This short film was created to accompany the exhibition on the Buṅgadyaḥ (Rāto Matsyendranātha) procession held at the Heidelberg University Library (CATS branch). The exhibition was organized in conjunction with the 28th European Conference on South Asian Studies, convened in Heidelberg, Germany, from 1–4 October 2025, and remained open to visitors from 1 October to 25 November 2025.
Produced by the Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP) with the support of the Arcadia Fund, the film offers a concise introduction to one of Nepal’s most revered ritual traditions—widely regarded as the longest-running chariot procession in South Asia—dedicated to the deity Buṅgadyaḥ.
Buṅgadyah, the “deity of Buṅga (Buṅgamati)” (see DANAM id: LAL0001), is a syncretic divinity venerated by both Buddhists and Hindus across the Kathmandu Valley. Nepalese genealogical traditions trace the origin of the Buṅgadyaḥ procession to the Licchavi king Narendra Deva in the seventh century, associating it with a legendary drought and the deity’s arrival from Kāmarūpa (present-day Assam). Yet these narratives present divergent chronologies and lack firm contemporary epigraphic corroboration. Historically verifiable references to Buṅgadyah emerge only in the early medieval period, when he appears in Buddhist contexts as Avalokiteśvara (Padmapāṇi/Lokeśvara) and in Hindu traditions as Matsyendranātha. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Buṅgadyaḥ had risen to prominence as a pan-regional deity of the Nepal Maṇḍala, with an elaborate chariot festival sustained through royal patronage, guthi institutions, and broad civic participation throughout the Valley.