Saparu (Gai Jatra) Source Mesocosm.

The cow festival of the dead of the previous year, and the annual carnival. 

The first day of the waning fortnight Gunlaga is the time for a major festival commemorating those who have died in Bhaktapur during the previous year. The festival includes two elements in an intimate mixture, commemorations of the death and carnivals. The day’s event and the inaugural procession of the previous afternoon introduce a period of related activities lasting until the eighth day of the fortnight. The day is called saparu (sometimes saparu) or saya in newari, and Gaijatra in Nepali. Sa means cow, and pa~ru means (according to manandhar may derive from parewa, the name of the first day of the lunar fortnight. In local speculation the word derives from sapa  cow mask with the ya of saya supposedly deriving from jatra or yatri, procession. All these terms refer more specifically to one of the day’s elements ( which gives the day its name ) a procession of real and symbolic cows. The carnival that is mixed with this procession, but which is a distinguishable aspect, will be discussed below.

There  are various stories that relate the cow, death and this particular day. The consensus is vague and the detail vary but it is on this day that the “cow goddess” can help the wandering spirits of the death who had died during the previous year to cross the river vaitarani into death’s realm. Once the spirit enters death’s kingdom, yama’s realm, it can, in traditional doctrine , be judged and then transformed into its proper next stage. Much more usual in Bhaktapur seems   to be the idea that it is on this day with the help of the cow goddess that the wandering spirits will enter heaven the idea of judgment in Yama’s realm being ignored or supposed.

Some of the other annual calendrical  commemorative  ceremonies for the dead, namely , those devoted to mothers and father apply only to those who have been dead for more than one year, that is , after the first year’s period of mourning has been completed. However, the saparu festival, as it legend indicates, concerns those who have died within the past year, with the exception of the period just prior to the festival, in which case the first sequence of the death rites is still being perform and the member of the house hold and the phuki are still impure. Member of all thars except the untouchable take part.

Although the cow jatra, thought to be a specially Newar festival, exist in other Newar communities, in Bhaktapur it is highly elaborated, and many Newar an d other Nepalese come to Bhaktapur  from other places to watch it.

The procession is made up of constructions in the form of the cow goddess and, rarely. Actual cows representing her,  each of which representing sents a particular dead persons.  Each cow figure is preceded by carnival group made  up of friends or phuki of the household to which the dead person belonged. The group vary in number, but in case of important or particularly people they may include hundreds of participant. The symbolic cows may be either “long’ or “ short” ones, the long one representing adult, the short ones children. Other aspects of their decoration indicate whether they are male or female. It is commonly said that in Malla  period officials standing at the palace-which the procession must pass on the festival route-could, by counting the figures, tell how many men, women, boys, and girls had died in Bhaktapur during the previous year. In the few cases now where living cows are used, they are not differentially marked. The long images have mask of the cow mounted toward the top end of an elaborately decorated long pole. The pole, which requires four men to carry it, is carried in the procession by representatives of the family. The short cow us simply a basket with mask on it, which is worn over the head of the representative. Traditionally for the upper thars these representation were carried or worn by farmers who farmed portions of the deceased person’s family land and performed various services for the family. Those of the middle and lowers thars were carried by phuki members.         

Each family supervises the production of the figure that will represent them in the jatra. They are assisted by phuki members, friends, and neighbors. The day before the jatra the house hold members undergo a major purification. On the day of the festival the cow figure is worshipped by all the family members, male and female, as the cow goddess, in a puja that is referred to as tarae yagu, literally crossing a bridge or river,” in keeping with legend explaining the dya’s event. The cow figure is asked to help the dead person get into Vaikunta, visnu/narayan’s special heaven. Participant in the saparu procession and the related worship is considered a necessary part of the sequence of the rituals done after the death of any individual. In keeping with the legend associated with festival, it is believed that the dead person will remain as preta if this participation is neglected, as would also be the case if the various other essential death rituals were neglected. Most upper-status participating household have also on this day and prior to the procession, a gau dan, a special memorial ritual requiring a Brahman purohita’s assistance, with the main ritual mourner, the kriya putra (ideally the eldest son) as the central worshiper. The Brahmans themselves, will-in-contrast-have their gau dan following the termination of the procession.   

The cow jatra procession moves around the city’s main festival route. Each symbolic cow, preceded by revelers, enters the festival precession at a point on the pradaksinapatha jatra route near each family’s home. The group makes a circuit of the route, which takes roughly two hours, and then leaves the procession when they are back at the same point at which they entered it. Family members consisting of the chief mourner, his brother, and some phuki members, close affinal relatives and friends, will walk as mourners behind the cow. This group consists of men and children both sexes. Women watch from the sidelines of the procession. Each group enters the procession at its end as it passes their entrance point, but the result, because of the mixed social constitution of most twa:s, is that the various twa:s are represented in the line of the procession in more or less random social order.

When people from all other neighborhoods have entered the procession the people from the large lakulache(n) sub twa: in the Ta :marhi main twa: enter it. They then arrange themselves differently than the participants of the previous twa:s, in a way that makes an impressive visual climax to the procession. For this group all the carnival dancers and maskers representing all the participating households in that neighborhood enter the procession as one group. This group of carnival dancers is joined by anyone in Bhaktapur who wishes to join in the carnival whether or not they are connected to any bereaved household. The dancers are followed, in turns, by a large group of musicians playing the special dance and processional music associated with the jatra.

Behind the musicians men carry a tall image constructed of bamboo and rice straw in shape resembling the long cow images but painted and dressed to represent Bhairava rather than the cow Goddess. Behind  the Bhairava image all the cow images from the lakulache(n) Twa; household are carried one after the other in dense mass of images and followed by the household mourners. This large group constitutes the end of the procession. When it gets to laeko square, it circumambulates the statue of the newar king Bhupendra Malla, which is located there, three times and then disbands.

Except for the Brahmans, who still have to do their gau dan puja, the day’s religious activities are finished. People return to their houses, and the cow images are taken to the river and thrown into it. Household feasts are held in the bereaved households for who have worked with the household on the image and /or accompanied it in the procession. The married-out household woman are expected to return to the household for this feast.

Although the aspect of the saparu jatra to which we have referred as “carnival” is , as we have seen, an integral part of the day’s events, it is convenient to discuss it separately. It is often terminologically distinguished from the remainder of the jatra by referring to it as “ghe(n)ta(n)Ghesi(n) Mhetegu.” The term ““ghe(n)ta(n)Ghesi(n)” is said to refer onomatopoeically to the sound of a particular kind of drum beat. Mhetegu means to play, as to play at game. The activities referred to by term take place only at this time, beginning with the preliminary performances on Gunhi Punhi evening, which we have noted above. Traditionally only farmers thars and above ( including, it may be noted, young Brahmans) participated, but now people from lower groups, with exception of the untouchable, do. Traditionally, and still, only men take part. This is an “anti structural” festival, but as always in Bhaktapur within strict limits.

On the saparu day people are free to choose their costumes and their dance performances. Sometimes a subgroup of those preceding a cow image may work together as thematic unit, but often individuals have their own individual theme. The “free Choices,” however, usually are among a conventional set of forms, which can be illustrated from the examples we have seen:

1.       A popular group of costumes and performers portrays Jyapu activities, and is done by both Jypus themselves and by upper-level participants. Many of these are derived from traditional Jyapu dances. People may mimic breaking the soil with hoe, or cutting grain stalks. Frequently the dance represent a Jyapu couple, with one man taking the man’s part, and another woman’s. It is important to remark that these dances are not lampoons but serious and graceful dance forms.

2.       A variant portrayal of Jyapu life shows a Jyapu and Jyapuni, represent by either dancers or puppets carried on the tops of poles by masked dancers. The farmers and his wife often carry sticks, and the couple performs a burlesque fight something like western punch and Judy performance.

3.       In addition to dancing  Jyapusnis, men may sometimes dress and dance as pretty girls of undetermined social status. Sometimes they perform as a mother, cradling a doll baby. Such dances, like the Jyapu-Jypunes dances, are not done satirically but, often, with considerable grace, beauty, and seriousness.

4.       There are gross and obscene sexual references in  some portrayals, of a kind that would be publicly unacceptable otherwise except during the Devi cycle’s Gatha Muga : Ca:re celebration. In these dances, for example, two men will dance as heterosexual couple, embracing and moving their hips in coital movement. Others may construct a large model penis and vagina, banging them together in mimicry of sexual inter course in time to the music of the festival musicians who accompany each group of mourner- revelers. Other men may add mock genitalia, such as banana and two globular fruits or vegetables to their costumes.

5.       Some dances mimic drunkenness, the performer pretending to drink from a container, and staggering.

6.       Another popular group is animals and supernatural forest creates- bears, tiger, monkeys, yeti, demons of various types, and so forth.

7.       Participants frequently dress as sadhus and other types of holy “renouncers.”

8.       Men dress as various deities, both male and female. These include most prominently Siva ( who is  perhaps the most frequent deity chosen) and Parvati, Krsna and Radha, and Rama and Sita.

9.       Performers often dress as Moghul Rajas, with turbans and robes.

10.   Sometimes the costumes and decoration are purely abstract and decorate, such as a face painted half  black and half white

There is another category of role taking that we have saved until last because it has been emphasized in some of the literature on this festival but seems, at least in Bhaktapur in the period of this study and the year preceding it, to be a minor and muted one. This is the category of satire with some possible political implication. There are some examples of this. People may carry a placard with a caricature of some unpopular figure in the government, sometimes as part of mock-funeral procession. Most often the satire is more veiled. In one procession, for example, a man danced as a particular rhesus monkey that lived near (and often on) the Bhaktapur royal palace, which now houses some central government administrative offices. It was clear to the onlookers with a little coaching that this represented the chief administrative officer of the district at the time. But the political satire is carefully guarded, and really important figure would be represented, if at all, in most veiled, ambiguous, and – it is hoped- safe forms. Other upper status figures are represented, but gently- Brahmans dressed in dhotis, public storytellers ( who are traditionally Brahmans) represented  as telling obscene stories, tourist complete with western garb ( or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and mock cameras hung over their shoulders. Although these representations are both muted and rare at present, one can imagine condition in which they might become dominant.

The carnival performances of Saparu play with the constraints of Bhaktapur’s  social structure. Satire is only one small component of this. On this day the participants can express things that are usually difficult to express in ordinary civic life. Constraints of gender, role, decent behavior, and (more carefully) respect for hierarchy are overcome, within the usual limits that Bhaktapur imposes on such Dionysian behavior. It is said by older people that on saparu any one can be king; any one can be anything he wants. In facts, however, social criticism and political criticism, is limited; women and the lowest –level thars cannot take part; among those who do take part, upper thars usually represent lower ones, and the reverse is less frequent. This latter constraint, however, indicates perhaps something more than some limits on lower- status people escaping the system even in fantasy. The lower-level thars represent for the upper thars not only the negative aspect of lower status but also a greater freedom from constraints, including the sexual constraints whose fantasized overcoming is represented in many of the carnival performances. Upper thars in Bhaktapur, conversely, represent greater constraints of propriety and self-control for people in the lower thars looking up. Motives of satire and resentment aside, it would be contrary to the spirit of escape symbolized by carnival to change ones role for what is, in a certain sense, a still more socially constrained one.

In its involvement of the entire city in public space, the procession on the pradaksinapatha, in its concern with the deaths that took place in the city during the preceding year; in its differentiated representation of those death by age, sex, and area; and in its carnival expression of the kind of fantasy that reveals something of the structure of the city’s life through the freedom and constraints of its “antistructural”  play, saparu is a major festival of focal importance for bhaktapur. However, its concern with ritual assistance for pretas of its recently dead to enter heaven- based essentially on the individual work of each bereaved household and reflecting no social differentiation of any significance to the city beyond maturity and gender – as well as the antistructural play of its carnival, puts saparu in marked contrast to the greatly more elaborate focal festival of structure, Biska; and Mohani , that we will consider in later chapters. Saparu may be labeled as an “antistructural focal festival.”

The week following Saparu, coming to an end on the eight day of the fortnight, is a period in which many pyakha(n), or “dance dramas,” are presented throughout the city. These are of different kinds. One group is of particular interest in that that unmarried girls in a household may join in it, this being the only  time in which women in Bhaktapur dance publicly now, although, as we have noted above, women and girls in some thars must have danced at some time in the past. These particular dances, often called for some reason’ramayana,” usually danced to the music of the Indian instruments, table ( small drums) and harmonium, accompany songs written by family members to commemorate a person in their  family who has  died during the year. Family group,  with their singers, dancers, and musicians, walk around the city festival route. Friends and relatives intercept them at various points and invite them to their houses where the group performs their pyakha(n) in the public space in front of the friend or relatives house watched by neighborhoods and bypassers.

Other pyakha(n) are performed by various groups during this week. Some of these are traditional stories, some newly created ones, some serious and sentimental, other comic, satirical, or farcical. This is one of two periods during the year when such pyakha(n) are presented. Other is during the eight days of indra jatra sequence in the following lunar fortnight. Many of the pyakha(n)s done following saparu, but comic dances are done only in the saparu period, extending the carnival emphasis as the “Ramayan” pyakha(n), extend the commemoration of the year’s death.