One last time around Patan Darbar Square

In the last two weeks I’ve shown lots of photos from around Patan’s Darbar square, and written a lot about it. Here I wanted to bring together a few final photos from the place. Most of the buildings are the traditional Newar fired brick and wood constructions. The lone stone temple visible here was the Krishna temple. In the twilight the dark stone set off the warm light on the second floor where a ceremony was in progress.

One of the reasons that I’ll have to go back is so see the palace. It shuts at five, so by the time we reached, not only was the gate closed, but the last tourists had left. Patan is reputedly the oldest Buddhist city in the world. It is said to be older than Patna (Pataliputra), the erstwhile capital of Magadha, which spread the religion across Asia. I don’t know what evidence there is in support of this claim. I have time to dig a little deeper into this history before I return.

Whatever the prehistory of the settlement, the early modern temples that dot the square in front of the palace are beautiful. Among the structures restored after the 2015 earthquare is the Vishwanath temple. These two stunning wooden pieces are from there: a window on the left, a door and its lintel on the right.

Street art of Patan

We spent only one evening in Patan, but in our long and meandering walk through parts of it I noticed an unusual sort of public art. They were photorealistic grayscale paintings of birds with a coloured circle as a background. All of them had a signature: one attribution for the photo, another presumably for the painting, all by the same two people.

There were so many things to do in that one evening that I did not really tailor my walk to find more examples. The three that you see here are all I saw: the sparrow, the munia, and the kingfisher. But the next morning as our car took narrow lanes through Patan in order to beat the airport traffic, I glimpsed several more pieces in the same style. This is one thing to watch out for if I go back to Patan soon. Unfortunately street art is shortlived.

Two temples of Patan Darbar

Early evening was a good time to visit Patan’s Darbar Square in Kathmandu. For one, the place was full of people. Also, importantly for tourists, by the number of people entering various temples you could tell which are the most important ones. The three storeyed stone temple which you see in the featured photo was clearly the most important one. An aarti was in progress, and I could hear voices singing from inside. It was the wrong time for tourism, so I did not enter.

The Bhimsen temple was also very busy, and therefore, clearly important to local life. It was built in the traditional Newa style: a three storeyed pagoda temple in fired brick and wood. I’ve never seen a temple to the second brother of the Pandavas, Bhima, and I would have liked to enter. The temple is closed to non-Hindus, meaning that it is meant to be only a place of worship. Although I would have technically qualified to enter, at this busy time I did not feel like behaving as a tourist inside.

I satisfied myself by admiring the beautifully sculpted beams and brackets. I had seen photos of this square after the 2015 earthquake, with temple spires shattered into pieces. I was glad the restoration has been done so well. A groundswell of public opinion prevented the government of that time from a fast restoration done by converting these places to structures made of concrete. The careful restoration of the temple using brick and the old pieces of wood and stone is taking long, but will preserve the history of the place better. The memory of Srinivas Malla, the king who caused the temple to be built in 1680 CE is being prolonged. I looked at the steep stairs behind the doors of the temple. “A daily climb would be good exercise,” The Family remarked.

I walked back to the Krishna temple again. It is a typical syncretic Nepali temple. The ground floor is dedicated to Krishna and his consorts Radha and Rukmini, the second floor to Shiva, and the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshwara reigns over the top floor. So you have the Vaisnavite and the Shaivite streams of Hinduism, as well as Buddhism in the same temple. What a wonderful use of the structure erected in 1667 by Siddhi Narasingh Mallya!

One door closes, another opens

Pimbahal is a lively district half a kilometer north of Patan’s durbar square. On our brief return to Kathmandu, our hotel for a night was in this area, and I spent some time wandering through it looking at people and the doors that they presented to the world. Unlike Thamel which was full of tourists and tourist services, Pimbahal had very few foreigners.

You enter Pimbahal through the ceremonial gate called Patan Dhoka. It seemed strange that this is supposed to be the main road to Patan’s Darbar Square, since there is only a maze of narrow lanes behind the gate, each just wide enough for a car. If you had the misfortune of meeting even a motorbike coming the other way, the two of you would have to do a bit of manoeuvring to get past each other.

I liked the style of doors in Kathmandu. In many of the lanes the ground floor of every house was a line of shops with blue, green, or red shutters across the front. Then there were the more ornate doors, individually carved panels and with a dark polish. Finally, several cafes and shops had modern glass doors. Quite a variety in these narrow streets.

Street Art Pokhara

In the tourist drag of Pokhara, east of the lake, you can see some street art. None of it has any obvious relation to artistic themes in either contemporary or traditional Nepali art. Of the few pieces that I saw, the one above was my favourite. It had a compelling modernist image, with wonderful tones in the ground that it was painted on.

If you were looking for Nepali themes, then I thought this came closest, with it concentric circles reminding one of the concentric layers of a Buddhist mandala. Close, but not too close.

Based on the colours, themes, and techniques, I’d begun to reach the conclusion that some of this street art was done by young tourists. This one had a complete signature which clinched the argument. It doesn’t make it any less interesting, of course.

The outer courtyard

The most iconic part of Nautalle Darbar in Kathmandu is perhaps the triple-roofed pagoda which towers over its courtyard and looms over the rest of the Darbar square. There are two storeys under each roof, and the whole thing stands over a three storeyed structure, making the nine storeys referred to in its name. The tower had collapsed in the earthquake of 2015 but has been restored. From earlier accounts by travellers, including my ancient copy of Lonely Planet Nepal (how did I ever acquire that?) you could once climb the tower. Not any more. At least not while large parts of the palace are still under repair.

The doorway through which you enter is still under repair. But as soon as you cross the outer doorway you have the interesting sight of a sentry in ceremonial uniform with a bayonet fixed to his rifle standing guard next to an old granite sculpture of the Narasimha avatar of Vishnu eviscerating Hiranyakshipu. Struts and scaffolds surrounded the two. Stone sculpture seems to be an older tradition in the region, which seems to have largely fallen out of use by the 18th century, when the palace was built.

But after this there is a large courtyard. So large, in fact, that it first looks very bare. But when you walk across it and look at the beautiful wooden structures embedded into the bare fired brick walls you realize that it is an astonishing display of wealth and artistry. The windows are elaborately carved, so are all the wooden struts below the jutting roof. I’ve written earlier about the structural use of the sculpted wooden snakes that run across the building. In the gallery above you see a beautiful carving of Vishnu at the joint between two such horizontal Naga beams.

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The doors and doorways are also quite remarkable. Atop every doorway is set a little image of a god, most often Ganesh or Lakshmi. They are common symbols across the country, and major gods on their own, but in the mythology of Shakti that permeates Kathmandu’s native Newa culture, they are the children of Durga. The woodwork is stained the colour of brick. But where it has weathered away you can see the dark colour of the cured wood below. In spite of the decorative elements, traditional Newa art and architecture is austere in a way. There is no plaster or paint over the bricks, no lacquer or polish over wood.

The private courtyard

Nautalle Darbar was built in the second half of the eighteenth century as the seat of power of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the first Gorkha king of Kathmandu. After unifying the rest of the country he manged to subdue the kings of the valley through a combination of shrewd politics and military power. His palace was built in the classical Newa style in order to obtain the religious and cultural sanction of the priests of Kathmandu. The palace in built around two courtyards. One is a huge expanse which looks like it was meant for semi-public appearances. The second, inner courtyard was small but extremely decorative, and it would have functioned as a more private space.

The walls of the palace had not collapsed in the earthquake. There have been possibly three earthquakes of magnitude greater than 8 with epicenter in or near Kathmandu since the palace was built. These were in 1833, 1988, and 2015. It seems that the style of architecture, with its brick walls and wooden inserts are designed to withstand shaking, by allowing some play in the walls. But these structural wooden elements are decorated, and in the palaces that I saw they were carved into snakes. In myths the Nāgas are powerful entities, but could be bound into giving protection to superior spiritual entities. The Garuda, whom you see in the carving above, is one entity who can subdue Nāgas. I found it interesting that the engineering elements were turned into a mythological story. The palace is meant to project a new political scheme, and perhaps this story is part of it.

Right around the courtyard, at a little more than head height were embedded sculptured wooden faces depicting the nine moods (Navarasa) of classical Sanskrit aesthetics. Five of them are shown in the gallery above. Struts which hold up the projecting upper balconies are have elaborate carvings; one in the form of Vāsudeva is shown above. Sculptures in palaces are allowed a far bigger range of subjects than those in temples. The warrior on a horse is an example. These photos are just a small sample of the enormously decorative facade of the inner courtyard.

Beat the whites with a chocolate wedge

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky made a famous pro-Bolshevik political lithograph in 1919 entitled “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge”. This is perhaps his most famous work of art. I walked into a cafe in Nepal’s biggest homegrown chain of cafes, The Himalayan Cafe, and inspected their pastries. I’m an absolute pushover for chocolate. The only way I can avoid this sin is by rigorously making sure that my eyes never encounter chocolate. So, having seen this pastry, I ordered one and then took a photo of my sin: a lasting record of one of the reasons I put on enough weight on the holiday to suffer through enhanced activity until my next holiday. Photographs of food are clearly still life, and since I copied a work of the art movement called Futurism more than a century later, you may call the featured photo a piece of retro-futurist still life.

And that leads me to my only political post on Nepal. The 240 years old monarchy was overthrown in November 2006 by a Maoist insurgency which forced the call for an election to a constituent assembly. Currently the elected government of Nepal may be the only Maoist party in power anywhere in the world. The famous taxi-driver-test revealed that people do not care who’s in power. The cake was good and chocolatey.

The courtyard of monkeys

At the very center of the Swayambhunath temple complex is the large stupa which you see in the featured photo. It is flanked by the spires of two temples. Behind this are wonderful views of the Kathmandu valley. The temple is a wonderful place at night. Some parts of it are beautifully lit, others are dark and mysterious.

Before I turned a corner and came to the central stupa, I came to the courtyard of monkeys. Tourists call this place the monkey temple because of the large number of them which have their home here. The courtyard was full of small ornate stupas, and, yes, monkeys. On the far side of the courtyard was the central opening with the stupas and the spires.

Off in one corner of the courtyard were little statues. Some were of Bodhisattvas (one held a mace). Between these beautifully carved pieces I saw a piece of folk art, beautifully done in its own way. Folkways and high culture mix in this place, just as ancient animistic beliefs are encased within the Buddhism of the hills.

The far end of the courtyard of monkeys was a deserted part, looking desolate in the flood lights of the temple at night. During the day this place would be alive with shops selling religious paraphernalia. The shops shut a little after sundown. The last doors were being locked as I wandered by. I loved the abandoned feel of the place, so different from the bustle of the shrines within the complex.

Swayambhunath temple

At night you have wonderful views of Kathmandu from the Swayambhunath temple. It stands to reason, since in one of several myths Swayambhu created the valley. In the story a Buddha planted a lotus in a deep lake. Swayambhu was born from the lotus. He took a sword and cut a gash in the banks of the lake, so draining it and creating the valley where Kathmandu lies. The myth parallels a story from the Upanishads of the creation of Brahma: Vishnu plants a lotus, and Brahma is creates himself from it. This gives Brahma one of his names: Swayambhu means self created.

The temple complex was a fascinating place at night. Initially I was reluctant to climb up the hill to see it. But then I took a few steps to get a better view of the city, and then a few more steps, and a few more. And soon I was at the top, which The Family had reached long before me. The complex is a reflection of the syncretic nature of Nepali society, with Buddhist, Hindu, and ancient animist elements coming together. The surface is Buddhist. I looked into this gold-clad shrine and saw a statue of a Bodhisattva.

The puzzling juxtaposition of the Buddha with a being holding a mace was something I saw first on that golden shrine. It continued elsewhere. In Hindu mythology the mace could belong to many celestial beings, Kubera being the foremost. In Buddhist mythology it is melded with Indra’s Vajra, which is then depicted as a double headed mace (hence Vajrayana Buddhism, or the Diamond Way). But this was just a normal mace that you would find in the hands of any number of beings in a Hindu temple. I’ll need to have this explained to me by an art historian or another expert.

One of the reasons I like visiting temples at night is the amazing light that you see. This was no exception. You see two examples above. I’m specially fond of the portrait of the man selling votive candles, his face turned red in their light. The other photo is a view down an alley which sports stupas, temples, and commemorative columns and gates. This is a lovely mixture of Hindu and Buddhist architectural styles.