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Rearing up behind an angelic pillar-statue of Garud, the Dattatraya Mandir (accent on the second syllable of Dattatraya) is Bhaktapur's oldest structure. The temple was raised in 1427 during the reign of Yaksha Malla, the last king to rule the valley from Bhaktapur, and like the Kasthamandap of Kathmandu, which it resembles, it was allegedly built from a single tree (the front portico was probably added later). Dattatraya, a sort of one-size-fits-all deity imported from southern India, epitomizes the religious "syncretism" (as anthropologists call it) that Nepal is famous for: to Vaishnavas Dattatraya is an incarnation of Vishnu, while Shaivas hail him as Shiva's guru and Buddhists even fit him into their pantheon as a bodhisattva. The oblong temple at the opposite end of the square belongs to Bhimsen , the patron saint of Newar merchants, whose territory Tachapal is. As usual for a Bhimsen temple, the ground floor is open and the shrine is kept upstairs.
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