Memories of Panauti

I was first introduced to Panauti by John Sanday, the British conservation architect, who was in charge in the 1970s of the restoration of Hanuman Dhoka palace at the center of Kathmandu by UNESCO and has resided in the Nepali capital from that time on.

It was in 1976. I was already familiar with Nepal and the Kathmandu Valley. I had been the cultural attaché at the French Embassy in 1970-71, and afterward spent nearly one year in the remote Newar village of Pyangaun in Lalitpur district, a village inhabited by Jyapu paddy-cultivators. These farmers were also at that time makers of bamboo boxes for measuring grains (rice, wheat), pyang in Nepal Bhasha. They used to exchange these boxes against food grains at several localities of the Kathmandu Valley in winter. Subsequently, I prepared and passed a PhD dissertation in the field of social anthropology (Paris University) on that village and joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the main public organization for research in France, in 1975. I had learned local languages with students and teachers and was quite fluent at that time in Newari.