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A House for the Living Goddess: On theDual Identity of the Kumari Chen inKathmanduIsabella Treea

a Independent scholar, UKPublished online: 27 Mar 2014.

To cite this article: Isabella Tree (2014) A House for the Living Goddess: On the Dual Identity ofthe Kumari Chen in Kathmandu, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 37:1, 156-178, DOI:10.1080/00856401.2013.851015

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A House for the Living Goddess: On the Dual Identity

of the Kumari Chen in Kathmandu

ISABELLA TREE, Independent scholar, UK

In 2007, during the course of planning the 250th anniversary celebrations of the inaugurationof the Kumari Chen—the house of the ‘Living Goddess’ in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square—anew document came to light, which recorded significant alterations made to the building onlyfour years after its foundation. This paper shows how these changes affected the KumariChen’s identity, transforming it from a building originally designed for royal Hindu Tantricworship to a building with dual purpose, where separate Hindu and Buddhist Tantric worshipcould take place under the same roof. Taking into account the historical context in which theKumari Chen was established, this paper explores the purpose for which the building wascreated by the last Malla king of Kathmandu and identifies motives for the subsequentalterations, shedding light on the relationship between Newar Buddhists and their Hindu kingin a time of unprecedented crisis.

Keywords: Living Goddess; Kumari; Kathmandu; bahal; Newar; Tantric; Malla; Bhaktapur;Taleju; mandala

Introduction

The Kumari Chen (or Kumari Ghar in Nepali) is an elaborate three-storey Newar building

abutting the old royal palace of Hanuman Dhoka in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square. It was built

by Jaya Prakasha Malla, the last Malla king of Kathmandu (final reign 1750–68), to house the

royal Kumari, a young girl (kumari)1 from Kathmandu’s Newar Buddhist caste of Shakyas

(Figure 1), who was worshipped by the Malla kings as an embodiment of their lineage deity,

the Hindu goddess, Taleju.2

In September 2007, the Kumari Chen hosted a series of special events to celebrate the

250th anniversary of the inauguration of the building and the associated annual chariot festival

of the Living Goddess, the ‘Kumari Jatra’. Over a period of fifteen days, thousands of Newars

from different localities in central Kathmandu took part in a spectacular, collective display of

Kumari bhakti (Kumari devotion). The celebrations included kanya pujas (girl worship)

involving hundreds of young girls from two separate areas in central Kathmandu; the

honouring of eight former royal Kumaris in Nasal Chowk, the central courtyard of the old

royal palace of Hanuman Dhoka; and an enormous ‘Kumari Prasad Feast’ for foreigners, also

in Nasal Chowk, with another feast on a separate day for Nepali nationals. The Kumari Chen

itself received a number of privately-sponsored renovations, including the restoration of the

1 Sanskrit and Nepalese terms in this paper are given with the informal transcription preferred in the Nepalese

media. Readers are referred to Michael Allen, The Cult of Kumari: Virgin Worship in Nepal (Kathmandu:

Mandala Book Point, 1996), for diacritics.2 Ibid., pp. 14–39; see also Bronwen Bledsoe, ‘An Advertised Secret: The Goddess Taleju and the King of

Kathmandu’, in David Gordon White (ed.), Tantra in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2000), pp. 195–205.

� 2014 South Asian Studies Association of Australia

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2014Vol. 37, No. 1, 156–178, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2013.851015

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Kumari’s gilt throne (simhasan)3 and the golden exterior window of her throne room

overlooking Durbar Square. Other offerings from private donors included a donation of 108

wind-bells for the eaves of the house and a spectacular new ceremonial burnished bronze khat,

or palanquin, for the Kumari. On the day prior to the first day of the Kumari Jatra, the entire

north facade of the Kumari Chen facing Durbar Square was decorated with an elaborate net of

puffed rice (taya) made by the Newar Women’s Association (Figure 2).

I was fortunate to be allowed to make an offering myself on the first day of the

celebrations—an honorific bronze banner, or pataka, which was dedicated to the Kumari

Chen. My intention was to honour the Kumari tradition and those associated with it, who had,

over the course of seven years, generously assisted me in my research for a non-academic

book on the Living Goddess.4 My offering of the pataka (Newari: patah) was greatly

facilitated by Kashinath Tamot, who had already been helping me in my research for several

years and who acted as my translator and intermediary with members of the Kumari Chen.

Much of the evidence produced in this paper is a result of his painstaking work and I am

extremely grateful to him for allowing me to reproduce it here.

FIGURE 1. The royal Kumari of Kathmandu emerging through the main entrance of the Kumari

Chen beneath the entrance torana depicting Taleju/Ugrachanda.Source: Author’s photograph.

3 The Kumari’s throne is generally known as the simhasan after the golden lions (simha) that support it. The

Kumari caretakers, however, refer to the throne as suvarna mayur asan (golden peacock seat) after the carved

peacock depicted on the seat itself. The peacock is the vehicle of Kaumari, one of the Astamatrikas (eight

protective mother goddesses), and is also represented around the sides of the Kumari’s golden chariot.4 Isabella Tree, Living Goddess, a Journey into the Heart of Kathmandu (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2014).

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From the outset, my participation in the 250th anniversary celebrations impressed upon me

the importance attributed to historical precedent by the Newar community. To a Westerner,

what happened a quarter of a millennium ago can seem so distant as to be virtually irrelevant,

but the Newar timeframe is far more inclusive. The past resonates with the present and the

present illuminates the past, while place and repeated ritual practice preserve a vital sense of

continuity. Just as it is considered crucial, for the sake of auspiciousness and efficacy, for a

jatra (festival procession) to maintain its original route over time, so it was clearly of the

utmost importance to all those involved in the 250th anniversary celebrations that the event

adhere to the sacred template established at the inception of the Kumari Chen. A few months

after the idea of a commemoration came about, a special ‘250th Sri Kumari Anniversary

Committee’ was set up to debate the validity of the proposed celebrations and the form they

should take. The first of these meetings, chaired by Gautam Shakya, younger son of the

principal Kumari caretaker, Gyan Devi Shakya, was held on 31 January 2007 and attended by

forty or so scholars, community leaders, and sponsoring businessmen from the Hanuman

Dhoka locality. Also attending were the two ‘royal’ priests primarily responsible for Kumari

worship at the Kumari Chen: on the Hindu side, Uddhab Karmacharya, the acting Achaju

priest of Taleju temple,5 and on the Buddhist side, Manjushri Vajracharya, the acting royal

FIGURE 2. The first section of an honorific net of puffed rice (taya) being raised over the north

facade of the Kumari Chen, 25 September 2007.Source: Author’s photograph.

5 The Hindu royal priest performs nitya puja (daily worship) every morning in the presence of the Kumari in the

audience chamber reserved principally for royal and state Kumari worship, the Golden Window of which

overlooks Durbar Square. This chamber is generally known as the simhasan (Lion Throne Room) because it

contains the Kumari’s lion throne.

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Buddhist priest (Raj Gubhaju)6 and member of the Pancha Buddha.7 Kashinath Tamot was

also present.

The committee’s primary concern was to confirm that 1757 (Nepal Samvat 877) was indeed

the year of the consecration of the Kumari Chen and that this was the occasion on which the

first Kumari was installed inside it and when the first Kumari Jatra, or festival procession, also

took place. Once this was established and the relevant dates identified, plans could go ahead for

a set of commemorative events. At the meeting, a debate arose around the question of the year

of the building’s foundation, with Uddhab Karmacharya, in particular, under the impression that

the consecration, and perhaps also the installation of the Kumari and the first Kumari Jatra, had

occurred several years later. The issue was clarified when Manjushri Vajracharya produced a

document hitherto unseen by the meeting members—‘Svayambhu Jirnoddhar Paddati

Ghatanavali’ (‘A Chronicle of the Progress of the Renovation of Swayambhu’)—from a

collection of manuscripts in the possession of his father, the Raj Gubhaju, Puspa Ratna

Vajracharya.8 The text confirmed the consecration date of the building as the eleventh day of

the bright fortnight of Bhadra, NS 877 (13 October 1757),9 but also clearly stated that four years

later, in 1761, the Kumari Chen underwent substantial alterations so that some of the key

Buddhist features of a bahal (a type of Newar Buddhist monastery; Sanskrit: vihara) could be

incorporated into the building.10 The consecration of these additional Buddhist features took

place precisely on the fourth anniversary of the original consecration.

This evidence is key to understanding the identity of the Kumari Chen, both in terms of the

original purpose for which it was created by King Jaya Prakasha Malla and its subsequent role as a

locus for contiguous Hindu and Buddhist Tantric worship of the Kumari. In particular, it throws

into doubt the claim made by Janice Glowski in her iconographic study of Kumari Baha Mandala

that the Kumari Chen was conceived from the outset as a ‘multi-sectarian monument’ where Hindu

6 The Buddhist royal priest performs Buddhist nitya puja at around the same time in the morning as the nitya

puja performed by the Hindu royal priest. His performance, however, takes place in the agam (the esoteric

Buddhist shrine room) and activates the presence of the high Tantric Buddhist goddess, Vajravarahi, manifested

by the Kumari. Contrary to popular belief, the agam is not above the kvahpah dyah (the ground floor shrine

containing the Five Buddhas) on the south side of the courtyard, but on the first floor directly beneath the

simhasan, as Durga Shakya, daughter of the principal Kumari caretaker, describes in her book, Hamro

Sanskritima Devi Tulaja ra Kumariko Sthan (The Role of Goddess Tulaja and Kumari in Our Culture)

(Kathmandu: Kumari Publications, 2010), pp. 139–46. An English-language translation is due to be published in

2014.7 The Pancha Buddha are the five Vajracharyas who represent the five Transcendent Buddhas in Buddhist rituals

at the Kumari Chen and elsewhere, such as at Swayambhu. They are selected from the eighteen bahals known as

the mahaviharas (lit. great monasteries) in Kathmandu. They each belong to their own lineage bahal and are not

tied exclusively to the Kumari Chen.8 A second similar and highly significant manuscript, ‘Svayambhu Jirnoddhar Ghatanavali’ (‘A Chronicle of the

Renovation of Swayambhu’), from the same collection, was shown to Professor Alexander von Rospatt in

October 2008 by Manjushri Vajracharya and is referred to in Rospatt’s essay, ‘The Past Renovations of the

Svayambhucaitya’, in Tsering Palmo Gellek and Padma Dorje Maitland (eds), Light of the Valley: Renewing the

Sacred Art and Traditions of Svayambhu (Cazadero, CA: Dharma Publishing, 2011), pp. 157–208. Both texts

are untitled and have been microfilmed by the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (hereafter

NGMPP).9 The same date for the consecration of the Kumari Chen was given in another text, ‘Bhimsendeva Ghatanavali’

(‘A Chronology of the Events of the God Bhimsen’), also produced by Manjushri Vajracharya.10 Interestingly, Iain Sinclair has identified a broader generic meaning for the term ‘baha(l)’ as an object of

veneration which can be either Hindu or Buddhist (with ‘bahi(l)’ as a marker of location). Personal

communication, 13 July 2013. In this paper, however, I use the word bahal with the narrower definition as

understood by most Newars and specialists.

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and Buddhist ideas and iconography were intentionally blended together in a unique display of

religious syncretism.11 The new evidence provided by the text presented to us by Manjushri

Vajracharya clearly demonstrates that the Kumari Chen began its life, first and foremost, as a place

of royal Hindu Tantric worship. It was only later (four years later, to be precise) that it attained the

Buddhist features that would allow Buddhist Tantric worship to take place there too. In the light of

this evident progression of the Kumari Chen from a place of principally Hindu worship to a place

of dual Buddhist/Hindu worship, Glowski’s definition of the Kumari Chen as a bahal is itself

debatable. As John Locke points out, the Kumari Chen defies definition—it is a ‘strange hybrid’.12

The Buddhist adaptations that came four years later may have given the Kumari Chen some of the

features of a bahal—such as a kvahpah dyah (ground-floor Buddhist shrine), agam (esoteric

Buddhist shrine), chaitya (miniature Buddhist stupa), etc. required for the Buddhist Tantric worship

of the Kumari—but other key, defining aspects of a bahal remained conspicuously absent, and are

absent to this day. Foremost amongst these missing features (as Locke and Glowski both

acknowledge) is the sangha.13 The word sangha (community) is often loosely used to describe

arbitrary groupings within Newar Buddhism, and is even applied to semi-secular organisations, but

in the context of a bahal, sangha refers specifically to the formally constituted membership of a

bahal, its lineage community. As Locke says, ‘a baha is a Newar institution with a consecrated

Buddha shrine (kvahpah dyah) and an agam (Tantric Buddhist shrine) to which is attached a

sangha of initiated Bare (the Newar priestly high caste of Vajracharyas and Shakyas)’.14

This critical absence of the sangha (without which no true bahal can function), together

with the fact that the Kumari Chen was not a bahal from the outset (and therefore could never

fully be realised as one), and that it was created in the beginning with ostensibly Hindu

iconography for the purpose of royal Hindu Tantric worship, makes it highly unlikely, in my

view, that the building itself ever represented a Buddhist mandala (a cosmological diagram

used as a visualisation tool to realise the practitioner’s identity with the fully enlightened

Buddha),15 as Janice Glowski maintains.16

However, before embarking on an exploration of the Kumari Chen’s Buddhist

characteristics and the reason for their tardy or even hasty inclusion, we must look at Jaya

Prakasha Malla’s motivations for establishing the Kumari Chen in the first place. It is necessary,

too, to clear up the muddle surrounding the question of precedence regarding royal Kumari

worship in the Kathmandu Valley. As Michael Allen notes, there are numerous tales in the three

Malla cities of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Patan, some in the written form of vamshavalis

(chronicles), others transmitted orally, claiming that one of ‘their’ kings was responsible for

establishing the tradition of royal Kumari worship.17 Since the royal Kumari of Kathmandu has

become, post-conquest, the focus of national, and not just city-wide, importance, the popular

account—often repeated in guidebooks and by tourist guides—is that royal Kumari worship

began in Kathmandu and that Jaya Prakasha Malla, the founder of the eye-catching Kumari

Chen in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square, was the instigator of the tradition.18 However, using

11 Janice M. Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics: An Iconographic Study of Kumari Baha Mandala in

Kathmandu’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 2002, [https://etd.ohiolink.edu, accessed

2 Nov. 2013], p. iii and passim.12 John Locke, Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal (Kathmandu: Sahayogi Press, 1985), pp. 265–7.13 Ibid., pp. 6, 267; and Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, p. 85.14 Locke, Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal, p.615 This definition is from John C. Huntington and Dina Bangdel, The Circle of Bliss (Chicago: Serindia

Publications, 2003), p. 530.16 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, pp. iii, 246–60.17 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, pp. 18–9.18 Joe Bindloss, Nepal (Melbourne: Lonely Planet Guides, 2009), p. 123.

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textual evidence gathered by Kashinath Tamot during the course of our research into the Kumari

tradition, we can now be clear that the practice of establishing ‘permanent’ royal Kumaris for

worship was several centuries older than this and was instigated by Malla kings in fourteenth-

century Bhaktapur. This is important because it shows how the pattern was set in which

Kumaris came to be worshipped by Hindu kings on a regular, institutionalised basis in all three

cities. It gives us an idea, too, of how the Malla kings remained indebted to the Vajracharyas for

allowing them access to this powerful Tantric practice—a practice that the Vajracharyas had

presided over in the Kathmandu Valley since at least the eleventh century.19 Despite Hindu

patronage at the highest level, it is evident that the tradition of royal Kumari worship

remained—from its inception in the late fourteenth century—fundamentally in the domain of

the Vajracharyas. Royal Kumaris continued to be selected exclusively from the Newar Buddhist

caste of Shakyas20 to live within traditional Newar Buddhist bahals and to be invested with

Vajradevi, the Buddhist goddess, even while they were, at the very same time, believed to be

manifesting the Hindu kings’ lineage goddess, Taleju.

Having identified the established practice of royal Kumari worship in the Valley prior to the

foundation of the Kumari Chen, we can then appreciate what an extraordinary departure Jaya

Prakasha Malla’s building was, how it changed the template of royal Kumari worship forever,

establishing a permanent residence for the royal Kumari, a building featuring Hindu iconography

and designed specifically for royal Hindu worship that stood, for the first time, outside the sacred

Newar Buddhist temenos of a bahal. We can identify the historical context for this remarkable

innovation—the period in which the Valley faced invasion by the Gorkha conqueror, Prithvi

Narayan Shah (who ascended the Gorkha throne in 1743)—and point to the pressures brought to

bear upon the last Malla king of Kathmandu as he struggled to protect his kingdom and retain his

power and the allegiance of his people. Identifying the innovative characteristics of Jaya

Prakasha’s Kumari Chen, I aim to explain, reveals the extent to which the Vajracharyas, the

Newar Buddhist Tantric priests and keepers of Kumari worship, were prepared to accommodate

their Hindu king in a time of crisis. However, I also suggest that the incorporation of Buddhist

features into the Kumari Chen four years later demonstrates how, ultimately, with the Gorkha

threat still on the rise, the pressure of Buddhist taboo reasserted itself, compelling the Hindu king

to bow, once more, to the prescriptions of Vajrayana and provide accommodation for full Tantric

Buddhist worship of the royal Kumari now living at the Kumari Chen.

The Royal Tradition of Kumari Worship

Several published accounts credit Trailokya Malla—a king of Bhaktapur who reigned as joint

ruler over the kingdom of the Valley of Nepal from about 1560 to 1613—with establishing a

permanent Kumari for royal worship.21 While these accounts identify Bhaktapur as the place

of origin, we now know that even this date is around a century too late. Evidence for the

establishment of the Kathmandu Valley’s first ‘permanent’ royal Kumari appears in a copy of

the Pancharaksha sacred text,22 which records an invitation sent on the fifteenth day of the

19 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, pp. 14–6.20 Nowadays, through force of circumstance, Patan’s royal Kumari is Vajracharya, but, originally, she would

have been from one of Hakha Bahal’s Shakya lineages. See Locke, Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal, p.150.21 Bikrama Jit Hasrat, History of Nepal: As Told by Its Own and Contemporary Chroniclers (Hoshiarpur,

Punjab: V.V. Research Institute Press, 1970), pp. 59–60; D.B. Shrestha and C.B. Singh, The History of Ancient

and Medieval Nepal (Kathmandu: HMG Press, 1972), p. 29; and N. Moaven, ‘Enquete sur les Kumari’, in

Kailash, a Journal of Himalayan Studies, Vol. II, no. 3 (1974), p. 173.22 Bhadraratna Vajracharya, Buddhist Monasteries of Bhaktapur (Bhaktapur: Maitreya Yuva Sangha, 2004),

pp. 150–1.

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dark half of Ashwin, NS 611 (12 October 1491) by the joint kings of Bhaktapur (Raya, Ratna,

Ram and Ari Malla—approximate reign 1482–1504) to a Tantric priest in Kathmandu,

Jivachandra Vajracharya. Jivachandra Vajracharya was the son of Suratvajra,23 a famous

siddha (Tantric Buddhist adept) in the time of King Yaksha Malla (1428–82) and founder of

Taksha Bahal in Asan Tole, Kathmandu. The joint kings of Bhaktapur, it appears, were

inviting Jivachandra Vajracharya to come to their city to establish a sadya kumari (Living

Virgin Goddess) for their own personal worship at Bhaktapur’s royal palace. All indications

are that this was the moment a Newar Buddhist child was first established at the behest of

Hindu kings as a vehicle for their lineage goddess, Taleju, and given a permanent role directly

connected to the palace. Hindu kings are mentioned in the chronicles as worshipping a Kumari

on occasions, but, until this juncture, the practice seems to have been confined to just this—an

occasional, extraordinary event entirely within the domain of Vajrayana.24 From now on, the

Malla kings would have much easier and more regular access to the ministrations of their own

designated Kumari, installed in a Buddhist bahal close to the palace, permanently on hand for

consultation and divination, who—since she would also embody a Hindu Tantric goddess for

the first time—could be involved in pujas (performances of worship) conducted by their own

ritual specialists. Though we cannot be sure of the process whereby the chosen Shakya girl

was prepared for this innovative step, it seems likely to have been similar to the practice that

continues to this day in Patan and Bhaktapur: she would first have been ritually ‘opened’ to

receive the Tantric Buddhist goddess, and only then would it have been considered safe to

invest her with the additional presence of Taleju.

The Pancharaksha copy refers to this new Kumari, sponsored by the Malla kings of

Bhaktapur, taking up residence in Chaturbrahma Mahavihara, a bahal on the eastern side of

Bhaktapur’s royal palace. The royal Kumari of Bhaktapur (who still exists today, receiving a

pension from the state as one of the key protector deities of the nation despite her position

having relaxed to such a degree that she now lives in her parental home and goes to school)

still comes to Chaturbrahma Mahavihara for worship during the Hindu festival of Dasain, and

Taleju worship also continues here. Interestingly, it seems the Tantric Buddhist priest,

Jivachandra Vajracharya, did not return to his bahal in Kathmandu after establishing

Bhaktapur’s royal Kumari, but also took up residence in Chaturbrahma Mahavihara, founding

a lineage that survives there to this day.

Forty-two years after Bhaktapur’s royal Living Goddess was established, the residence of

the ‘Eka(n)ta’ (‘single’ or ‘main’) Kumari (as she came to be known) and her family moved

from Chaturbrahma Mahavihara to Dipankara Bahal, Kvathandau, in the northeast of the city,

in order, it appears, to accommodate the requirements of a specialist caretaker. This is

indicated in an application made by Tuisin Buddhacharya of Pashupati Bahal, Bhaktapur, to

the Nepalese Government in 1904 for the recognition of his wife as the hereditary caretaker of

the royal Bhaktapur Kumari in which he refers back to the establishment of a hereditary

Kumari caretaker by kings Jita and Prana Malla of Bhaktapur in 1533.25 Presumably, with a

royal Kumari now permanently available to the Malla kings, there arose the need for a

specialist intermediary between the Kumari and the palace and perhaps even for closer

oversight of purity observances.

23 For a biographical account of Suratvajra and his legendary exploits as a siddha, see Vijayaraj Vajracharya,

‘Lives and Works of the Siddha Vajracharyas of Nepal’ (in Hindi), in Dhih (Journal of Rare Buddhist Texts

Research Project), Vol. 17, no. 4 (April 1994), pp. 133–4.24 Daniel Wright, History of Nepal (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, [1877] rpr. 1993), p. 157.25 Vajracharya, Buddhist Monasteries of Bhaktapur, p. 58.

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The earliest record we have of royal Kumari worship in Kathmandu—as identified by

Kashinath Tamot—is 37 years after the first royal Kumari was installed in Bhaktapur.

According to the Santisvasti Saphula manuscript, King Surya Malla, the second ruler of an

independent kingdom of Kathmandu (reigned 1521–29), worshipped Kumari and Taleju in

1528 in order to empower himself against an attack by King Mukunda Sen of Palpa.26 It is

interesting to note that the king prior to Surya Malla, who is attributed with establishing the

independent kingdom of Kathmandu, is none other than Ratna Malla, one of the joint rulers of

Bhaktapur who invited Jivachandra Vajracharya to establish the first royal Kumari next to

Bhaktapur’s royal palace. It seems highly probable, given the Malla kings’ propensity for copying

each other, that Ratna Malla replicated the practice when he moved to Kathmandu. Whether this

is so or not, the date of permanent royal Kumari worship in Kathmandu is over a century earlier

than scholars have previously thought.27 A much later text—also identified by Kashinath Tamot—

which describes a changeover of Kumaris performed on the ninth day of Dasain in 1742, refers to

the Kathmandu royal Kumari residing at Sikhanmuguli (Sikhanmu Bahal), a bahal very close to

the royal palace, adjacent to the site of the present-day Kumari Chen.28

In Patan, the royal Kumari was selected from the sangha of Hakha Bahal, a bahal that,

according to Wright’s chronicle, was originally founded by King Lakshmikamadeva (approx.

reign 1024–40) ‘close to the Mul Chowk of the Patan Durbar’, but was relocated to its present

site half a kilometre away on the main road leading west from Mangal Bazaar by

Siddhinarasimha Malla (king of Patan, reigned 1619–61) when he embarked on grand

extensions to his palace.29 As in Bhaktapur, Patan’s royal Kumari was installed inside a

special Kumari Chen located within the precinct of the bahal. This building, in a small

courtyard adjoining Hakha Bahal’s main courtyard—now in a state of dilapidation and

unlived-in by Kumaris since the 1940s—was where Patan’s royal Kumari resided, along with

her parents and any other siblings, for the duration of her tenure.30 Patan’s Kumari Chen itself

is modest by modern standards, though presumably it would have seemed relatively spacious

and well-appointed to its successive inhabitants a century or so ago. In modern times, the

family of Patan’s royal Kumari has generally preferred to remain in its own house—provided

it is within the immediate vicinity of Hakha Bahal—though the present Kumari lives in rented

accommodation inside Hakha Bahal itself.

Certainly, Patan’s plain, unornamented Kumari Chen—like the Kumari Chen in

Bhaktapur—does not seem to have been designed to accommodate the visits of a king. In

particular, there is no royal audience chamber—as there is in Jaya Prakasha Malla’s later,

more elaborate, and much larger construction in Kathmandu. Instead, for occasions of

personal worship by the king, the royal Kumaris in all three cities were carried in a ceremonial

palanquin the short distance to the royal palace, to a courtyard called Mul Chowk (Main

Courtyard)—a tradition that continues to this day in all three cities during the festival of

Dasain. For longer rituals, she may even have stayed, temporarily, in special accommodation

within the palace complex. We know that Bhupatindra Malla (king of Bhaktapur from approx.

26 Kashinath Tamot, ‘Surya Malla Mukunda Senyata Buketa Kumarisametyake Bal Phvamgu Abhilekh’

(‘Record of Surya Malla Begging Strength from the Kumari in Order to Defeat Mukunda Sen’), in Desaymaru

Jhya, Vol. 14, no. 20 (7 June 2007), p. 3.27 Mary Shepherd Slusser, Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal: Mandala Book

Point, 1998), p. 312.28 This text comes from four folios of a manuscript entitled ‘Kumari Avesa Devarcana Vidhi’ (‘The Method of

Worship for Infusing Divinity into a New Kumari’), NGMPP, reel A 1222/28.29 Wright, History of Nepal, p. 234. See also Locke, Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal, p. 151.30 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, p. 43.

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1696 to 1722), for example, created the Kumari palace adjacent to the Mul Chowk in the royal

palace of Bhaktapur in 1707 for this very purpose.31

Although the royal Kumaris were established to meet the specific requirements of the king

and the Hindu court, the tradition remained—for over two-and-a-half centuries of Malla

patronage—fundamentally in the domain of Newar Buddhism. The Kumaris continued to live

with their families in their own Shakya lineage bahals under the umbrella of Vajrayana

worship. The Malla kings, desirous though they may have been of bringing the practice of

royal Kumari worship further within the Hindu sphere, would nevertheless have been

intimidated by the dangers inherent in breaking the precedent of the tradition. The inhibiting

power of the taboos and prescriptions concerning Kumari worship is well illustrated in a story

related to Michael Allen by one of his Vajracharya informants in Bhaktapur:

. . . once during the time of the Mallas the highly orthodox Hindu king took such

exception to having to bow down to a Shakya kumari that a girl was instead chosen

from the Taleju Brahman community to take her place. However, when she was

brought to the Taleju temple at Dasai(n) for the mass buffalo sacrifice she became

afraid and cried. A report of this was sent to the king who immediately re-established

the tradition of selecting the goddess from the. . .Shakya community.32

Despite the obvious advantages of bringing the royal Kumaris under stronger Hindu influence

and binding them closer to the palace, the Malla kings would have been highly reluctant to

introduce any innovations that might jeopardise the efficacy of the practice and thereby diminish

the extraordinary powers they believed worshipping a sadya kumari conferred on them.

However, in 1757, the Valley of Nepal was in crisis.33 Having already endured years of

crippling blockade by the king of the Gorkhas, the Valley was now under imminent threat of

conquest and Jaya Prakasha Malla, the king of Kathmandu, was under extraordinary pressure to

maintain control over his kingdom and bring powers into play that would defend the Valley and

defeat the invader. It seems that of the three Malla kings, it was Jaya Prakasha alone who

recognised the full ambition of Prithvi Narayan Shah to take over the Valley34 and, as the crisis

deepened, he turned to Taleju and other manifestations of the goddess for empowerment and

protection. Jaya Prakasha’s belief in the efficacy of his devotion to the goddess is well

documented in the chronicles. It was, they claim, the goddess’s ‘hidden’ form, Guhyeshwari,

together with the Kumari herself who miraculously restored Jaya Prakasha Malla to his throne

after a palace coup in 1746.35 As Michael Allen describes, ‘there is much evidence to suggest

that as Jaya Prakasha became increasingly apprehensive about the growing Gorkha threat

he turned more and more to the propitiation of Taleju and other female deities in the belief

or hope that they would confer greater power on both himself and his city state’.36

Jaya Prakasha Malla’s most daring and ambitious offering of all was to create a residence for

the royal Kumari—a mandalic construction37 in which, it appears, he aimed to activate the

31 See the manuscript, ‘Kumari Prasada Dhvajavarohana Vidhi’ (‘The Ritual of Consecrating the Finial of the

Kumari’s House’), NGMPP, reel B 197/3.32 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, pp. 56–7.33 D.R. Regmi,Modern Nepal (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2007), pp. 139–46, 152–3; John Whelpton, A History of

Nepal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 37; and Wright, History of Nepal, pp. 225–7.34 Wright, History of Nepal, pp. 198, 250.35 Hasrat, History of Nepal, pp. 86–8; and Wright, History of Nepal, pp. 223–4.36 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, p. 21.37 For the design of Newar temples, bahals, and other devotional structures as three-dimensional mandalas, see

David L. Snellgrove, ‘Shrines and Temples of Nepal’, in Arts Asiatiques, Vol. VIII, no. 1 (1961), pp. 3–10, and

Vol. VIII, no. 2 (1961), pp. 93–120; and Slusser, Nepal Mandala, pp. 142, 145–6.

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powers of the protective deities in the Valley through worship of a Living Goddess—the

manifestation that was believed to bring about the most immediate results. In order to do this,

he constructed a Kumari Chen on the south side of Kathmandu’s Durbar Square unlike any a

Kumari had lived in before.

Jaya Prakasha Malla’s Kumari Chen

The main evidence for dating the establishment of the Kumari Chen on Kathmandu’s Durbar

Square is a text in Newari entitled ‘Register of the Construction of the House for Mother

Kumari’ (‘Kumari Majuyata che Dayakaya Dharota’) from the private collection of

Yagyaman Pati Vajracharya of Layku Bahil, a member of a branch of the Raj Gubhaju

family.38 This text was presented to the 250th Kumari Anniversary Committee by Kashinath

Tamot.39 The text gives a detailed chronology of the key stages of the construction of the

Kumari Chen during the year NS 877, from the laying of the foundation stone on the second

day of the dark fortnight of Phalgun (27 March 1757)40 to the concluding festivities, offerings,

and feasts following the consecration of the building about six months later.

Of particular interest is the text’s description of the procession of the three bell-shaped gilt

metal roof finials (gajuri) around the city on the third day of the bright fortnight of Bhadra

(6 October 1757) and the establishment of the finials on the roof the following day (7 October

1757) with the hanging of a long honorific cloth banner (pataka). The establishment of the

roof finials, the text describes, was celebrated with an Indra kalash and purna kalash worship

involving the king, ‘Twice-blessed Jaya Prakasha Malla Deva’, the sponsor of the project.

This ceremony, conducted by fourteen Vajracharyas, marked the consecration of the building.

It has been commemorated at the Kumari Chen on the fourth day of the bright fortnight of

Bhadra every year since, with the Raj Gubhaju conducting a worship of the finials from the

ground below, while labourers climb onto the roof to hang a white cloth pataka from the

finials and pour rice pastries down on the assembled celebrants as blessings.

According to the text, the actual completion rituals for the building—involving an

elaborate fire sacrifice, Indra kalash puja, a recitation of the 25,000-verse Prajnaparamita

(Panchavimsatika patha) by all the Vajracharyas in the city, and the feeding of ear-pierced

yogins on the plinth outside the Kumari Chen—were held eight days later, on the eleventh day

of the bright fortnight of Bhadra, NS 877 (13 October 1757). And on the same day—the text

describes—Jaya Prakasha Malla worshipped the Living Goddess (sadya kumari) at the royal

palace and, after taking a solemn vow (samkalpa), welcomed her into her new house, where

provision had been made for a dedicated family of caretakers to look after her. ‘All the gods’

(deva dakon), comprising 184 Buddhist and 76 Shaivite deity images from Kathmandu, and

deity images from Lalitpur and Bhaktapur also, were invited to attend the celebrations for

‘three nights and four days’ (svacha penhu), culminating in the installation ceremony.

Following the installation ceremony, the text describes, all these deities went in procession

around the city of Kathmandu before returning to their shrines.

38 Gautamavajra Vajracharya, Hanumandhoka Rajdarbar (Kathmandu: Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies,

1976), pp. 42–3.39 Kashinath Tamot presented one further text to the meeting, giving the same date for the consecration of the

Kumari Chen and installation of the Kumari. It mentions the attendance of ‘all the deities of the state of

Kathmandu’ and ‘five Dipankars from Bhaktapur’, although ‘no deities attended from Patan’ (presumably

because of the hostility of Rajya Prakash Malla, king of Patan, towards his brother Jaya Prakasha). See Janaklal

Vaidya, ‘Notes on Events Dispersed in the Manuscripts of the National Archives’, in the annual periodical

Kheluitah in Newari, no. 10 (1988), pp. 17–25.40 AD date calculated by Diwakar Acharya, Kyoto University.

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This was clearly an unprecedented event in the Valley’s history. While it was (and still is)

commonplace in the Valley for either Hindu or Buddhist deities in the three cities to be invited

to a big festival (such as Samyak, when all the main Buddhist deities attend), there appears to

be no record of any other occasion when both Buddhist and Hindu deities from all three cities

were summoned together for a single ritual purpose. Usually, too, deities tend to return to their

shrines on the same day, after the festivities have finished. The opening celebration for the

new Kumari Chen in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square was clearly marked out as an event of

critical importance not only for the king of Kathmandu, but for the entire population of the

Valley.

As Janice Glowski observes in her iconographic study, ‘King Jaya Prakasha Malla sought

Kumari’s assistance during a time of great financial and political difficulties precisely

because of her historical associations with the various religious traditions in the Valley, her

religious identity as an embodiment of absolute creative potential, and her role as a supreme

protectress of the state’.41 Jaya Prakasha Malla’s innovative Kumari Chen, Glowski explains,

was designed as ‘a microcosm of the Kathmandu Valley’, a ‘multi-layered mirror’ into

which the beleaguered king could invoke the Valley’s most powerful goddesses, ‘thereby

resulting in a coalescence of these protective deities in the centre of Kathmandu City’.42

Worshipping these powerful goddesses under one roof, through the medium of a sadya

kumari, would, Jaya Prakasha Malla seems to have intended, generate their collective energy

(shakti) at the centre of Kathmandu and throw a protective force-field around the Valley.

Key to this, Glowski maintains, was the Kumari Chen’s mandalic design, which she

describes as ‘articulating numerous layers of mandalic patterns. . .created by the so-called

“mandalic goddesses”, the Astamatrika (eight mother goddesses) and the Navadurga (nine

[D]urgas)’.43

However, in order to create this mandalic ‘microcosm of the Valley’, Jaya Prakasha Malla

set a controversial precedent. The Kumari Chen, as we can observe today, occupies a large

area of ground, incorporating entrances in the four directions, a central courtyard and three

storeys on all four sides44 (Figure 3)—considerations that, on their own, would have

prohibited the building of it within an existing bahal. Its layout, too, seems to lend itself to

public worship. Today, Hindus of all nationalities and Newar Buddhists are admitted into a

large public puja room on the third floor, behind the fivefold casement window (pachukha)

overlooking the courtyard from the south. Here, devotees present offerings to the Kumari

seated on a simple throne in the hope of receiving prasad (blessings in the form of fruit or

flowers) and to be cured of ailments, especially blood disorders such as haemorrhaging or

menstrual problems. The Living Goddess is believed to possess the power of prediction and

certain gestures are believed to signify particular events. If she trembles, for example, it

signifies that the worshipper will go to jail; if she only picks at the food offered to her, the

person offering it will lose money. Special pujas can be performed in an attempt to avert these

outcomes. In the same way, the king would pay great attention to the behaviour of a Kumari,

sending propitiatory offerings in an effort to assuage signs of displeasure. In general, in the

present day, a happy, healthy Kumari indicates all is well with the nation-state; illness or bad

moods indicate instability in the country or some natural disaster like a flood or an earthquake

41 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, p. 48.42 Ibid., pp. 47, 284.43 Ibid., p. iii.44 As Glowski points out, a bahal typically ‘has two levels on three sides and three or five levels on the main

shrine wall’. Ibid., p. 257.

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about to descend.45 For purity reasons, foreigners are not allowed inside the building, but they

can receive darshan (blessings derived by setting eyes on the goddess) from the courtyard

when she appears at this window. They can also send offerings up to her and receive prasad in

return if the Kumari so wishes and, on occasion, they can receive predictions in this way, too.

The architectural layout of the Kumari Chen with its large public puja room strongly

suggests that Jaya Prakasha Malla’s prime intention in creating the new Kumari Chen was to

broaden the appeal of the royal Kumari, to make her more accessible to the citizens at large,

setting her up as the city’s central goddess, and, in a spirit of all-embracing Kumari bhakti,

involve his subjects in his fervent attempts to propitiate her and secure the protection of

Kathmandu. It appears it was at this juncture, too, that the selection pool for the royal Kumari

was broadened from the sangha of Sikhanmu Bahal alone to the sanghas of the eighteen

mahaviharas of Kathmandu.46

FIGURE 3. The interior courtyard of the Kumari Chen with the Buddhist chaitya in the centre,

showing the porticos on the ground floor of the north and east sides of the building and, in the

far corner, four of the sixteen windows (two on the ground floor, two on the first floor)

supporting carved toranas of warrior goddesses.Source: Author’s photograph.

45 Ex-Kumari Rashmila Shakya describes how she was affected by persistent fevers and crying spells during the

time of the democracy demonstrations in 1990 and that these were only alleviated when King Birendra

eventually lifted the ban on political parties and accepted the role of constitutional monarch. Rashmila Shakya,

From Goddess to Mortal (Kathmandu: Vajra Publications, 2005), pp. 61–2.46 Though it is generally accepted that the royal Kumari is chosen from the eighteen main bahals or

mahaviharas of Kathmandu, in practice, she is selected from only the six or seven with Shakya lineages.

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Another dramatic innovation was involved in the design of the Kumari Chen. In addition to

a room for public Kumari puja, the new Kumari residence featured a special room for the

Kumari’s lion throne—the simhasan–in which the king would personally engage in Tantric

worship of the Kumari as his ista devata, the Hindu goddess, Taleju. Even today, access to the

simhasan is granted only to the king, the head of state, or other devotees with the specific

permission of the Taleju priests and/or Kumari caretakers.

According to Kashinath Tamot and other informants who have been granted access to the

simhasan, the room features dramatic, colourful paintings on all four walls of eight terrific

mother goddesses alongside depictions of Ganesh and Bhairab and another gigantic four-faced

goddess—larger than all the rest and surrounded by flames—with Jaya Prakasha himself

kneeling in supplication on the viewer’s right, with his queen and two sons kneeling on the left

(Figure 4). Durga Shakya (the Kumari caretaker’s eldest daughter) refers to the eight

goddesses—all of whom have sixteen arms—as ‘Mahamatrikas’ (lit. ‘Great Mothers’).47 One

of them, in the southwest corner on the southern wall of the simhasan, has a nameplate

identifying her as ‘Mahaindrayani’. According to Durga Shakya, the nameplates of the

remaining seven Mahamatrikas were removed when protective glass was placed over them

following restoration work in 1966. The larger goddess surrounded by flames is identified by

Durga Shakya as Tulaja Bhavani (Taleju) and has eighteen arms, corresponding with the

FIGURE 4. Plan of the murals in the simhasan (Lion Throne Room) on the second floor of the

Kumari Chen, with the Kumari’s Golden Window facing north.Source: Plan reproduced by kind permission of Kashinath Tamot.

47 Personal communication between Durga Shakya and Kashinath Tamot, 8 July 2010. For a detailed description

of the Kumari Chen, see Durga Shakya, The Role of Goddess Tulaja and Kumari in Our Culture, pp. 139–46.

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image depicted in the torana above the main entrance to the Kumari Chen.48 Clearly, the

iconography in the simhasan is Hindu, befitting the place where a Kumari was worshipped by

the Hindu king in her role as Taleju.

It seems likely that the Mahamatrikas depicted in the simhasan relate directly to the

goddesses depicted on the eight roof-struts around the interior courtyard on the same level—

the second floor. As Glowski says of the roof-strut goddesses, ‘although the figures’ arms

are damaged, the goddesses stand on vahanas and are identifiable as the Astamatrika’.49 The

mandalic pattern here is clear. The Astamatrika, whom Levy describes as ‘the Mandalic

Goddesses’,50 are regarded as powerful protectresses and definers of sacred space; they also

connect directly to the landscape of the Valley, the mandala of Nepal itself. As Allen

describes, the Astamatrika are ‘enshrined at power-places (pitha) located on the perimeters of

the valley, places that were mostly selected by kings as strategic for defence against enemy

forces. These powerful goddesses both defend the king and define the boundaries of his

kingdom’.51 Evoking these powerful enemy-destroying protectresses at the Kumari Chen

connects the building with the protective circles of Astamatrika pithas around the periphery of

the Valley and the city of Kathmandu itself.52

The goddesses featured on the toranas (the ornately carved wooden arches above the doors

and windows) on the ground floor and first floor levels around the Kumari Chen’s interior

courtyard are far more problematic and have not yet been satisfactorily identified. Their

iconography is complex; they have differing numbers of arms and weapons, and some, but by

no means all, possess the same vehicles as the Astamatrika (Figure 5). Even so, certain

aspects of the goddesses’ arrangement give us a clear indication of Jaya Prakasha Malla’s

original intentions for the building. That the goddesses are essentially mandalic in nature is

apparent since there are two sets of eight—two on each side of the inner courtyard around the

ground floor and the first floor. Furthermore, they are all depicted as ‘durgas, standing in

fighting posture, impaling the asura (demon) Mahisa with their tridents’,53 placing them

clearly within a Hindu system of worship.

A clue to the interior torana goddesses’ identity may well lie in the identity of the

signature deity depicted in the torana above the Kumari Chen’s main entrance—a goddess

also characterised as a Mahismardini (Destroyer of Mahisa). According to the findings of

Kashinath Tamot, the deity in the torana above the main entrance to the Kumari Chen (also

referred to as Tulaja by Durga Shakya) is an especially fierce emanation of Durga known as

Ugrachanda (alternatively Ugrachandi), who makes her appearance in late Malla period

iconography. Iconographic designs for Ugrachanda in a sketchbook in the Patan Museum

collection (Figure 6) are identical to the goddess featured in the Kumari Chen’s main entrance

48 See also Rama Sharma, ‘Kathmandaun Vasantapurasthita Jivita Kumaripujako Sanskritika evam Aitihasika

Parampara’ (‘The Culture and Historical Transmission of the Kumari Worship Established at Basantapur,

Kathmandu’), unpublished PhD thesis, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal, 2000; and J.B. Manandhar,

‘Murals of Kumari Ghar’, Gorkhapatra (21 Sept. 2002, Saturday Supplement) for descriptions of the paintings

inside the simhasan.49 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, p. 196.50 Robert Levy, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal (Delhi:

Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), pp. 487–8.51 Allen, The Cult of Kumari, p. 84.52 Niels Gutschow and Manabajra Bajracharya, ‘Ritual as Mediator of Space in Kathmandu’, in Journal of the

Nepal Research Centre, Vol. 1 (1977), pp. 1–10.53 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, p. 192. Only one torana does not depict a goddess impaling a

demon, and this is the newest one (possibly a poor copy) by the west portico.

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torana (Figure 7).54 There is also a particularly beautiful stone sculpture of the very same

goddess just inside the Bhaktapur Palace entrance gate (Figure 8), with the following

inscription on the pedestal: ‘King Bhupatindra Malla made and installed the statue of thrice

virtuous Ugrachanda Devi in NS 827 (1707), on the third lunar day of the bright fortnight of

Vaishakha’. These findings lay to rest the confusion surrounding the identity of the deity

depicted on the main entrance torana of the Kumari Chen—an enigma that has often

perplexed scholars, including Janice Glowski, who identifies the goddess as a ‘multivalent’

form of Mahalaxmi, while at the same time accepting that ‘the torana goddess is shown

defeating the asura Mahisa—an iconographic feature not typically associated with the

Astamatrika’.55

It seems almost certain that the interior torana goddesses are in some way collectively

associated with Ugrachanda, the signature goddess featured in the entrance torana. However,

until an exact description of this group of torana goddesses comes to light in another context,

conclusive identification of these intriguing deities remains elusive.

One feature, however, is clear: all the main deities in the simhasan itself and in the toranas

around the interior courtyard and on the northern facade of the building are depicted as

FIGURE 5. One of the ground floor toranas in the courtyard of the Kumari Chen, depicting a

twelve-armed warrior goddess with the vehicle of an Astamatrika (in this case a goose), yet also

impaling a demon (asura) with a trident—a feature which is characteristic of a Mahismardini.Source: Author’s photograph.

54 Iconographic designs for Ugrachanda with listings of her attributes are published in M.L.B. Blom, Depicted

Deities: Painters Model Books in Nepal (Groningen: Egbert Forsten Publishing, 1989), p. 41.55 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, pp. 175–82, and Figure 3.15, p. 226.

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Mahismardinis relating specifically to the Hindu system of royal Kumari worship conducted

by the Hindu royal priests at the king’s palace in the late Malla period. This strongly supports

Glowski’s argument that the interior torana goddesses belong to a mandala of the Hindu

goddess, Durga—or, more specifically, as we now know, Ugrachanda—that also, through the

inclusion of the Astamatrika, evokes the Valley in microcosm. Glowski, though, claims these

toranas were created with a dual purpose. She argues the torana deities (together with the

roof-strut Astamatrika) represent, at the same time, the circles (chakras) of goddesses

belonging to the mandala of the Buddhist deity, Chakrasamvara. However, given these

goddesses’ unequivocal Hindu attributes as demon-slaying durgas—and what the ‘Svayambhu

Jirnoddhar Paddati Ghatanavali’ manuscript reveals about the later addition of Buddhist

features to the Kumari Chen—this hypothesis seems highly unlikely. Indeed, in personal

communication with the Raj Gubhaju and other Vajracharya practitioners connected with the

Kumari Chen, none appeared to have any knowledge of the Chakrasamvara mandala ever

being invoked using the interior courtyard toranas in this way. In particular, Yagyaman Pati

Vajracharya maintains ‘every bahal represents Chakrasamvara mandala’, but is adamant that

the Chakrasamvara mandala is not represented by the Kumari Chen.56

Jaya Prakasha’s ambitious designs for his innovative Kumari Chen, with its focus on the

Hindu worship of Taleju/Durga/Ugrachanda and other Mahismardinis, could arguably only

ever have been achieved outside the Buddhist enclave of a bahal. Certainly, this was the first

FIGURE 6. Iconographic design for Ugrachanda from a sketchbook in the Patan Museum,

Nepal, Gallery D.Source: Image reproduced by kind permission of Suresh Man Lakhe, Museum Officer, Patan Museum, Nepal.

56 Personal communication, 26 Oct. 2009.

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time a sadya kumari—a Shakya child embodying the Goddess—was called upon to live

outside her own lineage bahal. It was at this juncture, too, it seems, that a Kumari was first

separated from her parents and placed entirely in the hands of the royally appointed female

Kumari caretaker and her family.57 We do not know if there was previously a royal Kumari

caretaker in the Kathmandu system, as there was in Bhaktapur (there seems never to have

been one in Patan), but from now on, the role of a specialist Kumari caretaker (and, indeed,

the caretaker’s entire family) would be vital in sustaining the highly complex, highly

public, and super-charged practice of Kumari worship at Kathmandu’s new Kumari

Chen—something for which normal Shakya parents would be completely unprepared.

We can only guess at the deliberations that went on amongst the sangha of Sikhanmu Bahal

and the wider Vajracharya community of Kathmandu to allow this radical departure. But the

Newars, too, would have been in a high state of anxiety about the future. For centuries, the

predominantly Newar Buddhist population of the Valley had benefitted from the protection

afforded by an almost symbiotic relationship with the Malla kings. The prospect of conquest by

a belligerent orthodox Hindu raja from the hills must have troubled them deeply. Whatever their

reservations about allowing the Kumari to live in a separate building detached from their bahal,

the Vajracharyas of Sikhanmu would arguably have had greater reason to allow the innovation

to go ahead. Most likely, the final decision would have rested with the Kumari herself and

permission for the move would have been sought through a ksama puja, the customary ritual for

FIGURE 7. Image of Ugrachanda in the torana over the main entrance of the Kumari Chen.Source: Photo courtesy of Gudrun B€uhnemann.

57 Glowski is mistaken when she says that ‘the Kathmandu Kumari’s immediate family establishes residence in

Kumari Baha during the girl’s tenure as the goddess’. Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, pp. 26, 90. For

the circumstances of a Kumari’s life at the Kumari Chen and the complex issue of returning to her parents after

her dismissal, see Rashmila Shakya, From Goddess to Mortal, passim.

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seeking a Kumari’s approval for an action or dedication to be carried out in her name.58 We

know, at least, that in 1757, the Vajracharyas allowed Jaya Prakasha Malla to demolish a

residential courtyard (khandachuka) and garden next to Sikhanmu Bahal in order to clear a site

for the construction of the new Kumari Chen, and the displaced Vajracharyas were moved to

Layku Bahil on the northern side of Durbar Square and given compensation.59

The Buddhist Alterations to the Kumari Chen

As the ‘Svayambhu Jirnoddhar Paddati Ghatanavali’ text reveals, only four years after it was

completed, the new Kumari Chen was subject to radical alterations that brought some of the

Buddhist features of a bahal into the building. This explains certain obvious anomalies in the

FIGURE 8. Sculpture of Ugrachanda installed in Bhaktapur Palace by Bhupatindra Malla in

1707.Source: Photo courtesy of Gudrun B€uhnemann.

58 A ksama puja was conducted on 5 April 2007 in the simhasan at the Kumari Chen by the 250th Sri Kumari

Anniversary Committee seeking the Kumari’s approval and empowerment for the proposed celebrations.59 From an introduction to Layku Bahil, given in a six-page leaflet distributed during Baha Puja at Layku Bahil,

Layku Bahil: Mhasika (Laykubahi Vajracarya Khalah, VS 2053 Bhadra 1 [17 Aug. 1996]). See also Locke,

Buddhist Monasteries of Nepal, p. 265.

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Kumari Chen’s design. As Glowski points out, the ground floor Buddhist shrine (kvahpah dyah)

on the south side of the interior courtyard has no welcoming space in front of it for devotees.

Conspicuously missing are the broad steps, flanked by stone lions, found ubiquitously in bahals

where the kvahpah dyah receives regular public worship.60 Instead, at the Kumari Chen, there is

simply a continuation of the narrow raised walkway (Newari: phah; Nepali: peti) running

around all four sides of the courtyard, which makes for a very awkward and abrupt approach

to the shrine (Figure 9). This clearly demonstrates that a Buddhist shrine was never part of

Jaya Prakasha Malla’s original plan, but was, instead, ‘shoe-horned’ into the building at a later

stage.

Further evidence that the ground floor shrine is a later addition is given by the presence of six,

rather than eight, motifs representing mandalic charnel grounds (smasana) (Figure 10). These

motifs, carved into the projecting ends of horizontal beams (Newari: ninal), feature a chaitya (a

small representation of a Buddhist stupa) and a shivalinga (aniconic phallic representation of the

Hindu god Shiva) in the same image. Much is made of the ‘unique religious syncretism’61 this

FIGURE 9. The unceremonious entrance to the Pancha Buddha shrine on the south side of the

Kumari Chen courtyard (Manjushri Vajracharya, the Raj Gubhaju, is on the left, in discussion

with Kashinath Tamot).Source: Author’s photograph.

60 Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’, p. 86.61 Personal communication, Prof. Mukunda Aryal, 4 Mar. 2003; and Glowski, ‘Protection, Power and Politics’,

p. 257.

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motif exemplifies, but the design had, in fact, been in currency for at least a century before the

Kumari Chen was built—making it unlikely that its appearance in the original iconography of the

Kumari Chen is indicative of any ground-breaking ideas of Hindu/Buddhist syncretism on Jaya

Prakasha Malla’s part.62 Two of these smasana motifs appear on each of the north, west, and east

sides of the inner courtyard, but there are none on the southern side, suggesting that the missing

two were indeed sacrificed for the later addition of the Buddhist shrine. It is highly likely there

was also originally a portico (dalan) on the southern side of the courtyard identical to the existing

porticos on the east, west, and north sides, and that this, too, was removed to make way for the

shrine. The other obvious innovation, here, is that the kvahpah dyah contains not a single deity—

an image of Akshobya or another of the Pancha Buddha as in other Buddhist bahals—but five

stone sculptures representing the complete set of the Pancha Buddha. This is quite possibly

unique in the Valley.

Evidently, Jaya Prakasha Malla was compelled to change dramatically his concept of the

Kumari Chen and this was almost certainly a result—directly or indirectly—of the increasing

threat from his enemy, the king of the Gorkhas. In May 1757, midway into the building of the

Kumari Chen, Prithvi Narayan Shah had launched an audacious attack—his first—on the town

FIGURE 10. One of six existing cremation ground (smasana) motifs at the Kumari Chen

depicting a Hindu shivalinga (top), Buddhist chaitya (left) and funeral pyre (right). The

elephant stands for Indra, one of the gods of the eight directions.Source: Author’s photograph.

62 Gudrun B€uhnemann, ‘Shivalingas and Chaityas in Representations of the Eight Cremation Grounds from

Nepal’, in Ernst Steinkellner, Birgit Kellner et al. (eds), Pramanakirtih: Papers Dedicated to Ernst Steinkellner

on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, Part 1 (Vienna: University of Vienna, 2007), pp. 23–35.

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of Kirtipur just five kilometres to the southwest of Kathmandu.63 The people of Kirtipur had

resisted fiercely, forcing the Gorkhas to retreat, and in the ensuing rout, Jaya Prakasha Malla’s

Indian sepoys had succeeded in slaughtering a considerable number of Gorkha soldiers,

including Prithvi Narayan Shah’s senior commander and advisor, Kalu Pande.64 The victory

was crucial to Kathmandu and, doubtless, Jaya Prakasha Malla would have attributed it, at

least in part, to his ongoing devotional project in Kathmandu’s Durbar Square.

But then, one by one, strategic forts around the Valley rim began to fall to the Gorkha

forces.65 The Gorkha king was—it appears—engaged in well-publicised Tantric pujas of his

own at power-places of the goddess outside the Valley,66 and the Malla king would almost

certainly have felt himself engaged in a Tantric battle of wills, wrestling for the goddess’s

favour and protection. As his kingdom began unravelling at the edges, Jaya Prakasha Malla

redoubled his efforts to bind the goddess to him and fortify the mandala of Nepal. According

to ‘Register of the Construction of the House of Mother Kumari’,67 on the fifth day of the

bright fortnight of Jyestha NS 880 (19 May 1760), Jaya Prakasha renovated the Lion Gate at

the entrance to Taleju Temple in Kathmandu, mounting a little figure of himself as the donor

in a pavilion on the top, and, together with his queen, Dayalakshmi, began a magnificent fire

sacrifice of a hundred thousand oblations in front of the gate—a sacrifice more lavish even

than the inauguration homa for the Kumari Chen itself—which took a full nine days to

complete.

Yet still, it appears, Jaya Prakasha felt compelled to do more. On the thirteenth day of the

bright fortnight of Jyestha NS 880 (27 May 1760), according to this same text, Jaya Prakasha

Malla dedicated a splendid ratha, a ‘golden three-storeyed temple’, to the Kumari (Figure 11).

This is the same Kumari chariot kept today in the garage with yellow doors adjoining the

Kumari Chen and used for the three days of the Kumari Jatra. Though it has since received

many renovations, the three-tiered pagoda-style structure in which the Kumari sits for her

jatra is the original and bears Jaya Prakasha’s original inscription.68

Jaya Prakasha’s construction of a chariot for the Kumari was, it seems, yet another

innovative dedication to the Goddess founded in desperation. With the Gorkha army making

inroads into the Valley, the city of Kathmandu itself was now under direct threat. The jatra,

during which the Living Goddess would be pulled around the periphery of the capital in her

massive chariot in the manner of the jatra of Macchendranath (the ancient god of Jana Bahal,

Kathmandu, associated with the bodhisattva, Avalokiteshwara), appears to have been a further

attempt on the part of the Malla king to reinforce his city’s defences by Tantric means. Four

months after the Kumari’s inaugural ride in the ratha the Kumari Jatra was incorporated into

the existing festival of the Indra Jatra—a festival honouring Indra, king of Heaven, and

celebrating the rule of the earthly king of Kathmandu—and for the very first time the royal

Kumari was pulled through the streets of the city in her golden chariot, tracing the protective

boundary of the city walls (a route it follows to this day though the walls have long since

disappeared). This, it appears, was the first time a sadya kumari had been treated in this way

as a very public, exoteric deity; Jaya Prakasha Malla’s aim must have been, at least in part, to

63 Wright, History of Nepal, pp. 226–7.64 Regmi,Modern Nepal, p. 140.65 Ibid., pp. 155–6.66 S.J. Stiller, Prithwinarayan Shah in the Light of Dibya Upadesh (Ranchi: Catholic Press, 1968), pp. 40–1.67 Vajracharya, Hanumandhoka Rajdarbar, pp. 42–3.68 Narbada Shrestha et al., ‘Kumari Ghar’, unpublished research report by Nepal Research Group for the

Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Vikram Samvat 2064, p. 38.

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unite the city in a spectacular display of Kumari bhakti and dispel the citizens’ doubts as to

their king’s authority and his ability to resist the invader.

However, the evidence provided in the ‘Svayambhu Jirnoddhar Paddati Ghatanavali’ text

in the collection of the Raj Gubhaju implies that all was still not well. The dramatic changes to

the Kumari Chen in 1761—a year after the dedication of the Kumari chariot—suggest Jaya

Prakasha Malla must have come under considerable pressure to adapt his original blueprint

and incorporate the defining aspects of a bahal into the building. It is likely that doubts in the

Vajracharya community about the wisdom of allowing the royal Kumari to live for the first

time in a building outside the umbrella of Vajrayana worship would have intensified as the

situation in the Valley deteriorated and the Gorkha threat became increasingly visible. The

instigation of a Kumari Jatra might also have worried them. Jaya Prakasha Malla, however,

would have been desperate to keep the Newar Buddhist community onside and to empower

the royal Kumari by all possible means. His adaptations demonstrate how he now clearly

intended the Kumari Chen to encompass full Buddhist Tantric worship as well as Hindu;

accordingly, he established the hereditary position of a special royal Buddhist priest—the Raj

Gubhaju—to carry out the Tantric worship of the royal Kumari from the Buddhist side. From

now on, the Kathmandu royal Kumari would, uniquely, receive daily nitya puja from both a

royal Hindu and a royal Buddhist Tantric priest. Though the two esoteric strands of Kumari

FIGURE 11. The Kumari chariot, dedicated by Jaya Prakasha Malla in 1761, waiting outside the

Kumari Chen on the first day of the annual Kumari Jatra.Source: Author’s photograph.

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worship came together in this way under royal patronage under one roof, this did not mean that

they merged beyond definition, or that the Kumari herself dissolved into a single syncretic

entity. Rather, the Kumari Chen came to be used, like numerous sacred sites in the Kathmandu

Valley, by Buddhists and Hindus for separate devotion in a related cause: the Kumari

retaining a dual identity rooted both in her ongoing worship in the secret agam as the Tantric

Buddhist goddess, Vajravarahi, and as Ugrachanda/Taleju in the Hindu context of the

simhasan.

Conclusion

The ‘Svayambhu Jirnoddhar Paddati Ghatanavali’ text in the possession of the Raj Gubhaju

identifies the stages in which dual Hindu and Buddhist worship came into being at the Kumari

Chen. It shows how the building changed from a design that was, at the outset, a manifestly

Hindu construct designed for the supercharged worship of the Living Goddess as Taleju/

Ugrachanda by the Hindu king, to a building that could accommodate Vajrayana practice as

well. Jaya Prakasha Malla’s ground-breaking creation of a free-standing mandalic residence

for Kathmandu’s royal Kumari, followed by a dramatic revision of the design only four years

later, illustrates the tense and continuous interplay of negotiation, co-operation and resistance

that existed between Newar Buddhists and their Hindu kings—forces that came dramatically

to the fore in a time of unprecedented crisis for the Valley of Nepal.

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