Rediscovering the Hindu temple : the sacred architecture and urbanism of India

This volume examines the multifarious dimensions that constitute the workings of the Hindu temple as an architectural and urban built form. Eleven chapters reflect on Hindu temples from multiple standpoints - tracing their elusive evolution from wayside shrines as well as canonization into classical objects; questioning the role of treatises containing their building rules; analyzing their prescribed proportions and orders; examining their presence in, and as, larger sacred habitats and ritualistic settings; and affirming their influential role in the contemporary Indian metropolis. Going beyond stereotypical presentations of Hindu temples dominated by chronological and stylistic themes, this study, addressed to architects, urbanists, and builders, combines historic scholarship, documentation, personal observations and fieldwork to expand the idea of the Hindu temple as a complex and contradictory cultural entity, that is both formal and informal, monumental and modest, historic and modern, and deserving of a far broader and deeper understanding. TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 MAP OF INDIA 9 HINDU TEMPLES CITED IN THIS STUDY 10 FOREWORD 12 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 14 A NOTE ON AUTHORSHIP 16 INTRODUCTION 18 CHAPTER 1 - HINDUISM AND THE HINDU TEMPLE 22 CHAPTER 2 - THE PLEBEIAN TEMPLE 40 CHAPTER 3 - CODIFYING THE HINDU TEMPLE 54 CHAPTER 4 - CONCEPTION OF A HINDU TEMPLE 68 CHAPTER 5 - THE HINDU TEMPLE AS LANGUAGE AND STYLE 82 CHAPTER 6 - UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF A CANONIZED TEMPLE 100 CHAPTER 7 - SYSTEMS OF MEASURE, ORDER AND PROPORTION 128 CHAPTER 8 - BEYOND THE OBJECT 180 CHAPTER 9 - RITUAL 216 CHAPTER 10 - CIRCUITS, CARTOGRAPHIES, AND CONTRADICTIONS 238 CHAPTER 11 - EVOLVING IDENTITIES 260 EPILOGUE 272 ENDNOTES 274 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 284 APPENDIX 286 PROPORTION STUDIES ON INDIAN PILLARS 290 INDIAN ARCHITECTURAL GLOSSARY 304 BIBLIOGRAPHY 308 INDEX 313