Essays in Early Indian Architecture

Coomaraswamy's contribution to the history of Architecture in India was limited but profound. In particular, his probing analysis of texts and sculpted reliefs in order to reconstruct the extraordinary wooden architecture of early India was an act of great scholarship. That three ofCoomaraswamy's essays were published in a journal, Eastern Art, that ceased publication after only three issues, and that an important fourth essay on 'Huts and Related Temple Types' survived only in manuscript have made access to Coomaraswamy's work in this area difficult to students and scholars.This volume for the first time brings together these four major essays along with Coomaraswamy's analysis of `Indian Architectural Terms'. An introductory essay by Michael W Meister on 'The Language and Process of Early Indian Architecture' connects Coomaraswamy's foundational essays with morerecent scholarship on the origination of India's vast tradition of temple architecture. An Afterword, with Joseph Rykwert on `Adam's House and Hermit Huts' presents a conversation with a major western architectural historian.