Adam Hardy is one of the most original and prolific current writers on Indian temples. His new book offers the most thought-provoking thesis on the principles of temple architecture since Stella Kramrisch's enduringly famous study, The Hindu Temple (1946). Specialists in the field might suspect this compliment of being double-edged, for while Kramrisch's book has always justly been held in high esteem, many readers have ultimately found her portrayal of Indian design processes unconvincing, or incomplete. Some have questioned her claim to have approached the subject from a perspective derived from the temple builders' own shastras (or technical literature) rather than from within a western art-historical system. Hardy likewise goes for the grand interpretive theory that is said to be based on Indian thought, and while the result is undeniably stimulating, it remains to be seen how widely his conclusions will come to be accepted.
His attempt, he tells us in his Introduction – in the midst of a trenchant statement about the difficulties of writing at all in a post-colonial age – is to explain “the other . . . in what seem to be its own terms” (p. 19). The operative word is ‘seem’. Few would doubt the wisdom of trying to see things in a local light; the problem lies in being sure that you have identified the light correctly.
One option which Hardy rejects is the study of the shastras on building, and in particular of the essential design tool that those texts identify, namely the vastu purusha mandala. In this respect he departs not only from the example set by Kramrisch, but also from the method espoused by later specialists such as M.A. Dhaky and Krishna Deva, whose contribution is recognised and praised (somewhat faintly) for “bringing to light much indigenous architectural terminology” (p. 21).
The mandala emerges here as something of a bugbear. Hardy gratefully seizes on some recent writers' contentious claims that the role of the mandala was fabricated by Kramrisch; and he acknowledges, but elegantly side-steps, arguments advanced by Vibhuti Sachdev and this reviewer which portray it differently (p. 57). In some places in the course of the book he appears to accept the mandala-based conception of plans and ceilings (pp. 82, 157), while elsewhere he is more equivocal (p. 138) or doubtful (p. 101). Sometimes he seems to have assimilated the idea of the mandala without knowing it. When describing the interior space of temples, he remarks, “Progression inwards is from light to darkness, climbing through levels, passing through layers . . . Space is centralised and hierarchical, yet cellular and polycentric” (p. 97). This is a concise and accurate account of the concept of vithi – of the concentric segmented layers of the mandala – but it is not claimed as such.
Mandalas – or re-invented versions of them – have featured prominently in the designs and the rhetoric of leading revivalist architects like Charles Correa, and in consequence are a favourite device among aspiring imitators. Hardy comments that “having seen students design boring square buildings in the name of authenticity . . . I would not be upset if the vastu-purusha-mandala faded gracefully from the discourse” (p. 57). But the fact that the mandala has been misunderstood and misapplied in recent times is a poor reason for ignoring its historical use. The confusions of the present make it more difficult, but all the more important, to see the past in balance; and that means keeping the mandala at the centre of things.
The central device for Hardy is not the mandala but the aedicule, the niche in the temple wall. With its columns, base and roof, the aedicule is a miniature building in itself, or a three-dimensional sculptural depiction of a building; and it is the essential building block, the aggregation of which creates larger structures. This idea is not based on the shastras but that does not mean it is wrong. In fact as an analytical tool it works quite well, especially for the temples' exterior walls. Hardy's minute and patient study of aedicular patterning is the key to a whole system of classification that is sustained throughout the book.
It is also what leads Hardy to his own distinctive theory – developed in his many earlier publications but succinctly expressed here – of the kinetic force of temple design. Temple forms unfold and multiply; each form has emerged from within another and in turn becomes the source of the next. This process can be observed on two levels. It can be seen within any given regional tradition over a period of time, wherein a sequence of temples displays increasing elaboration and splitting of forms. But any individual temple can also be seen as representing the process at a single arrested moment, as if it were a depiction of something organic and growing, like a still photograph of an opening flower bud.
When Hardy seeks to connect this idea of emergence with Indian philosophical concepts he can sometimes be a bit opaque (e.g. top of p. 68). But when he describes the architectural effects he can be delightfully precise and even cheeky, as when he suggests that the distorted gavakshas of Orissan temples are achieved by “tugging at the weft” (p. 164) and compares their towers to “2 giant stacks of assorted biscuits” (p. 202).
The theory of emanation – of the dynamic force which almost literally unfolds the tradition – also determines the book's time frame. Hardy tells us at the outset that his focus is on the period between the sixth and thirteenth centuries – that is from the post-Gupta era up to and including the medieval kingdoms of north and south. As a result, what is ‘only touched upon’ (in fact largely ignored) is the almost equally long period from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries when temple architecture interacted with other and newer traditions in the region, including Islamic and European design, and eventually Modernism. The very presence of these external influences radically altered the story: there could no longer be building traditions which developed according to their own internally consistent logic, unravelling at their own pace. Startling innovations and breaks with tradition became the norm.
The story that Hardy tells works well for his chosen period, but (as he concedes) not for any time thereafter. To call the earlier period the “heyday of temple building” (p. 15) prejudges the issue: one might argue that temple architecture's later interaction with other cultures was a greater achievement still. But eclectic experiments are evidently not to Adam Hardy's taste. For the same reason he is dismissive of some recent efforts to design new temples: because of what has intervened, they do not – they cannot – follow the rules of the game; they do not “show the way” ahead (p. 241). The thought that temple architecture has ended is a sad conclusion to such a stimulating book – and surely not what the author himself would wish to believe.
All of that said, this is a lucid and beautifully illustrated survey which deserves to become a standard textbook wherever the subject is taught.
