Exploring India'S Sacred Art Selected Writings Of Stella Kramrisch Ed. & With A Biographical Essay

Exploring India'S Sacred Art Selected Writings Of Stella Kramrisch Ed. & With A Biographical Essay
Author: Barbora Stoller Miller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1994
Genre:
ISBN: 9788120812086

Exploring India's Sacred Art presents a selection of Stella Kramrisch's influential essays, along with a biographical essay. The writings collected here emphasize the cultural and symbolic values of Indian art. The first section discusses the social and religious contexts of art. This is followed by essays on various forms of ritual art. The section entitled The Subtle Body is derived from her term for the form that underlies concrete shapes; it includes studies of literary and visual symbolism. Further essays concentrate on formal and technical aspects of temple structure and painting in the context of their symbolic meaning. Over 150 illustrations, many of them prepared especially for this volume, provide a vital visual dimension to her writings. Also included is Joseph Dye's comprehensive bibliography of her works. Exploring India's Sacred Art testifies to the life and work of one of this century's greatest art scholars and provides an unparalleled source of insight into Indian art and culture.

Many Heads, Arms and Eyes

Many Heads, Arms and Eyes
Author: Doris Meth Srinivasan
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 447
Release: 1997-09-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004644970

One of the first things that strike the Western viewer of Indian art is the multiplicity of heads, arms and eyes. This convention grows out of imagery conceived by Vedic sages to explain creation. This book for the first time investigates into the meaning of this convention. The author concentrates on its origins in Hindu art and on preceding textual references to the phenomenon of multiplicity. The first part establishes a general definition for the convention. Examination of all Brahmanical literature up to, and sometimes beyond, the 1st - 3rd century A.D., adds more information to this basic definition. The second part applies this literary information mainly to icons of the Yaksa, Śiva, Vāsudeva-Kṛsṇa and the Goddess, and indicates how Brahmanical cultural norms, exemplified in Mathurā, can transmit textual symbols. Both Part I and Part II provide iconic modules and a methodology to generate interpretations for icons with this remarkable feature through the Gupta age.

The Sacred India Book

The Sacred India Book
Author: Amit Pasricha
Publisher: Constable
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2011-10
Genre: India
ISBN: 9781780331249

Spirituality is the shining thread that runs through every motif of the rich and complex tapestry that is India. It is not only worship in temple, mosque or church, in gurudwara or agiary, that defines the faith of Indians - it is their ordinary, everyday kind of spirituality that serves as an axis, balancing the temporal with the eternal. The Sacred India Book seizes and distils this ephemeral quality often described as 'the Spirit of India'. Amit Pasricha seeks out meditative moments and momentous ones, exalted moments and exultant ones - the eternal quality of a weathered cross overlooking a windswept beach, the ecstatically outstretched hands of Holi celebrants at Vrindavan, the quiet faith of a women as she ties a piece of coloured thread on the latticed screen of a shrine. His photographs lay before the viewer the colourful, intricate mosaic of Indian religion, spirituality, ritual and tradition: images of religious art such as the living, writhing energy of unfinished idols in a potter's shed in Kolkata; the making of religious music a Buddhists chant from atop icy mountains; the richness of religious traditions in the pristine precision of a Parsi ritual. Amit Pasricha's masterful use of the panoramic format - in unintentional but fitting consonance with the wide, encompassing nature of the sacred in India - and Bharati Motwani's insightful text make The Sacred India Book a limited edition to be preserved and treasured.

A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India

A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India
Author: Upinder Singh
Publisher: Pearson Education India
Total Pages: 708
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788131716779

A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India is the most comprehensive textbook yet for undergraduate and postgraduate students. It introduces students to original sources such as ancient texts, artefacts, inscriptions and coins, illustrating how historians construct history on their basis. Its clear and balanced explanation of concepts and historical debates enables students to independently evaluate evidence, arguments and theories. This remarkable textbook allows the reader to visualize and understand the rich and varied remains of India s ancient past, transforming the process of discovering that past into an exciting experience.

Unknown India

Unknown India
Author: Stella Kramrisch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 136
Release: 1968
Genre: Folk art
ISBN:

The Art of Ajanta and Sopoćani

The Art of Ajanta and Sopoćani
Author: Om Datt Upadhya
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Total Pages: 434
Release: 1994
Genre: Ajanta (India)
ISBN: 9788120809901

Pauranic Prana-aesthetics, a finer shade different from that of vitalistic aesthetics )the earlier having breathing-rhythm of Ksaya-Vrddhi --diminuation and augmentation--other than the latter`s emphasis only on the rhythm of augmentation), has been delineated in this study with examples from the world`s two of the best art-monuments: Ajanta (India), now not remaining unknown even to the most casual connoisseur, and Sopocani (Yugoslavia), the most significant and monumentally beautiful work of Byzantine art. Tracing Prana-aesthetics as the aesthetics of inner-light coded in the creeper-motif by the artists of Ajanta, this work emphasises decoding of the creeper-motif by Byzantine artists culminating into the frescoes of Sopocani done in Hellenistic-Byzantine aesthetics beatifield by Hesycast meditation to which that of Buddhists was not unknown. Comparisons of various determinant aspects, aesthetics and artistic denominators, and constraints not allowing similar consummation are properly investigated to substantiate the thesis that Prana-aesthetics transfigures at Ajanta but transubstantiates at Sopocani. The significance of the anabolic aspects of this aesthetics is highlighted especially as a way out from the reductivistic tendencies of the present day visual-arts straining them upto the stage of catabolic dissolution.