12 rice heaps shielding Patan from lightning

Lalitpur, Oct. 18: September 30, Saturday. 

While Kathmandu was immersed in the merry of Indra Jatra, neighbouring city Patan was busy preparing for a unique festival of its own – the Punchali Bhuja.

The Bhuja is an annual ceremony for the worship of Goddess Purnachandi, held in front of her temple, 260 metres southwest of Gabahal. It is performed on the evening of the first day of the dark fortnight of the Nepali month of Ashwin (Ashwin Krishna Paksha Pratipada) and eponymously features a dozen heaps of Bhuja: boiled rice on circular plates.

Each heap is made of one Muri (160 pounds) of rice and contains 84 different kinds of food items (Chaurasi Byanjan). They are moulded in the shape of hills and are placed in front of the Purnachandi Temple on the aforementioned day.

History

The origins of this festival are not clear. However, Bishnu Chandan Rajopadhyaya, a resident of the Purnachandi area and a priest at the Taleju Temple in the Patan Durbar Square, believed that it began during the Malla rule.

“Stories we heard growing up spoke of various calamities and tragedies that befell Patan during the reign of a Malla king. He tried many things to change the kingdom’s fortunes but to no avail. So ultimately, on the advice of his Gurus, he began the Bhuja festival and the disasters stopped,” Rajopadhyaya shared.

This could be the case as, according to culture scholar and researcher Dr. Nutandhar Sharma, the temple for Purnachandi was built in 1635 AD during the time of king Siddhi Narasingh Malla. “After some time though, a fire burnt that structure down and the temple was reconstructed in the form we see today,” Sharma, who is also a member of the faculty at the Aksheswar Traditional Buddhist Art College, informed.

Purnachandi is an aniconic shrine (Peeth) revered as Goddess Siddhilaxmi. She is also worshipped as the amalgamation of the energies ‘Shaktis’ of five deities-- Kali, Bhairavi, Bhagwati, Kumari and Laxmi. She is also in the pantheon of the 10 Hindu Tantric goddesses collectively known as the Das Mahavidya under the name Kamala – she originated from a lotus (Kamal) flower and is the Tantric characterisation of Laxmi.

Meanwhile, the moniker Purnachandi, arguably the goddess’s most famous appellation, signifies her consecration by the mystic Purnananda Swami.

As Rajopadhyaya shared, the Nekhu (Nakkhu) River once flowed through the place where the Purnachandi Temple currently stands. One  day, Goddess Dakshinkali from Pharping came to visit. But, when she arrived, Purnananda recognised her and bound her in place through magic. Since then, the goddess has lived in Lalitpur with the name Purnachandi (Chandi established by Purna or Purnananda).

According to another version of the tale, Goddess Siddhilaxmi appeared to Purnananda in a dream and asked him to come find her on the bank of the Nekhu River. He did as told and followed the river’s course to the present-day Purnachandi. There, he saw water bubbling out from the ground and understood that that was where the goddess was. So, he worshipped there and proclaimed it as the spot where Siddhilaxmi resided. Later, King Siddhi Narasingh built a temple there.

Folktales may take imaginative liberties, but they have some basis in reality. Here too, the presence of a stone cremation platform called Bhakari or Tungal and a Yogeshwor Shiva Linga suggests that today’s Purnachandi was once a Ghat near a flowing body of water. Perhaps, the pond that still exists behind the temple is a remnant of that.

Steal of ‘62

Dr. Sharma mentioned that Purnachandi was a divinity of great importance in Patan. “Almost half of Patan’s native population worships the goddess as their guardian numen,” he said, adding, “She is also the tutelary deity for the Rato Machhindranath.” Because of its status, the Purnachandi Temple was endowed with much land and had several communal trusts (Guthis) associated with it. This allowed it to fund its yearly rituals without worry.

But then came the event infamous in Nepal’s cultural history as the ‘Steal of ‘62’ (Basatthi Saalko Haran). In 1862 BS (1805 AD), the then former King and sitting Head Executive Mukhtiyar Rana Bahadur Shah, who is believed to have gone mad after the death of his favourite wife Kantiwati, ordered the seizure of all lands provided to temples and religious orders.

“The government employee sent to confiscate Purnachandi’s land was a local Amatya who himself worshipped her as his tutelary goddess,” Sharma informed. “As it was a direct order from the very top, he took the land but he was not happy."

He continued, “So, the Amatya pleaded with the king and prevented its seizure by the state.”

“After this, he went to the priests of Purnachandi, who belong to the Rajopadhyaya Brahmin caste group, and offered them the land back. But, since he was the one who saved it, the priests asked the Amatya to keep the land under his management.”

Since then, as the holders of the land, the Amatyas have been an integral part of the Purnachandi Temple and the Punchali Bhuja rituals.

The Amatya who saved Purnachandi’s land was Raghubir Amatya, who was a Subba, equivalent to a present-day non-gazetted officer in Nepal’s bureaucracy, at the time. As per his fifth-generation descendant Raj Amatya, Raghubir was able to successfully petition the palace and obtain a royal decree in 1903 BS (1846 AD) to get Purnachandi’s land back. 

“Between 1862 and 1903, the priests could only perform the Punchali Bhuja ceremonies symbolically as the temple had no money. The festival returned to its original form only after the return of the land.”

And for the past 120 years, the Amatya family have acted as patrons for the Punchali Bhuja. Additionally, Raj informed that his family also performed worship ceremonies every year on the establishment day of the Purnachandi Temple and other special occasions. 

Raj informed that the land they held for the temple was in Khokana. He remembers receiving harvest from it till the 1980s.

Significance

As Rajopadhyaya put it, the Punchali Bhuja is marked every year under the patronage of the Amatya family, who manage the necessary items,  and the officiation of the Rajopadhyaya priests, who carry out the religious rites. Special tantric pujas are performed inside the temple and on its premises, which last almost the whole Pratipada night, and involve animal sacrifice and a special oblation called Kushakandika. The oblation is believed to both satisfy and strengthen the gods. 

The most visible parts of the ceremony are the 12 white Bhujas placed just in front of the temple’s entrance. The Purnachandi Jatra, where the goddess is taken around various locations in Patan, also begins on Pratipada day.

But why is the Punchali Bhuja performed? “It shields Patan from lightning,” Rajopadhyaya, Sharma and Raj shared. “The Bhuja is one of a few specific ‘Mala’ (lightning) worships performed in Patan to prevent thunderbolt strikes,” Rajopadhyaya said. 

“There does seem to be something to this belief as we do not see many lightning strikes within the borders of the old Patan city,” Dr. Sharma remarked.