KVPT’s Patan Darbar Earthquake Response Campaign - Work to Date - September 2016

The Restoration of South
Manimaṇḍapa, Patan Darbār Square
An annotated on-site report,
24 March to 16 April 2016
by Katharina Weiler
Introduction
The following documentation of the inventory, repair,
replacement and rebuilding of Patan Darbār Square’s
lost temples and mandapas provides unique insight into
historic construction principles and inherited craftsmanship
but also inspects present-day restoration, conservation,
and preservation issues. The report highlights
major steps in the course of the rebuilding of the Char
Narayan and Harishankara temples, in order to provide
future generations of craftsmen, conservation architects,
art historians and the (inter)national community with a
unique testimony of the loss in the course of the 2015
earthquake, and the recycling, repair, and replacement
of old or lost elements.
At the same time, the annotated report carefully presents
the changes of values in Newar (re)building history in
order to contextualize the project within the international
debate on aspects of authenticity in architectural
heritage conservation. Historic and, above all, new photographs
and measured drawings from the workshops
on site and construction sites at Patan Darbār Square
illustrate the documentation, with a special focus on the
work of the craftsmen involved in the repair and reconstruction.
History
Since the early 18th century, at least, the South
Manimaṇḍapa and its northern counterpart, the
(North) Manimaṇḍapa (“Pavilion of Jewels”), marked
the entrance to the steps leading to Maṅgahiṭī, the deep
fountain at the northern end of the Patan palace originating
in the Licchavi era (7th century).
From the beginning, the two mandapas that are located
at the northern side of the Royal Palace in Patan, Keshav
Narayan Chowk, were used as communal space for social
gatherings, an informal trading post, and a place to
prepare religious rituals and festivals.
The South Manimaṇḍapa appears to be older than the
Manimaṇḍapa, which is dated 1701 according to an inscription.
Whereas the Manimaṇḍapa has served as
the place for astrologers and priests to determine Newar
festival dates, e.g., the auspicious moment for initiating
the annual festival of the rain god Rato Matsyendranath,
and as the coronation site for Patan’s kings, the South
Manimaṇḍapa functioned as municipal weighing
house, where market prices were fixed.
A Manimaṇḍapa (Nev. maḍu), exclusively a Nepalese
feature of urban architecture, is an elaborate form of a
public, communal arcaded platform constructed and
maintained as a means of earning merit by anybody
who can afford to do so. Already in the late 18th century,
Capuchin monk Father Giuseppe mentioned in
his account the great amount of “large square varandas,
well built, for the accomodation of travellers and
the public” 1 in every town of the Kathmandu Valley.
The building type consists of a square (or slightly rectangular)
platform protected by a roof that is supported
on sixteen columns. The number of columns bestows
upon the Manimaṇḍapa the colloquial name “sohra
kuṭṭa”,or“sixteen legged.”
From an early photograph taken by Clarence Comyn
Taylor ca. 1863, we learn about the appearence of the
two mandapas at Patan Darbār Square in the second half
of the 19th century. They were each built on a rectangular
brick plinth, measuring approximately 4 x 5 meters,
equipped with wooden floorboards. In each case,
a multi-layered decorative timber cornice was borne by
twelve intricately carved outer wooden pillars resting on
timber base beams. The hipped roofs of the one-story
buildings – clad with terracotta tiles – were borne by
Opposite
View of the two Manimaṇḍapa ,
Manimaṇḍapa (right) and South
Manimaṇḍapa (left).
Photograph taken ca. 1863 by Clarence
Comyn Tayler. Description in
Taylor’s List of pictures: ‘No VIII.
View from a window of the principal
reception room in the Palace
at Patun. Stone temple of Krishna
in the back ground to the left, and
temple of Mahadeo on the right. In
the foreground is an enclosure with
steps leading down to a “Hittee”
or fountain’. This photograph is
reproduced as a woodcut in James
Ferguson’s History of Indian and
Eastern Architecture, 1910, Vol 1,
fig 158.
Courtesy of National Geographic
Society
1
Father Guiseppe: An Account of the
Kingdom of Nepal. (...) Asia Society of
Bengal, 1790, 307-322.
257