“She was just my daughter yesterday, but today she is a goddess.” So said the father of Aryatara Shakya, the two-year-old proclaimed Nepal’s new “living goddess”. Carried by family members from their home to a temple palace in Kathmandu, the toddler was installed as the latest Kumari last week during the country’s most significant Hindu festival, Dashain.

“My wife during pregnancy dreamed that she was a goddess,” Ananta Shakya told The Associated Press , “and we knew she was going to be someone very special.”

The secret life of a Kumari

In a tradition stretching back 300 years, the Kumari is revered by both Hindus and Buddhists in Nepal and parts of India as an embodiment of the divine female energy. Chosen from the Shakya clan, Newari Buddhists indigenous to the Kathmandu valley, t

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