Date：March 7 2010, (Sun.) 16:00-17:30
Venue： Room AA 401, 4th Floor, Research Building No. 2,
Yoshida Campus, Kyoto University
Speaker: Sudarshan Raj Tiwari, Professor, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University
Discussants: Yogesh Raj, Hans Rausing Scholar, Imperial College London
【Abstract】
Crossroads Setting of Temples in Nepali Towns
The setting of the Nepali temple today is clearly urban and it is in
this urban setting, in the crossroads created by streets and the
spaces and squares they create, that the temple and its form come to
life. A study of the urban development pattern of the Kathmandu Valley
shows that both the temple and its setting derive from a more than a
2000-year-old history of urbanisation. The form of the city itself was
mediated principally by temples and their associated rituals. That
such should have been the case with Lichchhavi towns is
understandable, given the classical Hindu knowledge and practices in
city planning and patterning that they would have brought from their
background in the Gangetic plains. Surprisingly, what comes out of the
analysis of records of the Lichchhavi themselves is that the Kirat
society before their arrival was also quite urban and the Kathmandu
Valley was already dotted with small but dense urban settlements. The
small towns of the Kirat were also ritually mediated: the devakula
temple and its counterpart pith had as strong and deterministic a role
in defining the form of the town itself as the street patterns were
for the Lichchhavi town. The inter-assimilation of the classical Hindu
pattern and the Kirat pattern seem to have reinforced the Hindu idea
of locating temples within or near the town as well as in natural
‘power places’ and tirthas and developed a unique set of locational
and siting characteristics for temples in the Valley. A syncretism of
the Kirat idea of godly spirits or energy resident at crossroads and
the Hindu/Buddhist concept of planning a town in the cosmic image (and
their technique of realising the concept through the patterning of
intersecting streets) is behind the development of the crossroads of
Kathmandu Valley towns as the key setting of temples.
Professor Sudarshan Raj Tiwari studied architecture and earned
Bachelor’s degree from School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi
(University of Delhi) in 1973. He took his Master’s degree in
Architecture from University of Hawaii, USA in 1977 specializing on
housing in tropical countries. His interest drew him to the study of
Nepali historical architecture, urbanism and culture, which led to a
PhD from Tribhuvan University for his dissertation on ancient
settlements of Kathmandu Valley in 1995. He has served in the faculty
of Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering for more than
thirty years, and was Dean of the Institute of Engineering between
1988 and 1992. Prof Tiwari has worked at several world heritage sites
such as Lumbini, Swoyambhu, Changunarayan and Bhaktapur Durbar Square.