Binita Magaiya is a research assistant in the Heritage as Placemaking project and a prospective PhD candidate at Social Science Baha, Kathmandu.

The notion that all good and bad deeds come in ‘full circles’ is represented in my gem through an examination of two religious visual elements: ritual bells, ubiquitous in the Kathmandu Valley and commonly rung to alert the gods to one’s prayers, and the Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels known as mane (or mani), found at some Buddhist sites in the region. My ‘gem’ in the Urban Heritage Mining summer school discusses the presence of these heritage elements (the bells and the mane) and questions how they may speak to practices of prayer and accommodation more broadly.

Given the diversity of sociocultural context and religious practice, the idea of prayer can be ambivalent for many believers. For instance, someone from one religious background or geography may not always be aware of how to pray in a new location or context, and there may emerge a desire to pray “correctly” in order to not offend anyone else. This is fascinating in the context of Nepal, where there is sometimes a very broad or very thin demarcation line between Hindu and Buddhist practices, as well as diversity in practice between some ethnic groups in Nepal and their neighbors. For example, Newa believers generally must remove any type of head coverings before praying to the god, whereas in many religious traditions in India, a head covering is recommended for prayer. Prayer, and the heritage elements that accompany its practice, are diverse.

During our heritage tour to Chilancho in Kirtipur, one element clearly striking to me was the integration of two manes in between the bell posts (Fig. 1). The accommodation of the manes in such a fashion, with a smaller version of a ‘typical’ Newa bell on top, is intriguing. At first, I thought the bell’s presence perhaps reflects that we were in a close-knit Newa neighborhood, which has a strong tendency toward Hindu religious visual elements. Upon further investigation of the appearance of these manes, we saw they were placed there in the 1990s, at which time a larger bell may have been changed out for a smaller one to accommodate the new mane. In the twentieth century, Kathmandu saw an influx of Tibetan refugees who set up their homes in nearby areas. Following the Tibetan uprising in 1959, thousands of Tibetans fled their homeland. Many fled to Nepal or via Nepal to India. The trickle into Nepal has continued since then. Currently, Nepal hosts around 20,000 Tibetan refugees who live in twelve designated camps in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

In the Chilancho Stupa in Kirtipur, the function of both the prayer wheels/manes and the bell is similar in both religious and emotional contexts. They each serve as a tool to send prayers to the gods. However, the scale and proportion of the bell were considerably downsized within the structure to accommodate the manes. Rohit Manandhar, one of our fellow students in this summer school, shared his thoughts on this phenomenon, saying that he sees this as an act of vandalism. The placing of a not-so-unknown object such as a mane within a different foreground forcibly changes its whole proportion. This is most noticible when one compares the bell at Chilancho Stupa with the bell at another temple without mane, such as those at the Changu Narayan Temple in Bhaktapur (Fig. 2). Additionally, the whereabouts of the original (larger) bell at the Chilancho Stupa remain unknown, bringing notions of accommodation, acquisition, and recognition into the foreground.

When is one’s act of faith perceived as vandalism by the other? While in Kirtipur, a similar thought occurred to me upon examining the area around a chiba (a small, stupa-like monument or sanctuary, also called a chaitya) and a nearby pati (a raised, arcaded platform, also known as a phalcā). Today, this particular pati is missing both columns and a supported roof, suggesting a similar fate of alteration and accommodation over time. Behind the chiba, two adjacent walls on either side of a doorway have been punctured to accommodate mane (Fig. 3). The question of tolerance remains with us while we went about our procession route in Kirtipur, but such interventions of individual faith mechanisms definitely affect the immediate surrounding. Could such additions be seen as religious tolerance or vandalism? The question remains, but however we define the “gem” in the context of our summer school, such interventions are definitely a part of the rich cultural diversity we all have come to accept, and through which we have grown.

References:

“Nepal Is Caught Between the US and China on Tibetan Refugee Issue,” by Santosh Sharma Poudel, The Diplomat

“Livelihood Patterns of the Tibetan Refugees in Kathmandu” by Neelam Shahi

”Kirtipur Municipality Profile: Facts & Statistics” by Milan Karki