Art Architecture Antiquities

The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain

To scholars in the field, the need for an up-to-date overview of the art of South Asia has been apparent for decades. Although many regional and dynastic genres of Indic art are fairly well understood, the broad, overall representation of Indiaês centuries of splendor has been lacking. The Art of Ancient India is the result of the authorês aim to provide such a synthesis. Noted expert Sherman E. Lee has commented: –Not since Coomaraswamyês History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927) has there been a survey of such completeness.” Indeed, this work restudies and reevaluates every frontier of ancient Indic art _ from its prehistoric roots up to the period of Muslim rule, from the Himalayan north to the tropical south, and from the earliest extant writing through the most modern scholarship on the subject.

This dynamic survey-generously complemented with 775 illustrations, including 48 in full color and numerous architectural ground plans, and detailed maps and fine drawings, and further enhanced by its guide to Sanskrit, copious notes, extensive bibliography, and glossary of South Asian art terms-is the most comprehensive and most fully illustrated study of South Asian art available.

The works and monuments included in this volume have been selected not only for their artistic merit but also in order to both provide general coverage and include transitional works that furnish the key to an all encompassing view of the art.

An outstanding portrayal of ancient Indiaês highest intellectual and technical achievements, this volume is written for many audiences: scholars, for whom it provides an up-to-date background against which to examine their own areas of study; teachers and students of college level, for whom it supplies a complete summary of and a resource for their own deeper investigations into Indic art; and curious readers, for whom it gives a broad-based introduction to this fascinating area of world art.

The Art of Indian Asia, 2 Vols.: Its Mythology and Transformation: Volume One: Text, Volume Two: Plates

The present work is intended not as a handbook but as an introduction to its subject, to be read from beginning to end. Each section is preparation for the next. Chapter I, presenting as it does a brief historical outline of the transformations of Indian art as well as a key to the symbology of the forms, can be used as a guide during the first perusal of the pictures. For the reader then wishing to find quickly the several portions of text referring to any spefific group of monuments, a copious index has been supplied, together with textual references in the Description of Plates and cross-references in the footnotes. Marginal references to the Plates, furthermore, accompany the text. These should make possible an easy and rapid correlation of the materials of the two volumes.

The first two groups of Plates in the text volume illustrate, for the most part, the anthropological and comparative observations of the text. Included among them, however, are a few photographs that are indispensable to Dr. Zimmer’s argument but do not meet the aesthetic standard of the Plates volume. On the other hand, the final cluster of text Plates constitutes. an independent pictorial appendix, illustrating the miniature and Rajput art of the eleventh to nineteenth centuries A.D. Dr. Zimmer’s notes on this subject had not been developed beyond preliminary jottings, and could not be incorporated in any major section of the text. But since there is actually a rather special, very delicate, lyric quality about these paintings on palm leaf and paper, which sets them apart, somewhat from the tradition of the stone monuments, it is not inappropriate that they should be given a separate place.

The Hindu Temple (2 Vols.)

The Hindu Temple is the sum total of architectural rites performed on the basis of its myth. The myth covers the ground and is the plan on which the structure is raised. It explains in detail the religious and spiritual significance of the temple b4y means of copious references to Sanskrit texts„both sacred and scientific. It depicts the Hindu Temple as not merely a heap of brick, stone or wood but a visible symbol of aspirations of pious men and women, the throbbings of their hearts in religious fervor and their endeavor for the attainment of salvation. The first four parts of this volume are devoted to the philosophy of temple architecture. Part V deals with the origin and development of the temple from the Vedic fire altars to the latest forms. Part VI discusses the pyramidal and curvilinear superstructures in the main varieties of the _ikhara, the

_ikhara enmeshed in Gavaksas and the composite _ikhara. Part VII described the proportional measurements and the rhythmic disposition of the garbha-grha and the vertical section. It discusses the proportions of the Mandapa and the types of temples described in the ancient sanskrit texts like the Brhatasmhita and the Samarnganasutradhara.

This most comprehensive and authoritative treatise of ancient Indian Temple Architecture will prove of immense help to the students of ancient Indian culture.

This two-volume work explains in detail the religious and spiritual significance of the temple by means of copious references to Sanskrit texts–both sacred and scientific. It depicts the Hindu Temple as not merely a heap of brick, stone or wood but a visible symbol of aspirations of pious men and women, the throbbings of their hearts in religious fervor and their endeavor for the attainment of salvation.

The first four parts of the work are devoted to the philosophy of temple architecture. Part V deals with the origin and development of the temple from the Vedic fire altars to the latest forms. Part VI discusses the pyramidal and curvilinear superstructures in the main varieties of the Sikhara, the Sikhara enmeshed in Gavaksas and the composite Sikhara. Part VII describes the proportional measurements and the rhythmic disposition of the garbha-grha and the vertical section. It discusses the proportions of the Mandapa and the types of temples described in ancient Sanskrit texts like the Brhatsamhita and the Samaranganasutradhara.

This most comprehensive and authoritative treatise of ancient Indian Temple Architecture will prove of immense help to the students of ancient Indian culture.

Contents (Vol. 1)

PART I: The Site, Part II: The Plan, Part III: Plan and Supernal Man, Part IV: The Substances of which the temple is built, Names and Origins of the Temple, Part VI. The Superstructure, Part VII: Proportionate Measurement and Varieties of the Temple (Volume 2) Part VIII: The Images of the Temple, Explanation of Plates, Appendix, Sources, Index, Plates I-IXXX.

Despair and Modernity: Reflections from Modern Indian Painting

Dehejia has tried to create a place within the main frame of culture and philosophy of Indian art for a legitimate analytic theory called despair. Dehejia’s effort creates a space for the modern within Indian classicism by negotiating the philosophy of despair in classical terms. As a result the basic schism that has grown in recent years between the philosophy and history of modern art on the one hand and the philosophy and history of traditional arts is today cloder to being breached