Essentially a fertility rite, it re-enacts the Newāri concept of primal procreation, the origin myth of Bhaktapur and its spatial divisions (Figure 5). Another key festival is the autumn harvest festival, Mohanī (or Dashin 7.Over the course of nine days, people visit each Astamātrikā shrine on its designated day, starting the first day at Bhamayāni Pith in the east and ending the visits to peripheral shrines on the eighth day at Mahālakshmi Pith in the northeast, effectively circumambulating the boundary of Bhaktapur. On the ninth day, they visit the Tripurasundari Pith at the town’s centre, completing the Bhaktapur mandala (Gutschow and Kölver 1975; Levy 1990; Parish 1994). The circumambulatory paths of these festivals delineate the sacred space around temples and neighbourhoods. The primary circumambulatory path (pradakshinā patha) is defined by many festivals with many divinities on many occasions and creates a sacred territory around the center of Bhaktapur (Figure 6). People of higher castes (and the royal family, historically) live within the sacred area defined by this primary pradakshinā patha, and people of lower castes live outside of it. People of the lowest castes mostly live outside of the outer sacred boundary delineated by the Astamātrikā temples. The primary circumambulatory, therefore, separates the ‘sacred’ town from a ‘profane’ countryside. As there are no ramparts around Bhaktapur, the sacred boundaries formed by the gods are believed to have protected Bhaktapur and its people (Gutschow and Kölver 1975; Levy 1990).
This hierarchy in the ritual purity and social structure of Bhaktapur is embedded in the use of the town’s topography for siting buildings, determining their height and the extent of architectural embellishment. The palace complex and upper caste residences of priests and the administrative class are located at a higher elevation in Bhaktapur, which decreases toward the periphery. Lower-caste houses are located at these gradually decreasing elevations, corresponding to their place in the caste hierarchy. The height and ornamentation of architectural details of buildings
also gradually decrease from the centre toward the periphery (Gutschow and Kölver 1975).