Bhaktapur’s Taleju temple

When you enter Bhaktapur’s Darbar square from the car park to its west, you notice immediately a knot of people around something facing a big bell. This is the famous Golden Gate on the square, which you see in the featured photo. The ten-armed goddess shown in the center of this golden sculpture shows Taleju Bhawani. This representation confirms that the patron goddess of the Malla kings of the three kingdoms of Kathmandu valley is the same as the Durga of the large country to Nepal’s south. As Wikipedia explains in its characteristic style: “Bhavānī (also known as Bhāvya, Tulajā, Turajā, Tvarita, Aṃbā, Jagadambā and Aṃbē) is a manifestation of Adi Shakti (Durga).” The Sanskrit name Tulajā becomes Taleju in the Newa language.

I followed the knot of tourists into the temple. The gate was so ornate that its shadow also looked interesting. In the photo of its shadow, taken from the first courtyard of the temple, you can see a narrow temple peak visible over the wall. That’s the temple of Nritya Vatsala. The Wikipedia article fails to mention that Vatsala is another form of the goddess Shakti, as is Kumari, whose cult is alive and flourishing in Kathmandu. I walked back to the door to take a closer look at the intricate relief carved into the wood. Interestingly, there is a smaller door in the door. Presumably the main door used to be closed at some point, and visitors would have to duck in through the smaller opening in it.

The first courtyard had multiple doors leading out of it. Above each was a magnificent arched decoration showing Taleju in one of her aspects. In one she was flanked by a pair of Makara, the representation of the mugger crocodile, which morphed over centuries into artistic forms which are hard to connect with the original. In another I found her flanked by lions, the mount of Durga, and surrounded by Nagas, with Garuda, the mount of Vishnu, possibly in a protective pose above it all. The conflation of Taleju and Vishnu (alluded to by Garuda and Nagas) was interesting, since Shakti can be paired either with Shiva (as she is in the nearby Nritya Vatsala temple) or with Vishnu.

Only one of the doors was open, and it led to a passage behind which was the actual temple. The closed door was a side entrance to the temple, and the two lamp-bearing guardians indicated that the door was ceremonial. Since the other doors in the first courtyard led to the Palace of 55 Windows, I jumped to the conclusion that this was the royal entrance to the temple. Everyone else had to go down the passage, and turn in through the main entrance. A plaque claimed that the temple dated from the 13th century CE. This would make it the oldest temple in the Darbar square.

Photography was forbidden inside the temple. You have to imagine the beauty of the temple from photos of the details of the woodwork that I took in the outer courtyard. They include peacocks and dancing men with swords, rampant nagas and those dominated by Garuda, who is their mortal enemy. The Nagas were part of a band of wood which seemed to go all around walls. This was something I saw elsewhere in Newa traditional architecture, and recalled a phrase about quake-proofing structures: you are supposed to build with brick and bind the structure with wooden beams sculpted with Nagas. It was similar to structures I’d seen in Ladakh and Uttarakhand, earthquake-prone parts of India. This kind of building is proof against minor quakes.