ABSTRACT
Yi-Fu Tuan, Man and Nature Kholagaun Chhetri domestic space is a mandala. It consists of the house building and the compound that surrounds and encloses it. A mandala is a diagram of Hindu [tantric] cosmology that uses geometric space as a mode of representation. In Nepal, there is convincing evidence that Newars, the indigenous Hindu/Buddhist inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, explicitly used the mandala form in the design of its cities, neighbourhoods, temples and houses.1 Chhetris of Kholagaun do not describe their houses as mandalas. Instead, in their everyday domestic practices as well as in the material and ritual construction of their houses, they build mandalas into their domestic space so that living in a house is at the same time an intimate lived experience and embodied knowledge of the divine cosmos. Further, the mandala form is one with which they, like Newars, are intimately familiar:
One lives and moves always within a series of…mandalas: the Nepal mandala [the Kathmandu Valley], the mandalas of the cities, and the mandalas of house or temple. Conscious of being surrounded by these forms, it is not surprising that Newars tend to reproduce that form in all aspects of their lives…the order of the mandala has also become as habitual for Newars as linear constructions have for us. (Shepherd 1985:103)
Kholagaun Chhetris also move within the Nepal Mandala, the roughly circular Kathmandu Valley surrounding its sacred central cities and temples, as well as others. One of these is Chār Nārāyan, composed of the four Vishnu/Narayan shrines guarding the four quarters of the Valley and defining a mandala oriented by the cardinal directions: Ichangu Narayan in the north-west, Changu Narayan in the north-east, Bisankhu Narayan in the south-east and Shikhar Narayan in the southwest. In early November, when Vishnu wakes from his four months of sleep, Kholagaun Chhetris, along with other Nepalis, celebrate the event, known as Haribodhini Ekādasi, by fasting and travelling to Bisankhu Narayan Shrine, located on a hill just across the rice fields from their hamlet, where they worship Vishnu. This is also an occasion for the 36-mile pilgrimage to all four Narayan
Shrines2 during which devotees embody the Nepal Mandala in their day-long circuit of travel and worship. Villagers say that everyone should do this pilgrimage at least once in their lives.
