Man and his House in the Himalayas, Ecology of Nepal, by Gerard Toffin

Contents:
Introduction/Gerard Toffin.
I. The Terai: 1. A Tharu house in the Dang Valley/Camille Milliet Mondon.
II. The middle country of Indo-Nepalese castes:
1. The Indo-Nepalese house in central Nepal: building patterns, social and religious symbolism/Marc Gaborieau.
2. From the fountain to the fireplace: the daily itinerary in domestic space among high Indo-Nepalese castes/Veronique Bouillier.
II. The Kathmandu Valley: the Newar world:
3. Urban space and religion: observations on Newar urbanism/Gerard Toffin.
4. Traditional Newar building practices in the Kathmandu Valley/Marcel Le Port.
5. The pode house: a caste of Newar fishermen/Gerard Toffin, Vincent Barre, Laurence and Patrick Berger.

III. The tribal hill zone:
6. With head held high: the house, ritual and politics in East Nepal/Philippe Sagant.
7. How I built my house/Corneille Jest.
8. Habitat of Nepalese transhumant pastoralists/Philippe Alirol.
9. Settlements and houses in the Thak Khola/Francis Morillon and Philippe Thouveny.

V. The upper Himalayan Valleys:
10. Settlements in Dolpo/Corneille Jest.
11. Two houses in the Tibetan cultural tradition: in pisang (Nyi-shang) and in Stongde (Zanskar)/Pascal Marechaux.
12. Vernacular house form in Ladakh/Paul Murdoch.
13. Postscript/Luc Barre, Corneille Jest and Gerard Toffin.

From the preface second edition: This book was first published in French in 1981 by CNRS, National Centre for scientific Research (France), under the title L Homme et la Maison en Himalaya. Man and his house in the Himalayas particularly highlights the symbolic dimensions of the house in this region of Asia. Beyond their physical contours, the dwelling and settlements of the Himalayan range embody a number of social and religious implicit meanings. They reverberate ideas and representations about the cosmos, the relations of power within family or village, the opposition between the sacred and the profane, as well as the dichotomy between sexes. In the major languages spoken in Nepal, for instance, house terms convey interesting parallels with the human body. Several examples are given in the book. These parallels are not mere coincidences. They transform dwellings in meaningful spaces for their inhabitants. Through these complex processes of symbolization, the materiality of constructions is transfigured. The house is metamorphosed in a symbolic space, a matrix of ideologies rituals and mental images, which must be explored thoroughly.