by

to appear in

Robert Brown and Katherine Harper Lorenzana eds.,

(New York: Mellen Press, 1992)

1. Hindu-Buddhist Convergence in pre-Islamic Kashmir 3

2. Why was World-Negation necessary in the first place? 6

3. The Buddhist Role in the Hinduization of Nepal 8

B. The King and the Gardener: Pachali Bhairava of Kathmandu 13

1. Mythologiques of Pachali Bhairava, King of Pharping. 17

2. Pachali Bhairava Temple and the Dualist Structure of Kathmandu 18

3. The Structure and Participants of the Daily Rituals 26

4. Rotation of Pachali Bhairava Jar during the Annual Festival. 31

5. Twelve-Yearly Empowerment of the Royal Sword (khadgasiddhi) and the Nava Durga Dances 46

6. Socio-Political Levels in the Sacrificial Schema. 54

7. Pachali Bhairava in the Hindu Pantheon: Kingship and Transgression 58

C. Between Lhasa and Banaras: Vedic Sacrifice, Buddhist Tantricism and Tribal Cultures 68

1. Bhairava as the Royal Sacrificer from Hindu Banaras 68

2. Bhairava as the Tantric Adept from Buddhist Lhasa 69

3. Bhairava as the Newar Shaman of Tribal Nepal 71

4. Between Mecca and Banaras: Islam and the Acculturation-Model of "Hinduism" 75

D. End-Notes to "Between Veda and Tantra" 76

E. Bibliography 81

F. List of Photographs 84

 

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.

The roots of Tantra—a religious outlook, doctrine and practice which pervades Indian culture as a whole—are perhaps coeval with the equally ill-defined roots of "Hinduism" itself. The still unresolved controversy over the relative priority of Buddhist over Hindu tantras, narrowly understood as sectarian textual traditions, is itself symptomatic of an inadequate conceptualization of the role of Buddhism in the formation of not only Hinduism but of Indian civilization as a whole. Nowhere perhaps is the inadequacy of such a text-based approach more apparent than in the still surviving Newar cult of (Pachali) Bhairava, which defies comprehension in terms of sectarian categories. Its symbolic universe resists reduction even to a Hindu-Buddhist "tantrism" that would be opposed to brahmanical ideology on the one hand and shamanic practices on the other. Unlike both Vedic and "primitive" religions, however, Tantric soteriology already presupposes the cultural supremacy of the ideal of individual liberation (moksha / nirvana) as propagated especially by Buddhism. At the same time, it reflects the imperative of revalorizing the world, the human body and even the exercise of (royal) power in social relations from this transcendental standpoint. This incomplete movement of "return" to an immanent mode of sacrality, which Hinduism coopted on the politico-cosmic and aesthetic-emotional levels through the symbolic universe of bhakti, resulted in a cultural synthesis that permitted the retention of indigenous cults and forms of social organization within a dominant "Aryan" discourse. I am currently editing a series of collective volumes on Abhinavagupta and the Synthesis of Indian Culture, and this may be taken as an invitation to specialists of Tantrism, scholars of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and anthropologists of Indian religions to bring their valuable expertise to bear upon this interdisciplinary project.

The examples of Buddhist Logic, the "sentiment of tranquillity" (shanta-rasa) and the cult of Bhairava—drawn respectively from the domains of philosophy, aesthetics and religion—should suffice, for our present purposes, to illustrate the cultural significance of Abhinavagupta's ambivalent treatment of the Buddhist heritage just before the Islamic invasions of the 12th century. Indian philosophy derives primarily from Brahmanical-Buddhist debate over the status of the world. Buddhists renounce the world by underlining its suffering, unreality, impermanence and by negating the Self, whereas Brahmanism as a whole attempts to reconcile the transcendent principle with life-in-the-world. The Buddhist critique of reality is first analytic (vibhajya-vada), then logical (the Madhyamika principle of non-contradiction) and finally epistemological (the Yogacara-Sautrantika attack on Nyaya categories as mental constructs). Abhinava's "Doctrine of Recognition" (Pratyabhijna) presents itself as the synthesis of all the otherwise incompatible schools of Hindu philosophy. Above all, it is a systematic defence of the traditional Nyaya-Vaisheshika categories (substance, quality, action, relation, etc.), as the only possible basis of all worldly transactions (loka-vyavahara), against the critique of Buddhist Logic. Yet, its sophisticated epistemological analysis wholly follows the methods of Dharmakirti (and Dharmottara) in rejecting the Nyaya insistence on the externality of the world. The result is an inclusive non-dualism that, unlike the Advaita of Shankara or the Vijnanavada of Vasubandhu, affirms the reality of the world but as internal to Consciousness. The acceptance of the principle of momentariness results in a dynamic conception of the world and of the Self, as ultimately invested with the creative power of the Lord (Ishvara). Bhartrhari's earlier defence of (Vedic) tradition (agama), though now pitted against the logic (tarka) of the Buddhists, is ultimately identified with (supra-human) intuition (pratibha). The Shaivas of Kashmir have used the Buddhist critique of the independent reality of the world, as generally espoused by the orthodox brahmanical schools, in order to restore an absolute autonomy (svatantrya) to the supreme Self. The historical course of this philosophical debate reflects a shift in perspective from the clear-cut choice between the brahmanical insistence on the external authority of Vedic scripture and the uncompromising Buddhist rejection of the world, to a shared Tantric world-view that affirms the creative power of the absolute Consciousness, irrespective of the status of the individual self or of the world.

It is evident that the passages on the "sentiment of tranquility" (shanta-rasa) in Bharata's treatise on dramaturgy, the Natya Shastra, had been interpolated into some manuscripts as a response to its effective use by the Buddhists to promote the ideal of renunciation through poetry and theater. Orthodox Hindu dramaturgists refused to accept shanta because the traditional eight emotions were sufficient to account for activity (pravrtti) in this world in pursuit of the legitimate life-aims (purushartha). The only sustained example of the viability of shanta that Abhinava, in his ambivalent defence, is able to provide, is the play Nagananda on the bodhisattva Jimutavahana, which was written by the "Hindu" king Harsha, who however longed to end his life in the robes of a Buddhist mendicant. The presiding deity he stipulates for shanta is, not surprisingly, the Buddha himself. Abhinava ultimately justifies the necessity of shanta by appealing to the supreme pursuit of liberation (moksha), arguing that it underlies all the other "mundane" rasas as their common denominator. Does this signal the triumph of the Buddhist renunciation ideal within the heart of Hindu sensibilities? Not quite! For Abhinava integrates shanta in such a way as to leave the existing scheme of rasas intact and even concedes that it is impossible to represent "tranquillity" in its pure form on the stage, that it needs to be supplemented by extraordinary modes of the other rasas. He hardly speaks of shanta in his tantric writings, but exults in the experience of rasa in the context of hedonistic activities like eating and sexual intercourse. Abhinava refers approvingly to Buddhist theories of rasa as a "stream of consciousness" and, by then, even monks like Dharmakirti had begun to write very sensuous poetry in Sanskrit. The endorsement of the Buddhist shanta has resulted not in the rejection of the world-drama but in its appreciation in an aesthetic mode (VISUVALINGAM 1992b).

The religious inspiration behind the Shaiva philosophy and aesthetics of Kashmir came from the tantric cults of Bhairava. By that period, Mahayana Buddhism had already attained its radical Vajrayana phase and shared much in common with Hindu tantricism. Esoteric texts, which were inaccessible to laymen, nevertheless passed back and forth between Shaiva and Vajrayana adepts, and Trika texts even found their way into Tibetan hands. The manner and degree to which such shared tantricism may have permeated Kashmiri society may be better appreciated by studying Hindu-Buddhist collaboration in the Kathmandu Valley, which has remained free of both Muslim and Western domination. The socio-cultural dimension of tantricized royal festivals, especially their trans-sectarian significance, has been very well conserved in the Newar cult of Pachali Bhairava which is, in other respects, peculiar to Kathmandu. Especially evident is the clan-based "tribal" infra-structure of Newar society, with "shamanizing" phenomena of trance and possession. Not only do the Newar Buddhists, who are integrated into the caste-system, venerate the Hindu pantheon. Their quasi-brahman Vajracharya priests are often the principal officiants for the Hindu community, especially at the royal level of the Bhairava-cult, whose ritual structure is however derived from the paradigm of the Vedic sacrifice. The development of Buddhist tantricism seems to have contributed not so much to the abandonment of the brahmanical tradition but to the generalization and consolidation of its symbolic universe even quite independently of the direct mediation of the Hindu brahmans who originally came from India.

In practice, Buddhism ends up accommodating life-in-the-world so totally that, especially with the emergence of Vajrayana tantricism, the differences with Trika Shaivism become purely doctrinal, a question of a "language-game." On the other hand, Hinduism (e.g. Shankara) ends up largely interiorizing the Buddhist ideal of (world-negating) renunciation. The ambivalent status of Buddhist Logic, Shantarasa and Vajrayana practices within the philosophical discourse, aesthetic sensibility and religious practice of "hinduized" culture reflects this gradual convergence of the Brahmanic and Buddhist paradigms. Apart from the Muslim destruction of its monastic institutions, the common text-book explanation for the death of such a hoary millennium of Buddhism in its homeland is its reabsorption by a rejuvenated and enveloping Hindu religious culture (e.g., the well-known bhakti movements in Kashmir, South India, Bengal and elsewhere). This however raises the even more formidable question as to why, in the first place, the birth of Buddhism was at all necessary?

Renunciation presupposes a desacralized world, denuded of meaning, which is hence rejected in favor of transcendence. It has no permanent place in the this-worldly sacrality that characterized the mythico-ritual universes of both Vedic and tribal societies. Yet, as attested among the Newars, Buddhism seems to have played a crucial role in the elaboration of a synthesis between brahmanical and tribal cultures. The perennial transcendent values enshrined in the Buddhist tradition notwithstanding, its socio-historical role seems to have been primarily that of facilitating a process of acculturation in which the Vedic symbolic universe ends up becoming the dominant unifying force throughout the subcontinent. Buddhism, along with other more short-lived heterodox movements, emerged in Magadha of the 6th century B.C., where the Aryan aristocracy (kshatriya) had already begun to question the sacrificial order. A similar trend in the brahmanical heartlands to the west had instead resulted in the gnostic speculations of the Upanishads still centered on the Vedic Revelation. Even more important was the explosion of mercantile activity and the opening of trade-routes to the south, north and elsewhere, which created the arteries through which Buddhist missionary activity could peacefully spread to pre-Aryan populations and even adapt indigenous cults to its own ethico-rational and egalitarian outlook. The "secularizing" cultural milieu witnessed the incorporation of tribal republics—like those of the Vrjjis and Licchavis whom the Buddha admiringly set as a model for his own sangha—into the growing imperialism of the Magadhan state. The cultural necessity of Buddhism was dictated by the breakdown of Vedic authority at the point where the still "pastoral" Aryan values came into headlong collision with indigenous populations within the emerging and expanding context of a new level of politico-economic organization.

From the time of emperor Ashoka, Buddhism seems to have been the most dynamic religious force in unifying the subcontinent. Kashmir (an early stronghold of Sarvastivadins), Bengal (especially under the Vajrayana dominated Pala dynasty), South India (5th to 8th C.), Nepal and other regions have all passed through a phase of Buddhist dominance before their eventual Hinduization. Banaras, subsequently the socio-religious center of classical brahmanism, was itself associated with heterodox and pre-Aryan cults around the time of the Buddha, who supposedly set the Wheel of the Law turning at Sarnath for the benefit of his five brahman disciples. The leadership of this proselytizing religion was increasingly taken over by converted brahmans who shared the same cultural ethos as their orthodox adversaries. At the same time, the renunciation of brahmanical society opened these scholar-monks to far greater possibilities of freely experimenting with pre-Aryan modes of religious experience. The intellectual and socio-political power and prestige of Indian Buddhism certainly came from its common roots in the dominant Aryan culture, but its driving force, appeal and dynamism seems to have derived from its privileged relation to societies external to brahmanism. This universalizing but world-negating religion seems to have been destined, by the constellation of factors conditioning its very birth, to provide a common language for cultural communication between the otherwise closed universes of South India, Shri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, China and Japan, with their own particularistic and ethnically oriented religions like Dravidian folk-cults, shamanism, Bon, Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism. Little wonder that Buddhist emissaries from these Asian countries were generally received with such honor by even Hindu kings and their brahman counsellors.

In its religious rivalry with Buddhism, Hinduism was in turn obliged to gradually interiorize successful Buddhist innovations and to legitimize them within the framework of the Vedic tradition. Through the so-called process of "Sanskritization" (a misnomer, especially in the Newar context), the sacrificial universe was increasingly propagated and consolidated by non-brahmans and even by religious specialists of non-Aryan origin. This was facilitated by an underlying compatibility between the purified brahmanical sacrifice and the cults of possession and blood-letting generally associated with Indian folk-religions. As the cultural gap between the brahmanical and the hitherto pre-Aryan societies narrowed—and with the gradual integration of their disparate symbolic universes—Buddhism was deprived of its raison d'être as a socio-historical force. The only way Buddhism could survive in India was by competing with the Hindu appeal to indigenous populations, even at the cost of increasingly compromising its original world-negating posture. Radical Shaiva-Vajrayana tantricism could be jointly opposed to both the purified extrinsic ritualism of the classical Mimamsa and the ethico-rational ethos of early Buddhist "Protestantism" (which is still retained in some measure by the Theravada Buddhism of Shri Lanka). Understood in this way, "Hinduism" appears to be not so much a fixed religious doctrine but a process of controlled acculturation that legitimizes itself by referring back, directly or indirectly, to the Vedic Revelation (cf. SMITH 1989). Perhaps the best symbol of this process is the non-Vedic transgressor-god Bhairava, adopted by both Hindu and Buddhist tantricism, in whom the figure of the consecrated brahmanical sacrificer is wholly merged with that of the shaman in ecstatic trance.

"But it is perhaps of greatest significance, that here alone Mahayana Buddhism has survived as a living tradition. Valley Buddhists have sometimes been pressured, but scarcely persecuted; Buddhist monuments have been destroyed by nothing less benign than time and neglect. The Kathmandu Valley is thus not only an immense museum of Buddhist antiquities, but it is a unique oasis of surviving Mahayanist Buddhist doctrines, cultural practices and colorful festivals.... Buddhism has been slowly declining since about the twelfth century. Today, the process has picked up speed, and Buddhism is rapidly disappearing. But Nepali Buddhism as a living force has hardly been explored, and even its monuments await documentation. The study of Buddhist remains in the Kathmandu Valley, social and physical, is urgent" (SLUSSER:270). Let me introduce Elizabeth's presentation of Pachali Bhairava by providing a historical sketch of Hindu-Buddhist relations in the Kathmandu Valley along the lines of this acculturation model. The political history of Nepal is generally divided into the following periods: the pre-historic "tribal" (or Kirata) period, the Licchavi period from ca. 300 to ca. 879 A.D., the following Transitional period which continued till 1200 A.D., then the Malla period which ended in 1769, when the Gorkhas under the still reigning Shah dynasty conquered the Newars and unified the whole of modern-day Nepal.

"On the basis of varied evidence—literary, historical, anthropological, linguistic, and that of tradition—we may then speculate that the kirata, metamorphosed by millennia of miscegenation and acculturation, form the matrix of the Kathmandu Valley population, which in contemporary Nepal is designated Newar" (SLUSSER:11). During the Licchavi period (ca. 300 to ca. 879 A.D), the process of "Sanskritization" and a brahmanical ideology (of sacrifices, the institution of panchali, etc.) was imposed from above on the indigenous tibeto-burman ("Kirata") population by Vedic kings (ibid., pp.18-40), who were known in India rather for their "republican" values and conservation of the "tribal" aspects of Aryan culture. Like the Karkota dynasty of imperial Kashmir, these predominantly "Vaishnava" monarches seem to have facilitated the transposition of Vedic sacrificial paradigms onto a Pancharatra tantric mould centering on Hindu temple worship (cf. INDEN 1991). Ancient Buddhism, in spite of its rejection of the hierarchical system of social values and the pantheon of gods deriving from the brahmanical sacrifice, was patronized fully by these monarches who built stupas and gave away entire villages to the sangha (SLUSSER:271-80). What is more, Manadeva I became a penitent in the Gum-Vihara, Shivadeva II (A.D. 694-705) converted to Buddhism and Vrshadeva (ca. A.D. 400), the founder of Svayambhu-stupa, seems to have been an openly Buddhist king. The Licchavi kings evidently found in the egalitarianism and aniconism of ancient Buddhism an inheritor of tribal Vedism that was almost as legitimate as classical brahmanism centered on the sacrifice. And all this even before the late achievement of the Hindu-Buddhist tantric synthesis.

The "transitional period" (ca. 879 to 1200), which has bequeathed to us so few artifacts of higher civilization, probably saw the collapse of this "pax vedica" around a centralized authority and the affirmation of a succession of indigenous powers (SLUSSER:41-51). Already present during the Licchavi epoch, Vajrayana Buddhism came into full bloom during this period of relative anarchy, when Nepal was considered a Buddhist country by the Chinese and the Tibetans who came to study there (ibid., pp.281-286). The slow maturation of "Aryan" culture within Newar society must have continued under Buddhist auspices, even independently of any royal patronage. The role of the Vedic Indra, whose iconic representations do not become popular until the 11th century but who continue to wear Licchavi style crowns, was played by the Bodhisattva Vajrapani (ibid., pp.267-9), the revealer of Vajrayana teachings. The importance of the number five in Newar Hinduism, and in the worship of Pachali Bhairava in particular, is found also in the five Tathagatas of Mahayana Buddhism: indeed, Amoghasiddhi, Vairocana, Amitabha, Ratnasambhava and Akshobhya, may have even received occasional animal sacrifices in Nepal. The spatial organization of the Licchavi stupas (as at Patan) already reflects a pentadic structure probably derived from a Vedic paradigm. This would have been the period when Aryan cultural patterns were thoroughly indigenized by the Newars into a uniquely Nepali mould.

The ascension of the Malla king and culture-hero, Gunakamadeva, whose cultural significance seems to have been confused with that of Amshuvarman (SLUSSER:45), probably indicates the turning-point at which the ancient Licchavi patterns reasserted themselves from below, even outside of specifically Vedic institutions. (The probably low-born) Amshuvarman (605-621 A.D.), the most illustrious ruler of the Licchavi period, was not only an ardent "Shaiva" but also a devotee of Bhairava who continued to generously patronize Buddhist institutions. Gunakamadeva is the legendary "founder" of Kathmandu, who would have instituted various royal festivals, including the Pachali Bhairava festival and the Nava Durga dances. Just as in Kashmir, the tantric reworking and interiorization of Vedic paradigms, initiated by the Pancharatras, continues under Shaiva auspices (cf. GOUDRIAAN:21) during this Early Malla period (1200-1382). Esoteric Shaiva techniques for intensifying (the Fire of) Consciousness are understood by Abhinavagupta as an internalization of the Vedic Agnihotra. This vegetarian fire-sacrifice was subsequently incorporated into a tantric ritual framework, as attested by the "temple to Agni" (Agnishala) at Patan; conversely, the Hindu-Buddhist meat-offering to the tantric divinity Pachali Bhairava is in turn modelled on the Vedic paradigm. The Late Malla period (1382 to 1769) is heralded by the ascension to the throne of Jayasthiti Malla (1382 A.D.), who came from the royal Vaisnavite milieu of Mithila in Bihar. This Indian prince reorganized the caste system along more orthodox lines and accelerated the process of "hinduization" among the Newars (SLUSSER:52-76). Despite their induction into the Vedico-Tantric symbolic universe and the growing hold of the bhakti religion of classical Hinduism, the faith and religious observance of the majority of Newars still remained Buddhist well into the Shah period.

Unlike the Newars, the Gorkhas are a staunchly Hindu Indo-Nepali ethnic group that claims an Aryan cultural heritage. Prithivi Narayana Shah, the unifier and founder of modern Nepal, patronized Newar religious institutions (e.g., the Nuwakot Bhairavi), including Buddhist ones (e.g., by contributing to the rebuilding of the Svayambhu stupa), even before his conquest of the Kathmandu Valley in 1769. After the Gorkha conquest, he supervised, financed and participated wholly in Newar royal festivals like the Indra and Pachali Bhairava Yatras. Despite the loss of power to the Ranas for a century (1846 to 1951), a period when Buddhism was sometimes officially discriminated against, his descendant Birendra Bikram Shah still continues to patronize and participate in these Newar festivals. Notwithstanding the neglect of their language and culture, the Newars have enjoyed a role in administrative affairs disproportionate to their numbers under the royal dispensation of the Shahs. With the erosion of the underlying socio-ritual structures (e.g., the guthi system which was their primary economic basis) under the impact of modernization, these festivals have become increasingly irrelevant to the political unity of Nepal. Paradoxically, the introduction of (parliamentary) democracy has perhaps endangered the (relatively) privileged status of the Newar minority.

Torn between genocidal communal strife and the menace of totalitarianism, our age of demystification could perhaps endorse our "tantricizing" reduction of divine kingship into a symbolic cipher for a generalized inner condition of individual autonomy.

"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.

Pachali Bhairava, king of Pharping (a town to the south of Kathmandu), has the habit of locking himself in a room of his palace to eat enormous quantities of rice and a goat. His wife insists upon coming and sharing his meal. The king accepts but informs his wife that he will have quite another appearance, and that she will have to throw some grains of rice on him in order to restore his human aspect. His wife is so terrified at the sight of Bhairava that she runs away forgetting to throw the grains. Afraid of being discovered by his subjects, the exposed king takes refuge in the place where the temple of Pachali Bhairava still stands today. His wife stumbles a little further on and becomes Lumarhi, the dangerous goddess Bhadrakali whose temple stands at the edge of the Tundikhel field.

In another version, Pachali Bhairava has the habit of leaving Pharping each morning to bathe in the Ganga at Banaras and returning to Kathmandu in the form of a handsome man. In this way, he seduces a young girl of the butcher caste (Nep. kasai) who tends a troop of pigs near the temple site. In other accounts, he is rather a farmer (jyapu) who thus breaks all the rules of caste. Before long, she too becomes curious and he finally agrees to reveal himself provided she throws some grains of rice as soon as she sees his real identity. She too forgets and flees as soon as she is confronted by her grotesque lover. Bhairava pursues her through the night, but day starts to dawn and he seeks to hide himself. He reaches a cremation ground and wraps a bamboo mat around himself, such as the Newars use for their dead. This one had in fact been used to bring a corpse to the cremation ghat. He has no time to disappear totally underground and the stone venerated today is his buttock! Another version explains the close relationship of the Kasai caste with the god Ganesha. The seduced butcher girl becomes pregnant and her fear at the grotesque appearance of her lover provokes the premature birth of the child, who is adopted by the Kasai. The child is none other than Ganesha, who is venerated by the butchers of South Kathmandu in the form of a small bronze statue attached to a drum that they play during different ceremonies.

Punya Ratna Vajracharya related yet another account in which Bhairava is not a king but a farmer (jyapu): Bhairava walks with his daughter Kumari and his son Ganesha during the festival of Indra. Bhairava's wife, Ajima (also of Jyapu caste), is jealous because she is not with them, and asks Bhairava to stroll with her around Kathmandu. He agrees, but not during the Indra Yatra. That is why during the Pachali Bhairava festival, Bhairava walks with Ajima through Kathmandu. During the Indra Yatra, the procession of the Kumari or Virgin-Goddess is in fact accompanied by Ganesha and Bhairava, but in this context, Bhairava (like Ganesha) is a small boy of the Buddhist Sakya caste. The boy's Sakya family regularly sends a tray of offerings to the temple of Pachali Bhairava. We may already note the strong symbolic link between the royal festival of Indra and that of Bhairava.

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."

The open sanctuary (pitha), one of the most ancient temples of Bhairava in Kathmandu, is situated in the south of the modern town near Tekudoban at the confluence of the Bagmati and Vishnumati rivers. It is very close to the cremation ghat on the Bagmati—the Ganga of the Kathmandu Valley—and is surrounded by other, non-riverine, cremation grounds. Under the shade of a big pippal tree, on the altar of the open sanctuary, there is a stone representing Pachali Bhairava, around which there are stones that symbolize his attendants (gana) (photo 1). Facing the altar is the Vetala in human form on which blood sacrifices are performed (photo 2). Because of the similarity of Pachali Bhairava with the human buttocks, people coming from the plains of India made fun of the sacrificial practices of the Newar. So king Pratapamalla (17th C.) covered most of the original emblem leaving only this stone for the sight of the devotees. What is underlined here is that Bhairava represents impurity, above all the impurity of death.

"In Kathmandu, the Jyapu farmers who still represent a third of the population of the old town are spatially distributed in four sectors, each associated to a particular temple: Svayambunatha (Simbu) and Lutimaru Ajima at the north-west, Bhadrakali at the south-east and Pachali at the south" (TOFFIN 1984:485). The principal devotees of Pachali Bhairava are farmers and oil-pressers who live in the southern part of Kathmandu. At the daily level, the farmers are the most involved because they maintain the open air temple, called a pitha. The tantric priest (Achaju) who performs the daily rituals is none other than the eldest male member (Thakali) of the family currently in charge of the open-air temple. The daily rituals are performed, morning and evening, by the farmer guardians and by a Buddhist "brahman" Vajracharya priest (photo 3). They offer, among other things, eggs, goats, and above all poultry to Pachali Bhairava, but the animals are never sacrificed on the altar itself but only on the Vetala (SLUSSER:337,362). Every Saturday, a tray of offerings from the house of the Juju is brought in the open-air temple for the daily ritual. Special rituals are also celebrated on the eighth day of Dasain (Maha-Ashtami) and on Pachare or Pishacha-chaturdashi, a three-day festival beginning on the fourteenth day of the dark fortnight of the month of Chaitra (March-April).

In the Newar tradition, each god has generally two temples. One is situated outside the town, and the god is venerated there in the open-air temple called a pitha. The other is inside the town, and the god is venerated in a closed temple called a dyahche in Newari (cf. SLUSSER:326). This dyahche is, in fact, a special room inside the house of the family who keeps the Bhairava jar. In the closed temple, Pachali Bhairava is represented by and worshipped as a jar (New. tepa or kom) filled with beer (photo 5). Its guardian must perform a ritual during Tihar, a five day festival beginning on the thirteenth day of the waxing fortnight of the month of Karttika (October-November). The Sakyas (a Buddhist caste) are responsible for cleaning the jar three times a year, during the festivals of Tihar, Ghantakarna and Pachare. Beside the Bhairava jar, an oval-shaped silver bowl called patra khola, representing Bhairava's wife Ajima, is also venerated by the same family. The dyahche which shelters the divine image for a limited period is sometimes confused with the agamche. The agamche is also a closed sanctuary within the city where the lineage divinity is kept for an unlimited period of time. "The only difference between the agamche and the dyahche, is that in the first case the divinity never leaves its temple, whereas in the second case it is exhibited before the eyes of the public once a year during its procession to a temple (pitha) situated outside the locality" (TOFFIN 1984:83 note 16; cf. chaps. 18 and 20). The agamche of Pachali Bhairava is in fact in the house of the Juju.

What is puzzling, already at this level of the cult, is that a Buddhist priest, (Babukaji) Vajracharya, performs the daily morning ritual which follows that performed by the Achaju from the Hindu Jyapu caste. The relation of the Buddhists with the open air temple of Pachali Bhairava appears to be quite ancient, for they associate this divinity with Svacchanda (Lalita) Bhairava (MALLA:6). Described by Hindu Tantras used in medieval Kashmir as "white, five-faced (the embodiment of the five Brahma mantras) and eighteen-armed, he is worshipped with his identical consort Aghoresvari, surrounded by eight lesser Bhairavas within a circular enclosure of cremation grounds. He stands upon the prostrate corpse of Sadasiva, the now transcended Siva-form worshipped in the Saiva Siddhanta" (Sanderson 1988:669).

The Manandhar: Pachali Bhairava had also a very important role in the ritual life of the former caste of oil-pressers. They are Buddhists and employ a Vajracharya as a priest, but this has not prevented them from being very Hinduized and, in fact, they worship all the Hindu gods (NEPALI:171). Until very recently, they used to shave the heads of their sons in the pitha on the fifth day of the annual festival, in a rite de passage by which the boys became adults integrated into their caste. The Manandhar still carry torches to light the path of the annual procession of Pachali Bhairava. According to TOFFIN (1984:580), a mask of Bhairava, who is their lineage god to be venerated only by the initiated, changes residence each year, passing successively into the house of every member of the guthi. This corresponds very well to what happens with the Pachali Bhairava jar among the Jyapus. Until 1885, the oil pressers were an impure caste and their own account of the story connects their livelihood with the (accidental) killing of a child. It is hence not surprising that they should be called upon to provide the music during funeral processions. It is the Manandhar who erect the pole of Indra at Kathmandu during the Indra Yatra and who carry it, after the festival, to the cremation ghat near the Pachali Bhairava pitha.

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.

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 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.

Map 2: Procession Routes during the annual festival of Pachali Bhairava

[map by Dr. Niels Gutschow]

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).

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Pachali Bhairava, petrified beside the cremation ground beside the Bagmati-Ganga, represents an interiorized experience of death, transgression and rebirth. It is around this shared experience that the Hindu sacrificial, Buddhist tantric and tribal shamanic dimensions of the Bhairava cult are differentially articulated. The co-opting of Buddhist castes and Vajrayana adepts into the Hindu socio-religious universe seems to have been facilitated by a specifically tantric Buddhist reading of this Vedic symbolism of sacrificial death. For their part, the autochthonous populations, particularly those which have undergone religio-cultural fusion to constitute present-day Newar ethnicity, have readily assimilated (the proponents of) Hindu-Buddhist tantricism because it not only incorporated their socio-economic infrastructures but also elevated their shamans into prestigious religious guarantors of the emerging "Hindu" polity.

If the royal Bhairava is repeatedly said to have come from Banaras, this is because the symbolic geography of Kathmandu has been subjected to "colonization" by a Hindu sacrificial ideology that had been invested most fully in the "great cremation ground" (mahashmashana) of the Hindu universe. On emerging from the impure death-like embryonic condition of the diksha, the Vedic king offered himself in sacrifice through a substitute victim attached to the sacrificial pole (yupa) which represented the axis mundi. This is represented beside the Kapalamocana tank in Banaras by (the stump of) an ancient pillar which has long been identified as the staff or cudgel (lat) of the policeman-magistrate Bhairava. Lat-Bhairava is, in fact, the ancient Mahashmashana-Stambha (pillar) where Kala-Bhairava used to not only devour the sins of pilgrims but also administer the "punishment/suffering" of Bhairava (bhairavi yatana), which alone conferred final emancipation (moksha) even on the worst of sinners. The policeman-magistrate (Kotwal) apparently presided over the public execution of criminals in what was probably a significant cremation-ground, which would account for the terrible character even of its metaphysical transposition. Once a year, the royal head of (Kala) Bhairava is still brought in procession to "crown" the pillar and to celebrate the cosmogonic marriage this linga of Bhairava with the adjacent maternal well.

It is this transformative paradigm—whereby esoteric tantric notions of internalized death and sexual union are both derived from and re-inscribed within the symbolic universe of the archaic Vedic sacrifice—that has been extended to Nepal to form the integral basis of a royal cosmogony where the New Year poles are simultaneously the sacrificial yupa and the phallic linga. The cosmogonic linga of the Bisket Jatra at Bhaktapur is explicitly identified with Kashi Vishwanath who came from Banaras in the form of Kala Bhairava, only to be decapitated in honor of his consort Bhadrakali. Their sexual union is re-enacted both by the collision of their respective chariots and the erection of the pole in the hollow mound of earth. It is also certainly not accidental that the royal festival of Indra's banner (dhvaja) at the capital, Kathmandu, coincides with the marriage of Lat-Bhairava which is celebrated exactly on the full moon of Bhadra which signals the beginning of the season for death-rituals. Though these royal cosmogonies were no doubt originally borrowed and adapted from Hindu India, it is the present-day ethnography of Newar tantricism that allows us to reconstitute, in this manner, the true significance of Bhairava even in his native city of Banaras, the socio-religious center of Hinduism.

The royal Bhairava also appears as the transgressive Tantric adept, endowed with magico-religious powers, who has transcended all sectarian distinctions. The "hinduization" of Newar Buddhism was however not a simple surrender to the caste-ideology and the underlying values of the brahmanical sacrifice. The tutelary divinity of the gardeners is not Bhairava but Bhadrakali, who is for them essentially no different from the Buddhist Vajravarahi. The Vajracharyas themselves primarily worship other Bhairava-like divinities like Chakrasamvara, Heruka, and Mahakala, and distinguish between their own private rituals and their officiation at the public festivals of the Hindus. The relative independence of the Buddhist re-reading of Hindu sacrificial paradigms is best demonstrated by the manner in which Shaiva Kapalika themes have been reworked into the Tibetan cycle of the subjugation of Rudra, in a context where Hinduism had been unable to exercise similar pressures on the socio-political level.

The immeasurable world-pillar, from which Bhairava emerged to appropriate Brahma's central head, is reduced to more handy ritual proportions in the cranial-staff (khatvanga) which the Kapalika wields as a weapon. On the basis of the explicit textual evidence of Tibetan Buddhist tantras further elucidated by the oral traditions of their lamaistic practitioners, the skull-topped khatvanga, provided with a brahmanical cord (yajnopavita), has not only been identified with the world-tree, also called Amrta and growing in the cremation-ground. The entire symbolic complex has been derived from esoteric psycho-physical, especially sexual, techniques centering on the production of the ambrosia of "supreme felicity" (mahasukha), through a process of alternating ascent and descent within the sushumna. This ritual system refers back to the liberating murder by (a Buddhist divinity like Heruka assimilated to) Bhairava (Jigs-byed) of the demonized, and still terrible, Rudra, but in a scenario that deliberately underlines the consubstantiality of divine killer and demoniac victim amidst the transgressive valorization of impurities (like excrement, etc.) converted into nectar. Though philosophically elaborated in the light of specifically Buddhist tenets, the underlying techniques are indistinguishable from those of the corresponding Shaiva tantras and the formal symbolic system is clearly derived from the Hindu, and even Vedic, universe. Like Mahakala, the sushumna is said to devour Kala (death) represented by the alternating lateral breaths; and in the Tibetan tantras Rudra "eats" or is "eaten" by his mother in the cremation-ground beside the cosmic tree called "Amrta" or "Khatvanga" and especially "Fornication," and ultimately attains deliverance to become Mahakala.

The erection of the linga, which is what the poles representing Indra and Bhairava are called in Nepal, signifies above all the neutralization and annihilation of the opposing vital breaths (prana/apana) resulting in the raising of the kundalini up the median channel (sushumna) in the very act of sexual (and even incestuous) intercourse. If the most virtuous of saints cannot aspire to that salvation which even and especially brahmanicides are assured of in Banaras, this is only because Bhairava as executioner-cum-victim is identical with the all-devouring Fire of Consciousness that consumes all the impurity of sin, and because the sacrificial death was itself assimilated to its fiery ascent up the sushumna as the (maha-) shmashana (pillar), now remaining as the Lat-Bhairava. The perpetual cremation at Manikarnika, where three streams unite(d) to flow out as the Brahmanala or Pitamahashrotas into the milky way of the Ganga, confirms that all death in Banaras is (modelled on) the initiatic process whereby this flame of consciousness pierces through the sinciput at the "aperture of Brahma" (brahmarandhra) to be freed forever. Even the apparently alternative fate, which is reserved especially for those who sin in Banaras itself before dying there, conforms rigorously to the above model of initiatic death. They are transformed into ghoulish Rudras (rudrapishaca) before undergoing the "punishment of Rudra" (rudrayatana) at the Mahashmashana-stambha. The figure of the Rudrapishaca appears to be a mythic projection of the fiendish (pretavad) Pashupata ascetics who once haunted these cremation-grounds. The (mystic) decapitation of the Tibetan adept, corresponding to the "skull-breaking" (kapalakriya) performed on the Banaras corpse, when the divine life-force escapes through the brahmarandhra, also corresponds to the murderous liberation of Rudra by a Bhairava-like (Jigs-byed) divinity who penetrates the demon at the base of the spine to flash like an arrow or comet through "the opening of the Door of Heaven." Rudra had already received the tantric initiation in his original incarnation as the master "Deliverance -Salvation/Black," whose name "alludes to his ambiguous nature: he will do evil, but will be finally delivered with the status of the god Mahakala." This salvation often occurs in the explicit context of copulation belonging to the same symbolic complex, which is not foreign to the Hindu cremation-rites. If Bhairava, the brahmanical dikshita from Banaras, can remind the Vajracharyas of the Vedic roots of their Buddhist Tantras, then Bhairava, the Tibetan Lama from Lhasa, could easily return the compliment by explaining to the Hindus the esoteric content of not just their royal cosmogony but their death rituals as well.

"The Newari word yala means the same as yupa, and, more broadly, signifies any sacrificial post, pillar, or standard. The tall poles raised for Bisket- and Indra-jatra, and on many other ritual occasions, are known to Newars even now as yalasin (wooden poles). Perhaps both names, Yala and Yupagrama, were determined by the existence of a small community associated with Vedic sacrifice at this crossroads.... One is tempted to see in the ancient Patan tumuli and the names Yala and Yupagrama, an analogy with pre-Buddhist pillars and tumuli of northern India. Objects of worship, the pillars and tumuli dotted the Uttarapatha, the great northern trade route, and clustered around the trading centers (...). Patan, almost certainly a stopover on the trans-Himalayan trade route, whose southern terminus intersected the east-west Uttarapatha, may mark the northernmost extension of this practice" (SLUSSER:97 and note 79). Lat-Bhairava, which is surrounded by the ruins of Buddhist architectural monuments, was itself probably a (pre-) Ashokan pillar standing at the central crossroads of ancient Banaras, where the Uttara-Patha crossed the road to Sarnath. Hiuen Tsang (7th C.) saw it standing beside a huge stupa: even during the reign of Aurangzeb (17th C.), when it stood within the compound of a beautiful mosque, the Muslim caretakers spoke of the remains of a Buddhist king of Bhutan reportedly buried within the mound. The "Ashokan" stupas of Patan could have "originated as pre-Buddhist funerary mounds, which, as in India, were converted into Buddhist monuments" (SLUSSER:96), for the original stupa-cult itself synthesized Vedic sacrificial symbolism (yupa-yashti) with pre-Aryan funerary practices but within the non-violent ethics of ahimsa. Notions of initiatic death may have thus already been important to Banaras, within a (pre-) Mahayana Buddhist framework, even before they were reworked into the antinomian practices of Shaiva tantricism.

Banaras is particularly sanctified because there the Ganga flows northwards towards its own source. Kala Bhairava bathed in the Kapalamochana tank precisely during a heavy monsoon flood when the Ganga began to flow backwards into the Varana river transforming the whole of Banaras into the primordial mound of archaic cosmogony. This identification of the fertile mound with the very source of the life-giving waters—the "mouth of the cow" (Gaumukh), in the case of Banaras—is expressed in the founding myths of some Nepali tribes rather in terms of a clod of earth flowing downstream from the source to coagulate at the present site of the tribal settlement. Even before the arrival of the Licchavis upon the Nepali stage, Buddhist penetration may have transformed an indigenous cosmogony of the primordial mountain into the worship of the stupa at Svayambhunatha (SLUSSER:298-302; GUTSCHOW:1987b). Svayambhu, which is ritually connected with a Kotwal Bhairava at the gorge where the Bagmati exits from the valley, was probably the site of a pre-historic cult related to the draining of the Kathmandu Valley. A similar acculturation of a pre-Aryan cosmogony centered on Banaras may have occurred under Buddhist auspices before it was eventually incorporated into the sacrificial paradigm of the Bhairava cult.

The Kashi-khanda claims that Shiva himself was once a stranger to his own sacred city (ECK:146-157). The local traditions recall an ancient period when Banaras was ruled by a righteous king (Divodasa) but without any of the Hindu gods. Not only was Sarnath the site where the Buddha (supposedly) set the Wheel of the Law in motion, but Banaras seems to have become a center of Buddhism even before it became the bastion of classical brahmanism. It is through a long series of ruses that the Hindu gods are depicted as having gained a foothold within the city of the heretics. They were finally obliged to preach "protestant" Buddhism in order to wean away the city from its original dharma, and it was only then that the Banarasis had no alternative but to accept the sacrificial ideology. The ideal life-style of popular Banaras culture (banarasipan), as incarnated in Kashi Vishwanath, seems to have been inspired by the wild, eccentric Pashupata ascetic. Even now Banarasi "orthodoxy" is of a very peculiar kind, and the local brahman literati still take pride in their habits of pan-chewing and bhang-consumption (VISUVALINGAM 1992a). The continuing worship of bir-babas, etc., probably goes back to the yaksha cult of pre-Aryan times. It is perhaps more than a mere reflection of recent "hinduization" that the Kirantis of Nepal still trace their mythical origins to Banaras.

Finally, we may note that Prof. F. B. J. Kuiper's reconstruction of Ancient Indian Cosmogony (1983:90-137) reduces the central Rigvedic creation myth of Indra slaying Vrtra—which was celebrated in New Year (pole) festivals similar to those which have survived among the Newars but have been lost in India—to the socio-cosmic exteriorization of a regressus ad uterum. He finds parallels to the primordial mound in other non-Aryan archaic cultures, even in primitive religions, and derives the archetype from an anamnesis undergone during a shamanizing experience. In that case, it would have been only a matter of time before the brahmanical socio-religious ideology of the dominant Aryans and the pre-existing tribal worlds of the subcontinent were brought together within a single overarching symbolic universe. In his recent linguistic analysis of Aryans in the Rigveda, Kuiper concludes that Sanskrit itself "had long been an Indian language when it made its appearance in history" (1991:94). "The inherited Vedic culture, however, must for a long time have remained dominant, notwithstanding the foreign influence that made itself felt: a foreign myth could only be adopted by transforming it into an Indra-myth and non-Aryan sorcerers were incorporated and became Vedic [rshis], authors of a separate collection of hymns.... As a sociological term 'Aryan' denotes all those who took part in the sacrifices and festivals. There is nothing novel in this definition. Not always, however, may it have been realized that many among these 'Aryans' had non-Aryan names and that this fact points to some inescapable conclusions. Statements to the effect that the Rigveda was no longer purely Aryan (...) are therefore correct to the extent that they refer to the language and ethnic components: both were 'Aryan'. Culturally, however, the Rigvedic society was Aryan without quotes, but this reveals how ambiguous the term is" (KUIPER 1991:96). It was only natural—and perhaps inevitable—that Buddhism, which peacefully mediated this ongoing process of acculturation—and well beyond the confines of the Indian subcontinent—had rapidly assimilated, developed, systematized and propagated these techniques and their symbolic encoding, thereby contributing to the consolidation of Tantric tradition.

Does our long and convoluted itinerary simply end with the surrender of the original Buddhist ideals of aniconism and spiritual egalitarianism to the Hindu pantheon and to the ideology of caste-based acculturation? "In the Indian province of Bihar, the renown of Muslim saints is to a large measure assured by itinerant singers. The reconstitution of the itinerary of these singers and the analysis of their repertory brings to light a network of tombs of Muslim saints established on Buddhist stupas" (SERVAN-SCHREIBER:1991, abstract). The site of the primordial cosmogony at Lat Bhairava has been taken over, after the Islamic conquest of the 12th century, by an open-air prayer-ground (idgah) where lower-caste Muslims of Banaras continue to offer their goat sacrifices during the Baqr-Id in commemoration of Abraham's sacrifice of his son Ishmael (Isaac). Well into the 19th century, they continued to participate with their Hindu neighbors in celebrating the royal marriage of Lat-Bhairava. Reciprocally, the Hindus used to participate in a similar festival celebrating the sacrificial marriage of the Muslim martyr Ghazi Miyan, who was likewise represented by a pole bearing his head. Does this mean that, in its turn, the egalitarian Islamic iconoclasm too was unable to resist the acculturating power of the Hindu paradigm? On the contrary, Aurangzeb's mosque was built so as to situate the Bhairava-pillar in the ritual direction facing Mecca. Similar cosmogonic notions are already invested in the black Kaaba stone—itself assimilated to a pillar—and they can be traced back to Jewish sacrificial constructions around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. We have already devoted a lengthy monograph entitled "Between Mecca and Banaras: The Marriage of Lat-Bhairava and Ghazi Miyan" (1992b) towards extending this acculturation model to the Abrahamic religions and the contemporary context. The viability of such a semiotic approach to the (transgressive) "roots of Tantra" (VISUVALINGAM 1989) is perhaps best revealed in its ability not only to account for the past evolution and present configuration, in Nepal, of this pervasive dimension of Indian religions, but also to discern the contours of its future transformations even beyond the borders of South Asia and of Hinduism proper.

D. End-Notes to "Between Veda and Tantra"

F. List of Photographs