Bhandarkal - Jalashayana Narayan

Pratapa Malla built a shrine to Jalashayana Narayan in the new garden, installing an image of the god asleep on a bed of snakes. The figure is one of four, or perhaps five, statues of Jalashayana Narayan originally located at the four points of the compass (and maybe the center) of an ancient valley kingdom, the capital of which was near Hadigaum. By thus moving the figure to his garden from the pool in Guaneshvara where it lay, Pratapa Malla made the palace the symbolic center of the valley.

Apart from the one in the palace garden, two more of these statues survive, one being the Bala Nilkantha in Balaju, the other in Buddha Nilkantha at Narayanthan (the oldest known group of temples in the valley, dating from the first half of the 7th c.). Of the three, the one at Buddha Nilkantha is held to be the original and the others copies. Pratapa Malla was told in a dream that he and his successors must never set eyes on the original; otherwise, as incarnations of Vishnu, they would perish.