I came to this map without prior expertise in Newar art, language, or religious geography. The commission itself was the entry point. What began as a request became a five-month process of immersion, methodological improvisation, and slow accumulation of partial understanding. In that sense, this map belongs as much to the history of learning as it does to the history of representation.
Stages of Production
The work presents the Kathmandu Valley as Nepāla Maṇḍala, a ritually saturated cosmological field as understood within Newar Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Rather than employing a modern cartographic projection, I chose to render the valley as a mandala, reflecting a premodern South Asian spatial logic in which geography, ritual practice, kingship, and myth are inseparable. The goal was not accuracy in the contemporary technical sense, but legibility within an indigenous epistemic frame.
At the same time, this was not an antiquarian reconstruction. I worked deliberately to make the map intelligible to contemporary viewers unfamiliar with Newar cosmology. The challenge was to balance immersion in a historical worldview with visual clarity for a modern audience. That reflects an approach similar to my work on other historical maps, but here the challenge lay not so much in reflecting a different time or culture, but in reflecting a different theological Weltanschauung.
Form, Orientation, and Cosmology
The circular form draws directly from Tibetan and Nepali mandalic diagrams, emphasizing the valley as a bounded sacred field rather than a peripheral region of a larger polity. Kathmandu Valley is presented as a complete and internally coherent world. Orientation, hierarchy, and symbolic placement take precedence over metric scale or topographic precision, following South Asian cosmological cartography rather than European conventions.
The Himalayas do not dominate the composition; nor is the valley subordinated to the modern Nepali state. Instead, the valley is centered upon itself, reflecting the Newar conception of Nepāla Maṇḍala as a self-contained sacred polity.
Stylistic and Material Influences
The color palette—dominated by saturated reds, golds, and floral ornament—draws on Newar manuscript illumination, paubhā painting, temple woodcarving, and ritual objects, particularly wooden book covers and votive art. Red, in particular, reflects tantric associations and the visual grammar of Newar religious culture.
Lotus motifs recur throughout the map, referencing purity, emergence, and cosmogenesis. This alludes directly to the foundational myth of the Kathmandu Valley, in which the valley was once a primordial lake until the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī cleaved the hills, allowing the waters to drain and revealing the self-arisen flame of Swayambhu as a lotus. The map thus operates simultaneously as geography and cosmogony.
Example of a Newari Mandala from the 14th Century
Language, Script, and the Limits of Knowledge
All place names are rendered in Rañjanā script, historically used by the Newar community for Sanskrit and Nepal Bhasa (Newari). The decision to use Rañjanā was both aesthetic and ideological: it situates the map within a Newar textual tradition and resists later linguistic homogenization under Devanagari and modern Nepali state norms.
This choice also introduced the most sustained difficulty of the project. I was unable to locate a comprehensive Newari–English dictionary suitable for historical toponyms. While major place names—such as Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur—are well documented, others required inference, triangulation, or educated guesswork. Some names represent my best attempt at rendering Nepali or Sanskrit forms into historically plausible Rañjanā orthography.
The conversion itself—from Devanagari to Rañjanā—proved nontrivial. While digital tools exist, they are imperfect, and manual correction was often required. In a few cases, such as Changu, the rendering reflects approximation rather than certainty. These inaccuracies are acknowledged openly; my hope is that the names remain intelligible, even where they may not be philologically exact.
Rather than concealing these uncertainties, I consider them part of the map’s intellectual honesty. This is not a definitive Newar gazetteer, but an attempt to think with a tradition rather than merely about it.
17th Century Newari Depiction of the Goddess Mahalakshmi
The Valley as Sacred Polity: Sites Depicted
Six major ritual and historical centers anchor the map.
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Swayambhunath Stupa (Kathmandu)
The most important Newar Buddhist site and the cosmological axis of the valley. Associated with the valley’s creation myth, Swayambhu is venerated by both Buddhists and Hindus, exemplifying Newar religious syncretism. -
Pashupatinath Temple (Kathmandu)
One of the most sacred Shaiva sites in the Hindu world. For Newars, Pashupatinath anchors life-cycle rituals—especially cremation and ancestor rites—along the Bagmati River, underscoring the valley’s Shaiva dimension. -
Kathmandu Durbar Square (Hanuman Dhoka)
The political and ceremonial heart of old Kathmandu, including the Taleju Bhawani Temple and the Kumari Ghar. The living goddess institution uniquely binds kingship, fertility, and divine legitimacy within Newar political theology. -
Patan Durbar Square (Lalitpur)
Often regarded as the Buddhist city of the valley. Sites such as Krishna Mandir and Hiranya Varna Mahavihar represent the height of Newar metalwork, stone carving, and Buddhist urban culture. -
Bhaktapur Durbar Square
A royal city notable for its preservation of traditional Newar urban planning, festivals, and craft traditions. The Nyatapola Temple and 55-Window Palace exemplify architectural verticality as sacred assertion. -
Changu Narayan Temple
The oldest continuously active Hindu temple in the valley, dedicated to Vishnu. Its Licchavi-era inscriptions link early classical Nepal to the later Malla-period Newar synthesis.
The Ashta-Matrikas: Guardians of the Mandala
18th Century Depiction of the Ashta-Matrikas
Encircling the valley are the Ashta-Matrikas, the eight mother goddesses who ritually define and protect Kathmandu Valley. Their placement follows long-standing Newar ritual geography in which divine forces delineate cosmic boundaries.
Mahālakṣmī and Cāmuṇḍā occupy elevated positions, reflecting their heightened significance in Newar tantric practice.
The pantheon includes:
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Brahmāṇī – Yellow; four heads; swan mount; prayer beads, water pot, lotus
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Māheśvarī – White; three-eyed; bull mount; trident and drum
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Kaumārī – Peacock mount; spear and bow
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Vārāhī – Black; boar-headed; corpulent; whisk and bell
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Vaiṣṇavī – Blue; four-armed; eagle mount; conch and discus
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Indrāṇī (Aindrī) – Red or yellow; elephant mount; spear and thunderbolt
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Cāmuṇḍā – Skeletal; skull-adorned; weapons and ritual implements; stands on a corpse
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Mahālakṣmī – Red-robed; four-armed; sovereignty and protection
Together they articulate a cosmology in which fertility, violence, protection, and political order coexist rather than resolve.
Interpretive Choices and Omissions
This map does not attempt exhaustive documentation. Modern infrastructure, administrative boundaries, and contemporary road networks are intentionally excluded to avoid collapsing sacred geography into bureaucratic space. What is omitted is as deliberate as what is included.
Sources and Research
Research drew on academic literature, museum collections, linguistic tools, and visual archives, including:
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https://globalnepalimuseum.com/objects/a-pair-of-wooden-book-covers/
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Pal, P. (1997). The Mother Goddesses According to the Devipurana. In N. K. Singh (Ed.). Anmol Publications.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20070701121832/http://museums.ap.nic.in/sapta.html
Additional visual references were drawn from museum collections and cultural heritage archives related to Newar book covers, temple sculpture, paubhā painting, and cosmological diagrams.
Production Notes
The map was hand-painted in watercolor and ink. While digital reproduction allows wider circulation, the original contains finer linework, pigment variation, and surface texture that are difficult to capture photographically. High-quality giclée prints are produced to preserve these details as faithfully as possible.