In Search of the Toothache God of Kathmandu
I
first visited the then mysterious city of Kathmandu, capital of the Kingdom of Nepal, in February
1970. It was a place little visited by outsiders, other than hippies here for the
cheap and legal marijuana and hashish. There was very little motorised traffic
in the city. Locals either walked or used one of the many bicycle rickshaws
found throughout the central city streets.
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| Illustrative of the lack of motor-transport in Kathmandu in February 1970; one morning I came upon these 'street-sweepers' making their slow way down one of the major thoroughfares of the city. |
To me, a first-time traveller in 1970, the city was very
much a culture shock. Singapore was the first Asian city I had visited and that had
very much been a jolt when compared to the rather demure life I had led in Auckland.
Kathmandu was something else. I wrote in my diary, on my very first day in the
Nepalese capital, that ’it had been very
much like going back to medieval days’ – or at least what I then imagined the
medieval cities of Europe to be like!
Over the next few days I visited many of the
major sites. I walked around the array of splendid temples in Durbar Square in
the centre of the city and stood in the courtyard of the temple of the Kumari
Devi, the Living Goddess, seeing the pretty little ‘goddess’ herself. I hiked
up to the fabulous golden stupa of Swayambhunath, on a hill overlooking the
city. I hired a bicycle, cycling out first to the shrine of the Reclining
Vishnu at Budhanilkantha, where I met my first sadhu, or Hindu holyman and then
to the large Hindu temple complex at Pashupatinath, then finally to the major
Buddhist Stupa at Bodhnath. The Kathmandu Valley was certainly a fascinating
place and I knew there was a lot I had missed. At the time I did not think I would be back.
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| In the courtyard of the Temple of Kumari Devi (the Living Goddes |
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| The Temples of Pashupatinath |
It was almost 10 years
later that I did return to Kathmandu, this time as a tour leader with Sundowners, one of the Overland companies
that carried intrepid travellers on the various routes through to London. As I often had long gaps between the tours out of Nepal, I was able to explore
Kathmandu and the surrounding Valley more thoroughly. I would wander around the
area known as Freak Street which had been the centre of Western hippy culture,
with small shops, seedy bars and restaurants, cheap hotels and dope dens. There
was ‘Pig Alley’, so named by Westerners due to the number of semi-feral pigs
which fossicked through the rubbish in the street, and on the way down to the
Vishnumati River was what we called ‘Shit Alley’, so named as it seemed to be
the place where many of the less-well-off of the city came to defecate! In the
dry season the Vishnumati River, which was en route to Swayambhunath, could
be crossed by a make-shift plank-bridge rather than by the permanent (if that
could be the right word) suspension foot-bridge.
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| The bridges over the Vishnumati River in 1981 |
At various times I hired a
bicycle and cycled out to the Durbar Squares in both Patan and Bhaktapur,
sister cities in the Kathmandu Valley.
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| Even in 1985, there wasn't much in the way of motorised transport in Bhaktapur |
It was during my last
visit to Kathmandu, that I purchased a small locally published book called
‘Exploring Mysterious Kathmandu’ by Katharine Hoag. In the Table of Contents, I
had seen a reference to the ‘tooth ache god’ which intrigued me – I had never
heard of this, so I decided to find this obscure, but interesting, street
shrine. Katharine Hoag gives only a very brief description: “You soon reach another large square, just
before entering it notice on your right at shoulder level the shrine to the
tooth-acre god. A tiny three-inch golden deity sits embedded among nails and
spikes on a great twisted lump of wood. If your tooth aches and you pound a
nail into this wood the god will cure you. Bangemudha, the name of this square,
means ‘twisted wood.’”
Although the description
was rather basic, I decided to look for this little shrine and following the
directions given in this small guide book, I did finally find the shrine in a
nondescript intersection in a crowded suburb of the old city. On closer inspection I could see that it had
once been an ancient tree stump and that the ‘nails’ mentioned in Katherine Hoag's book had each been driven
through a low-denomination alloy coin of Nepal as an offering to the god. The
large number of coins now completely hid the original wood, but I could just
make out the image of the small deity in the central cavity of the shrine. This was what the locals called the
‘Tooth-acre Tree’.
I took a couple of photos
of this un-aesthetically pleasing, but interesting shrine before I wandered my way back to the Blue Star Hotel in the gathering dusk.
Katharine Hoag’s little
book did not give the name of the god and for years I was unable to find any
reference to it in any other guide book. However, with the advent
of the internet and Google, I have finally found out a little more about this
interesting roadside god. It seems that the toothache god is peculiar to the Newar people
of the Kathmandu Valley and is known as Vaishya Dev. The wood into which the
coins have been hammered was a cutting from a legendary tree known as
Bangemudha. Whether by design or accident, the ‘Toothache Tree’, as it is often
referred to now, is in the heart of the city’s dental district. Maybe many of
the local Newars believe a bit of jiggery-pokery at the shrine of Vaishya Dev
will overcome the pain, both physical and financial, of undergoing dental
treatment.
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| The shrine of the Toothache God, as in was in 1985 |
© Neil Rawlins text & photography
