A Marvel of Newar Woodworking

The most celebrated examples of Newar woodworking in the Kathmandu Valley are the roof struts, almost always depicting curvaceous tree dryads (shalabhanjikas), that decorate and reinforce the pagoda roofs and the toranas that guard and embellish the entrances to the main shrines of temples and Buddhist monasteries (bahals).

The main shrine of the spacious square (fig. 2) known as Yetakha Baha, not far from the royal palace of the city of Kathmandu, boasts stunning examples of these two important genres of Newar wood carving. The four carvings of lovely dryads entwined in trees mounted on the third floor and supporting the roof (fig. 3) are prime examples in the valleywide corpus of remarkable early struts.1 But the torana topping the gateway to the main shrine is particularly important for its great age, wonderfully elegant composition, and the rarity of its design. 

Torana is a Sanskrit word usually referring to the entire gateway; in Nepalese usage, however, it is primarily reserved for the upper panel.2 The torana of Yetakha Baha is the oldest such wooden architectural element known in the Kathmandu Valley, radiocarbon-dated between 900 and 1030 CE.3 It takes the form of an elongated horizontal, unlike most other toranas gracing Nepalese Hindu temples and Buddhist bahals in the valley, which are semicircular, such as the spectacular one embellishing the entrance to Chusya Baha in Kathmandu (fig. 4). 

Unusual Composition

The Yetakaha Baha torana is also unique for its composition, which features the Buddha in the center preaching to an assembly of two men and two women (or divine beings), all seated with their legs loosely crossed and their hands held together in the gesture of attentive adoration and respect (fig. 5). The Buddha is seated serenely in full lotus position, his left hand in his lap and his right hand raised before his chest in the gesture of teaching. His hair is adorned, piled up in a chignon fronted by a crown ornament, like that of a bodhisattva. 

This group is augmented at either end by smaller attendant figures: on the left, a kneeling woman or goddess holding a garland in offering, and on the right, a small, rotund dwarflike male looking out from the scene and holding an offering of some kind in his crossed arms. An array of geometrically defined rocks forms the background to this peaceful scene of religious discourse, each figure set into a recess as if in caves in a vertical face. At the Buddha’s knees are a deer and a pair of birds, while other creatures—a monkey, a child, and a pair of lions—cavort or peer out from the rocks above. This rocky scene evoking the mountains that dominate the Kathmandu Valley skyline on a clear day is the only torana so far known “showing a Himalayan scene.”4

The entire scene is surrounded by a dynamic frame of three mythological creatures: two makaras—aquatic-footed creatures with an elephant-like trunk and extravagant curling tails—to left and right and the awesome grimacing leonine face of a chepu or kirtimukha above center.5 These three familiar figures in Newar art and design are joined by the sinuous coils of serpents—resembling tendrils of an enormous vine—which emerge from the chepu’s mouth and disappear into the maws of the makaras on either side. The interplay of the peaceful contemplative scene of the Buddha and his acolytes surrounded by the energy of these creatures produces an unrivaled tour de force of Newar wood carving. 

The History of Yetakha 

Considering the great age of the wonderful torana, surprisingly little inscriptional or documented evidence of the place name Yetakha can be found prior to the sixteenth century,6 and all of the on-site inscriptions belong to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A nineteenth-century inscription gives the name of the bahal as Bhaskara Malla Mahavihara, “the great monastery of (King) Bhaskara Malla,” a Kathmandu king who reigned from 1700 to 1722.7 

Some local legends attribute the bahal to an earlier king, Bhaskara Deva of the eleventh century, which has led to the name Sri Bhaskarakirti Mahavihara (the monastery of the glory of [king] Bhaskara). The age of the wooden torana and the struts above it lend some credence to this earlier attribution, and largely because of this evidence several scholars have endorsed the connection with the earlier king.8 An oral tradition holds that the queen of the earlier Bhaskara Deva (r. ca. 1045–1048) founded the bahal sometime after the nearby Itum Baha was founded.9 These two bahals have long been linked: Itum Baha is one of the most important of the main monasteries of Kathmandu, and Yetakha Baha is usually counted as a branch of Itum Baha, a relationship often confirmed by Itum Baha residents, but disputed by the residents of Yetakha.10

The Udas Community of Yetakha

The community in which this remarkable carving is found is as unusual as the work itself. The residents of Yetakha Baha are from the Newar group known as the Udas or Uray.11 The Udas community in Kathmandu can be traced back to quite ancient times. It seems that eventually they moved into the areas of medieval Kathmandu, and some came to the locality later called Etakha or Yetakha; it is possible that the Udas adopted Buddhism at the time of these migrations.

The Udas community in Kathmandu is large and influential, comprising various groups of families who traditionally followed a specific trade or practiced a craft. The largest single group is the Tuladhar (the holders of the scales), who are traditionally businessmen and historically have played an important role in trade with Tibet. It is possible that the original founder of the shrine now known as Yetakha Baha was a wealthy Lhasa trader, a devout Buddhist who commissioned the torana with its remarkable Himalayan theme, perhaps partially to remind him of his second home in the Land of Snows. Dhanasimha Tamrakar, the Udas founder of a small subsidiary nineteenth-century shrine in Yetakha, was known as a merchant who prospered in the Tibet trade. Most of the other Udas groups are artisans, including the Tamrakar, workers in copper, Kansakar, workers in bronze, and, notably, the Sthapit, builders and wood-carvers. It is likely that the Yetakha torana was made by a Sthapit wood-carver.

The name Bhaskara Malla mahavihara, which refers to Yetakha Bahal, is found in the nineteenth-century dedicatory inscription commemorating the establishment of Dhanasimha Tamrakar’s private shrine, which has since become known as Dhanasimha Baha. This shows the relative looseness of the term baha, which normally is associated with the viharas (monasteries) but can also mean “any courtyard having a Buddhist shrine.” The term bahal, related to the Sanskrit vihara, is normally reserved for communities of Shakya or Vajracharya residents, initiated Newar Buddhists who are considered the descendants of the original monks and priests of an earlier time. Although the Shakyas and Vajracharyas are now all married householders, they still are initiated in their youth into the Buddhist monkhood or priesthood, in a ritual that is usually followed by a brief period of symbolic monkhood, and their community is still known as a sangha, the community of monks that is one of the traditional three pillars of Buddhism—Buddha, dharma, and sangha (the Buddha, his teachings, and the community of monks). 

The Udas community of Yetakha Baha cannot be considered a sangha because its members, though considered the respected laymen of the traditional Buddhist hierarchy, do not go through the ritual initiation into the monkhood, which is experienced by all young Shakya and Vajracharya men. Rather, the community of Yetakha Baha is defined by membership in a guthi, the main Newar social grouping; the Yetakha guthi is dedicated to the recitation of the Namasamgiti, an essential Vajrayana Buddhist text.12 Up until recent times, the daily worship of the central deity of the Yetakha Baha shrine was performed by a Vajracharya priest from nearby Itum Baha, but after a recent dispute, since the early 2000s the daily worship has been taken up by a group of Udas elders from the Yetakha community itself.

Wood-carvers

The renowned business skills of the Udas trading families were matched in the arts by the skills of the Sthapits, wood-carvers and architects. Likely from ancient times, these master wood-carvers, like the traders, often traveled north to pursue their craft, most spectacularly evidenced in the wonderful carvings of the Lhasa Jokhang. Their skills are on display elsewhere in the Yetakha neighborhood as well, as in the tour de force known as the Window without an Equal (Deshay Maru Jhya) in a house on a street outside the Yetakha square (fig. 6). Members of these two groups of the Udas community collaborated, to paraphrase Hemraj Shakya, as the artist who created . . . and the donor who financed13 the torana and the struts of Yetakha, at a time long ago, when it was not yet known as Yetakha Baha, but already represented the wealth and skills of the Newar Buddhist lay community of traders and artisans.