A small temple in Patan, a town just south of Kathmandu, held the god Lakshmi-Narayan in the form of a stone sculpture carved in the 10th century. The Hindu deity, composed of a cojoined avatar of Vishnu and his consort, spent centuries draped in garlands of marigolds and adorned with the vermilion powder dabbed onto its forehead by worshipers. But in 1984, the god was kidnapped, and ended up at auction at Sotheby’s New York in 1990. Stripped of marigolds and scrubbed of color, the god had transformed into a sculpture. 

A woman completes repair work on the temple to prepare for reinstallation
A woman completes repair work on the temple to prepare for reinstallation © Erin L. Thompson

I heard Davis mention the sculpture in Dallas at a conference, and then wrote an article for Hyperallergic breaking the news to the general public. In March of 2021, the museum surrendered the sculpture to the FBI. Agents wearing white gloves, with their handguns still strapped to their sides, lifted Lakshmi-Narayan into a shipping crate and delivered it to Nepal’s embassy in Washington, DC.

Back in Nepal, the sculpture remained in storage in a museum in Patan while its fate was debated. A hand had broken off the sculpture, probably during the theft decades ago, and it had crossed an ocean. This type of breakage and travel would normally cause worshippers to decide that a deity had left a statue permanently. But Dixit and fellow members of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, which had formed to bring the Lakshmi-Narayan home, persuaded their community that “even after being 36 years in America,” the god “didn’t get citizenship,” as Dilendra Shrestha, the Campaign’s Treasurer, put it.1

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  • 1. The temple, a single room with a stack of tiled roofs ending in snub-nosed curving beams, was outfitted with a new door and a CCTV system to prevent another looting. A replacement Lakshmi-Narayan sculpture the community had been worshipping after the theft was moved to one side of the shrine, and the sculpture’s original base, which had split in two when it was stolen, was repaired. Earlier this month, on December 4, a day chosen for its auspiciousness, Lakshmi-Narayan was loaded into a palanquin carried on long bamboo poles.
The Lakshmi-Narayan reinstalled in Nepal
The Lakshmi-Narayan reinstalled in Nepal © Erin L. Thompson