API tools faq
paste
jonstond2

Historiography of South Asian Art (Art History)

jonstond2
Mar 15th, 2018
167
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 92.63 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Introduction
  2. Art has been produced in South Asia for approximately forty-five hundred years. Art history, however, is much more recent in South Asia. Although some historians consider various texts dating as early as the 3rd century CE to be art history and others have gleaned the writings of early travelers to South Asia for information on art, the earliest histories of South Asian art begin in fact during the colonial period. That is both because art history is intrinsically a European field of knowledge and because colonial authorities understood knowledge about South Asia, including its past, as a tool for power. The work was done largely by amateurs, self-trained British who had come to India as part of the colonial enterprise. Historical studies of South Asian art do not really begin until the early 1900s, and the earliest surveys date back to 1927. About the same time, Ludwig Bachhofer, a protégé of Heinrich Wolfflin, published his study of early Indian sculpture. Both did much to move the study of South Asian art from its roots in archaeology and textual studies to art history as it was then conceived. Whereas Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, the pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, did not teach and thus produce students, Bachhofer did, although more of his students went on to gain expertise in Chinese art than in South Asian art. The earliest full-time South Asia specialists in the United States, those working largely after World War II, came from other fields of art history, for example, medieval art in the case of Benjamin Rowland and Chinese art in the case of J. Leroy Davidson, and Stella Kramrisch, who had trained with Josef Strzygowski, the Polish Austrian art historian, came to the University of Pennsylvania. Their work, though quite different from one another, did much to shape the study of South Asian art in the United States and Europe. In South Asia the study of art remained heavily descriptive and often linked to studies in epigraphy and ancient history. On the Continent much of the work came from scholars who had been part of the colonial project either in India or in Southeast Asia. For example, Philippe Stern, who initially wrote on the art of Southeast Asia, trained a number of outstanding scholars during his years at the Musée Guimet, often following a close motif analysis. And Jean Philippe Vogel, though Belgian, had worked for the British in India. South Asian scholars who wrote on the monuments of the region were most often affiliated with museums or with the Archaeological Survey of India. As literature in the field of South Asian art history expanded, scholars began to stake out areas of specialization, sometimes following the model of European art history, that is, limiting specialization by geography and chronology. But three particular areas of writing on South Asian art developed rather distinctive scholarship. First, painting specialists tended toward connoisseurship as they sought to sort out the vast number of paintings in diverse collections and to create taxonomies for the understanding of painting production. Their scholarship was often presented in museum exhibitions, creating a rich repertoire of very important catalogues. Second, specialists in South Asia’s Islamic heritage sometimes had been trained in the field of Islamic art and so came to the study of South Asia as Islamicists rather than as South Asia specialists. Finally, the contemporary scene, once seen as derivative of European modern and contemporary art, has attracted some outstanding scholarship. In fact much of the very best work on South Asian art now focuses on the period from the arrival of the British and other colonizers to the early 21st century.
  3.  
  4. Surveys
  5. Until the late 20th century works covering large expanses of South Asian art were selective. Either they focused on a particular medium or they excluded important bodies of material. For example, the earliest survey, that of James Fergusson (Fergusson 1891, cited under European Discovery of South Asian Art), focuses exclusively on architecture and was part—a very large part—of his study of world architecture. Ernest Binfield Havell’s 1908 work (Havell 1908, cited under European Discovery of South Asian Art) focuses only on painting and sculpture, and in both cases, the studies cover Antiquity, not more recent material. Diez 1914 is one of several surveys this author wrote on Asian and Islamic art, probably the first to survey at least India’s older material. This was followed by Havell 1927 and Coomaraswamy 1927, which, like Diez 1914, omit significant material. Huntington and Huntington 1985 surveys South Asian art through the 13th century with a strong scholarly foundation. As the discipline of art history became more inclusive, especially after World War II, major series of books on the art of particular regions or periods included South Asia (Rowland 1970, Harle 1986, Dehejia 1997, and Mitter 2001).
  6.  
  7. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. History of Indian and Indonesian Art. London: Goldston, 1927.
  8.  
  9. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  10.  
  11. This book includes chapters on Rajput painting and arts and crafts, but it entirely neglects Islamic art of South Asia and modern art. And the incorporation of Southeast Asian art into the realm of Indian art production—one chapter is titled “Farther India, Indonesia, and Ceylon”—represents a sort of cultural imperialism that persists in the early 21st century.
  12.  
  13. Find this resource:
  14.  
  15. Dehejia, Vidya. Indian Art. London: Phaidon, 1997.
  16.  
  17. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  18.  
  19. An excellent survey with very readable text and comprehensive coverage.
  20.  
  21. Find this resource:
  22.  
  23. Diez, Ernst. Die Kunst Indiens. Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft. Wildpark-Potsdam, Germany: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1914.
  24.  
  25. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  26.  
  27. Diez was a student of Josef Strzygowksi, who wrote the first reference work in German on the arts of India.
  28.  
  29. Find this resource:
  30.  
  31. Harle, James. The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1986.
  32.  
  33. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  34.  
  35. This is a significant expansion and rewritten version of Benjamin Rowland’s survey (Rowland 1970).
  36.  
  37. Find this resource:
  38.  
  39. Havell, Ernest Binfield. A Handbook of Indian Art. London: Murray, 1927.
  40.  
  41. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  42.  
  43. Presents a sympathetic view of the material, including Islamic architecture, but very spotty coverage. Text available online.
  44.  
  45. Find this resource:
  46.  
  47. Huntington, Susan L., with John C. Huntington. The Art of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain. New York: Weatherhill, 1985.
  48.  
  49. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  50.  
  51. The most scholarly among the surveys though covering South Asian art only through the 12th century.
  52.  
  53. Find this resource:
  54.  
  55. Mitter, Partha. Indian Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  56.  
  57. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  58.  
  59. Part of the Oxford History of Art series. Includes good coverage of modern and contemporary art.
  60.  
  61. Find this resource:
  62.  
  63. Rowland, Benjamin. The Art and Architecture of India: Hindu, Buddhist, Jain. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1970.
  64.  
  65. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  66.  
  67. Part of the Pelican History of Art series, this book excludes all Islamic art in South Asia but has an entire section titled “Indian Art in Ceylon and South-East Asia,” which implies that the art of Southeast Asia is little more than an extension of South Asian art, not an art with its own style, iconographies, and meanings.
  68.  
  69. Find this resource:
  70.  
  71. Painting
  72. Surveys of Indian painting, such as Brown 1998 and Barrett and Gray 1963, come somewhat later than the earliest general surveys and those of architecture. One reason may have been the fact that good quality color reproductions were not easily printed at an early date.
  73.  
  74. Barrett, Douglas, and Basil Gray. Painting of India. Geneva, Switzerland: Skira, 1963.
  75.  
  76. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  77.  
  78. Beautifully illustrated, this book surveys South Asian painting as it was understood at the time.
  79.  
  80. Find this resource:
  81.  
  82. Brown, Percy. Indian Painting. New Delhi: ABI, 1998.
  83.  
  84. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  85.  
  86. First published in 1918, this is the first book devoted to South Asian painting.
  87.  
  88. Find this resource:
  89.  
  90. Architecture
  91. Surveys of South Asian architecture appear quite early (see Fergusson 1891, cited under European Discovery of South Asian Art). LaRoche 1921–1922 is a monumental work by an architect. Brown 1942 is a standard but somewhat outdated source for South Asian architecture.
  92.  
  93. Brown, Percy. Indian Architecture. 2 vols. Bombay: Taraporevala, 1942.
  94.  
  95. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  96.  
  97. The idea of Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic periods draws on a 19th-century conception of Indian history suggested by James Mill. Volume 1, Buddhist and Hindu Periods; Volume 2, Islamic Period.
  98.  
  99. Find this resource:
  100.  
  101. LaRoche, Emmanuel. Indische Baukunst. 6 vols. Munich: Bruckmann, 1921–1922.
  102.  
  103. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  104.  
  105. An early monumental work on the architecture of India with numerous plans and illustrations.
  106.  
  107. Find this resource:
  108.  
  109. Writing on South Asian Art in Antiquity
  110. Although South Asia did not produce works in Antiquity that can be described as art history, that is, literature that links art and chronology or looks at a particular historical context of art, there is a significant literature on aesthetics and also on the forms that both deities and the temples that house them should take and literature on painting and other arts. The writing on art in Antiquity might best be divided between the ancient Sanskrit texts and the Mogul sources that comment on monuments and painting.
  111.  
  112. Ancient Works
  113. Among those that consider aesthetics is the Kama Sutra, which may date back to the 1st century CE. By far the best translation is Doniger and Kakar 2002. It recognizes sixty-four arts, including painting, architecture, clay sculpture, singing, gambling, and dancing, that an urban person should know. These are recognized as arts (kalā) even though the Kama Sutra does not expand on what knowledge of them involves. Other texts that are intended to help a worshipper visualize deities or to provide taxonomies of the representations of deities have been mined for iconographic information, though they were never intended as iconographic texts serving the interests of either makers of art or those who study it. Generally, these texts are parts of much larger encyclopedic compendia. One that has been especially studied is the Vishnudharmottara Purana, translated and analyzed in Mukherji 2001, but other texts known as puranas have similar information though not in such detail, such as a work on astronomy, the Brihat Samhita, translated in Sastri and Bhat 1947. Some of the same texts provide information on architecture, and others are devoted exclusively to architecture (texts known as śilpa śastras or vastu śastras). They have been recognized by many (e.g., Raz 1834 and Jouveau-Dubreuil 1917) as how-to manuals intended for the use of architects and largely categorize existing architectural forms but not specific monuments. By using prescriptive terminology, such as “a temple should be oriented in such and such a way,” they give authority for architecture to the compilers of these texts, often Brahmin priests, rather than to the practitioners themselves, the architects. Parker 2003, which examines the practice of present-day architects working in traditional modes, explores the way these architects use ancient texts. Dhaky and Meister 1983–2001 uses ancient texts to understand proper terminology and ultimately to construct regional and chronological histories of temple architecture. Kramrisch 1946 also draws heavily on ancient texts, not just those that describe the ideal appearance of temples or those that enumerate their diverse forms but also much older literature, including the Vedas, to probe the temples’ meanings and the ideas that stand behind them.
  114.  
  115. Dhaky, Madhusudan Amilal, and Michael Meister, eds. Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture. 2 vols. New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1983–2001.
  116.  
  117. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  118.  
  119. This monumental project, published in two volumes, one on North Indian temples, the other on South Indian temples, each with many parts published separately, is organized geographically and chronologically but draws heavily on ancient texts to determine the nomenclature for components of temples.
  120.  
  121. Find this resource:
  122.  
  123. Doniger, Wendy, and Sudhir Kakar. Vatsyayna Mallanaga Kamasutra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  124.  
  125. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  126.  
  127. The best and most accessible translation of this text and an excellent introduction.
  128.  
  129. Find this resource:
  130.  
  131. Jouveau-Dubreuil, Gabriel. Dravidian Architecture. Madras: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917.
  132.  
  133. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  134.  
  135. Draws heavily on ancient texts that describe the ideals for architecture.
  136.  
  137. Find this resource:
  138.  
  139. Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. 2 vols. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1946.
  140.  
  141. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  142.  
  143. So profoundly based on ancient texts is this work that it is often difficult to disengage the author’s voice from that of the texts she extensively quotes.
  144.  
  145. Find this resource:
  146.  
  147. Mukherji, Parul Dave. The Citrasūtra of the Viṣṇudharmottara Purāṇa: Viṣṇudharmottarapurāṇīyaṃ Citrasūtram. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2001.
  148.  
  149. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  150.  
  151. In addition to the translation, the introduction provides an especially important analysis.
  152.  
  153. Find this resource:
  154.  
  155. Parker, Samuel K. “Text and Practice in South Asian Art: An Ethnographic Perspective.” Artibus Asiae 63.1 (2003): 5–34.
  156.  
  157. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  158.  
  159. The most probing attempt to examine ancient texts in light of early-21st-century practice in South India, specifically in the state of Tamil Nadu.
  160.  
  161. Find this resource:
  162.  
  163. Raz, Ram. Essay on the Architecture of the Hindús. London: Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1834.
  164.  
  165. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  166.  
  167. Probably the earliest work to use texts as a basis for understanding South Asian architecture.
  168.  
  169. Find this resource:
  170.  
  171. Sastri, V. Subrahmanya, and M. Ramakrishna Bhat. Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita. 2 vols. Bangalore, India: Soobbiah, 1947.
  172.  
  173. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  174.  
  175. The only available translation of this text.
  176.  
  177. Find this resource:
  178.  
  179. Mogul Sources
  180. Besides the ancient sources, all in Sanskrit, two Mogul emperors made keen observations on works that one might describe as art. These are best seen in the memoirs of Babur, the first Mogul emperor, whose diverse observations on India included some on its monuments, including ones he constructed, and in the memoirs of Jahangir, the fourth Mogul emperor, who was very much a connoisseur of art, particularly of painting. Wheeler M. Thackston’s translations of these two memoirs are by far the best (Thackston 1995 and Thackston 1999).
  181.  
  182. Thackston, Wheeler M., trans. The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1995.
  183.  
  184. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  185.  
  186. Babur in this memoir discusses Timurid monuments and his gardens and buildings in India.
  187.  
  188. Find this resource:
  189.  
  190. Thackston, Wheeler M., trans. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 1999.
  191.  
  192. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  193.  
  194. The section in which Jahangir proclaims himself an astute connoisseur of painting is one of several references to art in this work.
  195.  
  196. Find this resource:
  197.  
  198. Early Travel Writing
  199. Early travelers provide some insight into the art of South Asia. For example, the writings of two early Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India have been used as if they were accurate eyewitness accounts, even though both Faxian, who was in India during the 5th century, and Xuanzang, who was there in the 7th century, wrote their recollections upon returning to China. Their accounts are translated in Beal 2003. Nineteenth-century archaeologists and some much more recent ones have used their works as if they were guidebooks. The records of the Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, who spent almost a decade in the region during the 14th century, provide interesting perceptions of South Asian art, as seen in Husain 1953.
  200.  
  201. Beal, Samuel. Si-yu-ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World. 2 vols. London: Trübner, 2003.
  202.  
  203. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  204.  
  205. First published in 1906, this book includes translations of the works by both Faxian and Xuanzang.
  206.  
  207. Find this resource:
  208.  
  209. Husain, Agha Mahdi, trans. The Reḥla of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (India, Maldive Islands, and Ceylon). Vadodara, India: Oriental Institute, 1953.
  210.  
  211. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  212.  
  213. Travel writings of the 14th-century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, including his account of India, where he saw dozens of sites though the description is often cursory.
  214.  
  215. Find this resource:
  216.  
  217. European Discovery of South Asian Art
  218. Europeans have known South Asian art at least since the 1st century BCE, the approximate date of an Indian ivory figurine found at Pompeii. Other ivories from India were intended for export, as suggested by a cache of works from several parts of the world, including carved ivories probably produced in central India that were found in the course of French excavations at Begram in Afghanistan. But the earliest European writings on South Asian art date to the 13th century, when travelers such as Marco Polo passed through or visited the region. During the period of British rule, the documentation of art was part of the colonialist project.
  219.  
  220. European Written Sources
  221. The early European writers reported on the artworks they saw in terms that fulfilled their understanding— and their readers’ imaginations—of distant, non-Christian places, as Mitter 1992 shows. With the rise of colonialism and the increasing British interest in India, surveyors were sent to explore and record details of South Asia, among them Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, whose reports are compiled and edited in Martin 1838. The Archaeological Survey of India and the reports it published (Cunningham 1972) were a direct outgrowth of that effort, as were the photographs with which it documented sites and excavations. Photography was also the primary tool for comparative study by scholars in all fields of art history. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the discipline of art history without photography. Fergusson 1891 was one of the early proponents of photography for comparative study. James Fergusson was, however, a nasty racist, as shown in Fergusson 1974, in which he trashed those who relied on text rather than image, most notably Mitra 1961–1963. The establishment of British-style art schools in Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, and Lahore not only trained artists and crafts specialists but also brought directors who, in at least one instance (Havell 1908), wrote sympathetically about traditional South Asian art. About the same time that the art schools were established (the earliest was the Madras School of Art, established in 1850), the British established the earliest museums, intended as a means of scientifically organizing, categorizing, and displaying knowledge of India’s ancient arts. The earliest was the Imperial Museum (established in 1814), subsequently named the Indian Museum, in Calcutta. Not surprisingly, it was established by a botanist, whose interest in taxonomy was easily transferrable to the material culture of India. The first catalogue of its sculptures, Anderson 1883, was also written by a botanist.
  222.  
  223. Anderson, John. Catalogue and Hand-Book of the Archaeological Collections in the Indian Museum. Calcutta: Indian Museum, 1883.
  224.  
  225. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  226.  
  227. The first catalogue of sculptures in the first museum established by the British in India.
  228.  
  229. Find this resource:
  230.  
  231. Cunningham, Alexander. Archaeological Survey of India: Reports. 22 vols. Delhi: Indological Book House, 1972.
  232.  
  233. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  234.  
  235. These reports cover the years 1862—1902 and are an indispensable resource for early understandings of Indian antiquities and colonial attitudes toward them. They were succeeded by the Archaeological Survey of India annual reports, published beginning in 1902–1903. These were supplemented by memoirs on individual monuments, reports on inscriptions (e.g., Epigraphia Indica and Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum), and monographs on more general topics (the New Imperial Series).
  236.  
  237. Find this resource:
  238.  
  239. Fergusson, James. A History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1891.
  240.  
  241. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  242.  
  243. A successful indigo planter, Fergusson made enough money that he had a great deal of time on his hands to use photography for broad comparative studies.
  244.  
  245. Find this resource:
  246.  
  247. Fergusson, James. Archaeology in India, with Especial Reference to the Works of Babu Rajendralala Mitra. New Delhi: K. B., 1974.
  248.  
  249. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  250.  
  251. This indigo planter with lots of time on his hands was, however, a nasty racist, who criticized the Indian scholar Rajendralala Mitra (Mitra 1961–1963) for relying on text rather than image.
  252.  
  253. Find this resource:
  254.  
  255. Havell, Ernest Binfield. Indian Sculpture and Painting. London: Murray, 1908.
  256.  
  257. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  258.  
  259. One of the first surveys of sculpture and painting written by a director of the Calcutta School of Art.
  260.  
  261. Find this resource:
  262.  
  263. Martin, Robert Montgomery. The History, Antiquities, Topography, and Statistics of Eastern India. London: Allen, 1838.
  264.  
  265. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  266.  
  267. Compiles Buchanan-Hamilton’s accounts of eastern India, including his drawings of monuments.
  268.  
  269. Find this resource:
  270.  
  271. Mitra, Rajendralala. The Antiquities of Orissa. 2 vols. Calcutta: Maitra, 1961–1963.
  272.  
  273. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  274.  
  275. This is the volume that Fergusson 1974 so soundly trashed.
  276.  
  277. Find this resource:
  278.  
  279. Mitter, Partha. Much Maligned Monsters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  280.  
  281. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  282.  
  283. Brilliantly analyzes the earliest European interpretations of South Asian art and subsequent understandings.
  284.  
  285. Find this resource:
  286.  
  287. Early Images
  288. Visual images, both photographs and drawings, became a crucial form of documentation of works of art, including buildings. Some artists made visual records of the monuments they encountered (e.g., Daniell and Daniell 2005, made for consumption at home), while others (e.g., Francis Buchanan-Hamilton; see Martin 1838, cited under European Written Sources) made drawings to document sculptures and temples. Photography, which came to India soon after its invention, played a key role in the early documentation of Indian monuments. The Archaeological Survey of India used photographs to document its work. While the photographs are maintained in albums at the headquarters of the Archaeological Survey of India, many of them are available online through the British Library website India Office Select Materials.
  289.  
  290. Daniell, Thomas, and William Daniell. Oriental Scenery. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.
  291.  
  292. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  293.  
  294. Originally published in London in 1797. Lithographs of South Asian monuments made for consumption in Britain, where the notion of a ruin was especially appreciated.
  295.  
  296. Find this resource:
  297.  
  298. India Office Select Materials. British Library.
  299.  
  300. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  301.  
  302. Provides access to information on all the South Asia images in the British Library. Select images—large numbers of them—are available online.
  303.  
  304. Find this resource:
  305.  
  306. Historiography
  307. Until the late 20th century there was little critical reflection on the writing of South Asian art history. Only one work (Chandra 1983) explicitly provides an overview of writing in the field, although some works, such as Davis 1997 and Guha-Thakurta 2004, superbly probe historiographical issues. Asher 2007 reflects on the early-21st-century state of South Asian art history. This bibliography is intended to reflect historiographical issues.
  308.  
  309. Asher, Frederick M. “The Shape of Indian Art History.” In Asian Art History in the 21st Century. Edited by Vishakha N. Desai, 3–14. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
  310.  
  311. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  312.  
  313. A volume with articles that reflect on the state of Asian art.
  314.  
  315. Find this resource:
  316.  
  317. Chandra, Pramod. On the Study of Indian Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
  318.  
  319. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  320.  
  321. These published lectures delivered by Pramod Chandra at the Asia Society were the earliest attempt at a historiography of South Asian art history.
  322.  
  323. Find this resource:
  324.  
  325. Davis, Richard. Lives of Indian Images. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
  326.  
  327. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  328.  
  329. A very important work that examines the lives of select artworks subsequent to the moment of their creation.
  330.  
  331. Find this resource:
  332.  
  333. Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
  334.  
  335. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  336.  
  337. This work traces the multiple lives of both objects and institutions.
  338.  
  339. Find this resource:
  340.  
  341. Aesthetics and Iconography
  342. A system of aesthetics for performance—really a taxonomy of aesthetic responses—was developed in South Asia by the 3rd century CE and was described in some detail in a text on dance, the Natyashastra (discussed and summarized in Vatsyayan 1996). It is attributed to the sage Bharata, and the eight rasas (viewer emotional responses) described in the text were applied to the visual arts in an exhibition with an excellent catalogue, Goswamy 1986. Other ancient texts have been probed to understand the aesthetics of South Asian art, such as Coomaraswamy 1908 and Coomaraswamy 1934. Some scholars have mined ancient texts not for aesthetic data but for iconographic information, as if the artists relied on these texts or both composers of texts and creators of images drew from the same common understandings. Both general books on iconography, such as Rao 1981, Banerjea 1956, and Bhattasali 2001, and those that focus on a specific text, such as de Mallmann 1963 and Bhattacharyya 1987, have taken a similar approach to the study of iconography. Rao 1981 focuses primarily on Hindu works from South India, while Banerjea 1956 focuses on those from the north. Bhattasali 2001 uses the collection of sculptures in the Dacca Museum, now the Bangladesh National Museum, as the basis of study. Bhattacharyya 1987 relies primarily on a single Buddhist text, the Saddhanamala, as the source of iconographic information, and Mallmann 1963 probes one of the puranas, the Agni Purana, for the iconographic information it provides.
  343.  
  344. Banerjea, Jitendra Nath. The Development of Hindu Iconography. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1956.
  345.  
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347.  
  348. Like Rao 1981, this source uses ancient texts to identify images but focuses more on North India than on the south.
  349.  
  350. Find this resource:
  351.  
  352. Bhattacharyya, Benoytosh. The Indian Buddhist Iconography. 2d ed. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1987.
  353.  
  354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  355.  
  356. First published in 1968, the book draws information primarily from the text known as the Sadhanamala.
  357.  
  358. Find this resource:
  359.  
  360. Bhattasali, N. K. Iconography of Buddhist and Brahmanical Sculptures in the Dacca Museum. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2001.
  361.  
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363.  
  364. First published in 1929, this work examines the sculptures in a single museum, all of them from Bengal. It contains, however, a wealth of useful information that extends beyond these specific images
  365.  
  366. Find this resource:
  367.  
  368. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. The Aims of Indian Art. Broad Campden, UK: Essex House, 1908.
  369.  
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371.  
  372. Speaking to a Western audience that understood this material as quite alien and distant from the category of art, this brief book seeks to explain the purpose of South Asian art and to celebrate it.
  373.  
  374. Find this resource:
  375.  
  376. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. The Transformation of Nature in Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934.
  377.  
  378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379.  
  380. Presents the religious basis of Asian and European medieval art.
  381.  
  382. Find this resource:
  383.  
  384. Goswamy, B. N. Essence of Indian Art. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1986.
  385.  
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387.  
  388. An exhibition of Indian art used the rasas enumerated in the Natyashastra as an organizing principle, and the catalogue discusses traditional Indian aesthetic theory at some length.
  389.  
  390. Find this resource:
  391.  
  392. Mallmann, Marie-Thérèse de. Les enseignements iconographiques de l’Agni-Purana. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963.
  393.  
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395.  
  396. Probes a text dating to about the 8th or 9th century, the Agni Purana, for iconographic information.
  397.  
  398. Find this resource:
  399.  
  400. Rao, T. A. Gopinatha. Elements of Hindu Iconography. 4 vols. New York: Garland, 1981.
  401.  
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403.  
  404. The first major exploration of Hindu iconography drawing mainly on examples from South India, this work was originally published in 1914–1916.
  405.  
  406. Find this resource:
  407.  
  408. Vatsyayan, Kapila. Bharata, the Nāṭyaśāstra. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1996.
  409.  
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411.  
  412. A summary of the Natyashastra, a text on dance, including a section on rasa, an emotional response to performance that has been applied to art.
  413.  
  414. Find this resource:
  415.  
  416. The Indus Civilization
  417. The Indus civilization, also known as the Indus Valley civilization or the Harappan civilization, flourished in its mature phase from about 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE and extended from eastern Afghanistan to most of Pakistan and into western India. It has been known for less than one hundred years, so early surveys of South Asian art, such as Coomaraswamy 1927 (cited under Surveys), mention Indus art only in passing, and still earlier surveys reflect the ignorance of this remarkable civilization. The earliest works on the civilization were reports on the excavation of two principal cities, Mohenjo-daro (Marshall 2004) and Harappa (Vats 1940). Several books provide excellent overviews of the civilization, including Kenoyer 1998 and Possehl 2002. Possehl 1979 compiles some of the most important scholarship to that date on the civilization, while this scholar’s book on the still-undeciphered writing system (Possehl 1996) and his volume on the earliest phase of the civilization (Possehl 1999) were intended as part of a projected four-volume series presenting and analyzing diverse understandings of the civilization.
  418.  
  419. Kenoyer, Jonathan M. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  420.  
  421. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  422.  
  423. Kenoyer, whose work is closely associated with the site of Harappa, covers in depth the whole of the civilization’s mature phase. This book follows from a major US exhibition of Harappan material.
  424.  
  425. Find this resource:
  426.  
  427. Marshall, John Hubert. Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization. 3 vols. New Delhi: Asian Educational, 2004.
  428.  
  429. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  430.  
  431. A detailed report, originally published in 1931, on the first meticulously excavated cities of the Indus civilization, though the reader should note that excavations continue at Mohenjo-daro, as they do at Harappa.
  432.  
  433. Find this resource:
  434.  
  435. Possehl, Gregory L. The Indus Age: The Writing System. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
  436.  
  437. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  438.  
  439. The first of a projected four-volume series on the Indus civilization.
  440.  
  441. Find this resource:
  442.  
  443. Possehl, Gregory L. Indus Age: The Beginnings. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
  444.  
  445. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  446.  
  447. The second in the projected series, which was cut short by Possehl’s death in 2011.
  448.  
  449. Find this resource:
  450.  
  451. Possehl, Gregory L. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2002.
  452.  
  453. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  454.  
  455. A highly readable introduction to the civilization that also works to dispel common but considerably outdated assumptions about the Indus civilization.
  456.  
  457. Find this resource:
  458.  
  459. Possehl, Gregory L., ed. Ancient Cities of the Indus. New Delhi: Vikas, 1979.
  460.  
  461. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  462.  
  463. A compilation of important articles relating to the Indus civilization with an interesting introduction by the editor.
  464.  
  465. Find this resource:
  466.  
  467. Vats, Madho Sarup. Excavations at Harappā. 2 vols. Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1940.
  468.  
  469. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  470.  
  471. A detailed report on one of the two major cities of the Indus civilization.
  472.  
  473. Find this resource:
  474.  
  475. The Maurya Period
  476. Given the tendency to categorize South Asian art, like South Asian history, by ruling dynasty, scholars refer to Maurya art, although for the most part they are speaking of the art of a single generation, that is, art created during the reign of the emperor Ashoka (c. 269–232 BCE). In all South Asian history, no ruler has been so revered and so mythologized. Scholarship on the art of this period generally falls into two groups: those that examine the period as a whole, usually together with the art of at least one subsequent period (e.g., Bachhofer 1972 and Marshall 1922), and those that examine the pillars of the period, that is, the only works that can be attributed to Ashoka’s time with certainty, most notably the articles authored by John Irwin (see Irwin 1973). The history of Ashoka’s reign, which contextualizes the art, is brilliantly presented in Thapar 1997, and Harry Falk, who has written widely on ancient South Asian art and culture, has written a book on the art of the period (Falk 2006), an excellent complement to two edited volumes that result from conferences on Ashoka (see Olivelle 2009).
  477.  
  478. Bachhofer, Ludwig. Early Indian Sculpture. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1972.
  479.  
  480. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  481.  
  482. First published in 1929 as the translation of the author’s doctoral dissertation, written in German under Heinrich Wolfflin, it examines the stylistic development of Indian art from the time of Ashoka through the 3rd century BCE. Some ideas, such as characterizations of South Asian culture, are outmoded, though most of his observations about the works are very much on target.
  483.  
  484. Find this resource:
  485.  
  486. Falk, Harry. Aśokan Sites and Artefacts: A Source-Book with Bibliography. Mainz, Germany: Von Zabern, 2006.
  487.  
  488. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  489.  
  490. This is a thorough presentation of the scholarship on Ashokan monuments and the sites at which they are located.
  491.  
  492. Find this resource:
  493.  
  494. Irwin, John. “‘Aśokan’ Pillars: A Reassessment of the Evidence.” Burlington Magazine 115.848 (1973): 706–720.
  495.  
  496. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  497.  
  498. Continued in Part 2 on structure, Burlington Magazine 116.861 (1974): 712–720; Part 3 on capitals, Burlington Magazine 117.871 (1975): 631–643; and Part 4 on symbolism, Burlington Magazine 118.884 (1976): 734–753. These four articles, and others in which Irwin examines the pillars attributed to Ashoka, probe their dates and symbolism, arguing that at least some pillars date prior to the time of Ashoka.
  499.  
  500. Find this resource:
  501.  
  502. Marshall, John H. “The Monuments of Ancient India.” In The Cambridge History of India. Vol. 1, Ancient India. Edited by E. J. Rapson, 612–650. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1922.
  503.  
  504. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  505.  
  506. This is a good summary of South Asia’s ancient art, beginning with the time of Ashoka and extending through the 1st century CE. Other chapters in the volume provide good, though dated, historical overviews. Text available online.
  507.  
  508. Find this resource:
  509.  
  510. Olivelle, Patrick, ed. Aśoka: In History and Historical Memory. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2009.
  511.  
  512. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  513.  
  514. See also Reimagining Aśoka: Memory and History, edited by Patrick Olivelle, Janice Leoshko, and Himanshu Prabha Ray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). These two volumes with essays covering the history and monuments of Ashoka also consider the subsequent lives of this emperor and his monuments, for example, the reuse of the pillars and the early 21st-century display of his artifacts.
  515.  
  516. Find this resource:
  517.  
  518. Thapar, Romila. Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  519.  
  520. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  521.  
  522. First published in 1961, this was the first work by India’s foremost scholar of ancient South Asian history. It includes a translation of Ashoka’s edicts, the ones on pillars and the ones on rock surfaces.
  523.  
  524. Find this resource:
  525.  
  526. The 2nd Through 1st Centuries BCE
  527. Rather than look at a coherent body of art during this two-hundred-year period, published scholarship has generally examined separate monuments, the only surviving examples of art from this time. Thus it is common to see the railing from Bodhgaya, discussed in Coomaraswamy 1935, and the railings from Bharhut, discussed in Coomaraswamy 1956, as examples of art in North India from the 2nd and early 1st centuries BCE (often associated with the Shunga dynasty although without any evidence of Shunga patronage) and the gateways of the Great Stupa at Sanchi, presented in the three magnificent volumes of Marshall, et al. 1982, as an example of art from the end of the 1st century BCE. In Southeast India the stupas at Amaravati (Barrett 1954 and Knox 1992) span this period, while rock-cut sanctuaries (Spink 1958 and Dehejia 1972) were extensively carved at this time in western India. The earliest narrative sculptures—those on the railings of Bharhut and Bodhgaya, the gateways at Sanchi, and the stupa slabs and railings at Amaravati—date from this time. They often depict scenes from the Buddha’s life and his previous lives, known as the Jātakas, but invariably without the Buddha himself shown in anthropomorphic form. The explanation for his absence has led to some interesting debate (see Dehejia 1991 and Huntington 1992).
  528.  
  529. Barrett, Douglas. Sculptures from Amaravati in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1954.
  530.  
  531. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  532.  
  533. More than a catalogue, this book proposes a chronology for the sculptures of Amaravati.
  534.  
  535. Find this resource:
  536.  
  537. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. La sculpture de Bodhgaya. Ars Asiatica 18. Paris: Les Éditions d’Art et d’Histoire, 1935.
  538.  
  539. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  540.  
  541. Like Coomaraswamy 1956 on Bharhut, this is a valuable resource for the railing that demarcated the circumambulatory path of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya although it neglects discussion of the later sculptures of the site.
  542.  
  543. Find this resource:
  544.  
  545. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. La sculpture de Bharhut. Paris: Vanoest, 1956.
  546.  
  547. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  548.  
  549. The meticulous discussions of each relief and the plates of every railing pillar make this an especially important resource.
  550.  
  551. Find this resource:
  552.  
  553. Dehejia, Vidya. Early Buddhist Rock Temples: A Chronological Study. London: Thames and Hudson, 1972.
  554.  
  555. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  556.  
  557. This is more comprehensive than Walter Spink’s study (Spink 1958) and makes especially thoughtful use of the inscriptional evidence.
  558.  
  559. Find this resource:
  560.  
  561. Dehejia, Vidya. “Aniconism and the Multivalence of Emblems.” Ars Orientalis 21 (1991): 45–66.
  562.  
  563. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  564.  
  565. In this article Dehejia questions the explanation Susan L. Huntington (Huntington 1992) has offered for the absence of the Buddha image in anthropomorphic form.
  566.  
  567. Find this resource:
  568.  
  569. Huntington, Susan L. “Aniconism and the Mulitvalence of Emblems: Another Look.” Ars Orientalis 22 (1992): 111–156.
  570.  
  571. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  572.  
  573. Here Huntington responds to Dehejia 1991.
  574.  
  575. Find this resource:
  576.  
  577. Knox, Robert. Amaravati: Buddhist Sculpture from the Great Stupa. London: British Museum, 1992.
  578.  
  579. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  580.  
  581. This book, produced in conjunction with the reinstallation of the Amaravati Gallery at the British Museum, reexamines the works and presents fresh ideas on their chronology.
  582.  
  583. Find this resource:
  584.  
  585. Marshall, John Hubert, Alfred Foucher, and Nani Gopal Majumdar. The Monuments of Sanchi. 3 vols. Delhi: Swati, 1982.
  586.  
  587. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  588.  
  589. This monumental work discusses almost every structure and every sculpture at the site of Sanchi.
  590.  
  591. Find this resource:
  592.  
  593. Spink, Walter. “On the Development of Early Buddhist Art in India.” Art Bulletin 40.2 (1958): 95–104.
  594.  
  595. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  596.  
  597. Spink proposes a chronology for the rock-cut sanctuaries of western India.
  598.  
  599. Find this resource:
  600.  
  601. The 1st Through 3rd Centuries
  602. Though this period is often thought of as the age of the Kushana dynasty in North India, doing so neglects the art produced at this time in Southeast India, where the Buddha image in anthropomorphic form was introduced at the same time as in the Kushana-ruled areas of the north. Art during this period appears in three main areas, each with notably different styles: in Gandhara (corresponding with the eastern part of Afghanistan and much of modern Pakistan); in the city of Mathura, about 102 miles (about 165 kilometers) south of Delhi; and in the Krishna River valley in Southeast India. The discovery of sculpture in the Gandhara region raised great excitement among Indologists who were part of the colonial enterprise, because they saw in it a relationship with the art of Greece and Rome, signifying yet another link between India and the West. They also assumed that the West was responsible for the introduction of the anthropomorphic Buddha image, perceived as a lack in earlier South Asian art (Foucher 1972). That view was not entirely shared by South Asians, who championed Mathura as the home of the first anthropomorphic Buddha images (Coomaraswamy 1927). Explorations in Southeast India revealed a late stage of the sculpture at Amaravati and the development of the site of Nagarjunakonda (Sarkar and Misra 1972), though little has been done to link the art of this part of India with the contemporary art of the north. With the exception of two sources, van Lohuizen-de Leeuw 1949 and Rosenfield 1967, which cover both Mathura and Gandhara, that is, the north, most studies have focused on one specific region.
  603.  
  604. The North
  605. Scholarship here focuses on the art produced during the time of the Kushana dynasty, including a debate regarding where the anthropomorphic Buddha image was first produced—Gandhara, as Foucher 1972 argues, or Mathura, as Coomaraswamy 1927 suggests. Evidence raised by this debate is effectively examined in Linrothe 1993. A good exhibition catalogue, Czuma 1985, includes a helpful introductory survey. Rosenfield 1967 considers royal imagery, and van Lohuizen-de Leeuw 1949 explores the chronology of Kushana sculpture.
  606.  
  607. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. “The Origin of the Buddha Image.” Art Bulletin 9.4 (1927): 287–329.
  608.  
  609. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  610.  
  611. This important article argues for the indigenous origin of the Buddha image, arguing against Alfred Foucher’s position (Foucher 1972).
  612.  
  613. Find this resource:
  614.  
  615. Czuma, Stanislas J. Kushan Sculpture: Images from Early India. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1985.
  616.  
  617. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  618.  
  619. Catalogue of an exhibition of Kushana art.
  620.  
  621. Find this resource:
  622.  
  623. Foucher, Alfred. The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology. Varanasi, India: Indological Book House, 1972.
  624.  
  625. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  626.  
  627. The chapter “The Greek Origin of the Buddha Image” (pp. 111–137) is especially significant for the arguments asserted here. Text available online.
  628.  
  629. Find this resource:
  630.  
  631. Linrothe, Rob. “Inquiries into the Origin of the Buddha Image: A Review.” East and West 43.14 (1993): 241–256.
  632.  
  633. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  634.  
  635. An excellent analysis of the debates between Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (Coomaraswamy 1927) and Alfred Foucher (Foucher 1972) and available data.
  636.  
  637. Find this resource:
  638.  
  639. Rosenfield, John. Dynastic Art of the Kushans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
  640.  
  641. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  642.  
  643. This is an impressively detailed study of the Kushana royal images and contains a thorough bibliography.
  644.  
  645. Find this resource:
  646.  
  647. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw, J. E. The “Scythian” Period: An Approach to the History, Art, Epigraphy, and Paleography of North India from the 1st Century BC to the 3rd Century AD. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1949.
  648.  
  649. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  650.  
  651. In addition to examining dated images at Mathura, the author probes the inscription content and epigraphic style to determine the date of images. She also probes arguments for the date of the Kushana monarch Kanishka.
  652.  
  653. Find this resource:
  654.  
  655. Mathura
  656. A good, probing book on the Kushana sculpture of Mathura has yet to be written, although Quintanilla 2007 explores very effectively the pre-Kushana material from this site. Vogel 1909 treats the Kushana sculpture of Mathura as a product of a school in the European sense but does not acknowledge that sculpture was produced at Mathura long before the Kushana dynasty and well after it. Sharma 1984 is on the Buddhist art of Kushana Mathura but ignores the Jain material from the site and the relatively few Brahmanical works.
  657.  
  658. Quintanilla, Sonya Rhie. History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura, ca. 150 BCE–100 CE. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
  659.  
  660. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  661.  
  662. Though primarily concerned with the pre-Kushana material at Mathura, this book sets the stage for sculpture of the Kushana period and makes clear that Mathura is a site whose sculpture was produced over a very long period of time.
  663.  
  664. Find this resource:
  665.  
  666. Sharma, R. C. Buddhist Art of Mathurā. Delhi: Agam, 1984.
  667.  
  668. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  669.  
  670. A reasonable survey of the subject with seventy-seven plates.
  671.  
  672. Find this resource:
  673.  
  674. Vogel, Jean Philippe. The Mathura School of Sculpture. Calcutta: Archaeological Survey of India, Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1909.
  675.  
  676. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  677.  
  678. A reprint of an article from the annual report of the Archaeological Survey of India.
  679.  
  680. Find this resource:
  681.  
  682. Gandhara
  683. Much of the scholarship on Gandhara has been in the form of excavation reports (e.g., Marshall 1951, Faccenna 1980–1981, and Hackin 1954), overviews exploring the sources for Gandhara art (e.g., Foucher 1905–1951 and Nehru 1989), or surveys of its chronology (e.g., Rowland 1936 and Dobbins 1968). Some of the scholarship, including a very important exhibition catalogue (Drachenfels and Luczanits 2008) and an extremely well-illustrated older work (Lyons and Ingholt 1957), surveys the sculpture of Gandhara.
  684.  
  685. Dobbins, K. Walton. “Gandhāra Buddha Images with Inscribed Dates.” East and West 18.3–4 (1968): 281–288.
  686.  
  687. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  688.  
  689. Examines the very few Gandhara images with inscribed dates.
  690.  
  691. Find this resource:
  692.  
  693. Drachenfels, Dorothee von, and Christian Luczanits. Gandhara, The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Legends, Monasteries, and Paradise. Mainz, Germany: Zabern, 2008.
  694.  
  695. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  696.  
  697. The catalogue for this exhibition not only brings together a great deal of otherwise dispersed material but also presents some of the early-21st-century scholarly views on the art of Gandhara.
  698.  
  699. Find this resource:
  700.  
  701. Faccenna, Domenico. Butkara I (Swāt, Pakistan), 1956–1962. 5 vols. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1980–1981.
  702.  
  703. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  704.  
  705. This work and the results on other excavations published by the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente have begun to reshape the understanding of Gandhara art.
  706.  
  707. Find this resource:
  708.  
  709. Foucher, Alfred. L’art gréco-bouddhique du Gandhâra. 2 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1905–1951.
  710.  
  711. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  712.  
  713. This remains one of the most important sources for and most thorough studies of the Kushana art of Gandhara. Text available online.
  714.  
  715. Find this resource:
  716.  
  717. Hackin, Joseph. Nouvelles recherches archéologiques à Begram, ancienne Kâpici, 1939–1940: Rencontre de trois civilisations, Inde, Grèce, Chine. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1954.
  718.  
  719. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  720.  
  721. Begram, which yielded ivories from India and material from across the Silk Road, is extremely important for understanding the place of South Asia in a larger network. The chapter by Philippe Stern uses the Begram ivories to suggest reassigning the dates of many sculptures customarily dated much earlier.
  722.  
  723. Find this resource:
  724.  
  725. Lyons, Islay, and Harald Ingholt. Gandharan Art in Pakistan. New York: Pantheon, 1957.
  726.  
  727. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  728.  
  729. The book contains over two hundred plates of Gandhara sculptures and useful plate captions with bibliographic references.
  730.  
  731. Find this resource:
  732.  
  733. Marshall, John Hubert. Taxila. 3 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1951.
  734.  
  735. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  736.  
  737. Taxila is one of the largest and most important sites of ancient Gandhara. The report on the site includes a broad discussion of Gandhara art.
  738.  
  739. Find this resource:
  740.  
  741. Nehru, Lolita. Origins of the Gandhāran style: A Study of Contributory Influences. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989.
  742.  
  743. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  744.  
  745. Examines in depth the West Asian sources of Gandhara art.
  746.  
  747. Find this resource:
  748.  
  749. Rowland, Benjamin, Jr. “A Revised Chronology of Gandhāra Sculpture.” Art Bulletin 18.3 (1936): 387–400.
  750.  
  751. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  752.  
  753. Because there are so few dated images from Gandhara and because we are uncertain of the era or eras to which the dates belong, attempts to establish a chronology of Gandhara art have sometimes relied, as Rowland does here, on parallels with Roman art.
  754.  
  755. Find this resource:
  756.  
  757. The South
  758. Although sculpture at Amaravati and other sites in the Krishna River valley continued to be produced at this time, the principal site dating almost exclusively to this period is Nagarjunakonda. The two works cited here are among the good reports on the site. Ramachandran 1999 was written when the site was originally explored, and Sarkar and Misra 1972 was written after all the material from Nagarjunakonda was moved when the site itself was destined to be flooded by a new dam.
  759.  
  760. Ramachandran, T. N. Nagarjunakonda 1938. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1999.
  761.  
  762. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  763.  
  764. A good report published initially in 1953 as one of the memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India.
  765.  
  766. Find this resource:
  767.  
  768. Sarkar, H., and B. N. Misra. Nagarjunakonda. New Delhi: Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, 1972.
  769.  
  770. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  771.  
  772. Though there are other books on the site, even more recent ones, this is the most authoritative source and has many illustrations.
  773.  
  774. Find this resource:
  775.  
  776. The 4th Through 7th Centuries
  777. This chronological division most commonly suggests art during the period of Gupta rule, although in fact the Guptas ruled only a part of northern India. They are celebrated, perhaps excessively, because they are viewed as successors of the Kushana dynasty, often understood as a foreign ruling house. Consequently there is a kind of nationalist pride in the Guptas, more so because they proclaimed themselves as worshippers of Vishnu and thus Hindus in the modern sense of the term. The earliest surviving Hindu temples date to this period, though Buddhist art continued to be produced not only in the Gupta realm but also in that of their neighbors, the Vakataka dynasty (Spink 2002–2007). Following the end of Gupta rule in about 550 CE, centers of artistic production seemed to shift to the west and south of India, where excellent ports brought vessels from distant places, facilitating trade and contributing to the revenue of the rulers in these regions.
  778.  
  779. Art in the Gupta and Vakataka Realms
  780. There is much scholarship on the art of Gupta India. The best study of the subject is Williams 1982, which considers both architecture and sculpture, while Harle 1974 focuses only on sculpture, often out of context. There are some good essays in Khandalavala 1991, but it is not an overview of the art of this period. Ajanta is by far the most important site in the Vakataka realm, most thoroughly covered in Spink 2002–2007 and in Walter M. Spink’s many other publications on the site.
  781.  
  782. Harle, James C. Gupta Sculpture: Indian Sculpture of the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries AD. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974.
  783.  
  784. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  785.  
  786. A good study though focused exclusively on sculpture, thus removing it from context. The plate captions are especially good.
  787.  
  788. Find this resource:
  789.  
  790. Khandalavala, Karl J., ed. The Golden Age: Gupta Art Empire, Province, and Influence. Bombay: Marg, 1991.
  791.  
  792. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  793.  
  794. This collection of essays includes some useful and important work.
  795.  
  796. Find this resource:
  797.  
  798. Spink, Walter M. Ajanta: History and Development. 5 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2002–2007.
  799.  
  800. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  801.  
  802. These five volumes are by far the most comprehensive studies of Ajanta and are written by a scholar who knows the site better than anyone ever has except the monks who lived there.
  803.  
  804. Find this resource:
  805.  
  806. Williams, Joanna Gottfried. The Art of Gupta India: Empire and Province. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.
  807.  
  808. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  809.  
  810. By far the most thorough and thoughtful book on the art of this period. The excellent bibliography steers readers to many more sources.
  811.  
  812. Find this resource:
  813.  
  814. Art in Western and Southern India
  815. For reasons that are not yet clear, temple building and sculpture production in the heartland that produced the Gupta and Vakataka works ceased soon after the 5th century CE, and production shifted to other parts of India. The earliest surviving sculptures from the great Buddhist monastery of Nalanda (Paul 1995) date to this time, while in western India the site of Elephanta (Berkson, et al. 1983) was excavated. In southern India direct patronage from the Chalukya and Pallava dynasties resulted in several important sites, such as Badami (Banerji 1998) and other sites nearby (Cousens 1996 and Michell 1975) and Mamallapuram (Ramaswamy 1980 and Kaimal 1994).
  816.  
  817. Banerji, R. D. Bas Reliefs of Badami. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 25. New Delhi: Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, 1998.
  818.  
  819. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  820.  
  821. Although this volume covers only the 6th-century reliefs of the Badami rock-cut sanctuaries, not the sanctuaries as a whole or their relationships with one another or with the entire site of Badami, it reveals a continuity with the site of Elephanta.
  822.  
  823. Find this resource:
  824.  
  825. Berkson, Carmel, Wendy Doniger, and George Michell. Elephanta, the Cave of Shiva. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
  826.  
  827. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  828.  
  829. The essays in this collection, particularly the one by George Michell, provide an overall understanding of and significant insight into this impressive rock-cut site on Elephanta Island off the coast of Mumbai, and the bibliography is comprehensive.
  830.  
  831. Find this resource:
  832.  
  833. Cousens, Henry. The Chālukyan Architecture of the Kanarese Districts. Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperial Series 42. New Delhi: Director General, Archeological Survey of India, 1996.
  834.  
  835. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  836.  
  837. While the historical context assigned to several of the temples has been significantly revised since Cousens’s time, this is the first presentation of most of these monuments and served as a basis for much scholarly discussion that followed. Originally published in 1926.
  838.  
  839. Find this resource:
  840.  
  841. Kaimal, Padma. “Playful Ambiguity and Political Authority in the Large Relief at Māmallapuram.” Ars Orientalis 24 (1994): 1–27.
  842.  
  843. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  844.  
  845. This is an impressively insightful article on the most famous work at Mamallapuram.
  846.  
  847. Find this resource:
  848.  
  849. Michell, George. Early Western Chalukyan Temples. 2 vols. London: Art and Archaeology Research Papers, 1975.
  850.  
  851. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  852.  
  853. The text is good, and the plans and elevation drawings are excellent.
  854.  
  855. Find this resource:
  856.  
  857. Paul, Debjani. The Art of Nālandā: Development of Buddhist Sculpture, AD 600–1200. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995.
  858.  
  859. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  860.  
  861. The most important book on the sculptures of this site.
  862.  
  863. Find this resource:
  864.  
  865. Ramaswamy, N. S. Mamallapuram: An Annotated Bibliography. Madras: New Era, 1980.
  866.  
  867. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  868.  
  869. Despite the myriad entries in this bibliography, there is still no excellent scholarly book that comprehensively covers the site.
  870.  
  871. Find this resource:
  872.  
  873. The 8th Through 12th Centuries
  874. The diverse terms that have been used to describe this period are generally quite misleading. Coomaraswamy 1927 (cited under Surveys) referred to it as early medieval even though the term “medieval” is also sometimes used for the subsequent period, that is, the 13th through 18th centuries. This conjures notions of the European Middle Ages, with which it shares almost nothing in common. Rowland 1970 (cited under Surveys) describes it as the period of the Hindu dynasties, ignoring the fact that the Guptas, Pallavas, and Chalukyas all were Hindus in the modern sense of the term and at the same time failing to recognize that Buddhist art continued to flourish at this time, as did some of the earliest Muslim monuments in South Asia. Harle 1986 (cited under Surveys) refers to it as the post-Gupta period, giving a kind of prominence to Gupta India that exceeds the extent of their realm and in any event discussing monuments way beyond the Gupta realm. It is better to use a simple chronological designator even though that is stated in Common Era (i.e., Western) terms. Books covering the art of this period generally fall into two categories: regional or dynastic studies.
  875.  
  876. Eastern India
  877. Because brick was the primary building material in this part of South Asia, the art from this period is mainly sculptures, those dating back to the time of the Pala dynasty but not with any evidence of royal patronage for these sculptures. Good, comprehensive sources for the sculpture of this period include Banerji 1933 and Huntington 1984. The great Buddhist monastery Nalanda (Miśra 2008) was extensively expanded during this period, and new sculptures were added. Ray, et al. 1986 addresses the extensive production of metal sculptures in eastern India.
  878.  
  879. Banerji, Rakhal Das. Eastern Indian School of Medieval Sculpture. Archaeological Survey of Indian, New Imperial Series 47. Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1933.
  880.  
  881. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  882.  
  883. The strength of this volume is as much the illustrations as the text. This volume and Huntington 1984 raise the issue of what constitutes a “school” in the South Asian context, one of many notions borrowed unsatisfactorily from European art.
  884.  
  885. Find this resource:
  886.  
  887. Huntington, Susan L. The “Pāla-Sena” Schools of Sculpture. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1984.
  888.  
  889. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  890.  
  891. The most thorough investigation of sculpture in eastern India (Bihar and Bengal, including present-day Bangladesh) with an excellent section on dated images.
  892.  
  893. Find this resource:
  894.  
  895. Miśra, Bhāskaranātha. Nālandā. 3 vols. Delhi: B. R. Publishing, 2008.
  896.  
  897. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  898.  
  899. Though Miśra is not an art historian and though he treats Nalanda as if it were a university in the sense of being an institution of advanced learning, his study is nonetheless useful.
  900.  
  901. Find this resource:
  902.  
  903. Ray, Niharranjan, Karl J. Khandalavala, and Sadashiv Gorakshkar. Eastern Indian Bronzes. New Delhi: Lalit Kalā Akademi, 1986.
  904.  
  905. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  906.  
  907. The strength of this book is the large number of bronze sculptures illustrated in the catalogue that forms Part 2 of the book. Eastern Indian bronzes, though covered in Banerji 1933 and Huntington 1984, have not received nearly as much attention as bronze sculptures from South India.
  908.  
  909. Find this resource:
  910.  
  911. Central and Western India
  912. In this part of India temples were constructed in the realms of the Pratihara, Chandella, and Rashtrakuta dynasties. It is not always clear that patronage came directly from the dynasty for the construction of these temples except in the case of some temples at Khajuraho (Deva 1990 and Desai 1975), a product of the Chandella dynasty. The Kailasanatha temple at Ellora (Goetz 1952) may be a product of Rashtrakuta patronage, although there is no inscriptional record for the patronage for other temple sites, for example, Osian (Handa 1984) and those produced in the Pratihara realm (Trivedi 1990). The Buddhist caves at Ellora are effectively analyzed in Malandra 1993, and the Jain caves of the site are well analyzed in Owen 2012.
  913.  
  914. Desai, Devangana. Erotic Sculpture of India: A Socio-Cultural Study. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1975.
  915.  
  916. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  917.  
  918. With so much useless writing on the erotic sculptures, mostly on the Khajuraho temples and primarily intended to sell books more than to address an interesting issue, this book stands out as fine scholarship.
  919.  
  920. Find this resource:
  921.  
  922. Deva, Krishna. Temples of Khajuraho. 2 vols. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1990.
  923.  
  924. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  925.  
  926. Excellent text with translations of inscriptions and reasonably good illustrations.
  927.  
  928. Find this resource:
  929.  
  930. Goetz, Hermann. “The Kailāsa of Ellora and the Chronology of Rāshtrakūta Art.” Artibus Asiae 15.1–2 (1952): 84–107.
  931.  
  932. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  933.  
  934. This is the first detailed scholarly study of the largest freestanding rock-cut temple in South Asia. Goetz makes the claim that the Kailasanatha temple was created in several phases.
  935.  
  936. Find this resource:
  937.  
  938. Handa, Devendra. Osian: History, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. Delhi: Sundeep, 1984.
  939.  
  940. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  941.  
  942. Despite the importance of this temple site in Rajasthan, there is not yet a well-produced, profusely illustrated scholarly study of Osian’s temples.
  943.  
  944. Find this resource:
  945.  
  946. Malandra, Geri Hockfield. Unfolding a Maṇḍala: The Buddhist Cave Temples at Ellora. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
  947.  
  948. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  949.  
  950. This is the only careful study of the Buddhist sanctuaries at Ellora.
  951.  
  952. Find this resource:
  953.  
  954. Owen, Lisa N. Carving Devotion in the Jain Caves at Ellora. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
  955.  
  956. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  957.  
  958. As the title indicates, the book explores carefully and with excellent scholarship the Jain caves at Ellora.
  959.  
  960. Find this resource:
  961.  
  962. Trivedi, R. D. Temples of the Pratīhāra Period in Central India. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1990.
  963.  
  964. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  965.  
  966. A survey of the temples.
  967.  
  968. Find this resource:
  969.  
  970. Orissa
  971. The nomenclature of Orissan architecture is generally recognized as distinct from that in other parts of India, and the sculptures that adorn the temples also have a distinctive style. While some of the most important Orissan temples are in the city of Bhubaneshwar, by far the best known is the Sun Temple at Konarak (Mitra 1976). A comprehensive study of the temples of Bhubaneshwar is still lacking, though Behra 1993 provides a good introduction to the temple architecture of all Orissa, and Donaldson 1985–1987 is comprehensive in its coverage of temple sculpture.
  972.  
  973. Behra, Karuna Sagar. Temples of Orissa. Bhubaneswar, India: Orissa Sahitya Akademi, 1993.
  974.  
  975. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  976.  
  977. This may be the best book on the subject.
  978.  
  979. Find this resource:
  980.  
  981. Donaldson, Thomas. Hindu Temple Art of Orissa. 3 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1985–1987.
  982.  
  983. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  984.  
  985. A meticulous study of temple sculptures.
  986.  
  987. Find this resource:
  988.  
  989. Mitra, Debala. Konarak. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1976.
  990.  
  991. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  992.  
  993. With so much bad writing on this temple, this short book is a distinct standout.
  994.  
  995. Find this resource:
  996.  
  997. South India
  998. Two ruling houses dominate the artistic production of this period. One is the Cholas, who ruled in present-day Tamil Nadu; the other is the Hoysalas, who ruled in present-day Karnataka. Both provided extensive patronage for temple construction. These temples, often very large and complex, are replete with sculptures, including bronze sculptures, generally housed in the temple’s porchway (mandapa).
  999.  
  1000. South India under the Chola Dynasty
  1001. The best and most readable overview of Chola art is Dehejia 1990, and a much drier account of early Chola art is Balasubrahmanyam 1966. Pichard 1995 is an excellent work on the largest Chola royal temple. The bronzes of South India, particularly the form of Shiva as lord of the dance (Nataraja), have had wide appeal, impacting the aesthetic taste even of Auguste Rodin (Rodin, et al. 1921). Coomaraswamy 2003 is the work most commonly read on this form of Shiva, although Kaimal 1999 not only questions some of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s assertions but also puts the form of Nataraja in historical context. Dehejia, et al. 2002 is a collection of important essays in an excellent exhibition catalogue of South Indian bronzes.
  1002.  
  1003. Balasubrahmanyam, S. R. Early Chola Art. Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966.
  1004.  
  1005. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1006.  
  1007. This book might be read in conjunction with the more comprehensive published lectures in Dehejia 1990 and the meticulous study of the Great Temple at Thanjavur (Pichard 1995).
  1008.  
  1009. Find this resource:
  1010.  
  1011. Cohen, Andrew L. Temple Architecture and Sculpture of the Noḷambas: Ninth–Tenth Centuries. New Delhi: Manohar, 1998.
  1012.  
  1013. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1014.  
  1015. The author’s dissertation revised as a book.
  1016.  
  1017. Find this resource:
  1018.  
  1019. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. “The Dance of Śiva.” In The Dance of Śiva: Fourteen Indian Essays. By Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, 56–66. New Delhi: Munshiram Manohartal, 2003.
  1020.  
  1021. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1022.  
  1023. Originally published in 1918. This essay both addresses and abets the fascination with this form of Shiva. Text available online.
  1024.  
  1025. Find this resource:
  1026.  
  1027. Dehejia, Vidya. Art of the Imperial Cholas. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
  1028.  
  1029. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1030.  
  1031. This is the published version of the author’s Polsky Lectures, superbly accessible and insightful.
  1032.  
  1033. Find this resource:
  1034.  
  1035. Dehejia, Vidya, Richard H. Davis, and R. Nagaswamy. The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.
  1036.  
  1037. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1038.  
  1039. An exhibition catalogue, it contains not only illustrations and captions for some very important works but also some current thoughts by three outstanding scholars with complementary expertise.
  1040.  
  1041. Find this resource:
  1042.  
  1043. Kaimal, Padma. “Shiva Nataraja: Shifting Meanings of an Icon.” Art Bulletin 81.3 (1999): 390–419.
  1044.  
  1045. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1046.  
  1047. The article provides a critical historical grounding for the metal and stone images of this deity.
  1048.  
  1049. Find this resource:
  1050.  
  1051. Pichard, Pierre. Tanjavur Bṛhadīśvara: An Architectural Study. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 1995.
  1052.  
  1053. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1054.  
  1055. This is an outstanding study of the most important Chola dynasty temple made especially useful by the excellent plans and elevation drawings.
  1056.  
  1057. Find this resource:
  1058.  
  1059. Rodin, Auguste, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, and Victor Goloubew. Sculptures çivaïtes. Paris: van Oest, 1921.
  1060.  
  1061. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1062.  
  1063. Building on Coomaraswamy 2003 and incorporating many of those ideas, it adds aesthetic observations by Rodin, a sculptor of considerable distinction, and Goloubew, a musician and scholar of Southeast Asian art.
  1064.  
  1065. Find this resource:
  1066.  
  1067. South India under Other Ruling Houses
  1068. Temples and sculptures were produced elsewhere in South India, notably under the Nolamba dynasty, who ruled large parts of Andhra Pradesh (Cohen 1998, cited under South India under the Chola Dynasty, and Sivaramamurti 2000), and the Cheras, who ruled parts of Kerala (Art Museum, Trivandrum 1981). Foekema 1994 superbly presents Hoysala architecture.
  1069.  
  1070. Art Museum, Trivandrum. Catalogue of Selected Bronzes, Wood-Carvings, and Sculptures. Trivandrum, India: Department of Museums and Zoo, Government of Kerala, 1981.
  1071.  
  1072. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1073.  
  1074. Many of these date to the Chera period.
  1075.  
  1076. Find this resource:
  1077.  
  1078. Foekema, Gerard. Hoysala Architecture: Medieval Temples of Southern Karnataka Built during Hoysala Rule. 2 vols. New Delhi: Books & Books, 1994.
  1079.  
  1080. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1081.  
  1082. The Hoysala temples are especially important, because many sculptures on them bear the names of the sculptors and information on their places of origin, making possible a study of the movements of artists in Antiquity.
  1083.  
  1084. Find this resource:
  1085.  
  1086. Sivaramamurti, C. Nolamba Sculptures. Madras: Commissioner of Museums, Government Museum, 2000.
  1087.  
  1088. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1089.  
  1090. A retitled reprint of the 1964 catalogue of Nolamba sculptures in the museum.
  1091.  
  1092. Find this resource:
  1093.  
  1094. The 13th Through 18th Centuries
  1095. Often writing on the art of this period is shaped by the misguided sense that these years comprise an Islamic period, building on the 19th-century division of Indian history according to religious categories. Although Sultanate dynasties ruled in northern India, as did the Moguls for an extended period, Rajput houses ruled simultaneously and patronized art as much as the Muslim rulers did. The same pertains in the Deccan and South India, where both Muslim and Hindu houses ruled. Too often Muslim houses are viewed as invaders whose purpose was iconoclasm as much as the acquisition of territory and wealth, and the monuments are presented in that context. The most effective corrective is Asher and Talbot 2006. Damage to Hindu and Buddhist sites is frequently attributed to Muslim iconoclasm, while other sites are presented as having resisted Muslim aggression. Until the late 20th century academic studies focused largely on material dating to the 12th century and earlier because of an underlying sense that the material of the 13th through 18th centuries is somehow more alien. This notion pertained not only to the Islamic architecture of this time but also to Rajput architecture, which was seen as sullied by alien forms. However, with the closing of Iran to foreign scholars, Islamicists turned to South Asia, and in their wake came those who studied Rajput architecture. South Asian painting was studied by scholars somewhat later than architecture, because it was a private art until museum collections made it more public, although until the late 20th century it was studied largely from the perspective of connoisseurship. The importance of painting has been diminished by referring to the works as miniature painting, as if diminutive size were a mark of its relative importance. In this section are one book that covers multiple media of the Moguls (Michell and Currim 2007), one that covers the art and architecture of their contemporaries in the Deccan (Hutton 2006), and a history book (Asher and Talbot 2006).
  1096.  
  1097. Asher, Catherine B., and Cynthia Talbot. India before Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  1098.  
  1099. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1100.  
  1101. A history book, the best available for this period, heavy on art history.
  1102.  
  1103. Find this resource:
  1104.  
  1105. Hutton, Deborah S. At the Court of Bijapur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
  1106.  
  1107. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1108.  
  1109. Does a superb job of presenting the art of this Deccani court in its broad historical context.
  1110.  
  1111. Find this resource:
  1112.  
  1113. Michell, George, and Mumtaz Currim. Mughal Style: The Art and Architecture of Islamic India. Mumbai: India Book House, 2007.
  1114.  
  1115. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1116.  
  1117. One of the few books that covers both painting and architecture, though restricted to the art of the Mogul dynasty. Includes a chapter on the Moguls as patrons.
  1118.  
  1119. Find this resource:
  1120.  
  1121. Architecture before the Moguls and beyond the Mogul Realm
  1122. There is no excellent overview of Sultanate architecture. Nath 1978 and Merklinger 2005 present survey-level information. Individual sultanate monuments, most notably the Qutb Minar, have been given more thoughtful coverage. See, for example, the straightforward presentation of data, so characteristic of works produced by the Archaeological Survey of India, in Page 1970, which may be contrasted with the incisive historiography of Kumar 2002. Cousens 1982, like Page 1970, presents monuments with little interpretative scholarship. The kingdom of Vijayanagar, contemporary with the Moguls, created an enormously impressive capital that has been the subject of many studies. Michell 1992 is the best overview. Tillotson 1987 looks at the palace architecture of the Moguls’ contemporaries in Rajasthan.
  1123.  
  1124. Cousens, Henry. The Architectural Antiquities of Western India. New Delhi: Cosmo, 1982.
  1125.  
  1126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1127.  
  1128. This is a reprint edition of the 1926 book, one of several detailed reports that Cousens wrote on architecture both in the Deccan and in western India, areas that fell under his authority with the Archaeological Survey of India. Text available online.
  1129.  
  1130. Find this resource:
  1131.  
  1132. Kumar, Sunil. The Present in Delhi’s Pasts. Delhi: Three Essays, 2002.
  1133.  
  1134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1135.  
  1136. The essay “Qutub and Modern Memory” (pp. 1–46) has been frequently reprinted with slight modifications, but each version presents an excellent historiography of this monument.
  1137.  
  1138. Find this resource:
  1139.  
  1140. Merklinger, Elizabeth Schotten. Sultanate Architecture of Pre-Mughal India. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2005.
  1141.  
  1142. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1143.  
  1144. This book and Nath 1978 are the only books to survey the period, though this one is based on dissertation research conducted almost two decades before publication.
  1145.  
  1146. Find this resource:
  1147.  
  1148. Michell, George. The Vijayanagara Courtly Style: Incorporation and Synthesis in the Royal Architecture of Southern India, 15th–17th Centuries. New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1992.
  1149.  
  1150. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1151.  
  1152. Although excavations at Vijayanagara (also called Hampi, the village in which the ancient site is located) have been conducted by the Archaeological Survey of India and the Karnataka State Department of Archaeology, George Michell and John Fritz should be credited with fostering this and a great many other studies of this important site.
  1153.  
  1154. Find this resource:
  1155.  
  1156. Nath, R. History of Sultanate Architecture. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1978.
  1157.  
  1158. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1159.  
  1160. Nath writes widely and often superficially, though this was perhaps the first book on sultanate architecture.
  1161.  
  1162. Find this resource:
  1163.  
  1164. Page, J. A. An Historical Memoir on the Qutb, Delhi. Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India 22. New Delhi: Lakshmi, 1970.
  1165.  
  1166. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1167.  
  1168. A presentation rather than analysis of this monument, including its inscriptions.
  1169.  
  1170. Find this resource:
  1171.  
  1172. Tillotson, G. H. R. The Rajput Palaces: The Development of an Architectural Style, 1450–1750. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
  1173.  
  1174. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1175.  
  1176. Much writing on this subject is in the form of coffee-table books intended to appeal to tourists. This, however, is one of the few serious books on the subject.
  1177.  
  1178. Find this resource:
  1179.  
  1180. Mogul Architecture
  1181. Thoughtful work has focused on Mogul architecture, for example, Asher 1992, Koch 1991, and Koch 2006, but the works of Purushottam Nagesh Oak (Oak 1968, for example) represent a dangerous trend, since some take seriously his attempt to rewrite South Asian history by obliterating Islam from the region.
  1182.  
  1183. Asher, Catherine B. Architecture of Mughal India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  1184.  
  1185. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1186.  
  1187. One of two excellent books on the subject.
  1188.  
  1189. Find this resource:
  1190.  
  1191. Koch, Ebba. Mughal Architecture: An Outline of Its History and Development (1526–1858). Munich: Prestel, 1991.
  1192.  
  1193. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1194.  
  1195. This book and Asher 1992 are the best surveys of the subject.
  1196.  
  1197. Find this resource:
  1198.  
  1199. Koch, Ebba. The Complete Taj Mahal: And the Riverfront Gardens of Agra. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
  1200.  
  1201. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1202.  
  1203. Complete it is, for it presents the monument, including the gardens, in meticulous detail and thorough historical perspective.
  1204.  
  1205. Find this resource:
  1206.  
  1207. Oak, Purushottam Nagesh. The Taj Mahal Is a Hindu Palace. Bombay: Pearl, 1968.
  1208.  
  1209. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1210.  
  1211. Oak’s writing on this and other subjects is part of a dangerous distortion of history. He entirely misreads documents to prove that just about all great Muslim monuments in South Asia are Hindu works.
  1212.  
  1213. Find this resource:
  1214.  
  1215. Painting and Textiles
  1216. The study of painting came relatively late to scholarship on South Asian art. Coomaraswamy 1994, one of the first works on the subject, dates almost a full century after the earliest works on South Asian sculpture and architecture. Thus until the late 20th century scholarship focused on connoisseurship as scholars work toward a taxonomy of South Asian painting. Aitken 2010, however, represents an important change in approach. Beach 1992 surveys paintings of the period, and Archer 1973 is a more focused study of painting in the Punjab Hills (now Himachal Pradesh). A very important exhibition (see Beach, et al. 2011) looked at the works of individual painters, an entirely new approach to South Asian painting. Irwin and Hall 1971 considers the important art of textiles, one of South Asia’s main export products both in the past and in the early 21st century and an art consumed at home. Guy 1998 looks at textiles made for export to Southeast Asia. Among the fine Mogul luxury arts, more has been written on carpets than on other forms, such as jades and jewels; for example, Walker 1997.
  1217.  
  1218. Aitken, Molly Emma. The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
  1219.  
  1220. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1221.  
  1222. A new approach to South Asian painting, probing and elegantly written.
  1223.  
  1224. Find this resource:
  1225.  
  1226. Archer, William George. Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills: A Survey and History of Pahari Miniature Painting. 2 vols. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1973.
  1227.  
  1228. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1229.  
  1230. Here Archer breaks down the diverse styles of painting, assigning each to a different location of production.
  1231.  
  1232. Find this resource:
  1233.  
  1234. Beach, Milo C. Mughal and Rajput Painting. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  1235.  
  1236. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1237.  
  1238. Although it is not the first survey of South Asian painting, it is a scholarly overview of the subject.
  1239.  
  1240. Find this resource:
  1241.  
  1242. Beach, Milo C., Eberhard Fischer, B. N. Goswamy, and Jorrit Britschgi. Masters of Indian Painting. 2 vols. Zurich: Artibus Asia, 2011.
  1243.  
  1244. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1245.  
  1246. The exhibition on which this book is based presented paintings grouped by the artist who produced them, giving agency to the artist rather than to the patron, as was usually done. While conventional for European art, this is novel in the art of South Asia.
  1247.  
  1248. Find this resource:
  1249.  
  1250. Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish. “On Mughal and Rajput Painting.” In Art and Swadeshi. 2d ed. By Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, 63–80. New Delhi: Munshiram Manohartal, 1994.
  1251.  
  1252. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1253.  
  1254. If this was not the first academic presentation of South Asian painting it was among the first. Originally published in 1912.
  1255.  
  1256. Find this resource:
  1257.  
  1258. Guy, John. Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
  1259.  
  1260. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1261.  
  1262. Outstanding book on Indian export textiles.
  1263.  
  1264. Find this resource:
  1265.  
  1266. Irwin, John, and Margaret Hall. Indian Painted and Printed Fabrics. Ahmedabad, India: Calico Museum of Textiles, 1971.
  1267.  
  1268. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1269.  
  1270. Scholarship on textiles has been limited despite the fact that South Asian textiles have for long been one of the most important arts of the region, reaching a global market from early times.
  1271.  
  1272. Find this resource:
  1273.  
  1274. Walker, Daniel. Flowers Underfoot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997.
  1275.  
  1276. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1277.  
  1278. Very good exhibition catalogue with a useful bibliography.
  1279.  
  1280. Find this resource:
  1281.  
  1282. Colonial South Asia
  1283. In 1858, following the first uprising, often called the mutiny in Western histories, authority shifted from the East India Company to the Crown. But a great deal of South Asia remained independent, ruled by so-called princes, a term widely used even though it diminishes the real authority of these independent rulers. Inheriting this new realm, the British sought to understand it better by instituting “scientific” surveys: the mapping survey known as the trigonometric survey, the census, and the Archaeological Survey of India. That last institution, under the leadership of the first director general, Alexander Cunningham, published annual reports of surveys beginning in 1862 (Cunningham 1972). These are largely narrative reports on the ancient sites and their monuments, mostly in the north. New forms of documenting and producing art were introduced, for example, photography and lithography, and new forms of architecture were constructed, some of them for the Raj, as the British authority was known, and some for indigenous people, including the rulers in Rajasthan and elsewhere. Scholarship that looks back on this period often has shed the descriptive archaeological character of scholarship on earlier periods; for example, Guha-Thakurta 1992, Mitter 1994, and Metcalf 1989. Scholarship on photography and other print media is comparably sophisticated; for example, Pinney 1997 and Dehejia 2000. Guha-Thakurta 1992 and Mitter 1994 focus on Bengal, but other scholarship looks at Ravi Varma, the best-known Indian painter, who initially engaged European techniques and later in his career produced prints that became the basis of Indian popular calendar art. Some European artists worked in India, even for Indian patrons (Chakrabarti 1987), and some Indian artists produced paintings known as company paintings for the British (Archer and Parlett 1992). This was a period long neglected in the art historical scholarship, because the “true” India was imagined to be manifest in older material. Since there was not a paradigm for scholars to fall back on, an open field allowed for probing, imaginative work.
  1284.  
  1285. Archer, Mildred, and Graham Parlett. Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992.
  1286.  
  1287. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1288.  
  1289. Traditional South Asian artists were commissioned by the British to produce paintings that illustrated everyday life in India, that is, the diverse individuals representing the diverse professions and activities of everyday life. These have come to be known as company paintings. The British, always the highest officials among them, assumed the role of patron, replacing the maharaja, or indigenous ruler, or a wealthy merchant, who more often commissioned whole manuscripts.
  1290.  
  1291. Find this resource:
  1292.  
  1293. Chakrabarti, Hiren. European Artists and India, 1700–1900. Calcutta: Victoria Memorial, 1987.
  1294.  
  1295. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1296.  
  1297. This catalogue of an exhibition points to the question of what constitutes South Asian art, a question that pertains to other periods as well.
  1298.  
  1299. Find this resource:
  1300.  
  1301. Cunningham, Alexander. Archaeological Survey of India: Reports. 22 vols. Delhi: Indological Book House, 1972.
  1302.  
  1303. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1304.  
  1305. These volumes, originally published beginning in 1862, are often catalogued under the title of each separate report and the primary author, making it difficult to locate the whole series. They are nonetheless a valuable resource both for the sites as they appeared in the 19th century and for attitudes toward the monuments that often prevailed in colonial times.
  1306.  
  1307. Find this resource:
  1308.  
  1309. Dehejia, Vidya. India through the Lens: Photography, 1840–1911. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2000.
  1310.  
  1311. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1312.  
  1313. This catalogue of a very important exhibition does an outstanding job of reviewing the early history of photography in the subcontinent and offers an excellent bibliography.
  1314.  
  1315. Find this resource:
  1316.  
  1317. Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. The Making of a New “Indian” Art: Artists, Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  1318.  
  1319. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1320.  
  1321. This excellent book probes art in Bengal, where a nationalist art, one that consciously opposed the colonialist project, emerged.
  1322.  
  1323. Find this resource:
  1324.  
  1325. Metcalf, Thomas R. An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
  1326.  
  1327. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1328.  
  1329. While there is excellent scholarship on British architecture in India, there has been less interest and little comparable scholarship on indigenous architecture of this period. One of several important aspects of the book is the discussion of buildings produced by British architects for Indian rajas, for example, in Jaipur.
  1330.  
  1331. Find this resource:
  1332.  
  1333. Mitter, Partha. Art and Nationalism in Colonial India: Occidental Orientations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
  1334.  
  1335. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1336.  
  1337. While focusing largely on art and nationalism in Bengal, this important book takes a broader perspective.
  1338.  
  1339. Find this resource:
  1340.  
  1341. Pinney, Christopher. Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
  1342.  
  1343. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1344.  
  1345. The most probing study of early photographs in South Asia.
  1346.  
  1347. Find this resource:
  1348.  
  1349. Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art
  1350. Until the late 20th century modern and contemporary South Asian art were viewed as derivative of European art and were almost entirely ignored by scholars. Both are, however, fast becoming the field of great interest among scholars, and some of the best and most sophisticated academic writing is on these fields. Before about 1990 most of the writing on modern and contemporary South Asian art was in the form of art criticism, most commonly of exhibitions. But larger issues soon attracted scholarly attention, for example, the notion of a modern art in the newly established nation-states carved from British India (Dalmia 2001, Dalmia and Hashmi 2007, and Dadi 2010). Even more compelling issues have concerned scholars; for example, an exploration of the issue of modernism in South Asia (Mitter 2007, Mitter 2008, and Kapur 2000). Some other issues that have concerned scholars of modern and contemporary South Asian art, for example, identity, have not adequately been addressed by scholars looking at previous periods. Identity relates not only to identification with one of the postcolonial nation-states created in 1947 but also with regard to religion and the diaspora. Related to identity is the way art has shaped the new nation-states and the way nation-states have been shaped by the visual (Brown 2009, Ramaswamy 2010). Apart from the scholarship on “high” art, there is growing academic interest in (and sound scholarship on) India’s popular culture, including calendar art (Jain 2007) and cinema.
  1351.  
  1352. Brown, Rebecca M. Art for a Modern India, 1947–1980. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
  1353.  
  1354. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1355.  
  1356. While Partha Mitter examines the period just prior to independence, Brown explores the development of a South Asian modernism in diverse media during the years immediately following independence.
  1357.  
  1358. Find this resource:
  1359.  
  1360. Dadi, Iftikhar. Modernism and the Muslim Art of South Asia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
  1361.  
  1362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1363.  
  1364. Essentially the author’s dissertation, the book looks at artists in Pakistan, not all of South Asia, but does so in the context of Muslim identity.
  1365.  
  1366. Find this resource:
  1367.  
  1368. Dalmia, Yashodhara. The Making of Modern Indian Art: The Progressives. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  1369.  
  1370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1371.  
  1372. Treats, as most do, the group known as the Bombay Progressives as the makers of South Asian modernism.
  1373.  
  1374. Find this resource:
  1375.  
  1376. Dalmia, Yashodhara, and Salima Hashmi. Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: The Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007
  1377.  
  1378. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1379.  
  1380. A book of essays by an Indian and a Pakistani scholar, especially appropriate given the migration of artists from Lahore to India and from Mumbai to Pakistan, making issues of identity and memory central to the artists and the viewers who gaze at their work.
  1381.  
  1382. Find this resource:
  1383.  
  1384. Jain, Kajri. Gods in the Bazaar: The Economies of Indian Calendar Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
  1385.  
  1386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1387.  
  1388. A superb treatment of one of the two most popular forms in all Indian visual culture, the other being cinema.
  1389.  
  1390. Find this resource:
  1391.  
  1392. Kapur, Geeta. When Was Modernism: Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India. New Delhi: Tulika, 2000.
  1393.  
  1394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1395.  
  1396. The voice of this critic, unaffiliated with any academic institution, needs to be recognized for the powerful role she has had in shaping perceptions of the modern in South Asia.
  1397.  
  1398. Find this resource:
  1399.  
  1400. Mitter, Partha. The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922–1947. London: Reaktion, 2007.
  1401.  
  1402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1403.  
  1404. Mitter, the pioneering scholar of modern art in South Asia, examines art from the time of the Bauhaus exhibit in Calcutta to the moment of independence.
  1405.  
  1406. Find this resource:
  1407.  
  1408. Mitter, Partha. “Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-garde Art from the Periphery.” Art Bulletin 90.4 (2008): 531–548.
  1409.  
  1410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1411.  
  1412. This article and the responses to it by Alastair Wright, Rebecca M. Brown, Saloni Mathur, and Ajay Sinha, all part of the impressive Interventions Series in this journal, show the impressive leaps in the study of South Asian modern art in just a decade.
  1413.  
  1414. Find this resource:
  1415.  
  1416. Ramaswamy, Sumathi. The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
  1417.  
  1418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  1419.  
  1420. Examines the changing visual representations of Mother India and the politics that shape and respond to these representations.
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Public Pastes
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!