Bahal: An Introduction

Bahal, a corruption of the Sanskrit term vihara, originally meant "the residence of the Buddha, or a Buddhist monastery where monks or nuns live in a sangha." A sangha can be a religious community, a village, or even the greater community of life on earth. There are still hundreds of bahals, large and small, in the Kathmandu Valley.
Bahals have unique features, including traditional architectural structures that were handed down from the earliest days of Buddhism. Most bahals are two- or three-storey buildings of brick and wood with a series of rooms built around an open and paved courtyard. A semi-circular decorative panel known as a toran is placed above the entryway, which leads to the bahal's shrine. Inside the shrine is a kwapa-dya, also referred as kwapa-aju, usually an image of the Buddha sitting in the Vajrasana or the Bhumisparsa (earth-touching) mudra, or there can be another Buddha or Bodhisattava enthroned on the ground floor of the shrine. There is a separate special room called agam enthroned with the tutelary deity.

A bahal with an independent sangha performing its initiations at religious rituals under the direction of its elders, popularly known as dus paramita ajus, is called mul or mu bahal or simply ba. Those established by the family members of the mu bahal for private use, with or without official recognition, are known by the term kacha baha or the sakfa baha. Various subtribes, Bhikshus, Sakya Bhikshus, Sakyavamsas and the Vajra-charyas, play active roles in respected sanghas. In particular, one great achievement of the Newar communities of the Kathmandu Valley was their preservation of valuable and original Mahayana Buddhist texts that are written in Sanskrit.
Bahals have several religious rites that are performed in turn by the initiated members of the sangha. They start in the morning with a nitya puja, consisting primarily of an offering and the recitation of a hymn. In the evening services there is the dya-palaa, in which the youngest to the eldest offer lights to the deity. Namasangiti or the sutras are recited in the morning and evening respectively. But the unique ritual of sounding a wooden log or sin-gan 108 times at the beginning of the service to summon the worshippers determines the status of a bahal.

Bahals have several annual festivals. Busa-dan, commemorating the founding of a bahal, is almost universally observed among bahals. Several other festivals are observed in the sacred month of Gunla, falling between the bright half of Srawan (the end of July) and the dark half of Bhadra (the beginning of August). People visit the holy shrines of temples in the Kathmandu Valley, Covar and Swayambhu for example, and the bahals in the morning. Women fashion leis for stone caityas during the month and holy texts are recited. Bahi-dyas (other deities in a bahal) are brought out and deities of lineage are worshipped.
As most of the guthi, the organization governing the activities of the bahals, are in a state of impoverishment, sangha members have discontinued many of their traditional festivities, the preservation of Buddhist bahals and their traditions.