Art 710: Seminar in Indian Architecture	1/18/96
VARIETIES OF NORTH INDIAN ARCHITECTURE, A.D. 400-1400

Jaffe History of Art Building, Room 201, Thursday 3-5
Prof. Michael W. Meister

Thesis:  
Throughout northern India, a variety of masonry architecture evolved 
between 400 and 600 A.D. to provide a house for images of deities.  These 
structures can be seen as one of Architecture's most extreme cases:  
where the form itself becomes a primary function of the monument.  
Several problems can be addressed in approaching these temples:  the 
sources of their unique form;  the nature of the symbolism embodied;  and 
the remarkable variety of regional expressions over time given by 
craftsmen to this otherwise homogeneous model.

This seminar intends primarily to train your eye to see the forms of the 
temple, to recognize their meanings, to be able to test and analyse their 
evolution over time, and  as a final project  to interpret and discuss 
their regional expressions. 

Photographic Resources:
The University of Pennsylvania houses a photographic archive of Indian 
architecture (now over 70,000 photographs) as part of the W. Norman Brown 
South Asia Reference Room on the fifth floor of Van Pelt library (west 
end).  To gain access, please contact the South Asia bibliographer, David 
Nelson, or his assistant.

Books:
Two books have been ordered and are available at the Penn Book Center:

	Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Essays in Early Indian Architecture, ed. 
M. W. Meister, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
	George Michell, The Hindu Temple:  An Introduction to its Meaning 
and Forms, London, 1977 (now a Chicago U. P. paperback).


Brief Reference Bibliography (by order of publication):
	Fergusson, James.  History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, 
London, 1876;  revised and edited by James Burgess, 2 vol., London, 1910.
	Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.  History of Indian and Indonesian Art, 
New York, 1927.
	Brown, Percy.  Indian Architecture, vol. 1. Buddhist and Hindu 
Periods, 5th ed., Bombay, 1965 (1st ed., 1942).  
Kramrisch, Stella.  The Hindu Temple, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1946.
Deva, Krishna.  North Indian Temples, New Delhi, 1965.
	Volwahsen, Andreas.  Living Architecture: Indian, New York, 1969.
	Chandra, Pramod, ed., Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, New 
Delhi, 1975.
	Viennot, Odette, Temples de l'Inde centrale et occidentale, 
Paris: École Française d'extreme-orient, 1976.
	Herdeg, Klaus.  Formal Structure in Indian Architecture, revised 
ed., New York: Rizzoli, 1990 (originally published 1978).
	Meister, Michael W., M. A. Dhaky, & Krishna Deva., eds.  
Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture (vol. 2, North India, in two 
parts), New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983- .
	Harle, James C.,  The Art and Architecture of the Indian 
Subcontinent (Pelican History of Art series), New York, 1986.
	Dehejia, Vidya, ed., Royal Patrons and Great Temple Art, Bombay: 
Marg Publications, 1988 (an expanded version of "Monarchs and Temples," 
Marg vol. 39, no. 2).
	Tadgell, Christopher, The History of Architecture in India:  From 
the Dawn of Civilization to the End of the Raj, London: Architecture 
Design and Technology Press, 1990.             

A further bibliography representing scholarship on regional varieties of 
northern architecture will be distributed at a later point in the 
semester, in relation to final projects.

___________

Preliminary Assignment:
Art produced under the Gupta dynasty in the fifth century A.D. is often 
spoken of as from a "classic" high point, a "golden age," but 
architecture plays a limited role in this discussion.  Using Brown, 
Fergusson, or any other sources, develop a sense of the limited nature of 
our knowledge of architecture in the Gupta period for further discussion 
in class.

Two more recent discussions are:
	Williams, Joanna G., The Art of Gupta India, Empire and Province, 
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
	Meister, M.  "D rra and the Early Gupta Tradition," in Chhavi II, 
Rai Krishna Dasa Felicitation Volume, ed. Anand Krishna,  Banaras: Bharat 
Kala Bhavan, 1981, pp. 192-205. 

___________

Further Reading:
I.  Early Indian Architecture
	Coomaraswamy, "Early Indian Architecture IV:  Huts and Related 
Temple Types," and Meister and Rykwert, "Adam's House and Hermits' Huts," 
Res 15 (1988): 5-33 (reprinted in Essays in Early Indian Architecture).
	John Irwin, "'Asokan Pillars: A Reassessment of the Evidence, 
Part IV:  Symbolism," Burlington Magazine 118 (November 1976):  734-753.

II.  Interpretive Background
	Meister, "De- and Re-constructing the Indian Temple," Art Journal 
49 (1990): 395-400. 
	----, "Fragments From a Divine Cosmology: Unfolding Forms on 
India's Temple Walls," in Gods, Guardians, and Lovers, ed. Vishakha Desai 
and Darielle Mason, New York: The Asia Society, 1993, pp. 94-115.
	----, "Symbology and Architectural Practice in India," in Sacred 
Architecture in the Traditions of India, China, Judaism and Islam, ed. 
Emily Lyle, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992, pp. 5-24.
	"Temple: Hindu Temples," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. 
Mircea Eliade, New York: Macmillan, 1987, vol. 14, pp. 368-373.

III.  Origins
	Meister, "The Language and Process of Early Indian Architecture," 
in Essays in Early Indian Architecture (1992), pp. xvii-xxviii.
	----, "Pr s da as Palace: K tina Origins of the N gara Temple," 
Artibus Asiae 49 (1989): 254-280. 
	----, "On the Development of a Morphology for a Symbolic 
Architecture: India,"  Res, Anthropology and Aesthetics, 12 (1986): 33-50.
	----, "Symbol and Surface: Masonic and Pillared Wall-Structures 
in North India," Artibus Asiae 46 (1986): 129-48. 

IV.  Considerations of "Style"
	Ackerman, James S., "A Theory of Style," Journal of Aesthetics 
and Art Criticism 20 (1962): 227-37.
	Alpers, Svetlana., "Style is What You Make It," in B. Lang, ed.,  
The Concept of Style, Ithica, N.Y., 1979.
	Gombrich, E. H., "Style" in David L. Sills, ed., International 
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, New York, 1968, pp. 352-61.
	Meister, M. "Style and Idiom in the Art of Uparam la," Muqarnas 
10 (1993): 344-354.
	----, "B th : Individuality and Idiom," Ars Orientalis 13 (1983): 
169-186. 
	Schapiro, Meyer, "Style," in Anthropology Today, ed. A. L. 
Kroeber.  Chicago, 1953; reprinted in Morris Philipson, ed., Aesthetics 
Today, Cleveland, 1961.