Imagining Architects: Creativity in the Religious Monuments of India"Imagining Architects explores the nature of visual inventions in the religious architecture of India using an analytical framework that gives makers of religious monuments a visibility commonly denied to them in the historiography of Indian art and architecture. The exploration is based on a series of unusual formal experiments documented in a group of stone temples built in the eleventh century in the Karnataka region of southern India. The author shows (in these experiments) a deliberate search for a new architectural principle, using textual evidence and inscriptions referring to architects. The author also demonstrates a self-conscious modernity of Karnataka's makers, who negotiated architectural traditions and religious ideas to radically change a previous architectural norm dominating the region."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
Contents
List of Figures | 7 |
Preface and Acknowledgments | 13 |
An Architectural Mule | 19 |
Regional Theory in the Definition of Hybrid | 31 |
Drifts in Southern Architecture | 52 |
The Vesara Moment | 77 |
Individuality and Agency in Vesara Architecture | 100 |
The Geography of Vesara Architecture Karnataka in ca AD 1100 | 126 |
So What? The Expressive Content of Vesara | 167 |
Conclusion Makers and Making of Indian Temple Architecture | 188 |
Notes | 191 |
Glossary of Sanskrit Terms | 204 |
206 | |
210 | |
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Imagining Architects: Creativity in the Religious Monuments of India Ajay J. Sinha No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
adhiṣṭhāna Aihole Aihole's American Institute archi architects architectural motifs awning Badāmī barrel-vaulted bhadra cluster Bhūmija century Plate Chalukyan chitectural conceptual courtesy Cousens Dambhal decorative Dhaky's dormer Dravida Dravida architecture eastern shrine eleventh century frame Gadag half-pillars hāra Hāverī Hirehaḍagali Hoysala Hoysala architecture Huvināhaḍagali idiom Indian architecture Indian Studies Indian Temple Architecture inscription Institute of Indian Iṭṭagi Jaina Jaina temple Joḍa Kalaśa Kalleśvara temple Karna karņas Karnataka Kramrisch Kukkanur Kuruvatti kūta kūṭas Lakkundi M. A. Dhaky madhyaśālā Mahākūṭa mahānāsī makara Mallikarjuna temple Meister Michael W moldings motif Nagara Nagara kūṭastambha nāsī niche North Indian northern Karnataka offsets pavilion pilasters pratiratha projecting offset recesses region śālā sanctum shows shrine models Siddheśvara temple southern stories style subhadra Sūḍī suggest superstructure Surya Surya temple tecture temple at Lakkundi Temple Forms temple's tenth century tion torana tower tradition tural ture twelfth century Vesara architecture Vesara temples visual wall Yallama Yallamā temple
Popular passages
Page 206 - Survey of Western India. Report of the First Season's Operations in the Belgam and Kaladgi Districts. January to May, 1874. Prepared at the India Museum and Published under the Authoiity of the Secretary of State for India in Council. By JAMES BURGESS, Author of the " Rock Temples of Elephanta," &c., &c., and Editor of
Page 207 - Pali, Sanskrit and Old Canarese Inscriptions from the Bombay Presidency and parts of the Madras Presidency and Mysore, and in the next year BL Rice published his Mysore Inscriptions.
Page 207 - Gravely, FH, and TN Ramachandran. "The Three Main Styles of Temple Architecture Recognized by the Silpa-Sastras.