Living Goddess Wanted in Nepal: Young Girls Only Please Religious leaders in a town near Nepal's capital are searching for a young girl to worship as a living goddess because the incumbent has just got married to a fruit, officials said Monday. "We have started the process to find a new Kumari for Bhaktapur," Jaya Prasad Regmi, the head of the committee which manages the centuries-old Hindu tradition, told AFP. "We are holding meetings with locals and people from (the) Shakya cast." Three medieval towns in the Kathmandu valley worship pre-pubescent girls as the living embodiment of the goddess Taleju. Eleven-year-old Sajani Shakya had served in the post for... snip
"In Bhaktapur, we have a tradition to get our girls married to a Bael (Aegle marmelos), a fruit dedicated to Lord Shiva, around the age of 10 or 11," Shakya said told .
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080303/wl_sthasia_afp/nepalreligion_080303093235
