La Nakim delle Nava Durgā di Bhaktapur

Abstract

The Nakim ("married woman") of the Nava Durgā community of Bhaktapur (Nepal) performs sacred activities in the temple. She is the only female figure present in the Hindu religious communities of the newar society. Her hereditary role contradicts the social conventions that women are confined to domestic roles. There is no study of her role: the researches on Nava Durgā are focused on dance and masks. In the article I will examine the main tasks of Nakim, the ways in which her role is transmitted from generation to generation, the interdictions and questions concerning the relationship with the concepts of purity and impurity. The figure of Nakim includes apparently opposite characteristics: the subordinate condition to which she is subjected as a woman, and her status of community leader. Among her various roles, the most important one is to mediate between the sacred and the profane, which is comparable to that of the Vedic deities of Hinduism. Furthermore, her figure, as an inverse mirror of the divine figure of Nava Durgā (that is, of the nine wrathful manifestations of the goddess Durga), is the substantiation of the feminine for the Hindu religiosity.