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 of the year to indicate the religious fervour of the Nepalese. There are ten great national festivals specially observed by the Newars, and three others of Hindu origin, not peculiar to Nepal, being also kept in the plains of India, which are celebrated with considerable pomp by the inhabitants of the Valley. Apart from these there are subsidiary ceremonies, besides frequent processions on some pretext or another, such as good or bad fortune, births, marriages, sickness, deaths, etc., so that there are excuses ever present for the workman to leave his tools, or the shopkeeper his goods, and gaze with continuous delight on the carnivals that his spiritual guides have never omitted to provide for his delectation.

Of the purely indigenous festivals the most important of all is that in honour of Machendranath or Matsyendra Nath, who may be regarded as the patron saint of Nepal. There is a long rambling legend with regard to this divinity and his association with the country, but the ceremony of annually exhibiting his present-day embodiment in the form of an