THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF NEWAR BUDDHISMdonations and repairs to the vihiiras. Such inscriptions often list the names of all
the members of a donor's family. Few such inscriptions have survived from the
earlier periods, so one cannot draw any conclusions about when such married
monks first appeared, or when the custom became general. Even the term
bhikswfi is occasionally used for the wife of a Sakya or Vajracarya.^55
When celibate monks entirely disappeared is a question that simply cannot be
answered at the present state of our knowledge. I have been given concrete
examples of celibate Newar monks in the Valley within the past two hundred
years, but they were clearly exceptions to the rule and individual, isolated occur-
rences. They seem to have been men who had spent some time in Tibet, received
ordination there as Mahayana bhiksus and continued their practice when they
returned home. Most of them seem not to have been bare but Udiiya, i.e., men
who by caste were excluded from the rank of monk (bare) in Nepal. Slusser is of
the opinion that there were celibate monks in the Valley up to the seventeenth
century.^56 This opinion seems to be based on Wright's chronicle, (=History of
Nepal) which states (in speaking of the arrangements for the vihiiras made by
the king of Patan in the seventeenth century): "The Yampi Bihar, built by
Sunaya Misra was nirbanic (i.e., the inhabitants did not marry) ... "^57 It must be
noted that this interpretation ofnirbiinic is Wright's not the chronicle's, and it is
clear from the rest of the account that they were in fact married.
David Gellner's recent paper on the vihiiras of Patan has shed considerable
light on this whole passage in Wright's chronicle. Gellner has gone back to the
original Nepali text; and it is clear that Wright's translators have omitted several
key words and mistranslated others. Gellner treats this passage in the context of
his treatment of Cikan Bah! of Patan, which is the one exception to the general
pattern of decay in the bahzs. Cikan Bah! has a large sangha of 135 Sakyas. This
sangha is very active; the bah! buildings have been kept in good repair (and are
currently being extensively renovated), and over the last hundred and fifty years
they have built and consecrated several branches. This seems to have been a
result of two factors: the relative wealth of these families and the fact that they
have kept alive something of the original traditions of the bahzs. One of the aged
elders of Cikan Bah! gave Gellner the following account:
"When the biihii were inhabited by married siikya-bhiksus who worked
for their living, there were still brahmacarya-bhiksus, unmarried monks
who did no work, in the bah!. In the biihii they did tantric rituals, had
gilthzs, (i.e. annual ritual obligations] and so on, but in the bah! all they
had to do was keep the rule of celibacy (brahmacarya pale yiiye). Then
one day the king decided that the 1200 ropanz of land belonging to the
Knoti Bah! was too much, and he took the land to feed his soldiers.
'Since you live by begging,' he said, 'go ahead and beg!' Eventually
they had to marry and find work, although the 64 kinds of work had
already been given out to the 64 castes. So they did as the Sakyavarpsa
were doing."^58