Frequently Asked Questions

It is the origin story of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, and of the Swayambhu stupa that stands on the hill above it. A stupa is a domed Buddhist shrine.

Long ago the valley was not a valley. It was a lake. A light appeared on its own on a lotus flower floating in the middle of that water, about as long as a forearm and shaped like a small stupa. A bodhisattva named Manjushri later cut the surrounding hills open and drained the lake dry. People moved onto the new ground and built a country there. A monk named Shantashri, remembered today as Shantikar, then hid the light inside a stone and built the Swayambhu stupa over it.

Three storytellers, one inside the other, like boxes. A teacher named Jayashri tells the whole thing to a student named Jineshvara. Inside Jayashri's telling, a monk named Upagupta answers questions from Emperor Ashoka of India. Inside Upagupta's telling, the Buddha sits on the Swayambhu hill and answers a listener named Maitreya.

So a verse from the middle of the book is usually the Buddha speaking, quoted by Upagupta, quoted by Jayashri. All three tellings are closed again at the end of the book, in reverse order.

A lake, and a large one: seven kos across, which works out to roughly fifteen miles. Mountains ringed it. Lotuses and water lilies grew on it, swans and geese lived on it, and fruit trees and healing herbs grew on the slopes above the shore. Nobody lived there.

A serpent king named Karkotaka lived in the water with the other serpent lords. A Buddha named Vipashvi came to the shore, blessed the place, and said that one day a light would rise out of that lake by itself. Geologists agree with the poem on one point: the floor of the Kathmandu Valley really is an ancient lake bed.

In the time of a Buddha named Shikhi, long after Vipashvi had predicted it, and while the valley was still a lake. A lotus rose out of the water with a thousand petals, a stem of gem and threads of diamond. In the middle of it the light appeared on its own, about as long as a forearm, burning like a jewel.

The earth shook. Gods came down from every heaven to bow to it. A bodhisattva named Ratnapani asked what had happened, was told to go and see for himself, and led the first group of pilgrims out to the lake.

A different reward for each different gift, spelled out one by one. Wash the shrine with milk, curd, butter, honey and sugar, and you bathe in the heavenly Ganges. Burn incense and you become sweet-smelling and gentle, honored even by gods. Give cloth and you are dressed in silk and jewels. Light a lamp and you get clear eyes and a mind that clears away darkness.

Scatter flowers and you become a ruler. Offer food and you live long and strong. Play music and you are given a beautiful voice. Sweep up the dead flowers and clean the shrine, and you are freed from grief. Repair the stupa when it cracks, and you become wealthy and healthy. The list runs about fifty verses, and the Buddha ends it by saying this is only a short version.

A bodhisattva named Manjushri. He saw the light shining far off on the lake and wanted to reach it, so he traveled south from the mountains with his companions, taking human form as a teacher named Manjudeva.

He asked the light's pardon first for what he was about to do. Then he drew his sword, named Chandrahasa, walked around the water three times, found the hill that closed off the southern end, and cut straight through it. The water poured out through the gap and ran down to join the Ganges. That cut is the Chobhar gorge at the southern rim of the valley, where the Bagmati river still runs out through a cleft in the rock.

It turned into a mountain. Once the water drained away, the lotus that had been holding the light hardened into solid rock, and the light settled on top of it. That rock is the hill at Swayambhu, and the stupa stands on it today.

Manjushri did not drain the lake completely. He left two smaller lakes behind on purpose, so the serpent king Karkotaka would still have somewhere to live. One of them is Taudaha, a pond on the southern edge of Kathmandu, where Karkotaka is said to live to this day.

Manjushri, still in his human form as the teacher Manjudeva, together with the people who had traveled south with him. They settled on the bare ground the water had left behind, and because he lived there the whole region came to be called the Mountain of Manjushri.

A goddess named Khaganana rose up out of the drained lake bed and stayed. She is worshipped today as Guhyeshvari, whose shrine stands near Pashupatinath and who is important to Hindus and Buddhists alike. Ordinary people moved in after that.

In the time of a Buddha named Krakucchanda, two things happened. Four hundred priests and three hundred from the warrior class became monks on the same day on the ridge above the valley, with merchants, workers and others alongside them. They shaved their heads, put on orange robes and took up a begging bowl.

Then a wealthy man from an old royal line was made king. He took the name Dharmakara, which means mine of Dharma, built the first city in the valley, and set up a working government. After that the valley had towns, markets, shrines and laws.

The Bagmati began when water ran out of Vajrasattva's thumb on top of Shankha hill, which is Shivapuri, north of Kathmandu. The Buddha Krakucchanda's teaching made that water holy and it became the Bagmati. The spring is Bagdwar, still a pilgrimage site on that ridge.

The Bishnumati began at the same time, and the poem calls it by its older name, Keshavati, meaning she of the hair. When the new monks shaved their heads, their hair was divided into two piles. One pile was thrown into this river, which is how it got that name. The other pile was laid on a rock, and a small shrine appeared for every single hair.

Eight more lights that appeared on their own around the rim of the Kathmandu Valley. Vitaraga means the passionless one. Like the light at Swayambhu, these eight have no shape and nothing holding them up. They stand at Manichur hill northeast of the valley, at Gokarna, Charugiri, Kumbhatirtha, Phanishaila, Gartaka, Gandhavati and Vikramasthala. All eight are real places, and pilgrims still walk a circuit of them.

What you wash them with decides what you get. Butter takes you to the home of Shiva, honey to the temple of Brahma, curd to the world of Vishnu, milk to the moon, and plain cool water simply leaves you clean of sin. Those are Hindu destinations, offered without fuss by a Buddhist text.

At twelve spots where two rivers run into each other. Each one has a name and a specific promise. Bathing at Shodhana washes off the ten sins, the standard list that runs from killing and stealing to gossip and ill will. Raja gives kingship, health and comfort. Nidhana gives wealth of every kind. Jaya ends the fear of enemies. Chintamani gives whatever you ask for, and it is the spot known today as Teku Dovan, where the Bishnumati runs into the Bagmati at the southern edge of old Kathmandu.

A serpent king lives in each of the twelve, described down to the color of his hood. Takshaka is red, Somashikhi and Surupa are white, and Nanda and Upananda, who share one spot, are green.

The source of the Bagmati, high on Shivapuri, called Prabhava, which means source. This is Bagdwar, where the river is said to come straight out of the rock. One bath there is worth more than a hundred baths in the Ganges.

There is also a rule that covers every spot not on the list of twelve. Wherever streams run into other streams, that place is holy too, and bathing there earns merit. The twelve named places are examples, not the complete set.

The name comes from what happened to a monk named Dharmashrimitra. He traveled to the Kathmandu Valley because he could not explain the hidden meaning of twelve syllables in a Buddhist text he taught. He was given the answer there, then lied about where he got it, and lost both his eyes for the lie.

Vagishvara means lord of speech, and the whole story turns on what one man said and did not say. After that, the shrine became known as Dharmadhatu Vagishvara.

He was a famous teacher who got stuck. His students asked him to explain the hidden meaning of twelve syllables in the Chanting of the Names, a text he lectured on, and he could not do it. So he set out north to find the bodhisattva Manjushri and ask him face to face.

On the way he passed through the Kathmandu Valley and saw a farmer plowing a field with a tiger and a lion harnessed to the plow. The farmer was Manjushri himself, in disguise. That night Manjushri explained the twelve syllables to his own wife, and Dharmashrimitra, sitting in the dark outside their door, overheard the answer he had crossed a continent to find.

Because he pretended not to recognize his own teacher. Back home, lecturing to a packed hall, he watched Manjushri walk in dressed in rags and holding a blue lotus. He knew exactly who it was. But he was embarrassed to bow to a beggar in front of his students, so he bowed only in his mind. Afterward he claimed he had seen nobody.

Both his eyes fell out on the spot. Manjushri did not put them back. He said the result of a wrong act is swallowed by the person who does it, told Dharmashrimitra to see by knowledge instead, and gave him a new name, Jnanashrimitra, meaning friend of the glory of knowledge.

A king named Prachandadeva, from Gauda in what is now Bengal. He handed his kingdom to his son and went to live alone in a forest hut. Then he decided that sitting by himself helped nobody, left the hut, and spent years walking across India teaching instead. When he reached the Kathmandu Valley he was ordained as a monk and given the name Shantashri, which means glory of peace. He later earned a second name, Shantikar, and that is the name he is still known by in the Kathmandu Valley today.

Sitting in front of the uncovered light, he worked out that greedy people would eventually pull the shrine apart for its jewels. So he covered the light with a stone and built a tall brick stupa over the top of it. That stupa is the one people visit at Swayambhu today, and the light is still inside it.

Five small chambers the monk Shantashri, also called Shantikar, built into the platform around the stupa, each holding one deity: wind at Vayupura, fire at Vahnipura, the serpent lord at Nagapura, the earth goddess Vasundhara at Vasupura, and the deity Samvara at Shantipura.

All five are still on the hill and still receive worship, and most visitors walk past them without knowing what they are. Two matter later in the story. Nagapura is where the rain is bargained for when the valley dries out, and Shantipura is where Shantashri himself ends up.

The whole country comes apart, from the top down. A king of the valley named Gunakamadeva dumped the running of the kingdom on his ministers and spent his time on pleasure. The ministers copied him. Then the priests, the merchants, the craftsmen and everyone else stopped doing their work properly too.

The guardians of the world turned their backs. Fire broke out, disease spread, and the serpent king Varuna took offense and held the rain back, so the crops failed. Gunakamadeva works out the cause himself, and the poem puts it bluntly: the sin of the people is eaten by the king.

By hauling a serpent king out of a lake. King Gunakamadeva climbed the Swayambhu hill and asked the monk Shantashri, also called Shantikar, for help. Shantashri drew a ritual diagram on the ground and summoned every serpent king into it. All of them came except Karkotaka, the serpent of the old lake, who stayed away because he thought he was too ugly to sit in that company.

So the king was sent to fetch him. He rode a bay horse, dropped a blessed flower and a grass ring into the water, and followed the flower wherever it drifted. Karkotaka ignored him three times. The king seized him and dragged him out. The serpents then piled up clouds and it rained everywhere, and the famine ended.

So that nobody would ever have to drag a serpent out of a lake again. Before letting the serpent kings go, Shantashri got them to agree to a standing arrangement. He had them painted on a cloth and blessed it.

After that, whenever the rain failed, people could unroll the cloth, perform the ritual in front of it, and the serpent kings were bound to send rain. The cloth was sealed up and kept hidden at Nagapura, one of the five shrines on the Swayambhu hill.

Shantikar and Shantashri are the same man: the monk who covered the light with a stone, built the Swayambhu stupa, and later ended the drought. He was born a king in Bengal named Prachandadeva, so this is his third name.

The two monk names describe two different things about him. Shantashri, glory of peace, is what he was like: his senses were completely at peace. Shantikar, maker of peace, is what he did: he stopped a great calamity. The poem gives him the second name only after he has done the work, and says there has never been and never will be another master of mantras like him.

Underground at Swayambhu, alive, and waiting. His work was finished and he had grown old. He could have entered final peace and been done with it. He turned it down.

Instead he went down below Shantipura into a huge meditation chamber, raised a banner of the wish-fulfilling jewel above himself, and sat down without moving. He is waiting for a time when the teaching has died out and there is no teacher and no guide left anywhere in the world. Then he will come back up and teach it again. Shantipura is a real sealed chamber on the north side of the stupa, entered by a stair, and opened only in times of drought.

The Buddha finishes by promising a nun named Chuda that her daily worship, and the nine-syllable chant she recites, will bring her great knowledge within twelve years and eventually make her a Buddha herself. The chant is om chale chule vande svaha, and it is still recited at Manjushri's shrine on the hill. Then the crowd that has been listening gets up and goes home.

After that the story unwinds back through its three storytellers. Emperor Ashoka makes the last pilgrimage in the book, bathing at the holy river crossings and visiting each shrine in turn, and sings two hymns at Swayambhu. Then it returns to the teacher Jayashri and his student Jineshvara, where it began.

Protection, in oddly specific terms. Anyone who reads the book aloud, listens to it, copies it out, or keeps a copy at home and takes care of it is promised help from every direction.

Kings and officials will work in their favor. Enemies will come around and wish them well. Animals, birds and even insects will not harm them. The closing verses then drop the story and ask for something plainer: that the rain comes on time, that the earth gives its crops, and that whoever is in charge governs well.