The volume presents the history of the Institut Francais de Pondichery (IFP)/Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient (EFEO), a research institute under a French ministry. It offers selections from the more than 1,35,000 illustrations in their archive to showcase South Indian iconography, temple plans, architecture, murals and rock art, and Jain and Buddhist sites that are located in the state of Tamil Nadu. It gives an account of the manner in which the archive came to be formed and the nature of its legacy as well as the state of the archive today—what it houses and how it functions. With maps to aid the textual matter, it discusses the importance of the photographs in also solving cases of antiquities theft and in retrieving some of the smuggled heritage.
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