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Thesis (Doctoral)--Uppsala University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-170).

Thesis (Doctoral)--Uppsala University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-170).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1990. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves : 188-201).

As societies and cultures evolve with time, human settlements also transform gradually. These days, globalization and modernity bring about rapid changes and in a matter of a few years, the face of a settlement is changed forever and the lives of the people are no longer the same. While such changes are inevitable, it will be suggested that they should be conducive to the existing built environment. Change brought about by capitalistic and consumeristic pressures does not necessarily have to take away the identity of a settlement.Because I am a person from Kathmandu, Nepal, I chose that place to study how and why change is evidenced in the environments, lifestyles and house forms of the local people, and to explore how specific families both maintain and mediate their cultural values amidst these changes. As much as Kathmandu is an Asian center of glorious art, architectural, and cultural history, it is also a center of development, growth and change. In recent years, a growing trend in Kathmandu is for homeowners to leave their ancestralhome in and of the historic city and to relocate to new urban areas. This thesis focuses on this particular trend of relocation.Available literature, documentation from other sources, and the author's few years of professional experience in Kathmandu, shape the analysis of the settlement patterns, house forms, socio-cultural activities and the economics of the urban Kathmandu in the past and the present. The families, which have lived through the changes -- as they have moved from the historic center to new neighborhoods -- are the ones who can best represent the current scenario. Four such families were studied. Their answers to a lengthy questionnaire along with photographic documentation and physical mapping of their old and new dwellings have formed the main body of research.In their responses, the local people spoke volumes on how change is necessary, desirable, and inevitable. Still, there are major cultural values that never change. They exist in the spirits and to some extent in the way people conduct daily chores in the house. To a greater extent, however, cultural affinity exists at the larger scale of a neighborhood. Quality of life in the historic city is brought about by its rich festivities, sociability of spaces and the feeling of communal harmony. Although the society is changing into a more individualistic one and material and spatial needs are fulfilled in the new location, people miss the quality of life in terms of the socio-cultural attributes of the old place.As designers, we can extract upon these attributes to bring back their lost sense of place.Being sensitive to these values, design can become more a response than an imposition. / Department of Architecture

La population autochtone de la vallée de Kathmandu, les Néwar, a vu sa langue, le néwari ou népalbhasa, et l’une de ses religions, le bouddhisme, se trouver minorées par l’annexion militaire de leur territoire au Népal de la dynastie Shah, hindoue et népaliphone, en 1769. Un siècle plus tard, la politique de discrimination de la langue et de la religion bouddhiste lancée par l’Etat à l’encontre des Néwar a provoqué l’émergence d’une conscience identitaire et d’actes de résistance culturelle. Or, depuis ses débuts, la revendication de l’appartenance au groupe linguistique néwar et, souvent, de sa défense, se double chez ses acteurs d’un rattachement personnel à la religion bouddhiste, sans que cette double appartenance soit pour autant mise en avant dans les discours.La mise en regard de la situation actuelle de la vitalité de la langue et de celle du bouddhisme dans cette population vise d’une part à documenter l’étude des relations entre langue et religion, et d’autre part à proposer l’application d’outils d’évaluation de la vitalité linguistique à celle de la vitalité religieuse. C’est également une confirmation de la nécessité qu’il y a à mettre au jour et à conceptualiser les relations entre la langue et les autres dynamismes sociaux dont elle semble être, si souvent, à la fois le vecteur et l’enjeu. / In 1769, the Shah dynasty from Western Nepal, promoting Hinduism and speaking Nepali, had conquered the Kathmandu Valley and integrated it into a much wider Nepal. As a consequence, the language, as well as the Buddhist tradition of the local indigenous ethnic group, the Newars, became minority ones. A century later, the State launched a repressive policy towards both Newari language and Buddhism, and the result has been the development of identity awareness, both in the linguistic and in the religious fields, among the Newar intelligentsia, who entered cultural resistance. Therefore, since the beginning, both language and religion have been associated, although activists hardly acknowledge this double-sided feature of their commitments.This study of the current situation of both language and religion vitalities among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley aims primarily at documenting the research on relations between language and religion, and at testing the application of evaluation tools of language vitality to the evaluation of religious vitality. Furthermore, it confirms the necessity we are facing to explore and conceptualize more the links between language and the social dynamics it often sustains but also depends on.

<p dir="ltr">Over the past few decades, Nepal, and especially its capital, has experienced rapid social, economic, and political transformations, which have had a severe toll on the valley’s indigenous cultural heritage, resulting in its worsening state and loss of heritage values (Maharjan, 2012). The problem addressed in this study is the loss of indigenous culinary recipes and limited preservation and awareness of culinary heritage in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Games today play an important role in disseminating cultures around the world, and they are considered to be one of the most effective tools for passing on intangible cultural heritage (Cui et al., 2021). The project hence aims to address the problem by measuring the effectiveness of gamified Augmented Reality applications in preserving and disseminating knowledge of the indigenous culinary heritage of Kathmandu Valley.</p><p dir="ltr">The research methodology consisted of two key phases: The initial phase of the study involved interviews with experts actively involved in preserving the cultural and culinary heritage of the Kathmandu Valley. The valuable insights and recommendations provided by these experts served as the basis for building an AR game that effectively highlights the dishes and culinary traditions of the Newa civilization. The second phase involved a sample size of around 30 participants consisting of students from Purdue University. The prototype of the AR game was given to participants for testing, after which they were invited to complete a user evaluation questionnaire. The results of the post-test questionnaire showed that the AR application was an effective means of interacting with Newa culinary traditions, and had good potential to contribute to the cultural preservation and dissemination of the culinary heritage of Kathmandu Valley.</p>

Every four years, in the middle of a cold winter night, devotees bearing images of 126 Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other important deities assemble in the Nepalese city of Patan for an elaborate gift giving festival known as Samyak Mahādāna (“The Perfect Great Gift”). Celebrated by Nepal’s Newar Buddhist community, Samyak honors one of the Buddhas of the historical past called Dīpaṅkara. Dīpaṅkara’s importance in Buddhism is rooted in ancient textual and visual narratives that promote the cultivation of generosity through religious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). During Samyak, large images of Dīpaṅkara Buddha ceremoniously walk in procession to the event site, aided by a man who climbs inside the wooden body to assume the legs of the Buddha. Once arranged at the event, Dīpaṅkara is honored with an array of offerings until dusk the following day. This dissertation investigates how Newar Buddhists utilize art and ritual at Samyak to reenact and reinforce ancient Buddhist narratives in their contemporary lives. The study combines art historical methods of iconographic analysis with a contextual study of the ritual components of the Samyak Mahādāna to analyze the ways religious spectacle embeds core Buddhist values within in the multilayered components of art, ritual, and communal performance. Principally, Samyak reaffirms the foundational Buddhist belief in the cultivation of generosity (Skt. dāna pāramitā) through meritorious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). However, the synergy of image and ritual performance at Samyak provides a critical framework to examine the artistic, religious, and ritual continuities of past and present in the Newar Buddhist community of the Kathmandu Valley. An analysis of the underlying meta-narrative and conceptualization of Samyak suggests the construction of a dynamic visual narrative associated with sacred space, ritual cosmology, and religious authority. Moreover, this dissertation demonstrates the role of Samyak Mahādāna in constructing Buddhist identity in Nepal, as the festival provides an opportunity to examine how Newar Buddhists utilize art, ritual, and performance to reaffirm their ancient Buddhist heritage.

This thesis argues that conversion to Christianity in the Nepali city of Bhaktapur is closely connected with ethical attitudes towards suffering in Bhaktapurian churches. This argument is situated within broader debates in the anthropology of Christianity. Anthropologists have debated the extent to which Christianity is a force for cultural discontinuity, and have often connected it with modernity and individualism. I contribute to these discussions by showing how distinctively Christian conceptions of suffering may promote cultural change by stimulating new understandings of selfhood and ethics. The first three chapters explore the social life of Bhaktapur's Hindu majority. I describe how the last fifty years have seen a process of cultural unsettlement in Bhaktapur; one aspect of this unsettlement has been a disruption of traditional norms of care and deference. It is in this context that the distinctive ethics of Christianity have proved attractive to some. Those who convert have typically experienced a significant episode of suffering, and have felt themselves to be failed by those around them. They find in churches a framework that emphasises the moral significance of inner experience (I call this 'inwardness') and addresses affliction more in terms of ethics than ritual. I describe these ethics in terms of 'care': they stress presence with the afflicted person, engagement with their experience, and appeal to God in prayer. After two chapters describing Christianity in Nepal and Bhaktapur in general terms, I devote four chapters to examining different categories of Bhaktapurian Christians: those who have experienced healing, women, leaders, and youth. I focus on four conversion narratives, and relate these narratives both to other ethnographic materials and to broader trends in Bhaktapurian and global Christianity. I highlight the significance of the values of inwardness and care, and of narrative itself, in the life-worlds of Bhaktapurian Christians.