| Summary: | This study examines how the logic of localisation functions in Buddhist tantric literature and ritual as a powerful tool to convey knowledge and authoritative lineage via the immediacy of the manifest world. Literature composed in Newar (Nepāl Bhāṣā) and Sanskrit continues to link the pantheon of Buddhist tantric deities to religious figures and multivalent sites in the Kathmandu Valley. Narratives of exploits (avadānas) and songs describe how heroes (vīras), heroines (vīreśvarīs) and magical female beings (yoginīs) reside and are encountered as site‑specific maṇḍalas of Buddhist tantric systems. This article examines two such sites in light of their related corpus of local literature: a unique solitary form of Vajrayoginī – Śrī Ugratārā Vajrayoginī – who is worshipped at Mount Maṇicūḍa near Sankhu, and Nairātmyā – the semi-wrathful consort of Hevajra – who is worshipped in Paśupatikṣetra, Deopatan. In this article, I look at local accounts, excerpts from the Maṇiśailamahāvadāna composed in Nepāl Bhāṣā, and offer an edition of the Sanskrit Tridalakamala practice song (caryāgīti). I utilise these sources to investigate how the sacred landscapes of the Buddhist vajra‑yoginīs in Nepal remain integral to the hermeneutics of reception of tantric Buddhism.
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