Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas (Global South Asia) - Hardcover

Chanchani, Nachiket

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295744510 ISBN 13: 9780295744513

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2019

Synopsis

From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a region encoded with deep meaning, one approached by millions of Hindus as a primary locus of pilgrimage.

Nachiket Chanchani's innovative study explores scores of stone edifices and steles that were erected in this landscape. Through their forms, locations, interactions with the natural environment, and sociopolitical context, these lithic ensembles evoked legendary worlds, embedded historical memories in the topography, changed the mountain range's appearance, and shifted its semiotic effect. Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains also alters our understanding of the transmission of architectural knowledge and provides new evidence of how an enduring idea of India emerged in the subcontinent.

Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/mountain-temples-and-temple-mountains

About this title

About the Author

Nachiket Chanchani is associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295744510
• ISBN 13: 9780295744513
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288