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East of Pratap Malla's column stands the sixteenth-century pagoda-style Jagannath Mandir , dedicated to the god whose runaway-chariot festival in India gave us the word "juggernaut". The struts supporting the lower roof of this temple contain Kathmandu's most tittered-about erotic carvings , although such carvings are actually quite common in Nepali temples: once you know where to look, you start noticing them everywhere. Scholars can't seem to agree on the significance of these little vignettes, which often feature outrageous athletics, threesomes and bestiality. Some suggest that sex in this context is being offered as a tantric path to enlightenment, and as evidence they note that such scenes generally appear on the lower portions of struts, separated from the gods and goddesses above by lotuses (symbolic of transcendence). A more popular belief is that the goddess of lightning is a chaste virgin who wouldn't dare strike a temple so decorated. In any case, Hanuman, who guards the nearby palace entrance, is spared the sight by the globs of sindur over his eyes. Nearby, along the palace outer wall, is a stone inscription in fifteen languages, carved in 1664 by King Pratap Malla, the prime architect of Durbar Square's temples, who also fancied himself something of a linguist. The inscription is a poem to the goddess Kali, and the story goes that if anyone can read the whole thing, milk will gush from the tap. There are two words in French and one in English.
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