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John Cort explores the narratives by which the Jains have explained the presence of icons of Jinas (their enlightened and liberated teachers) that are worshiped and venerated in the hundreds of thousands of Jain temples throughout India. Most of these narratives portray icons favorably, and so justify their existence; but there are also narratives originating among iconoclastic Jain communities that see the existence of temple icons as a sign of decay and corruption. The veneration of Jina icons is one of the most widespread of all Jain ritual practices. Nearly every Jain community in India has one or more elaborate temples, and as the Jains become a global community there are now dozens of temples in North America, Europe, Africa, and East Asia. The cult of temples and icons goes back at least two thousand years, and indeed the largest of the four main subdivisions of the Jains are called Murtipujakas, or "Icon Worshipers." A careful reading of narratives ranging over the past 15 centuries, says Cort, reveals a level of anxiety and defensiveness concerning icons, although overt criticism of the icons only became explicit in the last 500 years. He provides detailed studies of the most important pro- and anti-icon narratives. Some are in the form of histories of the origins and spread of icons. Others take the form of cosmological descriptions, depicting a vast universe filled with eternal Jain icons. Finally, Cort looks at more psychological explanations of the presence of icons, in which icons are defended as necessary spiritual corollaries to the very fact of human embodiedness.
Presenting the handmade and handcrafted objects that are a part of daily life in Gujarat.
Through a curated collection of key Jain paintings, this volume offers a glimpse into the way people lived in western India during the medieval times: What they wore, how they ornamented themselves, what they amused themselves with, what furniture they sat on, which modes of transport they used. It includes Jain paintings from various collections in India and abroad to underscore the value of pictorial evidence in piecing together the past. The book takes the reader on a breath-taking visual journey through the varied costumes, exquisite textiles, handcrafted ornaments, curiously shaped vessels and containers, musical instruments, arms and armour, conveyances, and many such articles of everyday use. These articles of everyday use are corroborated with the descriptions left by foreign travellers passing through western India at that time. It explores contemporary lexicons and vernacular literature from this period, for possible names in vogue for the articles of Material Culture. The work is richly illustrated with line drawings by the author to highlight the objects being referred to. What comes across clearly through this book is that art is the mirror of the times, and as such, paintings reflect the society in which they are created. A magnificent read, this book will be essential for scholars and researchers of Indian painting, art history, Indian art, arts and aesthetics, Jainism, visual arts, South Asian history, Indian history, heritage studies and cultural history. It will also be a must-have for history and visual arts enthusiasts all over the world.