PAHARI PAINTINGS OF THE NALA - DAMAYANTI THEME

PAHARI PAINTINGS OF THE NALA - DAMAYANTI THEME
Author: PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
Publisher: Publications Division Ministry of Information & Broadcasting
Total Pages: 329
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 8123030029

The paintings reproduced in this beautiful volume were created in the second half of the 18th century in the Dogra Pahari region of North India, mainly in what is now Himachal Pradesh. Apart from their martial qualities and rich folklore, the several schools of Pahari art have been a major contribution of the Dogra-Pahari people to the grand mosaic of Indian culture. Professor B.N. Goswamy has with great competence traced the historical and geographical back-ground in which these painting were produced. I would only add that they combine the beauty and freshness of the mountains with the rare delicacy and grace of the people living in the area.

Text to Tradition

Text to Tradition
Author: Deven M. Patel
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 023116680X

Written in the twelfth century, the Naisadhiyacarita (The Adventures of Nala, King of Nisadha) is a seminal Sanskrit poem beloved by South Asian literary communities for nearly a millennium. This volume introduces readers to the poem’s author, his reading communities, the modes through which the poem has been read and used, the contexts through which it became canonical, its literary offspring, and the emotional power it still holds for the culture that values it. The study privileges the intellectual, affective, and social forms of cultural practice informing a region’s people and institutions. It treats literary texts as traditions in their own right and draws attention to the critical genres and actors involved in their reception.

Divine Pleasures

Divine Pleasures
Author: Terence McInerney
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2016-06-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588395901

As one of the finest holdings of Indian art in the West, the Kronos Collections are particularly distinguished for paintings made between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills. These outstanding works, many of which are published and illustrated here for the first time, are characterized by their brilliant colors and vivid, powerful depictions of scenes from Hindu epics, mystical legends, and courtly life. They also present a new way of seeking the divine through a form of personal devotion—known as bhakti—that had permeated India’s Hindu community. While explaining the gods, demons, lovers, fantastical creatures, and mystical symbols that are central to literature and worship, this publication celebrates the diverse styles and traditions of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures features an informative entry for each work and two essays by scholar Terence McInerney that together outline the history of Indian painting and the Rajput courts, providing fresh insights and interpretations. Also included are a personal essay by expert and collector Steven M. Kossak and an examination of Hindu epic and myth in Mughal painting, which lays important foundations for Rajput painting, by curator Navina Najat Haidar. Through their research and observations, the authors deepen our understanding and underscore the significance of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures presents a nuanced view of a way of life intimately tied to the seasons, the arts, and the divine.

Culture, Ideology, Hegemony

Culture, Ideology, Hegemony
Author: K. N. Panikkar
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 184331052X

This volume explores the interconnections between culture, ideology and hegemony in an effort to understand and explain how Indians came to terms with colonial subjection and envisioned a future for the society in which they lived. The process of exploring the indigenous epistemological tradition and assessing it in the context of advances made by the west was not unilinear and undifferentiated; it was driven with contradictions, contentions and ruptures. Locating intellectual history at the intersection of social and cultural history, the eight essays in this book cover a wide range of issues, moving from an overview of religious and social ideas in colonial India to empirical studies of themes such as indigenous medicine, the family and literary fiction. Professor Panikkar contests both the imperialist and nationalist paradigms of intellectual history. Meticulously researched and lucidly argued, his analysis is illuminated by a rare sensitivity to the nature of class formation and class values, as well as to the material conditions of human existence.

What Is an Image?

What Is an Image?
Author: James Elkins
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2011-12-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0271072318

What Is an Image? raises the stakes for writing in art history, visual studies, art theory, and art criticism by questioning one of the most fundamental terms of all, the image or picture. This innovative collection gathers some of the most influential historians and theorists working on images to discuss what the visual has come to mean. Topics include concepts such as image and picture in the West and outside it; the reception and rejection of semiotics; the question of what is outside the image; the question of whether images have a distinct nature or are products of discourse, like language; the relationship between images and religious meanings; and the study of non-art images in medicine, science, and technology. Among the major writers represented in this book are Gottfried Boehm, Michael Ann Holly, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, W. J. T. Mitchell, Marie-José Mondzain, Keith Moxey, Parul Dave Mukherji, Wolfram Pichler, Alex Potts, and Adrian Rifkin.

Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology

Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology
Author: E.C.L. During Caspers
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9400978227

When in 1925 the initiative was taken by the Kern Institute Leiden to start the publica tion of an Annual Bibliography of Indian Archaeology, the Board of the Institute could do so with confidence, as it was sure of the assistance of scholars all over the world as to the supply of publications as well as of information. With the help of this material a bibliography could be compiled by a small team of highly skilled archaeologists who could devote part of their time and attention to such a task for the benefit of their colleagues in all parts of the world. Times since then have changed, and circumstances have become less and less favourable. To find classified labour for the compilation and editing of such a bibliography has become extremely difficult, and this the more so as this work cannot be paid in accordance with the standards for this branch of classified documentation. The work has to be done as a part of the daily routine work even a scholar in today's time is expected to perform, and which he cannot but consider as being detrimental to the performing of those parts of his work, that demand the use of those qualifications that actually make him the expert.

Mughal and Rajput Painting

Mughal and Rajput Painting
Author: Milo Cleveland Beach
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1992-09-24
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780521400275

The Mughals - descendants of Timur and Genghiz Khan with strong cultural ties to the Persian world - seized political power in north India in 1526 and became the most important artistically active Muslim dynasty on the subcontinent. In this richly illustrated book, Dr Milo Beach shows how, between 1555 and 1630 in particular, Mughal patronage of the arts was incessant and radically innovative for the Indian context.