Queen catches glimpse of child goddess

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 6

Queen catches glimpse of child goddess

NZPA-AP Katmandu The Queen got a glimpse on Wednesday of Nepal’s “living virgin goddess” and a Hindu temple famous for erotic wood carvings. She and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived bn Monday for a four-day State visit at the invitation of King Birendra and Queen Ashiwarya. They will leave today for New Zealand and Australia. As the Royal couple arrived by car at the capital’s historic Durbar Square, the Queen looked out of the window at the Kumari Devi, or house of the living child goddess. Looking down at her from an Intricately carved balcony window was the five-year-old goddess, dressed in red and wearing black eyeshadow extending to her ears. The Queen did not stop or talk to the girl, the only person to whom King

Birendra bows his head. The Kumari is chosen from a clan of Buddhist craftsmen at the age of about five after an extensive ritual. Several candidates are locked in a dark room with menacing masks and the heads of freshly slaughtered buffalo, and the girl who shows least fear is selected. She lives in the threestory Kumari Devi until puberty, when she is given a life pension and a new goddess is found. During a week-long festival each September she is paraded through the capital in a chariot and blesses the King by putting a red tika mark on his forehead.

According to popular legend a man who marries a former Kumari will die within six months unless he is especially mentally and physically fit. After seeing the Kumari the Queen visited the

Hanuman Dhoka, a seven-teenth-century palace built by King Pratap Malta and renovated by the Shah kings, who lived there until the end of the nineteenth century. Before entering the palace the Queen and the Prince glanced briefly at the Jagganath temple, whose roof struts are adorned with wood carvings of copulating deities. The Queen, wearing a white coat and blue beret, stopped at the entrance of the palace to look at the stone statue of the monkey god Hanuman. The statue was draped with a red velvet cape and shielded by a golden umbrella, and the god’s face was obscured by red paste applied by devotees. After passing through a gilded gate guarded by two stone lions, the Royal couple saw the statue of Narsimha, the half-man, half-lion god, killing a demon with its nails.