Yogesh Raj

This project will produce a critical translation of 200 "inner" and "public’" Carya songs performed by Newar priests to reinvigorate the Vajrayana tradition. The songs chosen from print, ritual manuals, and unpublished manuscripts will represent varied temporal layers and diverse deities, life-cycle, and ritual occasions. The project proposes to translate the Carya songs, composed in New Indo-Aryan and Mid Tibeto-Burman languages, into Newari and Nepali to enable inheritors of the millennia-old tradition engage with their original expression and content. The project will see (a) collating primary and secondary literature; (b) inputs from ritualists, linguists, artists, historians, and digital humanists; and (c) publication and dissemination of the critical edition of Carya songs through a digital platform-independent site.