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WEDNESDAY JULY 4 2007 4:00 PM

Thanks For Visiting America! By The Way, Youre No Longer A Goddess

Submitted by Uncognitive

Edited by erin_broadley

Sajani Shakya is pretty much your average 10-year-old Nepalese girl.

Well, except that up until recently, she was venerated by both Hindus and Buddhists in Nepal as a Kumari Devi, or living goddess.

Sajani was one of the latest in a very long line of Nepalese girls considered to be an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga. Normally Durga is all fierce, riding a lion and kicking demon ass with her 10 arms, but camping out in a little Nepalese girl keeps Durgas energy in check and keeps it on the creation side of things. The Kumari Devi is also the patron of Nepals monarchy, bestowing blessings upon the king.

Being chosen as a Kumari Devi is quite an elaborate procedure. The right girl has to match 32 attributes of perfection, ranging from eye color to the shape of her teeth. Apparently ancient Hindu goddesses use a procedure similar to eHarmony. Then the potential Kumari Devis are put in a dark room where dancers in demon masks attempt to scare them, since a true incarnation of a goddess who, among other things, kicks demon ass shouldnt be scared by jazz hands.

However, its a lot easier to stop being a Kumari Devi. Traditionally, its the onset of puberty that signifies the goddess Durga leaving for a new incarnation in some other Nepalese girl, but even sustaining a scratch thats deep enough to bleed can cut short a Kumari Devis reign.

Sajani Shakya, however, lost her goddess status for other, less blood-based, reasons.

Was it because she blessed Nepals king during a decade-long civil war? Maybe its because Nepals entire monarchy might soon be abolished?

Nope, its because she set foot in the United States on a goodwill tour related to an upcoming documentary about both Kumari Devis and Nepals civil war. While there are a bunch of Kumari Devis living in various cities and towns in Nepal, Sajani was considered one of the major ones, and thus wasnt really supposed to leave Nepal.

Sajanis US tour was enough to anger temple elders in her town of Bhaktapur, who declared that setting foot on American soil had tainted her purity. Its like theyve heard of Britney Spears or something.

So now the newly de-goddessed Sajani returns to her life as a normal 10-year-old Nepalese girl (albeit with a government pension), and Im hoping America, having caused Sajani to lose her divinity, can learn something from this.

Like, why doesnt Jesus grow eight more arms and ride around on a lion, kicking demon ass?

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Comments

skeptik

New Orleans, LA

February 2004

JUL 15, 2007 08:54 PM

Vampirate said:

skeptik said:
And I don't think the Pythagoreans were really what Vampirate was talking about. He's probably talking about new stuff, like some proofs that only seem to work in non-whole numbers of dimensions. Or things that imply, mathematically, that time travel is not only possible, but actually a necessity.

But as I said, I don't know exactly what he was referring to.

Well, I am kind of talking about more modern things that are nonetheless kind of analogous to the whole square rood of two thing. A lot of it has to do with the nature of infinity and different sized infinities and so forth. The modern stuff is hard to understand, but another excellent ancient example is one of Zeno of Elea's paradoxes, where he basically argues: Between here and the other side of the street are an infinite number of points; it takes an infinite amount of time to traverse an infinite number of points; therefore, you can never cross the street, and motion is pretty much impossible. Whack-ass metaphysical conclusion based on interpretation of Math.

While now we think that Zeno was simply mistaken, or hadn't follwed his own reasoning to it's (il)logical conclusion, I think it can be fun to do just that.

While there are an infinite number of points, they are infinitessimally small. Which means that the time to cross any one of them approches zero (the flip side of infinity). Eventually, you get to the point where it takes no time at all to cross each point, and adding up an infinite number of zeroes is still zero. Therefore, you can cross the distance instantly. Which, while ludicrous, is equally as valid as his conclusion.

Also, it has been argued that without Zeno's Paradox, Newton (or Leibniz, if you prefer) could never have developed the Calculus. Which is pretty metaphysically mindblowing right there.

Vampirate

Durham, NC

October 2004

JUL 17, 2007 03:23 AM

skeptik said:
While now we think that Zeno was simply mistaken, or hadn't follwed his own reasoning to it's (il)logical conclusion, I think it can be fun to do just that.

While there are an infinite number of points, they are infinitessimally small. Which means that the time to cross any one of them approches zero (the flip side of infinity). Eventually, you get to the point where it takes no time at all to cross each point, and adding up an infinite number of zeroes is still zero. Therefore, you can cross the distance instantly. Which, while ludicrous, is equally as valid as his conclusion.

Also, it has been argued that without Zeno's Paradox, Newton (or Leibniz, if you prefer) could never have developed the Calculus. Which is pretty metaphysically mindblowing right there.

Yeah, I know, but it took a long, long time before we even had the mathematical tools to answer Zeno (rigorously, anyway, like, maybe not even until Newton-Leibniz-Weierstrass-Dedekind), so people were kind of metaphysically at sea for almost two millennia. I don't think that without Zeno we would never have developed the Calculus (problems in Physics would have eventually demanded this kind of solution), but having his and similar problems in the air did serve to focus some people.

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