The early medieval period (c. 600 – 1200 AD) witnessed a tremendous boom in temple construction all over the Deccan. Imperial and feudatory houses such as the Rashtrakutas, the Chalukyas, the Kalachuris, the Shilaharas and the Yadavas patronised varied religious sects and endowed shrines, temples and monasteries. The main source of information are the copper plate charters, which contain a host of information about various modalities of the endowments, a prominent component of which concerns money.
The Ambika temple in Jagat village, about 50 km southeast of Udaipur in the western Indian State of Rajasthan, dates back to 961 AD. The temple has a simple but well-spelt iconological scheme. Its numerous fine sculptures are in an excellent state of preservation. Ambika temple is a Devi (goddess) temple, with images of Durga, Saptamatrikas and other female divinities sculpted on the walls and doorframes of the main temple and the adjunct halls.
Paradoxically, in Bengal, most of the standing Hindu temples postdate the arrival of the Mughals, at the end of the 16th century. What significance did these Hindu landmarks have in the social and historical context? Where they simply commemorative, vindictive or did they compromise with the "hostile" rulers? How did these Hindu temples integrate landscapes with outstanding Muslim monuments?
The archaeology of the imposing Kantanagar temple in north Bengal, and many other shrines from different parts of Bengal provide a rich matter of
Numismatics and archaeology have always had a close relationship. Still in the study of archaeology and archaeological concepts, the discipline of numismatics is often relegated to a secondary importance. Though the use of religious tokens in India is not embedded in antiquity, it forms a part of the living traditions. The paper aims at consolidating numismatic research done so far on this topic and analyse this data in the context of other archaeological remains such as monuments and sculptures as well as religious texts.
Confronting, dealing with and ‘managing’ sacred space was a task that the colonial government of India had set for itself from the early days of the rule of the English East India Company in Bengal and it continued to dominate official views of governing India down to the end of British rule in 1947. At the root of this was the understanding, derived largely from a heavily text-based European orientalist scholarship, of India as an essentially religious culture, characterised by mutually antagonistic religious groups.
The spectacular temple complexes of Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal located along the 25 kilometre long fertile valley of the Malaprabha river, (a tributary of the Krishna) in Bagalkot district have long been admired for their distinctive Karn Dravida architectural tradition and sculptural exuberance. It was along the Malaprabha river in north Karnataka that Pulakesi I established his capital at Vatapi or present Badami and built a fort on top of the sandstone cliff in c. 543 A.D.
There was a prolific temple building activity at Khajuraho in central India between CE 900-1150 under the patronage of the Candella Rajput princes and Jaina merchants. About 25 temples now survive. The master-architects (sutradharas) of Khajuraho followed the Visvakarma School of Vastu tradition, as evidenced from inscriptions.
In the forms of shrine, which developed between the 7th and 13th centuries, Hindu temples, conceived as divine bodies, embodied structured patterns of movement in their architectural compositions. Shrines are invested with a sense of centrifugal dynamism that appears to originate at the tip of the finial, or a point just above it, progressing downwards from this point and outwards from the vertical axis.
