ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores house life in Ladakh, North India, during recent decades. It describes Buddhist houses as kinds of person; people’s bodies are also houses. The book presents key materials out of which Ladakhi houses are built: shrines, pillars, stores, names and numbers. It also describes the house that was brought to life during regular daily and calendrical performances among Buddhist smallholders in the 1980s, focusing on ritual architecture. The book explores small or offshoot houses in more detail to ask about the position of non-married women and elders from Leh’s ‘middling’ estates, estates on which they had few claims. It also presents a new house, a nunnery, made by women who had previously worked for their domestic estates.
