people, especially farmers. The Newars of the valley believe that elephants and shrews are the same creatures; they differ only in size. In Sanskrit literature, mice were considered among the calamities and obstacles (itis).1 Ganesha is worshipped today as the remover of obstacles not only by farmers but by businessmen, politicians, and students preparing for annual final exams. Besides being the season for festivals of thanksgiving, autumn was also the time of great historical battles among neighboring small kingdoms or principalities. These battles remain keenly in the memory of the Nepalese and Indians alike and are ritually reenacted every autumn. The exquisitely rendered metal sculpture showing the autumnal goddess Durga (cat. 39), the beheaded water buffalo demon, and the demon emerging from the neck of the animal is a symbolic expression of the bloodshed in battles between good and evil as well as real battles in the autumn. Although in Nepal Hindus and Buddhists celebrate the seasonal festival in honor of the autumnal goddess, her cult never gained popularity on the other side of the Himalayas, which has totally different seasons, characterized by hibernation. Likewise the worship of the cow and the goddess of wealth on the same day of autumn (the fifteenth day of the dark half of the month of Kartika) in India and Nepal is reminiscent of an important aspect of ancient life. In the culture of those people whose livelihood is largely based on cow milk, the number of cows a person owns indicates his wealth. The
128
Sanskrit word goman, which means owner of (multiple) cows, is also a synonym for a rich and prosperous man. So it is not difficult to understand why a cow is worshipped as the goddess of wealth. The name of the goddess Lakshmi derives from a descriptive word for a dappled cow with auspicious marks (lakhsma) on its body. The custom of autumnal cow worship originated from the ancient ritual of the autumnal impregnation of a cow, a subject that was discussed in the introduction. The cow goddess Lakshmi is also known as Kamala or Pandara, nominclatures derived from Sanskrit synonyms for lotus. How is it possible that a cow goddess is also a lotus goddess? It is possible because, as Kalidasa has described, lotuses blossom exactly when the rice paddies become heavy with grain. A wooden sculpture of Lakshmi (cat. 46), who could be identified as the Buddhist goddess Pandara as well, adorns the treasure room of a traditional Newar house. It is likely that some ancient Newars were cattle breeders, described in a medieval chronicle as gopala, cow-protectors. 2 Attracted by the abundance of vegetation and fresh water, they migrated from colder high hills such as Bal-po rdzon to warmer ones and eventually reached the Kathmandu Valley. As was mentioned in the introduction, Bal-po rdzon is the Tibetan name for Nuwakot, which literally means Newar village. Undoubtedly, the Newars shared the nomadic cowherd lifestyle with other
cattle breeders dwelling on the northern slope of the Himalayas or near the foothills of the mountain range before and after the arrival of Sanskrit-speaking cowherds. These new arrivals created oral Vedic literature, which is fortunately still available to us. Because this voluminous literature was partially composed in northern India, it includes information related to the non-Vedic culture of the native inhabitants. The lifestyle of cowherds is also related, directly or indirectly, to the original concept of Matrkas, Mother Goddesses, who, like cows, conceive in autumn and give birth to the rainchild. Although these goddesses are now incorporated into the Hindu pantheon, they are still ritually impregnated in autumn by mixing the clay prepared for making the masks of the goddesses with a small piece of clay previously used to make a phallic symbol. This symbol is not necessarily the same as the Hindu Shivalinga, Shiva’s phallic symbol. The Hindu Shivalinga is symbolic and always erected perpendicularly. The Newar phallic symbol does not have to be so. It could be very realistic and displayed with vivid sexual connotation. Long before Hinduism gained popularity on the subcontitnent, natives there worshipped the phallus as a fertility symbol. When the Vedic people observed this custom, they designated the natives as sisnadeva, people who worshipped the phallus as their god. Such a phallic cult is still alive in the valley. Near Dattatreya Temple in Bhaktapur, a huge, realistic wooden phallus, hung from the ceiling,