The Art And Architecture Of The Indian Subcontinent

Thirty years' research and first-hand knowledge of the area have enabled the author to trace the cultural contacts which have contributed to the rich mosaic of sculpture, temples, mosques, and painting that have gone towards the creation of one of the great civilizations of the world.

South Asian visual arts, to 1900 - Critical studies.

This guidebook introduces the architecture of the Indian subcontinent including Bangladesh in great detal, revealing a great architectural culture that is richly different from that in Japan, Europe, and America. It gives the armchair traveler a visual feast with a large number of photographs, which will transport the reader to the site without having to actually travel to these magnificent but far-flung monuments. Indian architecture through the ages is included, from ancient times to the present day, along with Islamic architecture and Colonial style architecture during the British rule. Important buildings are illustrated with many photographs of the exteriors and interiors.

Encompassing the whole of the Indian subcontinent, this book examines the range of provincial styles of Islamic architecture, from its beginnings in the 13th century to its decline in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The art of Hinduism constitutes one of the world's greatest traditions. This volume examines the entire period, covering shrines consecrated to Hindu cults and works of art portraying Hindu divinities and semi-divine personalities.

Dedicated to the tracing of continuity across sectarian divides, Christopher Tadgell’s History of Architecture in India (1989) was the first modern monograph to draw together in one volume all the strands of India’s pre-colonial architectural history – from the Vedic and Native traditions of early India, through Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic and secular architecture. This comprehensive revision, Architecture in the Indian Subcontinent: From the Mauryas to the Mughals, expands the structure to acknowledge the great advance in scholarship across this extremely complex subject over the last three decades. An understanding of Indian history and religion is the basis for understanding the complex pattern of relationships in the evolution of architecture in the subcontinent. Therefore, background material covers major invasions, migrations, dynastic conflicts and cultural and commercial connections, the main religious developments and their significance and repercussions, and external architectural precedents. While avoiding the usual division of the subject into ‘Buddhist and Hindu’ and ‘Islamic’ parts in order to trace continuity, the importance of religion, symbolism and myth to the development of characteristic Indian architectural forms in all their richness and complexity is fully explained in this fully illustrated account of the subcontinent’s architecture.

Vol. 1 "is supplementary to my 'Indian architecture: its psychology, structure, and history' [i.e., V. 2] which [deals] with the Muhammadan and British periods, but it has a wider scope as a study of the political, social, religious, and artistic aspects of Indo-Aryan civilisation."-- Pref.

This definitive book tells the visual history of tile decoration in the Indian subcontinent, through vibrant photography and thorough research. Historic India, which now encompasses the modern nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, is celebrated for the richness of its architectural and decorative arts, but less well known for glazed tiles. Arthur Millner opens up this hitherto neglected subject with a richly illustrated narrative of the development of tiles across the South Asian Subcontinent. Millner traces the craft’s roots in Muslim Persia, Afghanistan and Central Asia, showing how imported glazing techniques combined with an ancient local tradition of clay craftsmanship. He explores the production, designs and influences in Indian tiles from antiquity to the colonial period, tracing the historical evolution through a series of key eras, including the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire in Northern India as well as the independent sultanates in the Deccan, Bengal, Central India and the Indus region. Although glazed tiles are generally associated with Islam, they also briefly flourished in both Hindu strongholds, such as Gwalior and Orchha, and in Christian Portuguese-ruled Goa. More than four hundred photographs, many of little-known sites, are drawn from the author’s years of travel as well as from colleagues, the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, auction houses and other celebrated institutions. These images capture both the architectural context and the visual appeal of the vibrant colors and intricate designs, and provide a visual compendium of the different styles and techniques. Taken together they offer a unique chronicle of an important and environmentally threatened aspect of the region’s cultural, artistic and religious evolution over centuries—one that will appeal to both the specialist and general reader including anyone with an interest in Indian history and architecture, as well as those interested in Islamic art and ceramics.

This book explores conceptions of Indian architecture and how the historical buildings of the subcontinent have been conceived and described. Investigating the design philosophies of architects and styles of analysis by architectural historians, the book explores how systems of design and ideas about aesthetics have governed both the construction of buildings in India and their subsequent interpretation. How did the political directives of the British colonial period shape the manner in which pioneer archaeologists wrote the histories of India's buildings? How might such accounts conflict with indigenous ones, or with historical aesthetics? How might paintings of buildings by British and Indian artists suggest different ways of understanding their subjects? In what ways must we revise our conceptions of space and time to understand the narrative art which adorns India's most ancient monuments? These are among the questions addressed by the contributors to the volume.