This book had its inspiration during afternoon teas with Vivienne and Alex Kondos in the gardens of the Ambassador Hotel in Kathmandu in the autumn of 2001. We had been friends for many years and had been doing anthropological research in Nepal since the mid-1970s. On those warm afternoons, we began to explore how we might bring together our respective research about high caste Hindus that, until then, had run parallel, sometime complementary, sometimes critical but always respectful, courses. This book’s theme of the Chhetri house as a mandala is the fruit of those explorations with Vivienne and Alex.
Over the following two years, I was able to take several short field trips to Nepal with the generous support of time and funds from the University of Adelaide and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. For the past four years, my colleagues in the Discipline of Anthropology patiently witnessed and willingly assisted me in my struggle to understand and articulate the tacit dimension of domestic architecture and everyday life in a domestic mandala. Rod Lucas again deserves special thanks for the time and effort he took to comment upon important sections of the manuscript. I also want to thank Tony Radford and Deborah White of the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, for providing architectural and ethnographic insights, Chris Crothers of the Discipline of Geographical and Environmental Studies for her talents in drawing the maps, and Vistasp Mehta for allowing me to use the image of the vastu purusha mandala. Karen Armstrong kindly invited me to the University of Helsinki to participate in a collaborative workshop on Memory and Place with Nancy Munn, Rupert Stasch, Timo Kaartinen, and Jukka Siikala. For me the workshop was a great success and I hope I was able to contribute as much to the work of the other participants as I benefited from their comments and insights.
The hospitality of the people of Kholagaun and their continuing willingness to collaborate with me has spanned two generations so that for this project it was the children and grandchildren of my friends and neighbours who also contributed so much to my understanding of their houses and the life they carry out within them. In particular, Manoj, his mother, his wife and son invited me into the process of building their new house and patiently explained many of the rituals that accompanied its construction. I wish them, as well as all the people of Kholagaun, auspiciousness and well-being for their residence in their houses.
It has been more than thirty years since Ashoke and I met, lived in Kholagaun and became more than just friends. Throughout my fieldtrips to Nepal, I have become a member of his household, joining his wife, Pushpa, and children, Pranai and Dipika. They also introduced me to their Bāje who shared with me his deep knowledge of and reverence for Hinduism, horoscopes, sacred geography, and the aims and meanings of rituals accompanying domestic rites. I hope that my affection and gratitude to Ashoke and his family are evident throughout the pages of this book.
To adopt a metaphor from this work, the enframing whole within which this book makes its presence is my life with Jacki.
John Gray
2006