The hegemony of heritage: ritual and the record in stone

Uittreksel

"The Hegemony of Heritage makes an original and significant contribution to our understanding of how architectural objects and societies' relationship to the built environment change over time. Using the pairing of two living medieval monuments in Southern Rajasthan --the Ambika Temple in Jagat, Rajasthan, and the Ékalingji Temple Complex in Kailaspuri-- the author underscores many aspects of practice and avoids focusing simply on their divergent sectarian affiliations or patronage structures. This book offers new and extremely valuable questions about these important monuments, such as the entangled politics of antiquity and whether a monument's ritual record is affirmed as continuous and hence hoary, or dismissed as discontinuous or reinvented through various strategies. The Hegemony of Heritage engages theoretical constructs with the richness of ethnographic description and asks us to rethink notions such as archive and text through the filter of sculpture and mantra."--Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Introduction : the Hindu temple in diachronic context -- Temple as geographic marker : mapping the tenth-century sectarian landscape -- Temple as catalyst : renovation and religious merit in the field -- Temple as royal abode : the regal, the real, and the ideal in fifteenth-century Mewar -- Temple as palimpsest : icons and temples in the Sultanate era -- Temple as ritual center : tenth-century traces of ritual and the record in stone -- Temple as praxis : agency in the field in Southern Rajasthan -- Temple as legal body : aesthetics and the legislation of antiquity -- Conclusion: heritage and conflict : medieval Indian temple as commodified imaginary