Archaeology of Pataliputra and Nalanda PDF Download

Author: Brajmohan Kumar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Author: Brajmohan Kumar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788185205113
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Author: Birendra Nath Prasad
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000416739
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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In the religious landscape of early medieval (c. AD 600-1200) Bihar and Bengal, poly-religiosity was generally the norm than an exception, which entailed the evolution of complex patterns of inter-religious equations. Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism not only coexisted but also competed for social patronage, forcing them to enter into complex interactions with social institutions and processes. Through an analysis of the published archaeological data, this work explores some aspects of the social history of Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jaina temples and shrines, and Buddhist stūpas and monasteries in early medieval Bihar and Bengal. This archaeological history of religions questions many ‘established’ textual reconstructions, and enriches our understanding of the complex issue of the decline of Buddhism in this area. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Author: Nayanjot Lahiri
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674915259
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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In the third century BCE, Ashoka ruled an empire encompassing much of modern-day India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. During his reign, Buddhism proliferated across the South Asian subcontinent, and future generations of Asians came to see him as the ideal Buddhist king. Disentangling the threads of Ashoka’s life from the knot of legend that surrounds it, Nayanjot Lahiri presents a vivid biography of this extraordinary Indian emperor and deepens our understanding of a legacy that extends beyond the bounds of Ashoka’s lifetime and dominion. At the center of Lahiri’s account is the complex personality of the Maurya dynasty’s third emperor—a strikingly contemplative monarch, at once ambitious and humane, who introduced a unique style of benevolent governance. Ashoka’s edicts, carved into rock faces and stone pillars, reveal an eloquent ruler who, unusually for the time, wished to communicate directly with his people. The voice he projected was personal, speaking candidly about the watershed events in his life and expressing his regrets as well as his wishes to his subjects. Ashoka’s humanity is conveyed most powerfully in his tale of the Battle of Kalinga. Against all conventions of statecraft, he depicts his victory as a tragedy rather than a triumph—a shattering experience that led him to embrace the Buddha’s teachings. Ashoka in Ancient India breathes new life into a towering figure of the ancient world, one who, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, “was greater than any king or emperor.”

Author: Huu Phuoc Le
Publisher: Grafikol
ISBN: 0984404309
Category : Buddhist architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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"The volume thoroughly examines the origins and principal types of Buddhist architecture in Asia primarily between the third century BCE-twelfth century CE with an emphasis on India. It aims to construct shared architectural traits and patterns alongwith the derivative relationships between Indian and Asian Buddhist monuments. It also discusses the historical antecedents in the Indus Civilization and the religious and philosophical foundations of the three schools of Buddhism and its founder, Buddha. Previously obscure topics such as Aniconic and Vajrayana (Tantric) architecture and the four holiest sites of Buddhism will also be covered in this comprehensive volume. The author further investigates the influences of Buddhist architecture upon Islamic, Christian, and Hindu architecture that have been overlooked by past scholars."

Author: Pierre-Yves Manguin
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN: 9814345105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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This book takes stock of the results of some two decades of intensive archaeological research carried out on both sides of the Bay of Bengal, in combination with renewed approaches to textual sources and to art history. To improve our understanding of the trans-cultural process commonly referred to as Indianisation, it brings together specialists of both India and Southeast Asia, in a fertile inter-disciplinary confrontation. Most of the essays reappraise the millennium-long historiographic no-man's land during which exchanges between the two shores of the Bay of Bengal led, among other processes, to the Indianisation of those parts of the region that straddled the main routes of exchange. Some essays follow up these processes into better known "classical" times or even into modern times, showing that the localisation process of Indian themes has long remained at work, allowing local societies to produce their own social space and express their own ethos.

Author: Himanshu Prabha Ray
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429802854
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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This volume cross-examines the stability of heritage as a concept. It interrogates the past which materialises through multi-layered narratives on monuments and other objects that sustain cultural diversity. It seeks to understand how interpretations of “monuments” as “texts” are affected at the local level of experience, even as institutions such as UNESCO work to globalise and fix constructs of stable and universal heritage. Shifting away from a largely Eurocentric concept associated with architecture and monumental archaeology, this book reassesses how local and regional heritage needs to be balanced with the global and transnational. It argues that material objects and monuments are not static embodiments of culture but are, rather, a medium through which identity, power and society are produced and reproduced. This is especially relevant in South and Southeast Asian contexts, where debates over heritage often have local, regional and national political implications and consequences. Reevaluating how traditional valuation of monuments and cultural landscapes could help aid sustainability and long-term preservation of the heritage, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian history, heritage studies, archaeology, cultural studies, tourism studies and political history as well.

Author: Salila Kulshreshtha
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351356097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Religious icons have been a contested terrain across the world. Their implications and understanding travel further than the artistic or the aesthetic and inform contemporary preoccupations.This book traces the lives of religious sculptures beyond the moment of their creation. It lays bare their purpose and evolution by contextualising them in their original architectural or ritual setting while also following their displacement. The work examines how these images may have moved during different spates of temple renovation and acquired new identities by being relocated either within sacred precincts or in private collections and museums, art markets or even desecrated and lost. The book highlights contentious issues in Indian archaeology such as renegotiating identities of religious images, reuse and sharing of sacred space by adherents of different faiths, rebuilding of temples and consequent reinvention of these sites. The author also engages with postcolonial debates surrounding history writing and knowledge creation in British India and how colonial archaeology, archival practices, official surveys and institutionalisation of museums has influenced the current understanding of religion, sacred space and religious icons. In doing so it bridges the historiographical divide between the ancient and the modern as well as socio-religious practices and their institutional memory and preservation. Drawn from a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of religious sculptures, classical texts, colonial archival records, British travelogues, official correspondences and fieldwork, the book will interest scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, religion, art history, museums studies, South Asian studies and Buddhist studies.

Author: Ariel Glucklich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199718253
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Books about Hinduism often begin by noting the immense size and complexity of the subject. Hinduism is vast and diverse, they say. Or it doesn't exist at all - Hinduism is merely a convenient (and foreign) term that masks a plurality of traditions. In either case, readers are discouraged by the sense that they are getting only a tiny sample or a shallow overview of something huge and impossible to understand. This book is designed to be accessible and comprehensive in a way that other introductions are not, maintaining an appealing narrative and holding the reader's interest in the unfolding sequence of ideas through time and place. Each of the 13 chapters combines historical material with key religious and philosophical ideas, supported by substantial quotations from scriptures and other texts. The overarching organizational principle is a historical narrative largely grounded in archaeological information. Historic places and persons are fleshed out as actors in a narrative about the relation of the sacred to ordinary existence as it is mediated through arts, sciences, rituals, and philosophical ideas. Although many books purport to introduce the Hindu tradition, this is the only one with a broad historical focus that emphasizes archaeological as well as textual evidence. It will nicely complement Vasuda Narayanan's forthcoming introduction, which takes the opposite approach of focusing on the lived experience of Hindu believers.

Author: Amalananda Ghosh
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004092648
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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"An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology" is a significant reference work on archaeology in India. It is an authoritative work of permanent value in which the knowledge and expertise of Indian archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India, universities and other institutes have been pooled together under the editorship of the late A. Ghosh, former Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. The "Encyclopaedia" has been planned in an ambitious manner; it is not merely an alphabetical listing of entries with sketchy information on topics. Volume 1, which deals with certain broad subjects relating to Indian Archaeology, is divided into twenty chapters, alphabetically arranged. Each chapter is further divided into sections and subsections containing independent and self-contained essays. For example, in the chapter on "Cultures," detailed information can be found on various cultures in India; the chapter on "Basis of dating" contains articles on archaeological dating, archaeomagnetic dating, 14C radio-carbon dating, numismatic dating, palaeographic and epigraphic dating, thermoluminescent dating, etc. For those interested in getting further information on the subjects and in looking into the original sources and references, each entry also carries an exhaustive bibliography. Volume II is the Gazetteer. It contains basic data and information on all the explored and excavated sites in India along with reference to published reports and/or notices on each.