Swayambhu

Swayambhu, the self-arisen one, crowns a hill west of Kathmandu and is among the oldest Buddhist stupa complexes in Nepal. Hindus also worship there, and the resident monkeys earned it the nickname the Monkey Temple. The Swayambhu Purana tells how the bodhisattva Manjushri drained the lake in the Kathmandu valley, revealing a self-sprung flame which King Prachandadev of Gauda enshrined beneath a stupa.

Tradition brings Ashoka here in the 200s BCE, and a damaged inscription records building works ordered by the Licchavi king Vrsadeva in 640. In the 1400s the Indian abbot Sariputra rebuilt the dilapidated stupa with a Malla king's support.

The Tibetan master Tsangnyon Heruka restored it in 1504, and Pratap Malla of Kathmandu added the eastern stairway in the 1600s. Its white dome, four-eyed Buddha cube and gilded thirteen-tier spire embody the Vajrayana cosmos of Newar Buddhism.