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Set against the palace wall but not very visible behind a wooden screen is the snarling ten-foot-high gilded head of Sweta Bhairab (White Bhairab), a terrifying, blood-swilling aspect of Shiva. One day a year, during Indra Jaatra, the screen comes down and men jostle to drink rice beer flowing out of a pipe in Bhairab's mouth. The column nearby supports a gilded statue of King Pratap Malla and family, a self-congratulatory artform that was all the rage among the Malla kings of the late seventeenth century. North of this, on the other side of the small Degu Taleju Mandir, the massive, roly-poly image of Kala Bhairab (Black Bhairab) dances on the corpse of a demon. Carved from a single twelve-foot slab of stone, it was found in a field north of Kathmandu during the reign of Pratap Malla, but probably dates to Lichhavi times. It used to be said that anyone who told a lie in front of it would vomit blood and die. One story has it that when the chief justice's office stood across the way, so many witnesses died while testifying that a temple had to be erected to shield the court from Kala Bhairab's wide-eyed stare.
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