Kholagaun Chhetris dwell in a domestic mandala consisting of two ever-present modes of space: an auspicious four-sided polygon oriented to the cardinal directions and a series of concentric zones around a pure centre. In their intentional acts of planning and constructing houses and in their conventional domestic activities of preparing and consuming rice, Kholagaun Chhetris build these two modes of space into their houses and surrounding compounds so that everyday living is simultaneously an embodied revelation of the cosmos and its enigmatic consequences of attachment and detachment for their lifeworld as Householders. I began this book using the Heidegger’s notion of dwelling to draw attention to the consubstantial and inherently spatial relation between humans and their world produced in and through their embodied actions of using and doing things in everyday life. I now end by returning to Heidegger to reflect upon Nepali domestic architecture by way of a contrived pun, architechnē, that sees architecture as more than the making and manipulation of space for human use but as a structure of revealing. In architechnē, the production and practical use of space for human dwelling is at the same time a presencing of its enframing truth.
In contriving the word architechnē, I use the prefix ‘archi’ to refer to the architect and the practice of architecture which, to repeat the quotations from the Introduction, ‘produces space’ (Till 1969:9), ‘creates boundaries out of otherwise unbounded space’ (Kent 1990:2), is ‘the thoughtful making of spaces’ (Louis Khan in Till 1969:9), ‘is integrally identified with human activity, experience and expression, for, in ordering space, [it] also orders human action’ (Blier 1987:2); it ‘involves not just the provision of shelter from the elements but the creation of social and symbolic space—a space which both mirrors and moulds the world view of its creators and inhabitants’ (Waterson 1991:xv). I could also have entitled the conclusion ‘Vastu-technē’, using the Sanskrit term for the Hindu science of architecture for constructing spaces for human living (Ananth 1998:5-6). In all these definitions of architecture, the central idea that the architect—whether professional, vernacular (see Rapoport 1969:2), indigenous (Waterson 1991:xv) or the architecture without architects (Rudofsky 1964)—makes space for human habitation.
In the preceding chapters, I have given an account of the various ways in which Kholagaun Chhetris do precisely this. Some of their architectural practices are guided by explicit design considerations. These include the harmonious orientation of domestic spaces to the cardinal direction based upon their understanding of the vastu principles. This was explicit in their explanations of the placement of the worship room in the northern quadrant of the house and the main entrance facing the southern quadrant. They also include the multi-dimensional process of building a new house so that the stages of construction are auspiciously timed and are accompanied by rituals. The intention of all of these practices is to create an auspicious domestic space in the form of a yantra whose orientation to the cardinal directions portends beneficent outcomes for household projects carried out within it and worldly prosperity—the abundance of the good things of life, children, well being, material wealth, peace and harmony in social relations—for those who inhabit it.
Other architectural practises are more implicit. They are embedded in everyday domestic activities that Kholagaun Chhetris carry out for overtly practical reasons: to prepare and eat food, socialize with family and friends, care for household members, and perform rituals. But because human action is inherently spatial—‘We are bound by body to be in place’ (Casey 1993:104); the very physical form of the human body immediately constitutes the world spatially at least in terms of ‘here-there, near-far, up-down, above-below, right-left’ (Seamon 2005:7)—in carrying out these tasks they also make and configure domestic space. I illustrated this conventional architecture by describing the production of spaces in the compound through the distribution of activities of handling rice in its various states from raw to cooked and the prohibitions on people entering these spaces. While these spatialised activities are intended to protect rice, those who prepare it and those who eat it from impurity and danger, they also configure domestic space into a mandalic form consisting of series of concentric zones of courtyard, verandah, interior around the kitchen as the pure centre.
But to assume that this construction and configuring of spaces into a complex mandala is all there is to domestic architecture in Nepal is, to follow Heidegger, correct but not yet true.
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…Accordingly the correct instrumental definition of [architecture] still does not show us [architecture’s] essence. (Heidegger 1977: 289, words in brackets added)
One theme of the preceding chapters has been to describe what, in Heidegger’s terms, is a ‘correct’ understanding of Kholagaun Chhetri houses and their building of and dwelling in them. Such a correct understanding focuses on the ordinary way that Kholagaun Chhetris think about the everyday world as a set of people and things with which they engaged instrumentally in order to carry out the tasks of daily life. In this respect, what they know and could articulate to me about the domestic compound—the spaces, people and activities that constitute it, the characteristics and qualities they have for them—did not derive from their theoretical reflection upon them but from their practical engagement with them: using the kitchen for cooking rice and allowing certain people to enter it in order to maintain the purity of the food and to protect the family from impurity and danger; framing the main entrance with an image of Ganesh in order to remove obstacles, an image of Devi to protect the house from evil, and an image of a Nag deity in order to appease the underground nag from wriggling and destroying their house and their prosperity; orienting the house to the cardinal directions in order to make it auspicious; worshipping the central pillar ‘to please the deity’; accompanying the stages of house construction with rituals and harmonising them with the horoscope of the owner in order to ensure the auspiciousness of a house and enhance the wealth and well-being of household members.
However, while correct and pertinent to understanding domestic architecture, these aspects of building and inhabiting do not yet reveal the essence of architecture, the houses that result from it and the lifeworld lived within them. They do, however, provide the platform from which to do so: ‘In order that we may arrive at this [essence of architecture], or at least come close to it, we must seek the true by means of the correct’ (Heidegger 1977:289. I am suggesting here that seeking the true by means of the correct is what Kholagaun Chhetris tacitly do in explicitly carrying out their everyday lives in their domestic mandalas; it is also what I am trying to do in this account of their domestic spaces and activities. My use of the suffix ‘technē’ is meant to highlight the essence of Kholagaun Chhetri domestic architecture as not just the production of inhabited space but more importantly as the bringing-forth of an inhabited space ‘where truth happens’ (1977:295).
‘Technē’ is a Greek word that Heidegger points out is usually associated with the skills and activities of a craftsman in making something useful. However, for him the essence of technē is a bringing-forth (poiesis) into presence through the human use of skills and activities something that is possible and/or concealed; it is a form of revealing; and revealing is the essence of truth.
It [technē] reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us … Thus what is decisive in technē does not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the revealing … It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that technē is a bringing-forth. (1977:295)
For Heidegger, truth is not a set of propositions, knowledge or statements about the ultimate nature of the world and the people and things that exist within it. Instead the world is fundamentally a field of possibilities in which the existence and nature of phenomena—the people and things that exist for us—are not given directly to our consciousness. Phenomena have only possibilities for our experience of them; human thought and action bring forth certain of these possibilities to consciousness. Which possibilities are brought forth depends upon an historically and culturally specific whole or framework against, from and within which entities appear in consciousness. This enframing whole is usually tacit, consisting of ‘what is taken for granted by the humans who inhabit such a world’ (Ihde 1979:105). From Heidegger’s perspective, then, truth is a structure of revealing to consciousness certain of the world’s possibilities and, by implication, of concealing other of the world’s possibilities.1 Technē refers to human action which brings-forth this structure of revealing and concealing. In this context of truth and technē, architecture may be thought of correctly as a production and ordering of useful space for human habitation and architechnē essentially as the bringing-forth of inhabited space as a structure of revealing and concealing.
Kholagaun Chhetri domestic compounds are the result of architecture and architechnē. As architecture, they are configured by instrumental design and practical conduct as auspicious spaces portending beneficent and prosperous outcomes from the everyday tasks of Householder to bear and raise children, to sustain themselves through productive activity and to worship the deities and as increasingly pure and exclusive spaces to protect inhabitants from the impurity of lower caste people, the curses of evil witches and attacks of disembodied ghosts. These are the possibilities of the world that come forth into Kholagaun Chhetris’ everyday consciousness as their lifeworld of the Householder. They appear in their consciousness against, from and within a Hindu [tantric] epoch-of-being, that is, their cosmology of attachment and detachment, entrapment and liberation, illusion and revelation. This is a sense in which domestic architecture is the building of space where the correct happens. The analysis of marriage in the final ethnographic chapter is an illustration of how the everyday lifeworld of Householders appears in consciousness within and against the cosmology. Performatively and spatially, the rites and the movement associated with them take place within and against domestic mandalas configured as a series of concentric zones around the kitchen as the pure centre. Experientially, the explicit meanings of marital transformations for the performers effected by these rites emerges in relation to the implicit cosmos represented and brought-forth in architectnē practice by the mandalic configuration of the domestic compounds.
However, in Kholagaun Chhetri everyday instrumental and ritual engagement with domestic space, household members and household activities, the structure of revealing that is their cosmology is, paradoxically, obscured. ‘It disappears into usefulness’ (Heidegger 1975a:46). To use Polanyi’s terms (1962:55), I am suggesting that the enframing cosmological themes of attachment and detachment, entrapment and liberation, illusion and liberation remain in their subsidiary awareness concealed by but merged with their focal awareness upon the instrumental aims and activities of their everyday lifeworld. Yet, as Heidegger also points out, Kholagaun Chhetris come to know the structure of revealing that is their cosmos only through their everyday active engagement with and consciousness of the things of the world. This is what I was trying to illustrate with the spatial distribution of activities surrounding the preparation and consumption of rice and the associated spatial prohibitions. The concentric space constructed by these activities and spatial prohibitions produce a tacit and embodied knowing of the Hindu [tantric] cosmos. This is the sense in which the everyday acts are architechnē acts, bringing-forth the cosmos in the form of the domestic compound as the structure of revealing. As I have reiterated several time, this mandalic space is both a map of the Hindu [tantric] cosmos and a machine for revelation of its fundamental truths. In this sense, Kholagaun Chhetri architechnē is human action and skill that brings forth a spatial structure of revealing the enigma of the Householder’s lifeworld as detached attachment—a space where truth happens.
Note
1 Heidegger’s concept of truth is derived from the Greek word alētheia, which is usually translated as ‘revealing’.