Wa Sya Dya Toothache Shrine

Wa Sya Dya is a large piece of wood that juts from the side of a building into the street, set on a red-painted plinth inside an iron frame. Coins cover all of it, nailed over older coins in layer after layer, until the shape reads as a lump of metal.

People with toothache come to pray and nail a coin into the wood. Some also leave clay bowls holding rice grains, betel nuts, and coins. Newar residents in particular have long stopped here on the way to the dentist.

Mary Slusser, writing about Kathmandu for the AWON Bulletin between about 1965 and 1971, named "the washya dya, or toothache god, of Bangemudha Tol" as one of the city's "divine specialists consulted for aid in curing specific diseases and ailments of the body." The other example in that passage was a small stone fish relief set into the street at Asan, consulted for vertigo.

Dan Szczesny first saw the shrine in 2010 and found it again in October 2025, cleaned up and dressed with a red curtain roof. On May 7, 2026, Nepal Traveller described passersby still stopping to pray, leave a coin, and walk on. Nepal's 1 and 2 rupee coins have nearly dropped out of everyday change, and in 2021 the Nepali Times found vendors on the walkway to Pashupatinath selling them for a little more than face value to people who wanted them as offerings.

What the sources disagree on

Slusser and Record Nepal call the deity a god. The Nepal Dental Association calls it Washya Dyo or Danteshwori Devi, "Goddess that heals toothache." English-language travel writing usually calls it Vaisha Dev or Vaishya Dev.

The accounts also differ on what is inside. The dental association's history says a gold idol of the goddess was stolen more than 30 years ago, leaving only the wooden block. ECS Nepal reported in 2019 that a small statue sits inside the main hole in the log and is the object of worship, hidden now by coins.

Bangemudha means "crooked log" in Nepali, and several Kathmandu accounts say the wood was cut from a legendary tree of that name. The quarter also has a Newar name: a document dated 1769, cataloged by Heidelberg's Documenta Nepalica project, records it as Ṭāyamaḍu Ṭola. Some writers date the shrine to the Licchavi era of the valley's history. None of them cites an inscription or a document for it.

The dentists

Near the shrine is Naghal, a street whose name the dental association translates as "iron vessel." The association says Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher sent Asta Man Rajbhandari and Ghana Man Rajbhandari of Naghal to India for dentistry training more than 100 years ago, and that some Naghal clinics have passed through three or more generations of practitioners. In 2021, Record Nepal profiled Dheeraj Ram Rajbhandari, a former satellite engineer who runs Family Dental Clinic, which his grandfather started more than 80 years earlier.

The shrine stands in the open street, so it has no opening hours and no admission. The offering is a single coin. Nepal's 1 and 2 rupee coins have nearly dropped out of everyday change, so visitors who want to make the offering may need to find one before arriving.

Bangemudha sits near Asan on the lanes between Thamel and Indra Chowk, and Kathmandu Durbar Square is within walking distance. Dentists' signboards on the surrounding buildings make the spot easy to recognize.

This is a working shrine on a busy street. It's best practice to give room to anyone making an offering, and to ask before photographing them.