Skrevet af SEARS
Winner of the 2014 American Publishers Awards for Professional and
Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) in the Architecture and Urban Planning
category.
This pioneering book is the first full-length study of the matha, or
Hindu monastery, which developed in India at the turn of the first
millennium. Rendered monumentally in stone, the matha represented more
than just an architectural innovation: it signaled the
institutionalization of asceticism into a formalized monastic practice,
as well as the emergence of the guru as an influential public figure.
With entirely new primary research, Tamara I. Sears examines the
architectural and archaeological histories of six little-known
monasteries in Central India and reveals the relationships between
political power, religion, and the production of sacred space. This
important work of scholarship features scrupulous original measured
drawings, providing a vast amount of new material and a much-needed
contribution to the fields of Asian art, religious studies, and cultural
history. In introducing new categories of architecture, this book
illuminates the potential of buildings to reconfigure not only social
and ritual relationships but also the fundamental ontology of the world.
Tamara I. Sears is assistant professor of South Asian art and architectural history at Yale University.
