Among the earliest studies of temple architecture in India was Ram Raz’ Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus (1834), an illustrated discussion of texts on architecture, collectively vastushastra, principally from south India. Scholarship has continued to examine and translate such texts in order to understand the theory and practice of temple architecture. The various issues raised by such studies of these ‘canonical’ texts on architecture are outlined in the introduction to this sophisticated, imaginative and original work of scholarship: who wrote and used them? Do they seek to control practice or confer authority? Do they describe, guide or inspire practice? Are they an inventory of tradition, or inventing it? (p. 1)
Adam Hardy is well-known for his extensive research and deep understanding of the forms, typologies and practice of Indian temple architecture from several decades of close study and extensive fieldwork across South Asia. In his latest book he returns to the focus and detailed analysis of a regional tradition of Indian temple architecture that enables a wider assessment of important issues for architectural historians. This is not an introductory study; many readers would be recommended to become familiar with some of Adam Hardy's earlier work such as The Temple Architecture of India (2007) before engaging with this one. But from its initial focus on one unfinished temple in eleventh century central India, this pioneering publication casts light over medieval South Asian culture more broadly.
One of the legacies of the great Paramara monarch Bhoja of Dhar, who reigned c.1010-55 in central India, are the remains of what would have been, if completed, the largest temple ever built in India. The Shiva (or Bhojeshvara) temple at Bhojpur near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh would have dwarfed similarly grand – but completed – temples elsewhere in India, such as the Rajarajeshvara at Tanjore in the far south and the Lingaraja in Bhubaneshwar, Orissa. What was completed at the temple site remains impressive; surveys have further revealed the remains of a nearby palace, a vast reservoir and irrigation network. But what makes Bhojpur so significant for the architectural historian is the existence of the most extensive set of medieval architectural drawings in South Asia - more extensive and earlier than anything comparable in Europe - together with a vastushastra, the Samaranganasutradhara, that is believed to have been authored by king Bhoja himself. Hardy analyses the interconnected evidence of text, drawings and built form to deepen our understanding of the theory and practice of medieval Indian temple architecture.
In this book the drawings on the rock surfaces around the Bhojeshvara temple are completely surveyed and reproduced for the first time in order for them to be evaluated and related to the Samaranganasutradhara and actual buildings, especially the adjacent temple to which they are associated. These exceptional drawings include five of partial plans and others of mouldings, pillars and small drawings of parts of mandapas and types of shrines. These are shown to be 1:1 and fully to scale, and thus usable models and reference points for the design of the adjacent temple. Careful analysis of these drawings, alongside the unfinished temple, fragments on site, understanding of vastushastra and close comparison with contemporary Paramara temples enable Hardy to visually reconstruct the planned temple. It had previously been argued that the unfinished appearance was deliberate for the temple was planned to have served a funerary function, but Hardy's reconstruction dismisses this idea. If completed the temple would have been over one hundred metres high – he illustrates the possible variations – and in the Bhumija mode of the north Indian language of architecture (Nagara), that had developed out of the earlier Latina in the late tenth century, and was favoured by the Paramara rulers in Malwa.
The core of the book is the three chapters that discuss twelve of the eighty-three chapters of the Samaranganasutradhara on Nagara, Dravida and Bhumija temples. This is a very fruitful collaboration with the Sanskritist Mattia Salvini, whose translation is effectively informed by Adam Hardy's deep understanding of the logic of temple forms. The wisdom of this partnership is clear at the outset: “Adam could often predict the measurements to be found in a verse yet to be read, or he would correctly guess what a missing portion should contain. . .imagine translating an ancient Sanskrit verse on medieval temples to someone who can then tell you what the next verse is going to be!” (p. xii).
The three long chapters on Nagara (pp. 75–163), Dravida (pp. 164–201) and Bhumija temples (pp. 202–253) in the Samaranganasutradhara discuss the text alongside firstly, interpretative drawings of the composition and elevations of the temples described and secondly, photographs of a wealth of examples of contemporary temples from across central and western India in those forms. The seemingly repetitive list of measurements, proportions and technical vocabulary for architectural elements is shown to have its own architectural logic. Some of the temples described are ideals and imagined possibilities that build upon the compositional logic outlined, but not built; others are convincing and eminently buildable.
The detailed analysis of the text at the core of the book enables Hardy to develop his conclusions on the theory and practice of medieval temple architecture (pp. 254–269). “Bhojpur is not the Samarangana applied” but both exhibit the same way of thinking about architecture, including the same kinds of modular proportion (p. 255). Instead of equating the use of vastushastra texts with “constraint, stagnation and an absence of creativity” he argues that there is a continued process of creativity in filling the omissions and determining the aspects the texts do not delineate. Vastushastras are concerned with design, with drawing; they describe a building from the front as an abstraction and the instructions are for drawing not built construction (p. 265).
Adam Hardy is the author of this book, but his extensive and productive collaboration with other scholars – architects, archaeologists, Sanskritists, art historians - is evident throughout; this book is the most substantial published outcome of a three-year AHRC project on ‘The Indian Temple: Production, Place, Patronage’ (See also JRAS vol. 22.1, January 2012). This book demonstrates the merit of such academic teamwork across disciplinary expertise. The IGNCA and Dev Publishers are to be commended for their high quality production with full-colour illustrations throughout and good quality paper (a notable contrast with some longer-established Delhi publishers). A few typos and spelling mistakes have slipped through: in a book where accurate measurements are part of the discussion, the Rajarajeshvara temple's vimana at Tanjavur is, for example, stated to be 36m (p. 4) and elsewhere 66m. (p. 71) – Pierre Pichard states it to be 59.82m. (Tanjavur-Brihadisvara, 1995).
Hardy concludes his discussion of the relationship of vastushastra to the built forms of temples by stating that “If these texts are like recipe books, they cannot determine the dish, only set out the essentials of its ingredients, their manner of combination and their relative proportions; but they can be an inspiration”. This book is an inspiration itself.
