Kathmandu

Pashupati is Shiva as lord of animals, and the temple that carries the name stands on the bank of the Bagmati at the eastern edge of Kathmandu. Its central object is a stone linga with four carved faces looking to the quarters and a formless fifth above, and it is served by priests drawn from Brahmin families of southern India, an arrangement Nepali tradition traces back to the reformer Shankara and which has continued through changes of dynasty and of constitution. Only Hindus may enter the inner courtyard, a restriction the temple maintains and states openly.

The river below is Nepal's principal cremation ground. Ghats run along both banks, the upper platforms formerly reserved for royalty, and bodies are burned within hours of death with the feet placed in the water first. Families return on set days to make offerings for the dead. Ascetics live in the cells and caves on the far bank, and at Maha Shivaratri the site fills with sadhus who travel from across India for the night, along with several hundred thousand ordinary worshippers.

The temple is also a case study in what a living sanctuary is. It employs its own trust, runs an old age home, argued publicly through the 2000s over the appointment of Nepali rather than Indian priests, and has had to negotiate the pollution of the river it depends on. It is inscribed within the Kathmandu Valley World Heritage site, and much of the surrounding valley's monument fabric required repair after the earthquake of 2015.

The Newars of the Kathmandu valley are the only community anywhere that has carried an Indian style Vajrayana Buddhism forward without a break, and they have done it without monks. When celibate monasticism ended, the monastery courtyards became the hereditary property of two castes, the Vajracharyas who act as ritual masters and the Shakyas who form the congregation, and both marry. A Newar Buddhist and a Newar Hindu may attend the same festival, employ priests of both kinds for different rites within one household, and disagree about which tradition a given deity belongs to without anyone finding this a problem.

The clearest example is the Kumari. A girl is selected as the living presence of the goddess Taleju, a form of Durga, and she is chosen from Shakya families, that is to say from the Buddhist community. She is examined against a list of bodily marks, installed in a house near the old palace, carried rather than allowed to touch the ground in public, and gives audience and blessing; the king of Nepal once received his tika from her hand. Her tenure ends at her first menstruation or at any serious loss of blood, and she returns to her family.

There are Kumaris in several towns of the valley, of whom the Kathmandu one is the most prominent. The institution has been examined by Nepal's courts, which in 2008 required that her schooling and other rights be protected while the practice continued. At Indra Jatra she rides through the city in a wheeled chariot, and the festival remains one of the largest in the valley.