Contributed articles.

Catalogue and description of the art collections.

Some of us take pride and pleasure in our needlework skills, while others of us have been drawn to sewing crafts but haven't been confident enough to try them. Happily, this book is a gold mine of instruction and inspiration for everyone, whatever your level of skill.

Pahari Painting - "Painting from the hills", often subsumed under the broad head, Rajput Painting - has long been acknowledged as one of the great achievements of India in the realm of art. For too long, however, the Pahari painter, the maker of these images, has continued to be seen as belonging to an indeterminate, anonymous group of craftsmen who simply plied predetermined brushes. The present work is aimed at challenging that notion, for it presents the painter as thinking man, faced with, and capable of, exercising choices. It was time that the 'long winter of neglect' in which he had been left by history came to an end.

Satire reveals fault lines and incongruities between ideal and practice. Satirical discourse may be independent or invade and parody literary genres. It unmasks, ridicules and thereby deconstructs evil and hypocrisy to reconstruct honesty and reason, and at its farthest end may amount to moral utopia. This volume brings together essays on satire in the Indian vernaculars and in painting, mainly from the period of first modernity (ca. mid-fifteenth to mid-eighteenth century). These are framed by a contribution on the more ancient Tamil Jain satire and two essays on colonial satire. Among the contributing researchers are Purshottam Agrawal, France Bhattacharya, Ludwig Habighorst, Hans Harder, Monika Horstmann, Hephzibah Israel, Rohini Mokashi-Punekar, Anne E. Monius, Christina Oesterheld, and Heidi Pauwels.

As one of the finest holdings of Indian art in the West, the Kronos Collections are particularly distinguished for paintings made between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills. These outstanding works, many of which are published and illustrated here for the first time, are characterized by their brilliant colors and vivid, powerful depictions of scenes from Hindu epics, mystical legends, and courtly life. They also present a new way of seeking the divine through a form of personal devotion—known as bhakti—that had permeated India’s Hindu community. While explaining the gods, demons, lovers, fantastical creatures, and mystical symbols that are central to literature and worship, this publication celebrates the diverse styles and traditions of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures features an informative entry for each work and two essays by scholar Terence McInerney that together outline the history of Indian painting and the Rajput courts, providing fresh insights and interpretations. Also included are a personal essay by expert and collector Steven M. Kossak and an examination of Hindu epic and myth in Mughal painting, which lays important foundations for Rajput painting, by curator Navina Najat Haidar. Through their research and observations, the authors deepen our understanding and underscore the significance of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures presents a nuanced view of a way of life intimately tied to the seasons, the arts, and the divine.

Catalog of an exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art, Oct. 22, 2005-Jan. 22, 2006; and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Aug. 6, 2006.

The Rigveda is a monumental text in both world religion and world literature, yet outside a small band of specialists it is little known. Composed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, it stands as the foundational text of what would later be called Hinduism. The text consists of over a thousand hymns dedicated to various divinities, composed in sophisticated and often enigmatic verse. This concise guide from two of the Rigveda's leading English-language scholars introduces the text and breaks down its large range of topics--from meditations on cosmic enigmas to penetrating reflections on the ability of mortals to make contact with and affect the divine and cosmic realms through sacrifice and praise--for a wider audience.