Kumari Puja

Kumari Puja literally means worship of the virgin. The cult of the Kumari is deep-rooted among Kathmandu Valley’s Hindu and Buddhist people.

The participating girls are decked up, venerated and treated to a lavish feast not only by her family but also by hundreds of other families who take part in this grand affair. Among the Newa community, only girls who have not yet undergone the Ihee rite qualify to participate in the Kumari Puja observance. Ihee is a unique tradition practiced by the Newa people since thousands of years where a girl who has not yet reached puberty is symbolically wedded to a representation of Lord Vishnu, with the Bael fruit (wood apple; biological name Aegle marmelos) as the witness. The Ihee ceremony thus ends the girl’s status as a virgin, effectively revoking her right to participate in the Kumari Puja ritual. The Kumari Puja is a celebration of not only being female but also of a state of being pure that commemorates the period of her life before she undergoes her first symbolic marriage.

The Newa people have always given a very high status to the female gender in all religious, social and cultural facets of their society. Among the various symbolic values of the Kumari Puja tradition, the one that best exemplifies the highly cultured civilization of the Newa people is that this ritual is designed to give prominence to the fairer sex right from a very young age, and they are elevated to the rank of a goddess, albeit for a day, in a public ceremony that is conducted with much pomp and pageantry.