Th e art of vernacular painting in India is not only varied and rich but also intriguing for several reasons. With such observations the book addresses certain issues, like the validity of the historical information on Indian Art that excludes vernacular trends. The information on vernacular art in India has either been ignored such as in ancient literary discourses or inadvertently misconstrued within the theoretical purviews of modern days. If the hierarchy of the Hindu caste system has marginalised the culture of the lower rung groups, the lexicon of twentieth century anthropological studies has seen this art as material evidence of undeveloped societies; both creating the same value: to be patronised but not ‘art’. Can art be weighed on a scale of development? Arguments have been developed within the specifi c focus on scroll paintings by the itinerant painter bards in Bengal. Th e bardic tradition has been known to exist in India since a pre-Christian era and still continues within two vibrant trends of vernacular art forms – Bangla and Santhal pat. Th e book redefi nes and repositions the notion of art with contemporary folk art. As the picture Plates are self-evident, the book draws attention on a world of art that has not been present in Indian Art History.

"India retains one of the richest painting traditions in the history of global visual culture, one that both parallels aspects of European traditions and also diverges from it. While European artists venerated the landscape and landscape paintings, it is rare in the Indian tradition to find depictions of landscapes for their sheer beauty and mood, without religious or courtly significance. There is one glorious exception: Painters from the city of Udaipur in Northwestern India specialized in depicting places, including the courtly worlds and cities of rajas, sacred landscapes of many gods, and bazaars bustling with merchants, pilgrims, and craftsmen. Their court paintings and painted invitation scrolls displayed rich geographic information, notions of territory, and the bhāva, or feel, emotion, and mood of a place. This is the first book to use artistic representations of place to trace the major aesthetic, intellectual, and political shifts in South Asia over the long eighteenth century. While James Tod, the first British colonial agent based in Udaipur, established the region's reputation as a principality in a state of political and cultural deterioration, author Dipti Khera uses these paintings to suggest a counter-narrative of a prosperous region with beautiful and bountiful cities, and plentiful rains and lakes. She explores the perspectives of courtly communities, merchants, pilgrims, monks, laypeople, and officers, and the British East India Company's officers, explorers, and artists. Throughout, she draws new conclusions about the region's intellectual and artistic practices, and its shifts in political authority, mobility, and urbanity"--

Highlights the state's rich cultural and natural landscapes and attractions with fifty-seven photographs in a week-at-a-glance format.

A selection of 333 works of art representing masterpieces of the sacred and court traditions as well as their urban, folk, and tribal heritage.

Publisher description

For over 2000 years artists travelled throughout India, using painted picture scrolls to spread stories from the great Indian epics, as well as a wealth of stories about regional Gods and heroes and moral tales, amongst the most illiterate rural populati

A study of a set of sixteenth-century wall paintings at the Gyapagpa Temple in Nako, a village in India’s Himachal Pradesh state. Sixteenth-century wall paintings in a Buddhist temple in the Tibetan cultural zone of northwest India are the focus of this innovative and richly illustrated study. Initially shaped by one set of religious beliefs, the paintings have since been reinterpreted and retraced by a later Buddhist community, subsumed within its religious framework and communal memory. Melissa Kerin traces the devotional, political, and artistic histories that have influenced the paintings’ production and reception over the centuries of their use. Her interdisciplinary approach combines art historical methods with inscriptional translation, ethnographic documentation, and theoretical inquiry to understand religious images in context. “A meticulous and discerning piece of scholarship, one that is skillful in employing multiple methods—visual, linguistic and ethnographic—to create a fuller picture of a region we knew little about. . . . [A] pleasure to read.” —Pika Ghosh, author of Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal “Emphasizing the visual as primary evidence in the study of history, especially religious history, Kerin moves Buddhist art from the arena of museum displays, art markets, and aesthetics to the arena of dynamic interdisciplinary discourse, thus reaffirming the significance of in situ study. . . . Recommended.” —Choice “A forceful study on the specificity of Gyapagpa’s painting.” —South Asia Research/DESC> Indian art;south asian art;religious art;buddhist art;Indian history;south asian history;tibetan buddhism;buddhism;religion;indian buddhists;temple art;nako;gyapagpa;social history;political history;painting style;painting tradition ART019020 ART / Asian / Indian & South Asian ART035000 ART / Subjects & Themes / Religious HIS062000 HISTORY / Asia / South / India * REL007050 RELIGION / Buddhism / Tibetan 9780253010032 Patterns of War—World War II Larry H. Addington