Indian Temple Sculpture

Description

Product Description This innovative book, illustrated with the V&A’s unrivalled collection of South-Asian sculpture, looks at Indian temple sculpture in context, as an instrument of worship which embodies powerful religious experience. John Guy considers its cosmological meaning, its origins, the temple setting and the role of sculpture within it and reveals the vivid rituals and traditions still in practice today. It is also a fascinating introduction to the principal iconographic forms in the three traditional religions of the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, with the principal deities presented through their myths and manifestations. Review `Essential and beautiful … this lavishly illustrated book is a welcome and much-needed addition to the subject of Indian religious art’ –RA (Royal Academy Magazine), 2007 About the Author John Guy is Senior Curator of South and South-East Art in the Asian Department of the V&A. Major publications include Arts of India: 1550-1900 (V&A 1990), Indian Art and Connoisseurship (1995, ed.), Vietnamese Ceramics: A Separate Tradition (1998) and Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (1998).