Jogini and Juddha

 A “reminiscence” of one such Yoginı ¯ was reported recently in the daily English-language newspaper of Kathmandu, the Rising Nepal. Under the title“Reminiscence: Juddha Shumsher and the Sorceress,” the unsigned story begins:

Nobody knew her name. She was just [a] Yogini (nun) who had come
to Kathmandu from India on Shivaratri. During the Rana [r]egime. . . .
Indians were not allowed to come to Nepal without [a] passport and visa.
Only on such occasion[s as these religious festivals] they could come to
Kathmandu for a day and visit the Pashupatinath temple. . . . The her-
mits and yogis could remain for three days and leave. . . . The Yogini who
had come during the reign of Juddha Shumsher . . . did not go back to
India [with]in [the] stipulated time. She roamed about the Pashupati
area for many days and surprised people with her accurate prediction[s].
She was a middle-aged lady of dark complexion and wore a cotton sari,
blouse and a shawl. She smiled while speaking but anyone could guess
[that] she never cleaned her teeth. She accepted the invitation of some
devotees if she was pleased, and went to their residence as well. But she
never entered the house and preferred to stay out: on a bench or under
a tree in the garden.
The relatives and neighbours of the host used to come to see the lady.
Many of them brought some fruits and even clothes as offerings. . . . But
she did not accept anything and told the host to distribute it among
friends present in the garden. Sometimes she would point towards a per-
son and say to the host that the man was a criminal—he had taken a
bribe just a day before. Sometimes she would not allow a lady to touch
her feet saying the lady was a concubine of some rich person. Almost all
of the devotees charged by her did not stay there [sic] and quietly re-
turned bowing to the assembled crowd. But they spread rumours that the
so-called Yogini was a sorceress and she was in command of an evil spirit
called Karnapinchash [karn . apis ´a ¯ca]. The then prime minister Juddha
Shumsher also heard . . . the rumour. He ordered the police chief Chan-
dra Bahadur Thapa to expel the sorceress from Nepal within a week. She
used to stay in [the] Pashupati area and was always surrounded by devo-
tees who regarded her [as] a divine Yogini, not a sorceress.
The police chief also was one of her devotees and he did not dare to
arrest her immediately. He was trying to [find] the opportunity [to beg]
the P[rime] M[inister] to let the divine lady remain in Nepal. . . . On the
fourth day, a strange thing happened. The Prime Minister had gone to
[the gardens around the] Balaju [temple] for a stroll in the evening [w]here he saw the sorceress on a platform under a tree. . . . At that very
moment the sorceress saw the Prime Minister approaching in [a] rage....
Juddha Shumsher stood before her and signalled Major Thapa to come
forward. The Major ran to him with folded hands but before he could
speak, the Yogini stopped him, raising a hand. She then asked the Prime
Minister to lend her his ears so that she could tell him some matters of
importance privately. . . . She whispered in his ear for three minutes and
he nodded several times. In the end, he saluted her and requested her
to remain in this country forever. . . . No one knows [w]hat the divine
lady told Juddha. Some guessed that she must have told him his past and
future, otherwise he would not have cancelled his own order [to de-
port her]. After some months the sorceress from India disappeared. . . .
When Juddha abdicated in favour of Padma Shumsher and went to Ridi
in the guise of a hermit, people started spreading rumours that she
had predicted Juddha’s future to him in Balaju garden. No one knows
whether this is true or not, but people, including myself, still remember
the lady who had created [a] sensation in Kathmandu more than five
decades ago.

Source, Chapter 9