Salyankoti Devi

- Bhimsen Thapaliya

The hilltop offers almost a bird’s eye view of the serpentine Netrawati River in the east meandering through the fertile Salyanbesi farmlands. Turn west and you can see the Salyantar, an elevated flatland squeezed between the Budhi Gandaki and Netrawati rivers. To the north stands the imposing Ganga Jamuna hill with famed waterfall that cures your rabies. On a clear day, this sacred hilltop offers the glance of neighbouring holy places including Gorakhnath, Maidi Kot, Jwala Mukhi, Dhuwakot and Jaleswari. You are standing on top of Salyankot in north-western Dhading where the goddess Tripura Sundari resides.

The goddess, also known as Salyankoti Devi and Mai Bhagawati, blesses her devotees with immense power. If you are devotional enough, she will appear in your dream and ask you to express your wishes. She is one of the power goddesses and her blessing will enable you to fulfil your dreams, so goes the folk belief. She is said to assume changing forms, mostly fearsome, and so directly seeing her is strictly forbidden.

She has such a strong halo about her that even the kings were forbidden to have a look. Even the local Rana Magar priests who conduct the daily worships and management of the temple core, avoid taking a direct glance of the goddess, lest the blinding radiation affect their eyes.

During his Nepal unification campaign 238 years ago, Gorkha’s King Prithvi Narayan Shah had heard about the unusual fame of the goddess. She was renowned as a goddess who blessed true devotees with the power to accomplish big plans and projects. The architect of modern Nepal visited the temple and expressed his wish to see the goddess and offer prayers and worships. But the priest politely said that nobody was allowed to enter the main chamber where the goddess lived.

"I asked if I could see the goddess and offer prayers. They said only the priests and caretakers are allowed to go in. I asked if I could offer prayers at the door. That they allowed me to do," the king said in the Dibyopadesha, a compilation of oral counsels issued by the king at the final stage of his life. As his daily prayers progressed, the king had a dream one night. A young girl, wearing a veil and holding two daggers, appeared and the king asked who she was. She said she was the daughter of the Rana Magar priest. Before she vanished, she offered both the daggers to the king announcing that his dreams would be fulfilled.

As the king consulted his advisors next morning, they said that the girl appearing in his dream was the goddess herself. The dream appearance and the dagger blessing is said to have empowered the king to accomplish his unification mission toward east from this point.

The local people recount a tale about a king who insisted to have a look of the goddess despite the advice not to do so. He had to regret later as he lost his eyesight before he was able to have a look at her. Nobody except the priests is allowed to touch the goddess. If she is not worshipped with due respect and procedure, she may turn into a tiger or a serpent and cause trouble to the local people.

In his research based book "Salyankot Deviko Samchhipta Parichaya", author Sisir Sharma quotes senior citizens of the locality about the origin of the goddess. The goddess had identified herself to King Prithvi Narayan Shah as the daughter of Rana Magar priest during his dream. Folk tales about the origin of the goddess indicate that she had close family bond with the Rana Magars. According to the tales quoted by Sharma, she was rescued from a steep cliff nearby and established and worshipped in the house of a Rana Magar.

The goddess appeared in the dream of a Rana Magar and urged him to rescue her from the difficult abode amidst the cliff hole. Next day, the cliff hole was searched and her idol was found. The local people decided to establish her temple at Belung about five kilometres north of Salyankot but the goddess disappeared. The Rana Magar had a dream again and the goddess said she wanted to live at his home than anywhere else. The temple of the goddess is built like ordinary residential houses rather than the commonly used temple designs. An elderly local man said that such a temple was designed according to the wish of the goddess.

There are three different temples of the goddess, all of which were designed like residential houses. Two of the temples are located on the Salyankot hilltop while one is down in the Salyanbesi valley on the bank of the Netrawati River. However, the third temple was recently reconstructed in the Pagoda style.

The hilltop temple on the eastern side is known as Dashain Ghar where the goddess is worshipped for 15 days during the Bada Dashain (September-October) and for one day on Chaite Dashain (April) festival. Most of the time, the goddess lives in the western hilltop temple while she spends about four months in the riverside temple in the valley.

When the goddess moves from the hilltop shrine to the riverside temple around the middle of November, a grand festival is organised every year. The festival, known as Maithan Jatra or Nwagi Jatra, is the auspicious event to eat new rice of the year. Astrologers and scholars fix the date of this ceremony on the day of Vijay Dashami but it is kept a secret till the day of Bhai Tika. When the date is flashed, the information spreads far and wide. Most of the devotees come from neighbouring districts Gorkha, Nuwakot, Chitwan, Makwanpur, Rasuwa and Kathmandu.

Night-long worships and lighting of holy lamps takes place in the hilltop temple. The journey of the goddess starts at dawn next morning. For an able bodied person, the downhill trip to the riverside temple is a walk of about an hour. But the Jatra procession passes so slowly that it takes four hours. A Rana Magar priest carries the goddess covered by saffron cloth on his back and moves very slowly. Nobody except the priest can touch the goddess. So security cordons are formed throughout the journey to make sure the bystanders do not come too close.

As the goddess carrying the priest passes along, Jatra visitors greet the goddess by offering coins, rice grains and flowers at her. The sound of bells, playing of ritual instruments, hymn singing, smell of incense and large crowd eagerly waiting on the roadside creates a unique atmosphere when the goddess descends to the Salyanbesi valley known for its fertile paddy farmlands. After the goddess arrives in the valley temple, she is offered the new rice mixed with yoghourt and bananas. The new rice is served to the visitors as prasad. When the sun sets, another night-long celebrations start in the Maithan rice field. Women devotees stay awake throughout the night lighting oil-fed lamps dedicated to the goddess. People sing, dance and decorate the temple with long flower garlands. The whole Jatra is a two-nights-one-day event.

Dhading district headquarters Dhadingbesi is approximately 88 kilometres from Kathmandu. From Dhadingbesi, a 29-km gravelled road runs up to Tari Besi on the bank of Netrawati River. At this point, you are very close to the Budhi Gandaki river in the west which acts as borderline between Dhading and Gorkha districts. But instead of heading west, you turn north along the road running through Salyanbesi valley. Five kilometres north from Tari Besi, you are at Ganesh Khola. From Ganesthan, it is an arduous uphill trek of two to three hours before you arrive at the hilltop temple of goddess Tripura Sundari.

[Reprint from: The Rising Nepal (National English Daily, Friday supplement), April 1, 2011, p. I]