India & The World Area Studies

RAMA-LEGENDS AND RAMA-RELIEFS IN INDONESIA

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ISBN : 81-7017-251-9
Edited By :Willem Stutterheim, C. D. Paliwal and R. P. Jain

(1988, xxx+296pp., b&w plates, notes, bibl., index)
Rs.600.00
The work, first published in 1925 in the series Der indische Kulturkreis in Einzeldarstellungen (in German), has been considered a classic, but has not been easily accessible to the English reading public. The publication of the English translation opens up many new vistas of exploration…Read More
The author’s concern was not restricted to the archaeological features of this group of temples but went much further into the interpretation and identification of the historical processes of acculturization, diffusion and autochthonous tendencies. Much has been written on the subject during the past few decades; however, Stutterheim’s argument remains fresh. Perhaps scholars will want tore-explore the sources of the Gujarati version of the Rāmāyaṇa also the Panji stories of Java.

The monograph also stimulates discussion on a most contemporary concern, i.e. the relationship of the text and the images: the adherence, the interpretations and the deviations.

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THE ART OF INDONESIA

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ISBN : 97889350501771
Edited By :Bachchan Kumar

(2014, xxiii + 224 pp.index, bibl., Illus. col. 99)
Rs.1,100.00
The present book, Art of Indonesia, contains selected research papers presented at the International Conference on the Art of Indonesia organized by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi…Read More
It covers a wide range of studies that include preÊ-history, art and archaeology, sculptures, performing arts, cosmology, religious beliefs, oral and written records, textiles as well as conservation.

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ACROSS THE HIMALAYAN GAP : AN INDIAN QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING CHINA

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ISBN : 81-212-0585-9
Edited By :Tan Chung

(1998, xxvi+553pp., col. and b&w illus.)
Rs.1,200.00
This book is the fruition of Step 1 of a project launched by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) whic is a premier Indian research institution dedicated to a holistic understanding world civilization and to the promotion…Read More
of information and insight between different cultures of the world. “Sino-Indian Studies” is a special window of IGNCA drawing inspiration from Gurudeva Rabindranath Tagore’s longing for reenacting the history of the “great pilgrimage” and path-opening” – “to maintain the [Sino-Indian] “intercourse of culture and friendship”, in Tagore’s own words. Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, blazed a new trail in 1990, leading scholars of India and China to “look at each other” instead of trying to see each other’s country through the Western Hemisphere. All the 40 Indian authors in this volume have contributed their mite to this endeavour–making it a book that parades the various Indian perspective on China, on her civilization, history, society and present developments. While scrutinizing their writings, readers also get a glance over Indian Savants’ observations and Indian leaders’ addresses at Chinese universities. The book also targets the Chinese readership with the aim of creating its companion volume of Chinese perspectives on India which is the Step II of the IGNCA project in promoting indepth understanding between the two most populous countries–close neighbours and partners of the 21st century.
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ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

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ISBN : 978-81-7305-408-2
Edited By :BACHCHAN KUMAR

(2011, xvi+116pp.index, bibl., illus. col.29, b/w 17)
Rs.1,100.00
Art and Archaeology of South-East Asia is an outcome of two consecutive seminars organized by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi. It has eleven selected studies on South-East Asia by eminent scholars of the subject…Read More

Cultural contacts between India and South-East Asia began much before the appearance of Sanskrit inscriptions in the middle of the first millennium CE. This book contains a wealth of information on sculptural, architectural and monumental art forms of South-East Asia and its contemporaneous art forms in India. In its stride, it explores the common narratives and the aesthetic and iconographic links between India and South-East Asia.

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Barabudur – Sketch of a History of Buddhism based on Archaeological criticism of the texts

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ISBN : 81-207-1784-8
Edited By :Paul Mus, Alexander W. Macdonald

(1998, xxix+354 pp., col. and b&w plates, index)
Rs.700.00
The work presents a profound and far-reaching analysis of the ideas, religious aspirations and building techniques which contributed to the creation of one of the largest Buddhist edifices in the world. This book is not a history of the famous Javanese monument nor is it a history of Buddhism…Read More
It is the English translation of the foreword to a work – loosely focused on the Barabuḍur – which was published in Hanoi in French (1935). Besides, it is a survey of the Buddhist religious and philosophical concepts in the background of earlier religious and metaphysical traditions in India, as revealed in the Vedic and Upaniṣadic texts.

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DUNHUANG ART : THROUGH THE EYES OF DUAN WENJIE

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ISBN : 81-7017-313-2
Edited By :Tan Chung

(1994, 456pp., line drawings, col. and b&w illus., bibl., index)
Rs.1,500.00
Dunhuang although internationally known is infrequently visited. The Mogao shrine at Dunhuang is a cluster of 492 caves, containing 45,000 square metres of frescoes and 2,415 stucco statues. This is a precious art heritage of the world…Read More
It has great historical and artistic value. These caves were created, renovated and maintained continually with devotion and care from the 4th upto the 14th century. They were also maintained during the subsequent periods up till the 19th century. From the 7th to 9th century, culture and art enjoyed a golden period in China, so did Dunhuang Art.

In this volume we have provided an English translation of selected writings of Prof. Duan Wenjie, Director of the Dunhuang Academy who has given a chronological study of the contents inside the Mogao caves with several decades of research of the Dunhuang Academy under his command.

Prof. Tan Chung, the editor, has furnished an illuminating introduction, while Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, the driving spirit behind this volume, has made succinct comments in her ‘Foreword’. A valuable information on all the Mogao caves has been added.

Colour and black and white photographs and fine sketches by Vineet Kumar supplement the text.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts is committed to exploring all dimensions of art. It feels privileged to place before art historians and art lovers of the English-speaking world first-hand information about this unique art gallery going back to one-and-a-half millennia.
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Glimpses of Early Indo-Indonesian Culture – Collected Papers of Himanshu Bhushan Sarkar

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ISBN : 81-7305-182-8
Edited By :BACHCHAN KUMAR

(2001, xlvi+314pp., bibl., index.)
Rs.1,100.00
Indonesia has close cultural relations with India since the beginning of Christian era. Indian culture influenced Indonesia to a great extent in shaping its society, religion, customs, beliefs, art and architecture, specially during the pre-Islamic period…Read More

H.B. Sarkar is one of the ten Indian scholars who worked on the classical period of South-East Asia with special emphasis on Indonesia. He devoted his life to the study of this area and also did commendable work on the epigraphy. His work Corpus of the Inscriptions ofJava (in two volumes) is widely acclaimed.

The present volume contains the collection of his sixteen best-known and thought-provoking research papers on Indo-Indonesian culture.

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ICONOGRAPHY OF AVALOKITESVARA IN MAINLAND SOUTH EAST ASIA

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ISBN : 81-7305-182-8-0
Edited By :Nandana Chutiwongs

(2001, xlvi+314pp., bibl., index.)
Rs.1,100.00
This book contains a life-long study by the author on the concept and configuration of one of the best loved religious figures in Asia. It is based on the data extensively acquired from inscriptional and other archaeological evidences…Read More
The book offers a deep insight into the religious life of ancientSoutheast Asia, which had provided the backdrop to the veneration of Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist personification of Compassion. The visual representations portray him in an amazing variety of forms, reflecting the local adaptations of imported norms, to meet the spiritual obligations and the aesthetic aspirations of each community. Their iconographic details symbolically personify a series of religious ideologies, of human hope, basic needs and of yearning faith. Their stylistic features reveal, not only the standards of human artistic achievements, but also the trends of religious variants among societies of different cultural and social backgrounds, but united in a common faith and belief.

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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZUANZANG: TAN YUN-SHAN AND INDIA

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ISBN : 81-212-0630-8
Edited By :Tan Chung

(1999, xxviii+251pp)
Rs.750.00
Gurudeva Rabindranath Tagore has become a “multi-national” in the sense that he has authored the National Anthem of two separate sovereign countries — India and Bangla Desh,…Read More
and is regarded as the common cultural savant of both the nations. When friends in Beijing started preparing for the Memorial Function-Cum-Seminar for Tan Yun-shan’s birth centenary (scheduled for October 27, 1998), they accepted my request not to designate him as an “Overseas Chinese”. Yes, Tan Yun-shan was a Chinese diaspora, but he is also owned by India and has become a “multi-national” — like his “Gurudeva” Rabindranath. It is quite interesting to note that after accepting Tagore’s invitation in 1927, and arriving at Santiniketan in 1928, Tan Yun-shan started following the footsteps of Gurudeva, and has gone so far with Tagore to become a common asset of two sovereign countries. This phenomenon has also registered the borderlessness between India and China in his being (during his life time), and in his symbol (after his demise).

On the surface, my taking initiative and also the troubled pleasure (or pleasant-trouble) in Tan Yun-shan’s centenary celebrations seems in accordance with the filial piety of a Confucian Chinese tradition. But, the enthusiastic support from my Indian friends, particularly Rashtrapati (President of India) Honourable Mr. K. R. Narayanan’s warm blessings for and gracious participation in this celebration has taken it beyond the narrow boundary of nation-state, let alone nationalism. Like Gurudeva, Tan Yun-shan was no nationalist from a narrow perspective. His loyalty alway belonged to two nations — India and China. China was his first motherland, India was his second; China was his cradle, India was his cremation ground. He lived for 85 years of which nearly half a century was spent in India. Among his seven children, India and China have claimed an equal share of their birth places: 3 born in China, 3 born in India, one born in Malaya), and only the first two enjoy Chinese as their mother-tongue — the rest five have been essentially Bengali and English speakers. When we asked our late-lamented sister, Tan Wen, to write about father more than a year ago, she felt it better that the memoir should be couched in Bengali — which was practically her first language and strongest forte, although she had emigrated to the USA for nearly ten Years because of her marriage with a US citizen of Bengali descent. All this speaks how national boundaries have become blur in the Tan family.

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SOCIAL IDENTITIES IN REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA

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ISBN : 0-333-92947-0
Edited By :MADHAVAN K. PALAT

(2001, xv+246pp., gloss., index)

This volume explores the crisis of identity that faced Russia before and after the Revolution. The essays discuss how a re-evaluation of national identity challenged widely held ideas and rocked traditional institutions such as the Church. Local notables, peasants, artists and the intelligentsia all gorged new identities in relation to their own perceptions of ”Russia”…Read More
For peasants this was the idea of Ukraine and Russia as “nations”; for artists such as the futurist poet Khlebnikov this was the contribution of the supranation, “Eurasia”. The essays take a fresh look at the Russian Revolution, showing great diversity, covering such areas as the Stolypin agrarian reform, the fracture of the intelligentsia, and Church reform, as well as encompassing the central focus of “identity”. Also included in this volume is Khlenikov’s manifesto “An Indo-Russian Union”, published here in Russian with a new English translation.

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