual life of the Newars in general—are part of a
royal cosmogony, representing the symbolic death and the re-birth of the king
as the sacrificer par excellence. The "pre-classical" diksha
turned the sacrificer into an impure being, filled with a "dangerous
sacrality" (HEESTERMAN 1962:12-15). On the first day of the Pachare
festival (supra p.*),
the pure Shiva-Pashupati, Nepal's royal and "national" god par
excellence, becomes Luku Mahadeva who was hidden all year long in a heap of
rubbish like an unclean demon (pishaca), in order to receive offerings
otherwise forbidden. He is worshipped by everybody, the non-Shaivaite Hindus
and Buddhists included, which shows that this is not a sectarian phenomenon.
Pachare is a festival of mother-goddesses involving Pachali Bhairava and above
all his consort Bhadrakali. On the second day, the Nepali king would come,
preceded by the Kumari on her white horse, in order to venerate Bhadrakali (supra
p.*).
This ritual core gave birth to the "festival of horses," or
Ghoda-Yatra, on the Tundikhel field, that is still organized by the army and
presided over by the king of Nepal (ANDERSON:263-71;
SLUSSER:232,317,338,342-4). The basic elements of Pachali Bhairava worship,
such as the khadgasiddhi or the perpetual fire, do not derive from a
single Vedic sacrifice, such as the Rajasuya or the Agnihotra, but rather from
the whole of the sacrificial system. The horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha), reserved
solely for triumphant emperors, had certainly disappeared centuries earlier
from the Indian scene, but its ritual paradigm still seems to order the life of
the Nepalese people.
The tantric divinity
Bhairava has taken on all the symbolism of the royal sacrificer who, during the
Ashvamedha, would return to an "embryonic state" in the impure world
of Varuna. This explains why Bhairava is often represented by a pot symbolizing
the womb (cf. SLUSSER:352). The importance given to the eyes engraved on the
pot underlines this assimilation (p.*).
There is no need to resort to psychoanalysis to understand this symbolism,
because the "thousand eyes" that Indra (the netra-yoni) bears
on his own body are explicitly identified with the vagina by the Hindu
tradition itself. The lemon (tasi) that, as in India, symbolizes death
and semen, condenses an entire embryonic process (see note ); so too does the association of Matsyeshvari (p.*),
of the Sweto Bhairava dance (p.*),
and of the Hathu-haye-gu (p.*),
with fish (cf. SLUSSER:376). It was during the conjunction called the
"fish-womb" (matsyodari-yoga), when Banaras was enveloped,
like an embryo, by the maternal waters of the Ganga, that the Kapalika Bhairava
was liberated from his brahmanicide by coming out from a pond named
Kapalamocana (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM 1989:177-83). The Vedic king also emerged
from a basin—from his death-like condition—by discharging his impurity onto a
deformed scapegoat with whom he was identified.
The jumbaka had
to be a brahman, charged with evil, and the king himself was reborn as a
brahman on receiving the diksha. The purity of the brahman and the
impurity of Bhairava seem to form the two extremes of the dialectic of the
transgression that transforms the royal adept into "a brahman par excellence"
(maha-brahmana). While the impurity of the royal dikshita is
expressed through his identification with Bhairava as incarnated by the
Malakar, his "brahman-hood" is rather represented by his supposed
"son" the god Ganesha. The true aspect of the "beautiful"
Bhairava is as grotesque as that of the jumbaka, and he is as gluttonous
as the omnivorous Ganesha (sarva-bhakshaka). It is Bhairava himself who
is (re-) born as Ganesha from the womb of Ajima, who would have the role here
as the sacrificer's wife in the Vedic paradigm. What is more, the violent
shaking of the jar at the precise moment of Ganesha's arrival confirms that it
is Pachali Bhairava who also plays the role of the "mother" by giving
birth to himself. Finally—and despite the distribution of roles at the social
level of the festival—Bhairava, Ganesha and Ajima are a single symbolic entity
derived explicitly from an embryonic process. That is why Ganesha—who himself
has a belly like a jar—is explicitly identified with his own mother (Nai) Ajima
(cf. note ). The crucial point here is that, despite the absence of the purohita
and the practical effacement of the brahmans, as strictly defined, from this
Newar festival, the hold of brahmanism is exercised above all at the symbolical
level. The mythico-ritual universe mediated by the classical brahman largely
surpasses both his social body and the insistence on purity that forms the
basis of the Hindu hierarchy.
Indra is the king as sacrificer (yajamana)
par excellence, forming a couple in this regard with the officiating
brahman (purohita) who directs him through the rituals of sacrifice. In
offering himself to the divinity through the intermediary of a victim tied to
the sacrificial post, the Vedic king renewed his kingdom through his own
rebirth. It is through this sacrificial violence, assimilated to a
brahmanicidal killing of his purohita Vishvarupa, that the warrior-god
of Dumezil's second function universalizes himself ritually so as to annex not
only the third function (fertility) but also the first function (sovereignty).
Just as the sacrificer is bound by the cords of Varuna, the statuettes of
Indra, wound with strings, are placed during the Indra Yatra in a prison-cage
at the foot of poles, or on scaffolds so as to represent Indra like a thief
with outspread arms. But the role of the
sacrificial victim, during the Indra Yatra, is assumed by the
"tribal" (Kirata) king Yalambara whose head, cut off by Krishna to
prevent him from joining the 'losing' side in the Mahabharata war, fell into
the Indra Chowk where it is still venerated in the form of Akasha Bhairava. Already
in the Sanskrit drama (the Mrcchakatika), the brahman hero being led to
his sacrificial execution is compared to the pole carried towards the
cremation-ground at the south of the town at the end of the Indra festival.
When the Indra pole is lowered, a funeral procession of Manandhars carries it
to the southern cremation ground to be thrown in the Bagmati river. Then the pole is hacked into pieces which are used
to feed the perpetual fire of the pitha of Pachali Bhairava (see pp.*,*).
Indra, the royal sacrificer, and his sacrificial victim are one and the same.
After the classical reform of the Vedic
sacrifice, the profane sacrificer (yajamana) is transformed by the diksha
into a (temporary) brahman, the pure being par excellence who stands at
the summit of the Hindu hierarchy (HEESTERMAN 1985:154). The annual festival of
Pachali (Panchakom) may have already existed in a Licchavi Pancharatra
prototype as the "5-night sacrifice" of the (Rigvedic) Purusha (-sukta),
whereby the sacrificer-victim became identical with the whole universe. Vishnu
would represent this properly brahmanic dimension of the king, through which he
affirms himself as the conservator of the socio-religious order based on the
pure/impure opposition (TOFFIN 1986:74-78). The identification of the king with
both Indra and Vishnu, is underlined by the raising of the pole of Pachali
Bhairava, inside the precincts of the Atko Narayana temple, by the Juju exactly
at the moment of the raising of the pole of Indra at Hanuman Dhoka (pp.*-36).
This is why the Juju attends the preliminary rituals inside the Atko Narayana
temple first, before going to the pitha of Pachali Bhairava to supervise
the blood sacrifices. On his way to the pitha, the Juju must sit down at
a particular place where long ago his subjects used to come to pay homage to
this "walking Vishnu." But this
purification seems to be, in reality, the first phase of a dialectic of transgression
that results in the death of the king-sacrificer through the intermediary of a
substituted victim. The one-eyed Joshi, who, in front of the Vishnu temple, is
placed within the enormous pot (kasi)—thrown very roughly still today
onto the Vetala receiving the blood sacrifices for Pachali Bhairava—thus
prolongs the role of the brahman jumbaka in the Ashvamedha. This leads
us to think that the third head (supra p.*)
hidden behind the two heads of the sacrificed goats during the homa (mamsahuti)
must have belonged to this deformed Joshi who represents the king-sacrificer.
The Mupatra (Skt. Mahapatra), a quasi-buffoonic figure, who at the end of the
Indra Yatra at Bhaktapur "kills" with his sword the statuette of
Indra on the pole (NEPALI:64), first of all receives the crown of Vishnu before
the temple of the latter on Dattatreya square.
Throwing grains of
rice—which the wife of Pachali Bhairava forgets to do—is not only the way to
cure (Sweto) Bhairava of his stomachache after his meal of children-fishes, but
serves also to exorcize the possessed (LEVY 1987:128; cf. supra pp.*,
*).
It is through the psycho-physical esoteric practices, codified in the Tantras,
that Bhairava has assimilated the autochthonous religions with their sacred
poles, as well as the ecstatic trance that supports them. Even in the
philosophical system of "Kashmir Shaivism" in which Bhairava has
become a metaphysical principle to be attained through a
"brahmanical" gnosis, this substratum is revealed through symptoms
such as the trembling, swooning and fainting that accompany possession (avesha).
Thus, the Newar king, inasmuch as he assumes the figure of the tantric adept,
seems to draw his magico-religious power from a shamanic inspiration easily
reinterpreted as possession by Bhairava (bhairavavesha). This is what
happens, for instance, to the Dangol Dhami of Nuwakot, who celebrates on behalf
of the whole Newar community the erection of the New year poles and drinks the
sacrificial blood from many buffaloes, all the while wearing the royal insignia
of the king of Nepal (p.*).
The brahmanized diksita was first and foremost the consecrated warrior,
the Vratya, comparable to later militant Shaivite ascetics like the Pashupatas
and the Kapalikas (HEESTERMAN 1962). The Malakar dancer in trance, who
brandishes his red sword to better incarnate Pachali Bhairava, would prolong
the shamanic aspect of Hindu kingship, even while revealing a transgressive
dimension in this experience that relates it to the murderous fury of the
warrior-king (supra p.*).
Hence, the khadgasiddhi
inaugurates the day of Vijayadashami—the Kshatriya festival par
excellence—which marks the resumption of military activities in Nepal and in
India (TOFFIN 1981:60,67,77; BIARDEAU 1981).
The founding-myth of the Indra Yatra
and its calendar reveal that the king of the gods sacrifices himself to the
goddess Taleju, who assumes the form of the Kumari and goes out on the day of
the full moon of Bhadra in order to re-legitimize the power of the king for the
following year. This day also marks the beginning of the mahalaya shraddha,
during which ancestors are venerated, especially when the sun is in the sign of
the virgin. The synchronization of the enthronement of the king, the veneration
of the Shakti and the propitiation of the dead, can be explained only by the
single underlying sacrificial schema. The role of Bhadrakali, consort of
Pachali Bhairava, who puts on his blue dress to exchange, in turn, her sword
with the king (supra p.*),
suggests the androgyny of the king Bhairava. At Nuwakot, for instance, the
gender of the divinity inside the temple is most ambiguous and, even through
the festival is called Bhairavi Ratha Yatra, it is the Dhami incarnating
Bhairava, but still accompanied by his wife, who plays the most important role.
Again, Jagannatha, the royal divinity in Puri, is esoterically assimilated not
only to Bhairava when he is united with the Devadasi (dancer) representing
Bhairavi; he is also directly identified with the goddess Kali. Toffin likewise
emphasizes how the Newar king drew his magico-religious power by identifying
himself with his Shakti. In fact, the sexual liaison between the tantric king
and the goddess Taleju fits perfectly into the paradigm of the sacrificer
returning to the womb to form the primordial androgyne. All these elements are
found in the condensed scenario before the door of the palace at Hanuman Dhoka,
where the king-buffalo is sacrificed before the impassive Kumari, precisely at
the moment when Pachali Bhairava arrives from the pitha in the form of
the jar. But this is done in a such way that the blood spouts onto Kali-Ajima,
whom the myths assimilate indirectly to Taleju-Kumari (see supra pp.*,*).
Tihar (Diwali), a
festival during which Pachali Bhairava is especially venerated in his dyahche
(supra p.*),
is also called "the five (days) of Yama" (yama-panchaka). Yama
is propitiated directly and also through his different aspects: the dog, the
crow and the cow (ANDERSON:164-74; TOFFIN 1984:538-42). The dog is above all
the animal of Bhairava, the sacred cow is the (feminized) brahman, while the
crow represents the "funeral priest" (Mahabrahmana). The intimate relation between the brahman and death
is demonstrated, for instance, by the fact that at Bhaktapur the funeral mat of
the Rajopadhyaya is used as the canvas
for the painted image of Akasha Bhairava. Petrified at Tekudoban, near the
confluence of the Bagmati and the Vishnumati, after wrapping himself in a funeral
mat (supra
p.*),
Pachali Bhairava, coming from Banaras, represents above all the kingship of
death to whom everybody, without exception, is a condemned subject. As the
"Lord of Spirits" (Bhuteshvara), he renews the power of the
Indo-Nepalese king who, through the exchange of swords, appropriates the
regenerative strength of the death of the brahmanical sacrificer. The Indra
statuette, put to death at the transposition of the Vedic sacrificial post at
Bhaktapur, is explicitly called Yama Deo by the Newars. Nick Allen has proposed
completing the Indo-European ideology of Georges Dumézil with a "fourth
function", incarnated by Yama, that would represent the Other both as a
devalorized and excluded group and as a central transcendent principle. If
Bhairava, as Yamantaka, vanquishes this sovereign god of profane death to reign
in his place on the "great cremation-ground" (mahashmashana)
that is the holy city par excellence of Varanasi, it is because Bhairava, this
Absolute of "Kashmir Shaivism," is realized through an initiatory
death that Yama himself would have represented in the Vedic religion.
The
perpetual fire beside the altar of Pachali Bhairava (photo 4) must be linked to
the role played by this tantric god in the "Vedic" Agnihotra at Patan
(SLUSSER:266; and supra p.*).
In this ceremony, as opposed to the Mamsahuti, the sacrificial fire of the Rajopadhyaya
priest, who is rather the incarnation of Mitra-Varuna, receives only pure
vegetarian offerings. Michael Witzel, to whom I owe my knowledge of the
Agnishala, adds that a barrier has been built to prevent Bagh Bhairava of
Kirtipur from extinguishing, by his ferocious glance, the benefic fire of the
Agnihotra. Indeed, the Vajracharyas would perform a similar but secret
"meat offering" (Mamsahuti), annually, into the fire at this temple
of the "Tiger" Bhairava. Agni is still venerated in the form of a
demoniac image at Svayambhunatha, where a perpetual fire was also kept at the beginning
of the 19th century. On the other hand, the Agnihotrin of Patan, when he is
about to die, is still brought into the Agnishala to breathe his last. Bhairava
would thus represent the baneful aspect of the sacrificial fire, that which
manifests itself as the eater of corpses. After all, the "twice-born"
used to sacrifice regularly to the Vedic Agni primarily in order to be reborn
after death from the fiery womb of the funeral pyre. Half a century ago, a
perpetual fire was still maintained in the royal palace of Hanuman Dhoka,
whence citizens could borrow its flame, and Amshuvarman already mentions an
Agnishala in the palace of Managrha. (Pachali)
Bhairava—as we have seen at the end of the Indra Yatra (supra p.*)—is
the fire (of Consciousness) from which the sacrificing king is reborn.
In
the principal cremation ground (Cupinga) to the south of Bhaktapur is the
sacred stone for the Masan Bhairava who is "conceived as being below the
burning body. The body must be consumed before the spirit is free to leave the
locality. The fire does this, but Masan Bhairava also is associated with the
destruction of the body and the liberation of the spirit" (LEVY 1990:264).
The esoteric Trika (or "Kashmir Shaiva") techniques for the
universalization of the all-devouring Fire of Consciousness were lived through
as a mode of transgressive sacrality condensed into the mytheme of
brahmanicide. Though the Puranic myth of the decapitation of Brahma does not
seem to figure prominently in the mythology of the Newar Bhairava, the same
principle has been introduced into the founding-myth of the Taleju temple at
Bhaktapur. The only suitable place the invading Indian king, Harisimhadeva,
could find for establishing his royal tutelary goddess—thus superseding the
pre-existing Licchavi cult to Maneshvari—was the home of (the tantric)
Agnihotra (Brahman) who always sat upon the stone of the Kshetrapal Bhairava
within the courtyard of the (present) Taleju temple (LEVY 1990:236-7,239 note
36, cf. 261,264; and supra p.*).
This Rajopadhyaya's
ritual suicide in his own Shiva temple, in protest against his forcible
eviction, rather suggests—through the twisted logic of the myth—that the
paradigm of "Bhairava's Royal Brahmanicide" (CHALIER-VISUVALINGAM
1989) underlies, and conceptually unites, both the Vedic Agnihotra and the
tantric cult of the royal Taleju.
In
front of the royal palace at Hanuman Dhoka, the statue of Kala Bhairava, known
also as Adalata (court of justice) Bhairava—a towering, black and solitary
figure—is the principal witness before whom state functionaries take an oath
each year. This role corresponds precisely with his function of
policeman-magistrate (Kotwal) in Banaras. Criminals and litigants would also
swear while touching Bhairava's foot, and he who bore false witness, it is
alleged, vomited blood and died on the spot. Until the nineteenth century, the
image received occasional human sacrifices, the same that (Mitra-) Varuna
already demanded to maintain, paradoxically, the terrifying "order" (rta)
firmly hidden within the heart of the Vedic socio-cosmic order. But the Vetala
receiving the blood of the sacrifice is, in reality, none other than Pachali
Bhairava himself, the king-victim whose "sacred transgression" is
represented by the deformity of the Joshi. Kala Bhairava, who takes on the sins
of the pilgrims in Banaras, is the scapegoat par excellence, and the
brahman jumbaka of the imperial Ashvamedha was Varuna himself as the
black incarnation of Evil. The supreme judge is also the worst brahmanicide: if
the merciless Kotwal imposes so just a punishment upon himself before extending
his mercy (karuna) to his subjects, it is because his judicial murder is
endowed with a properly "soteriological" significance (bhairavi-yatana)
which exculpates every pious Hindu who chooses to die in Banaras.
The
specificity of Nepal could thus be summed up as the passage from the Vedism of
the Aryan Licchavis to the shamanism of the autochthonous tibeto-burmans,
without necessarily taking the detour of bhakti that promoted Vishnu and
Shiva—along with Brahma—to the rank of the supreme trinity in India. The
exaggeration of the values of purity, that gave birth to classical brahmanism,
seems to respond to the challenge posed by renunciation of the Buddhistic type,
that Hinduism, in its turn, has sought to coopt through bhakti. The
religious struggle, which was intense in India, has paradoxically seen Buddhism
adopting the structures of a Hinduism that integrated, in its turn, Buddhist
values and innovations. The real strength of Buddhism—that which assured its
own identity with regard to Hinduism—came from the beginning from its
privileged connections with cultures foreign to Brahmanism. The relative
independence of Buddhism vis-a-vis the caste society would have given it a
privileged role in the process of acculturation between Aryans and indigenous people.
But renunciation presupposes a profane world rejected in favour of
transcendence. This situation corresponds neither to Vedic culture nor to
tribal culture, and could have been realized only in a very limited way in the
Kathmandu Valley. Vajrayana practice differs from tantric Hinduism essentially
in its philosophical interpretation, which amounts to very little as far as the
functioning of Nepali society is concerned. Newar civilization appears rather
as a "Hinduized" sacred world in which Vedic, Buddhist and tribal
elements are fused into a mythico-ritual synthesis that has never been
seriously challenged by renunciation. Whereas in the Indian context, the
disappearance of cosmogonic festivals has reduced the royal Indra to a
miserable figure before the sovereign gods of bhakti, the underlying
sacrificial paradigm permitted the divine Newar king to easily assimilate the
autochthonous religions, especially shamanism, through the tantric figure of
Bhairava. The conservative values of the Vedic Mitra are retained in the
brahmanical representations of Narayan as a brahman-king, in Pashupati as an
ascetic-king, and even in the Buddha as a renouncing-king, but the values of
transgression, once the prerogative of Varuna, were simply taken over by
Bhairava.
E. Bibliography
——. 1990. (with the
collaboration of Kedar Rajopadhyaya) Mesocosm: Hinduism and the
Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
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