Nepalese Wood Carving: The Roof Struts of Patan Darbar Square 1565 to 1735

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In April 2015 an earthquake caused the considerable damage to the temples and palace on the Darbar Square in Patan, one of the three royal cities of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. Among these were the Carnarayana (1565), Viśveśvara (1627), Bhaidegah (1679), Bhimasena (1681), and Harisankhara (1709) temples, which are of paramount importance for the architectural history of the Newars, who shaped the urban culture of the valley. The Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust, under whose stewardship the rebuilding, repair, and restoration took place from 2015 to 2022, took advantage of the unique opportunity to document 380 wooden roof struts. The struts were either recovered from the debris or photographed in situ from scaffolding. The large-scale images allow us to discover the carved details of the struts for the first time. The narrative scenes within the foliage at the top of the struts and the stories of the Mahabharata and the Puranas, featuring the deeds and adventures of Tarakakṣasura, Bhimasena, and Sivaśarma at the bottom, can now fully be viewed, understood, and appreciated

Niels Gutschow is an architectural historian from Heidelberg University, who has been working in Nepal and India since 1970. In 1971, 1989, 1993, and 2003 he was involved in restoration projects. After the 2015 earthquake he acted as senior advisor to the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust.

The emergence of the history of Newar architecture The architecture in Nepal was first described by James Fergusson in 1876 (revised 1910)', based on photographs taken by Clarence Comyn Taylor in 1864 and reports by Buchanan Hamilton, Gustave Le Bon, Henry Ambrose Oldfield, Daniel Wright and Sylvain Lévi. Percy Brown, the keeper of the Government Art Gallery in Calcutta, who came to Nepal in autumn 1910, was the first visitor who was trained to look at architecture. In 1935 he published an article on "Buildings in Nepal" and in 1942 a chapter in his overview of Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu), titled "The Building Art of Nepal". In a rather condescending way he praised the "picturesque characteristics of these royal townships" and added that the Newar's "natures cried out for elaboration and detail.

The history of Newar architecture was first presented by the art historian Pratapaditya Pal who completed his dissertation in July 1962 titled, Architecture in Nepal Since the end of the 1960s Mary Slusser's research covered a wide range of topics among which architecture attained a pro- minent role. In 1977 Wolfgang Korn, a German architect who had worked in Nepal since 1968, presented a first typology of Newar buildings. In the early 1970s I started my research into Newar architecture and rituals in urban space, culminating in a History of Building Typologies and Details in Nepal, titled Architecture of the Newars, its three volumes were published in 2011.

The earthquake in 2015 - an opportunity for research When the two temples, the two arcaded halls and the east wing of Sundaricok on Patan's Darbar Square collapsed in the April 2015 carthquake, a unique opportunity appeared that allowed for studying, cleaning, repairing, and documenting the struts of the Harisankara and Carnarayana temples, as well as photographing the struts of the Viśveśvara temple in situ, by taking advantage of the scaffolding. In the fall of 2019, a report was published that documented the preservation of the Hariśańkara temple. The sixty struts of the three-tiered temple were photographed by Ashesh Rajbansh in August 2016.