Change In Plans

ZOLA WITH TWO NEPALI SADHUS

Namaste from Kathmandu!  We have had an unbelievably full and interesting day here.  Any notion that Nepal would be “just like India,” has been completely undone.  I will try to write about our day in a later post.  This short post is mostly focused on the Royal Kumari, the living goddess of Kathmandu.

As we are finding out, Nepal is unique in many ways.  In some “fun fact” uniqueness, Nepal has:

1. The only national flag that is not rectangular.  Nepal’s flag is two red triangles stacked on top of each other like little pennants
2. The only Maoist national government (elected or unelected) in the world.  They have only been in power for a few months, so it is too early to figure out whether this will be a good thing.  The monarchy was such a disaster that the bar is set pretty low.
3. The only time zone which is 45 minutes off the rest of the world.  If it is midnight in London, it is 5:45 am in Nepal.  Indian Standard Time (where it would be 5:30 am) was slightly confusing, but NST is maxing out our math skills.

Nepal is also unique in having a tradition of “living virgin goddesses,” in many of its cities.  The most important one lives in Kathmandu, and is known as the Kumari Devi, or the Royal Kumari.

For many centuries young Kathmandu girls have been carefully selected to act as Royal Kumaris.  No one seems to know exactly when this tradition began, estimates range from 1300 AD to 1750 AD, with the most frequent guess about 1550 AD.  Also, no one knows precisely how the tradition started, although the myths all involve a Newar king who somehow offended a powerful Hindu goddess.  Questions of origin aside, these pre-pubescent living goddesses are entrenched deeply in the culture and religion of Nepal.

The Royal Kumari is believed, literally, to be a living incarnation of the goddess Taleju. Taleju is the “wrathful” manifestation of the goddess Durga,  and Durga, in turn, is one of the many manifestation of the goddess Pravati. Pravati is the wife of Lord Shiva.  And to think that people say Hinduism is complicated.

The living goddess is selected at the age of 3 or 4, and serves until she starts menstruating.  Her role as goddess is: to live away from her family (in a small palace called the Kumari Che); to dress in elaborate red costumes and theatrical makeup; to wave to occasional visitors down in her courtyard; to receive important priestly and royal supplicants; and to be paraded around Kathmandu in a chariot a few times each year at important festivals.  Aside from the festivals, she does not leave her palace during her +/- 8 years on the job.

WAITING FOR A WAVE FROM THE GODDESS - THE MIDDLE WINDOW ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE PICTURE IS HERS

New living goddesses have to be selected roughly every eight years.  If you thought that the admissions process for Manhattan private schools was tough, you will feel comforted to see the extremio ad absurdum of the Kumari Devi selection process.

• Prospective kumaris are drawn only from a specific caste of Buddhist gold- and silversmiths, known as Shakya.  Choosing Buddhist girls to become a Hindu goddess is only slightly strange.  Also, they must live within a small and strictly defined area near the center of old Kathmandu.
• Prior to reaching puberty, and long before getting married for real, most Nepali girls go through two symbolic weddings.  One wedding is at age 4-5 to a fruit called the bel (a type of apple), and one wedding, at age 11-12, is to the sun.  A prospective kumari must not have gone through either of these symbolic weddings, as they would somehow reduce her purity.
• The few little girls who meet the basic selection criteria are subjected to a series of tests.  As I understand it, these tests include:

1. A physical examination, which is theoretically a 32-point check against ancient criteria of godliness (”strength of a banyan tree,” “voice as soft as a duck”).  In reality, it sounds as though the girls are checked for birthmarks, scars, crosseyedness, and any other mortal flaws.
2. A character test, which involves watching the sacrifice of some number of animals (somewhere between 12 and 108 animals); seeing their decapitated heads with candles attached, in a darkened room; and not screaming for Mommy.
3. A spirituality test, in which the girls are shown a line-up of identical sets of red “living goddess outfits,” and are required to pick out the clothes which were actually worn by the retiring Royal Kumari.  Apparently a similar spirituality test is used in selecting the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama.
4. A matching of horoscopes between the king and each prospective goddess. This is likely to change with the Maoists now in power.  In September, the new Maoist government appointed its first kumari -not a Royal Kumari, it was out in the provinces.  It isn’t clear how the selection process changed, if at all.

Once the new little Royal Kumari is identified, she is ensconced immediately in the Kumari Che, and has a pretty weird and isolated life until she reverts to being a normal mortal about eight years later.

All four of us thought that the idea of the Royal Kumari was pretty strange.  When we visited the Kumari Che, though, the kids were tremendously excited to find out that we might get a glimpse of the living goddess at her window.  Because we had seen Queen Elizabeth waving from her car when we went for the changing of the guards in London in June, Zola could not stop making excited comparisons between the (relatively modest) Kumari Che and Buckingham Palace.

Summoning the goddess was simple.  Our guide, Sangeeta, shouted up to the window in Nepali, “Kumari, please come!  Please come, Kumari.”   Eventually a very cute little three-year old girl toddled into sight.  She was dressed in the red and gold goddess outfit, and had the classic dramatic kohl outline round her eyes and sweeping up to her ears.  The tiny living goddess waved twice without smiling, and toddled back away from the window, presumably to finish her breakfast.  I thought Zola was going to burst with the glory of it all.

Unfortunately, it is forbidden to take pictures of the Royal Kumari, so we didn’t capture the moment.  It was an experience that was so bizarre and special and unexpected (particularly because I haven’t read any Nepal guidebooks yet) that it set us up for an amazing day of exploration.

ANYONE SEEN A LIVING GODDESS AROUND HERE?