THE UNIQUE FEATURES OF NEWAR BUDDHISMthough the struts supporting the roof may be a hundred years older. Chusya
Baha is a two-storied building of brick and wood built round an open and paved
courtyard. The courtyard is sunken and the ground floor plinth is a foot or more
above this pavement. Opposite the entrance is the shrine of the biihii, which
contains an image of the Buddha sitting in vajriisana and showing the earth-
touching gesture. The carved doorway of the shrine has a wooden door of lattice
work enabling one to see into the shrine even when the door is closed. Three
sides of the ground floor are open halls. One of these is the entrance hall which
has two benches and images of Mahakala and Gal)eSa set into the wall. These
two images are placed at the doorway of each biihii and bahi as protective
deities.^4 To these is usually added a third protective deity, Hanuman, who is
often represented simply by a triangular chink in the wall rather than by an
image. In each comer of the quadrangle are two small dark rooms, one with a
stairway leading to the upper storey. Each of these four stairways leads to an
apartment of three rooms on the first floor. Each of these four apartments is
separate with no interconnecting doors or passageways. Above the shrine of the
Buddha is a five-fold window, behind which is a large room (digi) where the
elders of the sangha meet, and off which is a doorway leading to the shrine
(iigam) of the secret tantric deities of the sangha. A bay window over the
entrance projects over the courtyard, and the outside of the upper storey is
pierced by several windows. The outer wall of the ground floor has two other
doorways, but no windows. All of the windows of the first floor are elaborately
carved, and the tile roof is supported by a series of exquisitely carved struts por-
traying various deities, each of which is named.^5 Above the roof is a bell-shaped
finial (actually an inverted kalasa) known as a gajiira. Over the street entrance
and also over the door of the shrine is a toral)a or tympanum. The one over the
street entrance portrays Prajiiaparamita (a personification of the Mahayana text)
and the one over the doorway of the shrine portrays Mahak~obhya, a tantric
form of the transcendent Buddha Ak~obhya. In the courtyard of the monastery
are two caityas, an image of Tara and a stone image of Vajrasattva flanked by
figures of the two donors of the image.
The structure of a bah/ is similar but has its own distinctive features. It is also
a brick and wood structure, usually of two stories, built round a courtyard. In
general it is a simpler structure with less ornamentation than the biihii. There is
usually only one opening in the entire ground floor, the main entrance, and
usually one mounts a flight of steps up to the entrance. In most biihiis the
entrance is at ground level. Inside the entrance are the images of Gal)esa,
Mahakala and Hanuman. The entire ground floor, except for the shrine, is
usually one continuous open hall. In one comer, usually to the left as one enters,
is a single staircase leading to the upper storey. The shrine is a small, window-
less room situated directly opposite the main entrance and offset from the rest of
the building so that it is possible for devotees to circumambulate it. The upper
storey usually has a projecting balcony which enlarges the space, but like the
lower floor it is usually undivided and a continuous open hall except for a single