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This article was downloaded by: [Heriot-Watt University] On: 19 November 2012, At: 12:21 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csas20 Architecture and Architechnē: Building and Revealing in High-Caste Nepalese Houses John Gray a a University of Adelaide Version of record first published: 07 Mar 2011. To cite this article: John Gray (2011): Architecture and Architechnē: Building and Revealing in High-Caste Nepalese Houses, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 34:1, 89-112 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2011.549086 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

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Page 1: Nepalese Houses

This article was downloaded by: [Heriot-Watt University]On: 19 November 2012, At: 12:21Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

South Asia: Journal of South AsianStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csas20

Architecture and Architechnē: Buildingand Revealing in High-Caste NepaleseHousesJohn Gray aa University of AdelaideVersion of record first published: 07 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: John Gray (2011): Architecture and Architechnē: Building and Revealing inHigh-Caste Nepalese Houses, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 34:1, 89-112

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2011.549086

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

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Architecture and Architechn�e: Building and

Revealing in High-Caste Nepalese Houses

John Gray

University of Adelaide

AbstractIn this paper I identify the doubleness of domestic space—not just asarchitecture, that is, the production of houses that expresses social reality,cultural meanings and/or cosmology, but also as architechn�e, that is, as theembodied experience, tacit knowledge and revelation produced by everydayliving in domestic space. This distinction provides the framework for analysingNepali houses as domestic mandalas. I argue that in the taken-for-granted,everyday use of domestic space as architechn�e, Nepalis engage in an embodiedbringing forth of their houses as an enframing whole, as a structure of revealingof the cosmos and the nature of their lifeworld as Householders.

Keywords: Architecture, architechn�e, Nepal, houses, cosmology, mandalas,lifeworld, Householders

The architecture of South Asia provides a rich source of evidence forRapoport’s generic hypothesis: ‘what finally decides the form of a dwelling andmoulds the spaces and their relationships is the vision that people have of theideal life’.1 Architectural space expresses culture. In Nepal and South Asia,built forms and their organisation of space express cosmology, ideology and/orsociality at all spatial scales—region, city, temple and house. The KathmanduValley,2 the city of Bhaktapur,3 the Hindu temple4 and, as the following

1 Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1960), p.47.2 Mary Slusser, Nepal Mandala: A Cultural Study of the Kathmandu Valley (Princeton: Princeton University

Press. 1982).3 Neils Gutschow and B. Kolver, Ordered Space, Concepts and Functions in a Town in Nepal (Wiesbaden:

Franz Steiner, 1975).4 Stella Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1976); and George Michell,

The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies,n.s., Vol.XXXIV, no.1, April 2011

ISSN 0085-6401 print; 1479-0270 online/11/010089-24 � 2011 South Asian Studies Association of Australia

DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2011.549086

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account of the dwellings of high-caste Hindus in the Kathmandu Valley argues,the house,5 all manifest the cosmos by being spatially organised in the form of amandala. Domestic architecture may also express social reality rather than theideal life of cosmology. For example daily activities and social relations aremanifest in the houses of Muslims and Hindus in Nepal,6 and the ideology ofthe unequal distribution of power between castes and classes is articulated inthe spatial relations of Goan houses.7

All of these studies focus on one moment of architecture—the production offunctional and meaningful space. There is, however, another moment ofarchitecture that focuses on the embodied experience, tacit knowledge andrevelation produced by everyday living in domestic space. It is this moment ofarchitecture for which I use the term ‘architechn�e’.

Architechn�e combines two concepts. The prefix ‘archi’ refers to the practice ofarchitecture which ‘produces space’,8 ‘creates boundaries out of otherwiseunbounded space’,9 is ‘the thoughtful making of spaces’,10 and ‘is integrallyidentified with human activity, experience and expression, for, in orderingspace, [it] also orders human action’.11 It ‘involves not just the provision ofshelter from the elements but the creation of a social and symbolic space—aspace which both mirrors and moulds the world view of its creators andinhabitants’.12 In all these definitions of architecture, the central idea is that thearchitect—whether professional, vernacular, indigenous or architecture without

5 Melinda Moore, ‘The Kerala House as Hindu Cosmos’, in M. Marriott (ed.), India through Hindu

Categories (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990); and Joyce Shepherd, ‘Symbolic Space in Newar Culture’,

unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1985.6 Marc Gaborieau, ‘The Indo-Nepalese House in Central Nepal: Building Patterns, Social and Religious

Symbolism’, in G. Toffin (ed.), Man and His House in the Himalayas: Ecology of Nepal (New Delhi: Sterling

Publishers, 1991); and Veronique Bouillier, ‘From the Fountain to the Fireplace: The Daily Itinerary in

Domestic Space among High Indo-Nepalese Castes’, in G. Toffin (ed.) Man and His House in the Himalayas:

Ecology of Nepal (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1991).7 Caroline Ifeka, ‘Domestic Space as Ideology in Goa, India’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.)

Vol.21, no.2 (1987), pp.308–9.8 J. Till, ‘Architecture in Space and Time’, in C. Melhuish (ed.), Architecture and Anthropology. Architectural

Design Profile No. 124 (London: The Academy Group, 1996), p.9.9 Susan Kent ‘Activity Areas and Architecture: An Interdisciplinary View of the Relationship Between Use of

Space and Domestic Built Environments’, in Susan Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space:

An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.2.10 Louis Khan cited in Till, ‘Architecture in Space and Time’, p.9.11 Suzanne P. Blier, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural

Expression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p.2.12 Roxanna Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia (Singapore:

Oxford University Press, 1991), p.xv.

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architects13—makes space for human habitation. In the very production ofsuch space is the production of meaning of and for that space that expressescosmology, ideology and sociality.

‘Techn�e’ is a Greek word that, as Heidegger points out, is usually associatedwith the skills and activities of a craftsman in making something useful.14

However, for him the essence of techn�e is a bringing-forth (poiesis) intopresence through the human use of skills and activities something that ispossible and/or concealed. Techn�e it is a form of revealing and revealing is theessence of truth.

It [techn�e] reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does notyet lie here before us . . . . Thus what is decisive in techn�e does notlie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, butrather in the revealing . . . . It is as revealing, and not asmanufacturing, that techn�e is a bringing-forth.15

For Heidegger, truth is not a set of propositions, knowledge or statementsabout the ultimate nature of the world and the people and things that existwithin it. Instead the world is fundamentally a field of possibilities in which theexistence and nature of phenomena—the people and things that exist for us—are not given directly to our consciousness. Phenomena have only possibilitiesfor our experience of them; human thought and action bring certainpossibilities to consciousness. Which possibilities are brought forth dependsupon a historically and culturally specific whole or framework, from withinwhich entities appear in consciousness. This enframing whole is usually tacit,consisting of ‘what is taken for granted by the humans who inhabit such aworld’.16 From Heidegger’s perspective, then, truth is a structure of revealing toconsciousness certain of the world’s possibilities and, by implication, ofconcealing other possibilities.17 Techn�e refers to human action which bringsforth this structure of revealing and concealing. In this context of truth andtechn�e, architecture may be thought of correctly as an intentional productionand ordering of useful and meaningful space for human habitation and

13 Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects (London: Academy Editions, 1964).14 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in D. Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger Basic

Writings (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977).15 Ibid, p.295.16 Don Ihde, Technics and Praxis (London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), p.105.17 Heidegger’s concept of truth is derived from the Greek word al�etheia, which is usually translated as

‘revealing’.

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architechn�e essentially as the implicit bringing forth of inhabited space as atacit structure of revealing (and concealing).

This distinction between architecture and architechn�e provides the frameworkfor the following analysis of Nepali houses as domestic mandalas.18 Arguingthat the mandala form consists of two ever-present modes of cosmologicalspace, I first describe the architectural practices of high-caste Hindus in theKathmandu Valley, particularly their intentional use of explicit designprinciples, which they called ‘b�astu rules’,19 to build their houses in theauspicious mode of a mandala oriented by the cardinal directions. Second, Idescribe their taken-for-granted conventional everyday use of domestic spaceas architechn�e. This is more than another, albeit implicit, form of configuringtheir houses, this time in the form of the concentric mode of the mandala; it isalso a bringing forth of their houses as an enframing whole, a structure ofrevealing of the cosmos and the nature of their lifeworld as Householders.This bringing forth and revealing is embodied. As they move about theirdomestic compounds, they not only carry out everyday activities—tasks suchas entertaining guests, processing grain, preparing food, eating a meal—butalso tacitly build and present their houses into concentric mandalas, producean embodied and revelatory knowledge of the enigma of being Householdersand turn it into a ‘bodily hexis’, that is, a permanent and corporealdisposition of thinking and feeling.20 Ordinary everyday household activities,then, are simultaneously extra-ordinary cosmogenic acts of building andbringing forth a spatial organisation of houses as a cosmological frameworkthat enables revelatory acts of embodied knowing of its fundamentalprinciples.

18 Heidegger distinguishes between a correct and essential understanding of phenomena: ‘The correct always

fixes upon something pertinent in whatever is under consideration. However, in order to be correct, this fixing

by no means needs to uncover the thing in question in its essence. Only at the point when such an uncovering

happens does the true come to pass. For that reason the merely correct is not yet the true’. See Heidegger,

‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p.289.19 The design principles used by high-caste Chhetris in building their houses mostly concern the orientation of

rooms and spaces to the cardinal directions each of which is associated with a deity and a realm of action.

Chhetris called these design principles ‘b�astu’ rules. Both the word ‘b�astu’ and the rules referred to by it

largely accord with some of the most well-known principles of spatial orientation found in the V�astu Sh�astras,

such as locating the puja room in the northeast because this is the realm of the deity Isoma. The Chhetris with

whom I did fieldwork have not and do not read the V�astu Sh�astra; b�astu rules form a body of everyday

knowledge of house design which derives from the V�astu Sh�astras and which they use in a taken-for-granted

way in building their houses.20 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1977), pp.93–4.

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Ethnographic Context: People and PlaceThe data for this analysis of domestic architecture and architechn�e is basedupon long-term ethnographic fieldwork with high-caste Chhetris living in ahamlet that is part of the village of Banaspati located at the southern reaches ofthe Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Chhetri is one of a set of castes—including high-caste priestly Brahmin (B�ahun) and Royal Thakuri and Dalit castes includingblacksmith (K�ami), tailor (Dam�ai) and leatherworker (S�arki)—that togetherare known in Nepal as ‘p�arb�atiya’ (literally ‘hill people’). P�arb�atiya aredescendants of high-caste Hindus and associated Dalit castes who migratedfrom northern India beginning in the second millennium AD, spreadingthrough the hill zones of western Nepal and in 1769 conquering and settling inthe Kathmandu Valley.

The hamlet consists of approximately 100 household groups (pariw�ar) of whichtwo-thirds are members of a single agnatic lineage. Household groups range insize from a small number of single-person households to nuclear householdsand complex joint households. In most cases each household group occupies asingle ‘house’ (ghar) consisting of their residential building and the compoundthat surrounds and encloses it. Most of them combine agricultural productionof food staples (rice, wheat, vegetables, milk) with non-agricultural employ-ment in the urban centres of the valley.

Chhetris explicitly understand their earthly existence in terms of four ideas. Thefirst is the conception of the unity and diversity of the cosmos; the second is theHindu paradigm of four stages of life (�ashr�ama); the third is the cycle ofsams�ara in which humans experience birth, death and rebirth and the attendantidea of release (moksa) of a person from this cycle consequent to knowledge ofthe ultimate and fundamental unity of the cosmos; and fourth is the enigmaticnature of the Householder stage in which they live out their everyday lives.Most Chhetris were able to articulate to me the idea that the human worldconsists of, on the one hand, a diversity of human individuals, social groups,material things and natural forces of everyday life and, on the other hand, atranscendent and absolute unity that is a spaceless, timeless, causeless void.They understood the origin of this worldly diversity through the Vedic story ofself-sacrifice of the primeval cosmic being, Purusha, who embodies thefundamental unity of the cosmos.21 As a result of Purusha’s sacrifice, all

21 Rig Veda, ‘Hymn to Purusha’ (10:XC). Purusha embodies the fundamental unity of the cosmos. All that

can and will exist in the world is immanent in his body. His self-sacrifice is a creative act unleashing the

diversity inherent and potential in his body and establishing the microcosmic-macrocosmic system of

correlations between planes of existence.

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perceptible time and space, every different corporeal being and thing, and allvarieties of natural energies and forces in the everyday world, are both distinctphenomena and an expression of the whole unified cosmos. To focus on theformer as fundamental is to experience reality as constituted only by thediversity of sensible worldly phenomena and to become attached to people andthings through social and material relations.22 To pursue such attachments asthe goal of life is to be shrouded in ignorance and to be caught in sams�ara (thecontinual cycle of birth, death and rebirth), that is, consigned to a continuallife-in-the-world of illusion. To focus on the latter as the fundamental reality isto experience the everyday world of diversity as ultimately an illusion (m�aya)that hides the unity of the cosmos. Such enlightened knowledge of the absoluteleads humans to eschew the illusion of attachments and gain liberation orrelease from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

It is in this context that Chhetris situate the four stages of life-in-the-world. Thefirst stage is the Brahmach�arya, the Life of the Celibate Student. This is thestage during adolescence when a young boy studies the religious texts underthe guidance of a guru as a prelude to and a pre-condition for marriage andentering the Householder stage of life. During this phase the boy adoptsasceticism as a mode of life through celibacy and begging for food. MostChhetri boys go through the Brahmach�arya stage only as part of the rite ofpassage (bartaman) in which they become adults.23 The second stage is theGrihastha, the Life of the Householder. This is the stage in which Chhetri menand women spend their adult lives; it is the stage for life-in-the-world, fully andactively engaging with the diversity of people and things motivated by practical,everyday concerns. It includes marriage, raising children, living in a householdand producing the material needs for its members. The third stage is theVanaprasta, the Forest Dweller. This is the stage when, having discharged theduties of the Householder and passed the age of copulation, a man and his wiferetire to the forest where they devote themselves to meditation and the practiceof austerities including chastity. All of the previous stages are a preparation forthe final and most radical renunciation demanded of the final stage of life, theSany�asin, or Wandering Ascetic. During this stage of life, a person renouncesall worldly desires, together with the social relations and attachments entailedby them as a means of realising the illusion of worldly diversity and gainingknowledge of the fundamental unity of the cosmos.

22 See John Gray, The Householder’s World: Purity, Power and Dominance in a Nepali Village (Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 1995).23 For women, the rite of passage to adulthood and to the Householder stage-of-life is marriage.

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Chhetri villagers consider themselves to be in the Householder stage of life.They told me that every Chhetri boy had gone through bartaman and theycould not remember anyone from their hamlet who had become a ForestDweller or a Wandering Ascetic. In effect, the four stages of life are reduced toa juxtaposition of two possible modes of being-in-the-world. One is theHouseholder, the ordinary person-in-the-world whose life is defined byGrihastha dh�arma24 that motivates actions (kaman) and the aim of such actionis to produce ‘practical’ and beneficial results (‘fruits’) in this world. It is thisaction in and for the world that both produces and engages the diversity ofpeople and material things which are the objects of one’s attachments, desiresand passions. But as a result of such worldly-oriented action and attachments,the Householder is caught in the continual cycle of birth-death-rebirth into theworld. The other mode of being-in-the-world is the Renouncer, personified bythe asceticism and detachment of the Brahmach�arya, Vanaprasta and Sany�asin.The goal of such detachment is to achieve liberation from the cycle of birth-death-rebirth and to realise the fundamental unity of one’s self with all otherselves and things.

Chhetris’ lifeworld is both practical and cosmological: as they engage ineveryday domestic activities, they are fulfilling their sacred duties. AsHouseholders, their aim is to prosper not just in the narrow sense of materialwealth but also in the wider sense, captured by the Nepali word samrddhi, of anabundance of those things that characterise the ‘good life’: children, health,well-being and peaceful relations with oneself, other human beings and thedeities. At the same time, they are also enjoined to remain detached from thesemanifold worldly attachments, to resist enslavement by them in order toachieve liberation by seeing through the veil of illusion that conceals thefundamental unity of the cosmos.25 Their goal is to live a life characterised bydetached attachment or passionless passion.

24 Grihastha dh�arma includes three main duties: begetting children, feeding the ascetics, and performing

sacrifice. Each of these motivates Householders to a life characterised by passion, prosperity and attachment.

See Gray, The Householder’s World: Purity, Power and Dominance in a Nepali Village. The duty to beget

children motivates an attachment to a diversity of people (epitomised by marriage and the love of children);

the duty to feed the ascetics motivates attachment to a diversity of things in the world (epitomised by

ownership of land to produce food for subsistence and to feed the ascetics); and the duty to perform sacrifice

motivates attachment to a diversity of deities (epitomised by doing numerous puj�as towards gods and

goddesses).25 T.N. Madan, Non-Renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture (Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 1987).

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Chhetri HousesThe house is the primary setting for the Householder’s life-in-the-world. In thehamlet where I worked, there were two types of houses usually consisting oftwo storeys.26 One type I will call ‘traditional’ (see Figures 1a and 1b), builtwith sun-dried mud bricks, carved wooden window frames and doors, mudfloors, and tile or thatched roofs. These generally have an open plan groundfloor with four visible pillars forming a rectangle around a central pillar, akitchen in a far corner often behind a low wall to obstruct visibility from thedoorway, and a worship room generally located on the second floor. The othertype of house I will call ‘contemporary’ (see Figures 2a and 2b), indicating itsmore recent construction using concrete for walls, with wooden window framesand doors. The main difference is that these newer houses have separate roomsrather than open plan with the kitchen located in the room furthest from themain entrance or on an upper floor.

Although they are distinguished by the building materials and interior roomlayout, there are four common architectural features. First, houses are built onrectangular sites surrounded by a low wall that defines the boundary of thedomestic compound. They are located towards one edge of the site away fromapproaching public roads or paths, leaving space for a courtyard. This resultsin a configuration of nested domestic spaces—boundary, courtyard, verandah,main entrance and interior of house (see Figures 1b and 2b). Second, the housesare oriented with the main entrance opening out onto the courtyard allowinghousehold members a clear view of it, and of anyone who may be approachingthe house from the public path or roadway. Courtyards are distinct spaces andone of their important architectural functions is mediating between the houseand public thoroughfares outside the boundary of the house compound that arepotentially dangerous places where impure people of lower castes (j�at), malignwitches (boksi) and malevolent ghosts and other spirits (bhut, pret, pich�as)linger. Third, a covered and raised verandah spans the front of the traditionalhouses and some portion of the front of contemporary houses; its locationmakes it another mediating space, now between the courtyard that is visibleand the interior of the house that is not visible to those outside the compound.Finally and most importantly, both types of houses are in the spatialconfiguration of a mandala.27

26 When I began fieldwork in 1973, all the houses were of the traditional type. By 2001, traditional houses

were in the minority (31 of 69), as over the intervening years a significant number of Chhetris had built

contemporary ones. Most of these new houses were built by young men after their marriages as part of the

process of separating from their joint families and establishing separate household groups.27 This account of the spatial layouts of traditional and contemporary houses is based upon detailed drawings

of more than 50 percent of Chhetri houses in the hamlet. While there is variation in the spatial layouts of both

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It is important to emphasise that Chhetris do not explicitly describe theirhouses as mandalas—they are lived rather than spoken of as mandalas.However, as I explain below, in their everyday domestic practices of preparing,cooking and eating rice, as well as in the material and ritual construction of

types of houses, each falls within a limited range forming a configuration of domestic space I have portrayed

with the sketch diagrams. See Roderick J. Lawrence, ‘Domestic Space and Society: A Cross Cultural Study’,

in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.24, no.1 (1982), pp.104–30 for a similar analytic movement

from specific and limited variation in the layouts of houses to a general configuration of domestic space.

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their houses, they build mandalas into their domestic space so that living in ahouse is at the same time an intimate experience and a tacit, embodiedknowledge of the cosmos.

The Mandala FormA mandala is a mystic diagram that represents the nature and order of theuniverse—‘a map of the cosmos . . . the whole universe in its essential plan’.28

Tucci’s description highlights three important attributes of mandalas. First,their primary referent is the cosmos that may be represented in differentgraphic modes: pictographs composed of pictures and icons that depictreligious concepts and deities who in turn personify the primary bodies andnatural forces of the universe as well as the qualities of humans; andgeographs composed of purely geometric designs—squares, circles, trianglesand the point—whose shapes likewise stand for religious concepts, deities andthe natural forces and human qualities they personify (see Figure 3). Second,they are maps of the cosmos and, as such, the spatial arrangement of thepictures and geometric elements in the composition depict importantcharacteristics of the cosmos. Third, more than just an allegorical map ofthe cosmos, mandalas are microcosms of it. Whether composed ofpictographic or geometric elements, they are revelatory of the fundamentalunity of the cosmos as well as the normally-hidden system of correlationsbetween planes of existence immanent in that unity: the cosmos, the deities,the human world, and the body and psyche of the individual;29 ‘knowledge of

28 Giuseppe Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala: With Special Reference to the Modern Psychology

of the Unconscious (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, [1961] 2001), p.23. In Nepal ‘mandala’ tends to refer to

mystic diagrams associated with the Buddhism of Newars and Tibetan groups and ‘yantra’ with the Hinduism

of Brahmin-Chhetris (see Figure 3). At the same time, it should not be concluded that ‘mandalas are rarely

part of the Hindu tradition and that yantras are not found in the Buddhist tradition’. See Gudrun

Buhnemann, ‘Mandala, Yantra and Cakra: Some Observations’, in Gudrun Buhnemann (ed.), Mandalas and

Yantras in the Hindu Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p.16. See also David Gellner’s description of the

importance of mandalas among both Buddhist and Hindu Newars of Patan: David Gellner, Monk,

Householder and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1992), pp.45–8. Both Buhnemann and Helene Brunner provide discussions of the differences

between mandalas and yantras based upon analysis of Hindu textual sources. Buhnemann concludes: ‘The

use and functions of these terms [mandala, yantra and cakra] are complex and it will be impossible to arrive at

a universally valid definition’ (ibid., p.18). See Helene Brunner, ‘Mandala and Yantra in the Siddh�anta School

of Saivism: Definitions, Descriptions and Ritual Use’, in Gudrun Buhnemann (ed.), Mandalas and Yantras in

the Hindu Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp.153–78.29 T.J. Hopkins, The Hindu Religious Tradition (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1975), p.23;

and Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, p.45.

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such mystical connections leads to power . . . ’30 and is a basis for ritualaction and its efficacy.31

Again, despite their differences in representational form, mandalas sharefundamental compositional design elements for expressing this cosmology andproviding a ‘machine’34 for revelatory knowledge: as a whole they are oriented tothe cardinal directions, each of which is associatedwith a deity; they have a centrepoint (bindhu) surrounded by a concentric girdle—either circular or polygonic—of line/s and space/s that provide the dynamicquality ofmovement; and theyhavean outer boundary line enclosing a sacred space. This spatial configuration isconstructed from three primary geometric elements: the square, the point and thecircle, each representing a fundamental dimension of the cosmos.

Figure 3Two Forms of the Mandala

30 T. Goudriaan, ‘Introduction, History and Philosophy’, in S. Gupta, D.J. Hoens and T. Goudriaan (eds),

Hindu Tantrism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979), pp.57–8.31 Gil Daryn, ‘Himalayan Encompassment: Man, Cosmos and Rice in a Brahmin Community in Central

Nepal’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Cambridge University, 2002, pp.164ff.32 ‘Early Tibetan Mandalas: The Rossi Collection’, reproduced with the kind permission of Rossi & Rossi

Ltd., London.33 Ajit Mookerjee Collection, in Madhu Khanna, Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity (London:

Thames and Hudson, 1976).34 Heinrich Zimmer,Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

Bollingen Series VI, 1972), p.141.

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The square is the perfect four-cornered polygon with sides of equivalent lengthintersecting at right angles. In Hindu iconography, it is the geometric image ofthe space for terrestrial dwelling; it creates the spatial abode in-the-worldfor deities and humans. Its orienting references are the cardinal directions. Thefour sides and the cardinal directions—east, south, west and north—are mutuallyconstitutive. In the process of creation, the cardinal directions and terrestrialspace are the source of each other’s existence. The four corners formedby the intersecting sides produce the intermediate directions—southeast,southwest, northwest and northeast. The eight directions are in turnassociated with deities representing and reigning over particular aspects of the

Figure 4Two Configurations of Domestic Space

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cosmos—they personify the cosmos manifest in the planets, natural forces, andhuman qualities.35 By focusing on these elements, we can abstract from thecomplex mandala a basic design configuration consisting of a four-sided, four-cornered polygon aligned with the cardinal directions surrounding a centre. Inthis configuration, the emphasis is on the terrestrial world as a space of humanhabitation created and defined by the sacred geography of the cardinaldirections and their reigning deities. In this configuration (see Figure 4), themandala is a space for auspicious action in-the-world. The directions and theirreigning deities have distinct qualities and meanings that organise terrestrialspace into a template for orientating human action. Chhetris try to align theiraction in particular directions—either by physically performing it in aparticular part of a structure or diagram or bodily facing a particulardirection during action—so that the nature of the action is compatible withthe quality or characteristic of the direction toward which it is aligned. Suchharmonious and auspicious alignment portends beneficent outcomes for theactions through which Chhetri Householders engage with and form attach-ments to the diversity of people, things and deities of the world in order toachieve a prosperous life in-the-world.

The point (bindhu) and its central location in the diagram together are a spatialrendering of the fundamental unity and truth of the cosmos in its un-manifestedform before and after space, time and the diversity of beings and things of theworld. Like Purusha, all is immanent in it; it is the point from which the worldin all its diversity is created and it is the point into which all creation dissolves.Movement outward from the bindhu that forms a surrounding space is the forceof creation and evolution of worldly diversity and the entrapment ofattachment to it; movement inward toward the bindhu is the force ofdissolution and devolution of worldly diversity and liberation from its illusorypower through knowledge of the fundamental unity.

The circle defines another type of space, a concentric zone around the all-embracing centre point without reference to the cardinal directions. Theconcentric zones do not immediately suggest the expanse of terrestrial space ofhuman living but the space created by and for the diversity of people andthings. Its orienting reference, then, is the centre point ‘as the universe in its un-manifested form’,36 ‘as the principle from which all form and creation

35 These essential features of the square—a four-sided polygon implicating and oriented by the four cardinal

and four intermediate directions—are retained in the rectangle which we will see is the basic geometric

configuration of a house.36 Ajit Mookerjee and Madhu Khanna, The Tantric Way: Art, Science, Ritual (London: Thames and

Hudson, 1976), p.96.

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radiates’.37 The zone/s marked out by concentric spaces around the bindhudepict the dynamism of the cosmos—simultaneously the outward, expanding,centrifugal act of creating from the centre point the diversity of things andbeings, as well as the space for them, and the inward, contracting, centripetalact of their dissolution into the centre point. By focusing on the point andsurrounding concentric zones elements, we can abstract another basic designconfiguration consisting of concentric zones around a point (see Figure 4). Inthis revelatory configuration the mandala is a guide for enlightened knowledgeof the cosmos, whether achieved by meditation or action upon its form. Insensual and embodied contemplation, as the eye fixes on the centre point and isdrawn to move outward by the surrounding lines, the beholder experiences theun-manifested source, visualises the creation of the diversity of people andthings and feels the attachment to the world that traps humans in the round ofdeath and rebirth. As the eye is pulled inward by the power of the bindhu at thecentre, the beholder experiences the obliteration of diversity, discovers theillusion of attachment to it and comes to understand the true nature ofthe universe as fundamentally a timeless and spaceless unity in which all formsof individual consciousness merge in the centre. As I describe below, Chhetrisexperience the same centripetal inward and centrifugal outward movement inrelation to the mandalic configuration of domestic space producing a non-contemplative, embodied and practical revelation of the cosmos and thelifeworld of the Householder.

Architecture: The Production of Domestic SpaceAs can be seen from the photos and sketch diagrams, Chhetri houses have thethree characteristics of the auspicious configuration of the mandala: a four-sided polygon oriented to the cardinal directions with a materially- or ritually-established central pillar. Chhetris intentionally build this configuration intotheir houses through three interweaving processes of construction.38 The first isthe material construction of the house which has a number of stages: selectingthe site, preparing the site, positioning the house on the site, laying thefoundation and building the external structure, and finally inhabiting thehouse. The second is linking these stages of material construction to the flow ofcosmic time so that they take place at auspicious times calculated by thehousehold priest to be compatible with the horoscope of the owner. The third

37 Gudrun Buhnemann, ‘Mandalas and Yantras in Sm�arta Ritual’, in Gudrun Buhnemann (ed.), Mandalas

and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p.41.38 See Robert Levy for a description of the Newar house as also an interweaving of the material and the

symbolic. Robert Levy, Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organisation of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp.186–92.

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process is making the house an auspicious place for domestic activities,portending well-being and prosperity for the owner and his household group.This involves creating a harmonious spatial conjunction between the house andthe space in which it is built, a space that is created in the act of building.Spatial auspiciousness entails ensuring compatibility and harmony between thephysical structure and the spatial milieu in which the house is erected: duringthe process of selection of the site, worship is performed to the deity of theEarth (Bhumi Puja); before the laying of the rectangular foundation, a‘Foundation Ritual’ (Jug Puja) is performed. In this rite, idols of deitiesassociated with the cardinal directions are buried in the four corners andanother in the centre of the rectangle. When the foundation is laid, these deitiesbecome part of the house structure itself and orient it auspiciously to thecardinal directions. In addition, rites are performed to neutralise evil orharmful presences from the land and the house itself.

This theme of auspiciousness is carried through into the spatial layout as well.Using what they call ‘b�astu rules’, Chhetris situate particular types of domesticspaces auspiciously in relation to the cardinal directions. The three mostimportant are the main entrance, the worship room and the kitchen. The mainentrance is in most cases oriented to the south for two reasons, at once practicaland cosmological. First, it situates the courtyard so that it receives the warmingsun during the cold winter months. Second, while the south is the inauspiciousdirection of the Yama, the deity associated with death, when entering the housepeople are facing north, the auspicious direction of the deities, so thatmovement into the house towards the north portends the beneficence of thedeities. The worship room should be in the northeast, the direction of the deityIsan, god of purity, knowledge and wisdom—the state, outcome and benefit ofperforming puja. In the majority of houses (66 percent) for which I havedetailed room layout plans, the worship room is located in the northeast; inthose houses in which the worship room is located in another quadrant of thehouse, the worship alters and idols are located in the northeast corner of theroom itself. The kitchen with its cooking fire should be in the southeast,the direction of the deity Agni, the god of fire. However, in most Chhetri houses(72 percent), the kitchen is in the northern quadrant. This pattern makes sensein relation to the location of the main entrance in the southern quadrant:placing the kitchen in the northern quadrant of the ground floor means that it isthe space or room farthest from the main entrance. When looked at accordingto the location relative to the main entrance, rather than aligned with a cardinaldirection, almost all kitchens in traditional and contemporary houses arelocated far away from the main door either by being placed in the farthestcorner or room of the ground floor or on an upper floor. This spatial location

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situates the kitchen in the centre of the revelatory configuration of the domesticmandala which is produced in their architechn�e practices.

Architechn�e: The Revelation of Domestic SpaceBourdieu developed the concept of ‘bodily hexis’39 to describe the way inwhich the knowledge and dispositions through which we conduct oureveryday lives have not just a reflexive form in ideas and concepts that wemay be able to verbalise, but also a tacit form, in the gestures and movementsof the body.40 This duality of the verbal/reflexive and tacit/corporealcharacterises the forms through which Chhetris experience cosmologicalideas, build them into their houses, and bring forth their houses as revelatorymandalas. To paraphrase Bourdieu: ‘Bodily hexis is [cosmology] realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition . . . a durable manner of standing,speaking, and thereby of feeling and thinking’.41 Bodily hexis entails movingin space and such motility not only creates culturally significant spaces(architecture), but, as this case study of Chhetris of the Kathmandu Valleyillustrates, also brings forth the house as a mandalic structure of revealing(architechn�e).

In the remainder of the paper, I describe how Chhetris create concentric spacesof inclusion and exclusion through the durable patterns of household activitiesand movement in their compounds.42 This creation is mediated by theireveryday concerns with maintaining purity and avoiding the dangers ofimpurity. These concerns about purity and impurity transfigure the abstractcosmological concepts of diversity and unity, attachment and detachment,illusion and revelation into everyday bodily practices of purity and impurity—and one of the most important of these are activities of cooking and eating inthe kitchen.

For Chhetris, being Householders means that there are no more importantmedia for living in the world than their bodies and the food they eat to sustainthem. Like Hindus throughout South Asia, they identify substancesproduced by the body—saliva, perspiration, urine, excrement, blood, semen

39 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p.93.40 Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1958); and Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983).41 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, pp.93–4, brackets added.42 Nancy Munn, ‘Excluded Spaces: The Figure in the Australian Aboriginal Landscape’, in S. Low and D.

Lawrence-Zuniga (eds), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Oxford: Blackwell

Publishing, 2003), pp.92–109.

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and mucus—as the primary sources of impurity (asuddha)43 as well as theproduct and signs of embodied life-in-the-Householder’s-world. Eating theeveryday meal of boiled rice and lentils (d�al-bh�at) is paradigmatic of actionsthat cause impurity. When people eat, the food they touch as well as the handwhich conveys the food to their mouths become polluted with their own saliva.These sources of impurity are all substances that flow from the inside to theoutside of the body and the impurity they produce is the result of transgressingits boundary. This means that the vital, life-maintaining organic processesinherently ‘produce’ impurity. Chhetris cannot avoid them as part of theirphysical being-in-the-world just as they cannot avoid the passions andattachments of their moral being-in-the-world as Householders. This parallelnecessity of, on the one hand, corporeal life and the impurity it entails and, onthe other hand, the dharma of the Householder and the attachments it entails,suggests that impurity is the everyday bodily transfiguration of attachment andby implication that purity is the everyday bodily transfiguration of detachment.

Purity as DetachmentPurity is a state of perfection characterised by a completeness, wholeness andintegrity that has not been corrupted by human action44 or by breaching theboundary between inside and outside. Maintaining or restoring purity entailsbodily deeds of detachment and asceticism. Bodily-produced impurity ispersonal and temporary. It is personal in the sense that only the individualwhose body produces the impure substance necessarily becomes impure. It istemporary in the sense that a state of purity is easily restored by two kinds ofactivities—cleansing and abstinence. In cleansing, impurity is removed and theintegrity of the body’s boundary restored with running water that courses overthe body and flows away. This is effective because water has the property ofabsorbing the quality of the object with which it comes into contact. For thisreason, cleansing always involves water flowing over the impure part of thebody, taking the impurity it has absorbed away from the body, thereby re-establishing its wholeness by creating a separation from the organic substanceswhich breached its boundary. The physical separation from polluting organicsubstances effected by bathing is a sensual practice of detachment from the

43 Villagers with whom I conducted fieldwork used the term juTho in a restricted sense to refer to a state of

impurity brought about by two circumstances: food or water that has been in contact with saliva during

eating, and death of a family member. However, in everyday conversation, they also used juTho with the same

general meaning as asuddha, referring to all forms of impurity. In such contexts, juTho was used in opposition

to the word choko which like juTho has a restricted meaning of food or water that has not come into contact

with saliva.44 Madan, Non-Renunciation: Themes and Interpretations of Hindu Culture, p.58ff.

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corporeal life of the Householder and the worldly attachments it necessarilyentails and from which it is impossible—like organic life itself—to abstain. Bycleansing after coming into contact with impurity inevitably produced by theprocesses of the body, Chhetris perform and experience their detachment fromthese processes.

The other method of purification is ascetic practice, usually consisting ofabstinence from eating and copulation, activities which produce impurity. Suchabstinences involve avoidance or non-involvement with things of worldlyenjoyment—good-tasting food and the physical pleasure of sexual intercourse.They are metonymic of a Householder’s lifeworld and the necessary attachmentto and/or passion for people and things—food, kinship relations and sexualrelations. The purity achieved by abstinence from such passions and pleasuresis another corporeal experience of detachment in the midst of the attachmentsof everyday life.

Impurity as AttachmentImpurity also has a permanent and collective form associated with castes whosemembers are affiliated through current or presumed historical practice withoccupations that require contact with the impure substances or actions ofothers’ bodies: washermen with other people’s sweat in the clothes they wash,tailors with the skin of dead animals used in the drum they play at weddings,and leatherworkers with the skin of dead animals in making shoes. In thesecastes, the occupation involves not just physical contact with pollution but alsoa permanent and excessive attachment to it in the sense that the activity isunderstood to have traditionally provided the means of subsistence. Peopleengaging in these occupations embody such impurity and pass it ongenealogically so that collectively the pollution defining them as a distinctcaste group is part of their corporeal substance. Even if a particular person inone of these castes does not engage in the traditional occupation, Chhetris stillinsisted that he or she still embodies the collective impurity of the caste throughgenealogical transmission.

If the body is the source and locus of impurity as the everyday transfigurationof attachment, food and water are its main conductors. Caste groups inBanaspati village are characterised and ranked as ‘caste groups from whomdrinking water is accepted for consumption’ (p�ani chalchha j�at) and ‘castegroups from whom drinking water is not accepted for consumption’ (p�aninachalchha j�at). Within the former category there is a further hierarchiseddivision between ‘castes from whom boiled rice is accepted for consumption’

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(bh�at chalchha j�at) and ‘castes from whom boiled rice is not accepted forconsumption’ (bh�at nachalchha j�at).

Bringing Forth the MandalaSuch an extended and elaborate ensemble of concepts and practices about thedangers of impurity transmitted through food and physical contact renders thepreparation and consumption of food not just explicitly nutritionally essentialand socially sensitive but also tacitly significant cosmologically. It is throughthe patterns of intentionally including and excluding impure people from theincreasingly interior concentric zones of the domestic compound—courtyard,verandah, and kitchen—where rice is prepared and eaten, that Chhetrisexplicitly protect themselves and their food from the impurity of low-castepeople, and, at the same time, they tacitly map the cosmos onto their domesticcompounds and bring forth a revelatory mandala of concentric zones aroundthe kitchen as the centre (see Figure 5).

The courtyard is the space most visible from outside the low boundary wall andmost vulnerable to the impurity and danger of impure people from outside thecompound. It is the place where raw grains are dried or processed. When rice is

Figure 5Concentric Configuration of the Domestic Mandala

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harvested in autumn, it is threshed in the fields and brought to the house aspaddy (dh�an) to be dried in the sun before milling. Once milled to remove thechaff, rice (ch�amal) is in the next stage of its transformation into food. Aftermilling, the courtyard is the place where rice is winnowed to remove theremaining chaff. It is still considered raw because it is uncooked and it has notbeen subjected to human action corrupting the wholeness of the grains. It is inthe process of cooking that the grains become vulnerable to the impurity oflower castes.

Because raw grain is immune from impurity, there are few, if any, protectivespatial exclusions. The courtyard is the place where anyone is allowed to enterrelatively freely. In this respect the courtyard is the only place where membersof Dalit castes can enter, such as members of the tailor caste making clothes forhousehold members. The reverse is also the case: Chhetris do not fear becomingimpure by entering the courtyards of low-caste people.

The verandah mediates the visible courtyard and the invisible interior of thehouse. Since it runs across the front of the house which faces into thecourtyard, it is, like the courtyard, visible from outside the boundary. But likethe house interior, the verandah is also a raised area above the courtyard onthe same level as the house’s ground floor and it is covered by a roof. Itsarchitecturally mediating character is matched by its use as a sociallymediating space between the public courtyard and the more secluded houseinterior. In traditional houses, there is often a raised wooden platform at oneend of the verandah that people use for sitting in the sun and entertainingguests accompanied by snacks; in contemporary houses, either chairs or agrass mat are brought out for host and guest. In terms of spatial inclusionsand exclusions, the visitors and guests entertained by Chhetris on theirverandahs are most often people of equivalent purity. They sometimes sit andtalk with people of lower castes from whom they will accept water but snacksare not offered. People of Dalit castes (from whom they will not accept water)are usually not allowed on the verandah, particularly when snacks are beingserved.

These spatial inclusions and exclusions are imposed because the method ofpreparing snacks makes them more susceptible than raw paddy and uncookedrice to impurity and danger. Snacks are prepared inside the house where, in theprocess of converting raw grain into an edible state, the food, the preparer andthe cooking process are out of the sight and touch of people in the courtyardand on the verandah. The most common snack is tea served with a small metalbowl of rice flakes, raw milled rice that has been boiled, then roasted and finally

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pounded into rice flakes. Alternately, dry-popped maize, dry-roasted soybeanor commercially-made biscuits may be served with tea.

Because of their method of preparation, rice flakes and other snacks aresusceptible to impurity, but less so than other forms of cooked food. When riceor other grains are cooked, they are placed in a medium—either water, oil or air(dry)—and heated over a fire rendering them porous, that is, the boundary ofthe grain becomes permeable and open to absorbing the qualities of themedium in which it is being cooked. The medium absorbs and conducts to thefood the impurities of anyone who touches or sees the grain with evil intentduring its transformation from raw to cooked. Different cooking media havedifferent potentials for absorbing and conducting: water has the most, air theleast and oil in between. The snacks served on the verandah are doublyshielded. First, they are cooked inside the house away from the touch of low-caste people who might be in the courtyard. Second, they are cooked andserved dry (sukh�a) to guests without further cooking or preparation.

Compared to the courtyard, the verandah is more ‘interior’. By this I amreferring to the increasing need to protect the purity of food with spatialexclusions upon people from outside the household group, because the snackserved is cooked and more vulnerable to impurity and danger than the rawgrains dried and winnowed in the courtyard.

Chhetris eat two main meals each day, usually consisting of lentil broth, a curryof vegetables and/or meat and rice cooked in water (bh�at). Water is the mosttransitive medium because it readily absorbs the character of any object withwhich it comes into contact. As a result, it can purify as well as pollute. Inpurificatory bathing, water flows over the object or person, absorbs thepollution and takes it away into the ground. Conversely, while it is boiling, ricesits in water which conducts the state of the cook to the permeable rice.

Because of food’s openness to absorption, cooking and eating in the kitchen aredominated as much by an explicit concern with protecting the purity of thefood, the people who eat it and the place where it is cooked and eaten, as by thepractical tasks of preparing food and consuming it.45 The kitchen in traditionalhouses consists of an earthen stove in the corner of a raised earthen platform(see Figure 6). Women told me that mud is a very absorptive surface that isparticularly prone to pollution from eating—bits of food made impure by

45 Daryn, ‘Himalayan Encompassment: Man, Cosmos and Rice in a Brahmin Community in Central Nepal’,

pp.30–1.

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saliva may fall on the ground—so they must sweep and seal the floor with apurifying mixture of cow dung and water after every meal. In somecontemporary houses, where the kitchen is a separate room with floors ofless- or non-absorptive concrete, marble or other hard surfaces, the floor needonly be washed with water after each meal to remove impurity.

The kitchen has the most exclusive spatial prohibitions. Only Brahmins andother Chhetris, the castes from whom they will accept cooked rice, wereallowed to enter Chhetri kitchens when meals were being prepared and eaten.People of the water-acceptable castes were allowed to enter the verandahduring a meal; they were occasionally allowed to come just inside the mainentrance to ask a question, but they could not enter the kitchen. When foodwas not being prepared or eaten, people of water-acceptable castes could enterthe kitchen, but I never saw this happen. Dalits (water-unacceptable castes)could not even enter the house of a Chhetri without causing defilement of allthe living spaces, public and private. Thus whenever a Dalit wanted to interactwith a Chhetri, he or she had to remain in the courtyard and call out to thehouseholder.

Figure 6Traditional Kitchen (photo by author)

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Compared with the courtyard and verandah, the kitchen is the most interior ofdomestic spaces. For Chhetris, it is the room where their food and their bodiesare most vulnerable to impurity and danger, so they do their utmost to ensure itis pure by locating it in the most inaccessible place, purifying it before and aftereating and imposing the most exclusive spatial prohibitions on people enteringit. Taken together, courtyard, verandah and kitchen form a concentric series ofincreasingly exclusive interior spaces where rice and the people eating it areincreasingly vulnerable to impurity and danger, and where maintaining andprotecting purity is increasingly important.

Everyday Practice and Embodied RevelationAmong high-caste Hindus of Nepal, the equivalences between planes ofexistence—cosmos, the city as mesocosm,46 the temple,47 the house, the bodyand the mandala—mean that the activities of everyday domestic life and theplaces where they take place are multi-faceted: corporeal, social andcosmological. Eating nourishes the organic body, pollutes the social personand is an embodied experience of a Householder’s attachment, illusion andentrapment in the cycle of death and rebirth in the world. Likewise, washingafter eating cleans the body, cleanses the social persona of impurity and is anembodied experience of detachment and renunciation, so central to thebalancing of the attachments of the Householder’s life-in-the-world. In carryingout these activities, Householders build and define distinct multi-facetedconcentric spaces in their houses—at once functional, social and cosmologi-cal—in the form of a mandala so that their houses are places to live their dailylives as well as maps of the cosmos.

Everyday activities do not just architecturally configure domestic space into amandala, they are also practices of architechn�e that simultaneously bring forththe house not just as a passive expressive map of the cosmos but also as astructure of revealing—Zimmer phrased this power of the mandala as ‘amachine to stimulate inner visualisation’48—and the revelation itself. Botheveryday action in, and meditation upon, a mandala can be revelatory of thetranscendent truths of the cosmos through inward and outward movement ofthe body or the eye in relation to the centre. Accordingly, Chhetris’ domesticlife entails moving in the domestic mandala, from inside out and outside in, asthey carry out their everyday projects of processing grain, entertaining guests,

46 Levy, Mesocosm.47 Kramrisch, The Hindu Temple.48 Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, p.141.

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preparing and cooking food, and eating meals. Through these movements andthe spatial inclusions and exclusions that accompany them, the enigma of theirHouseholder way-of-life—the paradoxical dharma of attachment and detach-ment—is ‘realized, embodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durablemanner . . . of feeling and thinking’.49

49 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, pp.93–4.

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