Late Temple Architecture in India, 15th to 19th Centuries: Continuities, Revivals, Appropriations, and Innovations

摘要

The temples of India represent one of the great architectural traditions of the world. From the earliest structures dating to the 4th century AD in the north, large numbers of elaborate stone, and occasionally brick, temples were built between the 6th and 13th centuries all across the region. The arrival of Islam in South Asia from the 12th century further enriched the architectural landscape with the construction of tombs, mosques and palaces. The iconoclasm and disruption to Hindu religious practice brought about by sultanate incursions and the establishment of Islamic rule across some of the region in the 13th and 14th centuries might be assumed to have resulted in the gradual termination of the rich traditions of temple architecture. However, as George Michell demonstrates in this original new book, temples continued to be built from the 15th century under the Islamic rule of the sultanates and the subsequent great Mughal Empire and, indeed, during the colonial dominance of the British.