Macha:ti Jatra (Trishul Jatra)

Macha:ti Jatra — also called Trishul Jatra, and locally Macha Tiyaan Jatra — is an ancient street festival of the Newar community of Gwal:dey, today's Pashupati and Jayabageshwori area, in Deupatan on the eastern edge of Kathmandu. It falls on Bhalashtami (Bhalbhal Ashtami) in the Nepal Sambat calendar — placed by tradition on Asar Krishna Ashtami — and begins in the late afternoon, around 4 pm, running into the evening. The community has kept it every year for centuries.

By tantric rites, nine special chariots are prepared and nine Kumars and Kumaris — child gods and goddesses — are seated upon them. The procession makes a circumambulation (pradakshina) of Shri Ishaneshwar Mahadev, led by the trident (trishul) that gives the jatra its second name. Along the route, by an old custom tied to one of the festival's legends, the people of Gwal:dey trade ritual abuse with certain Newar families of the inner city of Kathmandu.

Chronicles disagree on when and by whom the jatra began. Some genealogies trace it to the Licchavi king Narendradeva; others to the Malla kings Amar Malla or Yaksha Malla, the latter said to have started it in Nepal Sambat 634; and yet another credits Munibandhu, a tantric priest of Batsaleshwari, with formally instituting the rite.

One legend explains the trident. Demons living on the hill above Swayambhu (Jamacho) are said to have crept into Deupatan to carry off small children. In revenge, the people of Gwal: killed a demon's child, impaled it on a trishul and displayed it from the Siphal ridge; the demons then stopped raiding the settlement, and the jatra keeps the memory of that deliverance.

A more sorrowful account tells of Bhumi Achaju, priest of Bhuvaneshwari, who unknowingly offered his own son in sacrifice — a boy who had secretly followed him into the shrine. He set out to revive the child with amrita, the nectar of immortality, but returned too late: the family, finding the body, had already cremated it, carried after the Trishul procession because a corpse may not go before it. In grief he poured the amrita out at a place called Kubkudo, where — people still say — the dubo grass it touched became immortal, and a crow that ate of it became deathless too. In memory of his guru's devotion, the king ordered that an effigy of the dead son be carried in the Trishul procession ever after.