Word: mahendra
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...these priestly chants, TIME's New Delhi correspondent, James Shepherd, last week witnessed the coronation of Nepal's King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva (see THE WORLD). Shepherd first encountered the elaborate ceremonies of the Hindu kingdom in 1956 at the coronation of Birendra's father, Mahendra. The correspondent arrived for that occasion aboard a rickety DC-3 that "slithered low over the Himalayan foothills, searching for the gap in the mountains through which we slipped into the Katmandu Valley." He has since reported on coronations of two other Himalayan monarchs, the Kings of Bhutan and Sikkim...
...modernization of Nepal is inversely proportional to the number of elephants that have been employed at its three most recent coronation ceremonies. The coronation of King Tribhuvan in 1913-witnessed by only one foreigner, the resident British ambassador-required the services of 109 elephants. The crowning of King Mahendra in 1956, attended by representatives of 15 of the growing number of nations with which the Himalayan kingdom then exchanged diplomats, required 43. For last week's coronation of King Birendra, the streets of Katmandu were aswarm with hundreds of foreign guests representing the some 60 countries with which Nepal...
King Birendra succeeded to the throne on the death of his father, King Mahendra, in January 1972 but has waited for more than three years for the "most suspicious" moment, as determined by the royal astrologers, to be crowned. The ceremony, which will take place today, is largely a symbolic religious ritual. After the king is bathed with butter from a gold jar, mud from a silver jug, honey from an earthen jug and waters from eight rivers that cleanse the body according to Hindu beliefs, he is then annointed with several clays including mud from a mountaintop and dust...
...Died. Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Deva, 51, King of the Himalayan state of Nepal and the world's only Hindu monarch; of a heart attack; in Bharatpur, Nepal. Though he was a member of Nepal's royal dynasty, Mahendra was kept a palace prisoner for the first 30 years of his life because real power in his country had long since fallen to the aristocratic Rana family. In 1951, Mahendra and his father King Tribhuvan led a popular revolution that ousted the Ranas, and four years later Mahendra succeeded to both the throne and control of the government...
...there will be other splashy weddings. Prince Birendra has two younger brothers, both of whom are expected to be betrothed to Princess Aishwarya's two younger sisters. The pairings make shrewd political sense. As 49-year-old King Mahendra figures it, with all of his children marrying into the same family, there is no chance of ambitious in-laws from another clan waging a struggle over the succession...