The Temple Architecture of India.

• Author: Srinivasan, Doris Meth
• Position: Book review

The Temple Architecture of India. By ADAM HARDY. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2007. Pp. 256, figs., maps, illus. $90.

The aim of this book, in Hardy's words, is to open "a little window into another architectural universe," in order to understand the unfolding of structural forms in a manner that integrates architecture with religion and history. This reviewer found that the book opens a rather large vista into the world of two major Indian temple types. Along the way the reader experiences a delight in grasping plausible rationales to explain the shapes of many soaring monuments built by patrons having terrestrial and spiritual aspirations.

The two classical Hindu temple types considered in this book are the northern Nagara and southern Dravida constructions built during the medieval period (c. sixth-thirteenth centuries), that is, during a time when Indian temple architecture rivaled in scale and complexity Europe's great cathedrals. That Hardy is able to present a clear synthesis between formal architectural progressions and religious and historical benchmarks indicates how far the field of Indian architectural history has come, especially in the last fifty years. Hardy's presentation has incorporated and benefitted from major preceding works such as Stella Kramrisch's The Hindu Temple, the volumes of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture by Michael W. Meister, M. A. Dhaky, George Michell, and Krishna Deva, as well as other treatises by these senior scholars, and a selection of reliable, far-ranging monographs by art historians, historians of religion, and architectural historians dealing with documentations on Nagara and Dravida temple forms. The main contribution of Hardy's book is that he--an architect, teacher, and scholar in the field--has been able to absorb the previous research and present a unified view on the nature of architectural developments based on an underlying design principle in tune with a basic Indian mythopoeic world view. As the window opens, it discloses what the eyes should look for--with a knowing mind.

Underlying the different stages of Nagara and Dravida temple forms and their variations is, according to Hardy, the aedicule. An aedicule is a small building, as a shrine, imitating the form of the larger building. In the author's words (p. 10)

... it was sometime after my first trip to India that it gradually became clear to me that aedicules are not just "[architectural]" ornaments, but the basic units from which most Indian temple architecture is composed. A temple design is conceived as containing numerous smaller temples or shrines, arranged hierarchically at various scales, embedded within the whole or within one another. Once this simple concept is understood, other things fall into place. If the organic quality and self-replicating pattern of the Nagara and Dravida temple types has been already intuitively grasped by observers of India's rich architectural landscape, this book supports the observation with a chronological account which places developments not only within pan-Indic traditions but also within a considerably broader cultural landscape that delves into the "why" of the characteristics pertaining to Nagara and Dravida temples. The reader participates in an attempt to unlock the surface design through an understanding of the religious dynamics which underlie many, though not all, temples of these two types.

Paramount is the recognition that the organic and self-replicating architectural patterns...