Kathmandu

by Thomas Bell

The ‘childish rancour’ of the priest prevented him from entering the precinct, but he persuaded the Maharaja to provide four soldiers who excavated the buried portion of the column and took rubbings. The Sanskrit poem they delivered to Lévi is the most important text in Kathmandu’s early history. Dated 464 AD, the inscription describes the immediate ancestors and the victorious battles of King Manadeva. Manadeva was beautiful, a world-class hero. He had soft skin like worked gold, and well-fleshed shoulders. He was ‘love incarnate, a festival of flirtation for lovers.’9 He was also skilled in the use of weapons of attack and defence, and he had ‘received initiation in the fashion of the Kshatriyas, by combat and battle’. But especially, the poem praises Manadeva’s mother, the beloved Queen Rajyavati. She conferred the crown on her son after his father’s sudden death. She was ‘of pure race’, pious and loving, and so dedicated to her husband that Manadeva had to beg her not to commit suttee on his pyre. Instead, she completely purified herself, and gave all her fortune to the Brahmins to increase her dead husband’s merit.