Dr Devangana Desai

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Educational Qualifications: M.A. PhD, University of Mumbai

Dr. Devangana Desai, art historian, is Former Vice-President of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai (until August 2015). She is Trustee, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India) Mumbai, and Trustee, Sarabhai Foundation (Calico Museum), Ahmedabad. Dr. Desai is Series Editor, the Monumental Legacy Series on the World Heritage Sites in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

Dr. Desai was Consultant on a Project on the Museum Images of Khajuraho, Franco-Indian Research, Mumbai. She was Joint Editor, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, from 1992 to 2009. She was Chairperson of the Museum Society of Bombay for nine years from 1983 to 1992.

Dr. Desai is author of 1] Art and Icon – Essays on Early Indian Art, 2013; 2] Khajuraho – Monumental Legacy, (15th impression, 2014); The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho, 1996; Erotic Sculpture of India – A Socio-Cultural Study, 1975, second Edition, 1985; Sectional Presidential Address, Indian History Congress (1989), entitled Social Dimensions of Art in Early India; and Presidential Address for Indian Art History Congress (2013) entitled Art and Literature – A Dialogue, and over ninety papers on various aspects of Ancient Indian Art. Presently, Dr. Desai is writing a monograph on Mythology and Art – Vishnu-Krishna on the Banyan Leaf.

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Book Review: The Buddhist Art of NāgārjunakoṇḍaStoneElizabeth RosenThe Buddhist Art of NāgārjunakoṇḍaMotilal Banarsidass, Delhi1994, xxviii +144600.00

Indian Historical Review, 1999

NagarjunakoQ.cja in Andhra Pradesh was an important Buddhist as well as Brahmanical centre in the... more NagarjunakoQ.cja in Andhra Pradesh was an important Buddhist as well as Brahmanical centre in the early centuries of the era. Since its discovery in 1920 it underwent several excavations until 1950s, when the area was submerged due to the building of the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam. Fortunately, the Archaeological Survey oflndia created a special project to salvage some of the monuments before their submersion. It has published several Reports and Memoirs (MASI), No. 54 by A.H. Longhurst, No. 71 by T.N. Ramachandran, and No. 75 by R. Subramanyam, and also its inscriptions.

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Kûrma Imagery in Indian Art and Culture

Artibus Asiae, 2009

the vast expanse of whose body is tawny like the golden mountain (Meru) and who resembles the bul... more the vast expanse of whose body is tawny like the golden mountain (Meru) and who resembles the bulbous root of the Creeper of the old (ancient) world, protect you! T his is an invocatory verse to Kûrma (tortoise, turtle) 1 in a specially composed Avani-Kûrma •ataka consisting of 109 verses in praise of the tortoise, which the Paramâra king Bhojadeva (CE 1000-1055) had inscribed on a stone slab at Dhârâ in central India. 2 The poem speaks of the universal aspect of the tortoise, the belief that it supports the Earth and is like Meru, the cosmic mountain in the centre of the universe. Amazingly, it does not refer to the Kûrma incarnation of Viß∑u. There are verses in this •ataka that directly address the tortoise in the first person, and show a deep attachment to this seemingly trivial reptile. The tortoise is praised as 'the one and only one who bears the burden [of the earth]' (v. 106). 'You alone, O tortoise, are really born! What is the use of others who are [merely] born here on earth to no purpose, in vain? For it is you who saved the earth that was sinking down in the nether world (pâtâla) by supporting it on your back!' (v. 62). The mother of the tortoise is also praised in many stanzas for giving birth to the one who bears the burden of the earth without a grumble. Far from being insignificant, the tortoise has held a special place in Indian culture and the Indian psyche since ancient times, and continues to pervade various areas of living Indian traditions. Kûrma is revered not only as an incarnation of the god Viß∑u. As J. Gonda says, 'The animal played, and still plays, an important role in the cosmogonic, cosmographic, and genealogical conceptions of Indian peoples.' 3 In this article I show how kûrma imagery permeates many aspects of Indian culture, from the cosmic to the mundane, playing a role in mythology, art, ritual, and even everyday objects. These associations seem to derive directly from features of the animal's anatomy and physiology. The stability and strength of the tortoise's upper shell, the creature's associations with the ocean and longevity, and its retractable limbs all seem to inform the significance of kûrma in myths and ritual. The qualities that derive from kûrma's body also happen to be the qualities at the heart of Viß∑u's 1 1 In the Sanskrit language there is no sharp distinction between a tortoise and a turtle as there is in English. The Sanskrit words kûrma, kacchapa, and kama †ha connote both tortoise and turtle. Though technically the word 'turtle' (sea or freshwater reptile) rather than 'tortoise' (land or freshwater reptile) would perhaps be more apt in the context of the myth of Samudra Manthana (Churning of the Ocean), in this article I use the word tortoise as the traditional translation of the words kûrma and kacchapa. 2 Epigraphia Indica 8 (1905-06): 96, 241-60. Kûrmaªatakadvayam, inscribed at Dhârâ by Mahârâja •rî Bhojadeva, translated with a select glossary by V. M. Kulkarni, introduction by Devangana Desai (Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology, 2003). Accompanying the Avani-Kûrma •ataka is another •ataka of 109 verses on Kûrma in which King Bhoja is praised as a better support of the earth than Kûrma, the Boar, or •eßa (the Cosmic Serpent).

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The religious imagery of Khajuraho

Artibus Asiae, Mar 1, 1996

1- introduction 2- temple twon and patrons 3- religious currents and undercurrents 4- The Yogini ... more

Social Dimensions of Art in Early India

Social Scientist, 1990

Page 1. DEVANGANA DESAI* Social Dimensions of Art in Early India** I Art activity is a social pro... more

Book Reviews : HERMANN GOETZ, Studies in the History, Religion and Art of Classical and Medieval India, edited by Hermann Kulke, South Asia Institute, Uni versity of Heidelberg, Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, Wiesbaden, 1974, Pp. 171, 38 line drawings, 31 plates, Price not stated

Indian Economic & Social History Review, 1980

Erotic sculpture of India: A socio-cultural study

A descriptive catalogue of Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts in the collection of the Asiatic Society of Bombay

Art and Icon: Essays on Early Indian Art

the book ends with the discussion of contemporary devotional activities at Ellora with a photogra... more the book ends with the discussion of contemporary devotional activities at Ellora with a photograph of a path marked by boulders laid by the local Jain community to link the modern Jain temple on top of the hill to Ellora’s ninthand tenth-century caves. As the forty-first volume of Brill’s Indological Library series, which began as an interdisciplinary series dedicated to the studyof India’s vibrant cultural traditions in 1991, this book joins a list of landmark studies in the historyof Indian art and architecture, which includes recent titles like Alka Patel’s Building Communities in Gujarāt: Architecture and Society during the Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries (volume 22, 2004), Michael Meister’s Temples of the Indus: Studies in the Hindu Architecture of Ancient Pakistan (volume 35, 2010), and Pia Brancaccio, The Buddhist Caves at Aurangabad: Transformations in Art and Religion (volume 34, 2011). One hundred and twenty-one figures accompany the book, which are all reproduced in black and white on glossy paper at the end of the book in a simple but effective layout. The figures include one map, one site plan, and three ground plans. All but four images are the author’s own photographs, with many showing details of the site that have rarely been reproduced. This is not an architectural study, as the author makes it clear from the beginning, and it is understandable that the author decided to reproduce the plans from Fergusson and Burgess’s 1880 report, with the numbering system from Pereira’s 1977 publication on Jain caves at Ellora, instead of producing a new ground plan based on empirical architectural data. However, it would have been beneficial to have an enlarged version of the site plan or a version highlighting the Jain temples within Ellora’s site plan. Perhaps due to the size and the format of the book, the site plan is reproduced in a considerably reduced scale from the original, and it is impossible to read the legends. While Pereira’s numbering system helps to designate various spaces within a larger architectural context, it would also have been useful to have a diagram or plan that illustrates the phenomenological approach to the space as a lived, ritual space that the author labours to demonstrate in Chapter 5. Given the constant use of Sanskrit terms in the book, which perhaps suits the intended specialist readers, a glossary of terms would have been a welcome feature, given that each term is only explained once at the first instance of its appearance in the entire text. Date information is sorely missing in captions and in the list of illustrations, and a chronological table identifying the relationship between all the excavations, not only Jain but also Hindu and Buddhist ones, would have helped the study to reach its ambitious goal of locating Ellora’s Jain monuments within the multireligious context of the site. Aside from my idealist wish list of minor features, the book is informative, clearly written, and presents an insightful and contextualized view of the Jain caves at Ellora

Erotic Sculpture of India

... ABIM - An Annotated Bibliography of Indian Medicine. Erotic sculpture of India. -. Author(s):... more

Kalādarpaṇa, the mirror of Indian art : essays in memory of Shri Krishna Deva

The Chandella Hari-Hara in the British Museum

The Oriental gallery of the British Museum, London, displays a Chandella image 5'7" x 3&... more The Oriental gallery of the British Museum, London, displays a Chandella image 5'7" x 3' (1.70 x .92 m) of Hari-Hara1 (OA 1872 7-1, 75) [Pls. 20.1 and 20.2]. It is of buff sandstone and similar in style to the Hari-Hara displayed in the Khajuraho Archaeological Museum, Accession No. 5582 [Pl. 20.3]. The latter is 3.2 1/2î x 2' (.98 x .61 m) and smaller than the one in the British Museum. Even so, both the images reveal tremendous similarities in their style, ornamentation, and iconography, though because of its larger size, the British Museum image has more number of subsidiary and attending figures on its parikara frame. The article examines in its first part the Chandella features and style of the Hari-Hara image in the British Museum juxtaposing it with the Khajuraho Museum image of HariHara. Comparing their stylistic features with those of the other sculptures of Khajuraho, such as the excavated images of the Satdhara mound, assignable to pre-Lakshmaƒa or preAD ...

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Kūrmaśatakadvayam : two Prakrit poems on tortoise who supports the earth

The Religious Imagery of Khajuraho

Artibus Asiae, 1999

Bronzes from Sopara : Seven Buddhas and Maitreya

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Shalabhanjika : Woman-and-Tree in Art and Literature

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Relevance of Textual Sources in the Study of Temple Art

Samarasya, Studies in Indian Arts, Philosophy and Interreligious Dialogue, Bettina Bäumer Felicitation Volume, Ed. Sadananda Das and Ernst Fürlinger. , 2005

An architect who has book knowledge but has neglected to apply that knowledge to any construction... more An architect who has book knowledge but has neglected to apply that knowledge to any construction will faint when called upon to demonstrate his knowledge, `like a cowardly warrior on a battlefield.' On the other hand, one who is proficient as a builder but has not studied the ÷àstras will prove to be a blind guide who leads his followers into a whirlpool. Þ Samaràïgaõa-såtradhàra, chapter 44 THIS quotation from the eleventh-century treatise on Vàstu (canons of architecture and allied arts), attributed to the scholar-emperor Bhojadeva of central India, suggests that there is not so much hiatus between text and practice in early India as we generally believe.* The text lays down that the architect should be proficient both in ÷àstra (text, theory) and karma (work, practice). At Bhojpur, near Bhopal, a temple built by this visionary king still preserves the artists' sketches carved in stone, a masonry ramp for transportation of stone blocks, and the work sites where the temple's components were being carved, throwing light on the mechanics of the temple's construction. 1 Though we do get names of ancient preceptors of Vàstu codes such as Garga, Manu, Màrkaõóeya and others, canons on temple building were actually written down only from about fourth-fifth century CE when temples in dressed stone began to be constructed. .rom this time art-canons were incorporated as chapters in several religious and priestly treatises such as the Matsya Puràõa, Viùõudharmottara Puràõa, and the Haya÷ãrùa-Pa¤caràtra, as also in the astronomical treatise, Bhat-Sa §hità. But significantly, until the tenth century we do not come across specifically written architectural texts. The specialized works on temple art, known as the Vàstu÷àstras and øilpa÷àstras, were not written until

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EARLIER NAMES OF THE KHAJURAHO TEMPLES

Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay, 2000

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The Chandella Hari-Hara in the British Museum

Kaladarpana, Essays in Memory of Shri Krishna Deva, 2009

T he Oriental gallery of the British Museum, London, displays a Chandella image 5'7" x 3' (1.70 x... more T he Oriental gallery of the British Museum, London, displays a Chandella image 5'7" x 3' (1.70 x .92 m) of Hari-Hara 1 (OA 1872 7-1, 75) [Pls. 20.1 and 20.2]. It is of buff sandstone and similar in style to the Hari-Hara displayed in the Khajuraho Archaeological Museum, Accession No. 558 2 [ Pl. 20.3]. The latter is 3.2 1/2î x 2' (.98 x .61 m) and smaller than the one in the British Museum. Even so, both the images reveal tremendous similarities in their style, ornamentation, and iconography, though because of its larger size, the British Museum image has more number of subsidiary and attending figures on its parikara frame.

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The Kashmir Connection of the Vaikuntha Image of Khajuraho

Prajnadhara : Essays on Asian Art History Epigraphy and Culture in honour of Gouriswar Bhattacharya, 2009

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The Lord on the Leaf

Themes, Histories, Interpretations, Indian Painting, Essays in Honour of B. N. Goswamy, 2013

o Lord of the Banyan Leaf. ..

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Dr Devangana Desai

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