Nepal has chosen a living goddess, she is 2 years old 0 20

In Nepal, a new Kumari has been chosen – the embodiment of the ancient Hindu goddess Taleju. The new living goddess is two-year-old Aryatara Shakya, who has replaced eight-year-old Trishna Shakya. She was ceremoniously taken by her relatives to the Kumari Chowk temple complex.

In this temple-palace, she will spend the coming years until she reaches puberty, after which she will return to a normal life. Her main duty is to greet worshippers while seated on a throne. She will only be able to leave the temple during religious festivals, sitting in a golden palanquin.

Only girls from the Buddhist Shakya caste are chosen for the role of Kumari, although she is revered by both Buddhists and Hindus. They must possess 32 signs of perfection, including a melodious voice, cow-like eyelashes, and skin color resembling that of a lotus. To prove that they are not afraid of the dark, the girls must spend a night in the temple with the severed heads of buffaloes.

The custom of venerating the living goddess Kumari emerged relatively late, in the 17th century, although rituals associated with Kumari (pujas of girls) existed much earlier. In India, there are records of such pujas dating back more than 2600 years, and in Nepal, this rite likely appeared in the 6th century. Written evidence of pujas (rituals) describing the selection, adornments, and ritual of Kumari dates back to the 13th century.

According to one legend, King Jayaprakash Malla, the last ruler of the Malla dynasty, saw a red snake enter his bedroom while he was playing with the goddess Taleju. The king noticed the beauty of the goddess, the patroness of the royal dynasty, and thought that she surpassed the beauty of his wife. However, the goddess read his thoughts and decided to punish the king. She decreed that the king would only be able to see her in the form of a girl from a low caste. After that, the king began to search among the girls for the one in whom the spirit of the goddess Taleju had entered. To this day, a significant part of the search for Kumari is the mother’s dream about the red snake. Once a year, the King of Nepal seeks blessings from Kumari during the Indra Jatra festival. This same legend is told about another king, Gunkam Deva, an ancestor of Jayaprakash Malla.

According to another legend, King Jayaprakash Malla had a sexual relationship with an underage girl, resulting in her death. Feeling guilt and remorse, the king also began to have dreams in which he was instructed to seek the reincarnations of the goddess Taleju again. Each year, he must perform special rituals and seek blessings from Kumari.

According to a third legend, during the reign of King Jayaprakash Malla, a girl was expelled from the city because it was feared that the spirit of the bloodthirsty goddess Durga had entered her. The queen, upon learning of this, compelled the king to find the girl and honor her as the incarnation of the goddess Durga.