Forging Mandalic Space: Bhaktapur, Nepal's Cow Procession and the Improvisation of Tradition

In 1995, as part of Bhaktapur, Nepal's Cow Procession, the new suburban neighborhood of Suryavinayak celebrated a “forged” goat sacrifice. Forged religious practices seem enigmatic if one assumes that traditional practice consists only of the blind imitation of timeless structure. Yet, the sacrifice was not mechanical repetition; it could not be, because it was the first and only time it was celebrated. Rather, the religious performance was a conscious manipulation of available “traditional” cultural logics that were strategically utilized during the Cow Procession's loose carnivalesque atmosphere to solve a contemporary problem - what can one do when one lives beyond the borders of religiously organized cities such as Bhaktapur? This paper argues that the “forged” sacrifice was a means for this new neighborhood to operate together and improvise new maṇḍalic space beyond the city's traditional cultic territory.