ABSTRACT
Obscenity is publicly licensed in the fields, where men and women work side by side. By being confined to a period of time, aggression obviously provides emotional relief. In Newar Society, on threshold days, emotions are often evoked in the wake of crisis such as New Year’s Eve, or Durga’s victory over the buffalo-demon. Similarly, the annihilation of Ghantakarna marks the successful planting of rice. A dangerous period of time naturally culminates in the reinstatement of order. On such an occasion, emotion seems to be cognitive as well as non-cognitive, because the making and carrying of the effigy of the evil spirit is joyfully arranged, while the clubbing to death tends to be ecstatic in nature. Literally, something is moved out, and in the case of Bhaktapur, the evil spirits who had infested the houses are “moved out” in a processional fashion to regain purity and protection for the urban realm.
