A Religion Based on Worship
Religion in the Kathmandu Valley is primarily a set of practices and these are all based on the idea of worship, doing pujd, to a superior. Usually the superior in question is a deity, but it can also be a priest, elder or monk, someone considered to incarnate a deity, or anyone worthy of respect; and there are two popular family festivals, held on consecutive days, in which respectively one worships one’s own body, for good health, and elder sisters worship their younger brothers, for long life.
The simplest worship consists simply of bowing one’s head with folded hands; also indicative of respect, though not constituting worship as such, is the practice of keeping the deity or other superior on one’s right hand. If offerings are made, the simplest is a few grains of rice or, these days, a coin. A more elaborate worship is made by offering a set of five things together: flowers, incense, light, vermilion powder and food (e.g. rice, sweets or fruit). To these may be added an offering of water, representing the bathing of feet, and thread tied in a circle, representing cloth. All of these offerings may be made by an individual on his own; but in rituals which require the specialist services of a priest the number of offerings increases rapidly. Some of these offerings are kept at home by each family, others may be bought at shops specialising in the sale of ritual perquisites, and some are so unusual—such as the rhinoceros meat required when performing ancestor worship—that the priest will bring along a minute quantity himself. Certain deities accept animal sacrifice: the various forms of the Hindu Goddess (e.g. the Eight Mothers and the Nine Durgas), Bhairava, Ganesa and Bhimasena. But to sacrifice an animal to high and pure deities—Mahadeva (Siva), Narayana (Visnu), the Buddha or the Buddhist bodhisattvas—would be a heinous sin. However there is another class of deities, the secret or Tantric deities, who may be seen and worshipped directly only by those with special empowering initiations; while not normally receiving actual blood sacrifice they must be offered cooked meat and alcohol.
The offerings m. de in worship must be new and fresh—offering a half-eaten banana would be a terrible insult, and contradict the basic emotional attitude of worship, namely respectful acknowledgement of one’s inferiority and, often only implicitly, a request for protection. Likewise the offering must be kept pure, that is, it must be kept away from contact with impurity, a category which, as in the rest of South Asia, includes saliva, excrement, menstruating women, dogs, leather, Untouchables, the soles of the feet and so on. When worship has been performed it is usual to receive back some of the offerings as a blessing: vermilion powder as a spot on the forehead, flowers put behind the ear (right for men, left for women), water or food—including the meat of a sacrificed animal—to consume.
A Westerner from a secular society can only be amazed at the time, energy and resources that Newars devote to their religion. Every day offerings must be made and every year hundreds of festivals are observed, some confined to a particular village or quarter of the city, others common to all Newars alike. In addition every lineage has its own deity which must be worshipped once or twice a year, as do many castes or professional groups. High-caste families have their Tantric deities requiring regular worship. There are gods for toothache, earache, smallpox and infertility, gods who will help you find things you have lost, gods whose worship can help to remove the sin of adultery. Birth, entry into adulthood, marriage, the attaining of the ages 77, 80 and 99, and death are all marked by religious observances which involve the whole family and many relatives.
Newars also have a unique and characteristic religious organisation called^« t/zi: these group together a number of men usually, but not invariably, of the same caste, for some socio-religious purpose or other. Every Newar belongs to at least one guthi, a funeral association which takes charge of the cremation of its members.
But there are hundreds of others, e.g. those responsible for the maintenance of wayside shelters, guthis set up to ensure the annual performance of a particular fast, or charged with the building of the cart of a popular deity, to mention only a few. Guthis are funded by lands and other donations, gifted either by the founder or subsequently as an act of religious merit, or by annual contributions from its members. Each year or month, depending on the rhythm of the guthi’s activities, a different member takes charge ofits organisation. At the conclusion of his turn he must give a feast for all the members. The dishes to be served are laid down by tradition and participating in it is also a religious act, since the food is consecrated by the presiding divinity. Similar feasts are eaten by the family, and its guests, at the conclusion of every life-cycle rite, and at every important annual festival.Underlying this efflorescence of religious activity is a complex but stable society, built on respect and hierarchy. Different castes are related to each other, just as men are related to gods, in certain fixed and traditional ways, which are re-enacted every year as inevitably as the seasons. The historian or anthropologist can detect that certain rituals have gone out of, or come into, fashion (e.g. the fast of Svasthani, mentioned below), that the caste system is mutating and that new types of religious activity have emerged. But the Newars themselves remain extremely attached to their traditions and to the idea that they are unchanging and ought not to change.
Newar religious practices can be divided into the compulsory and the optional. The sheer quantity of compulsory observance is very slowly decreasing, but there seems to be at least as much optional religious activity as there ever has been.