This book seeks to lift into focus the monolithic legacy of the Rashtrakutas at Ellora, from out of the totality of cave-art there, for the reason that these monoliths perhaps are best suited to understand and reconstruct the artistic, architectural, traditional, religious and cuit interactions and growth-spectra that had taken place in the period from the 8th to the 10th century A.D., very much more eloquently than the study of the cave temple types. Without the stabilizing role of these monoliths. In the overview of the status of temple art, in that period which the Rashtrakutas adorned by their vigorous patronage, eclecticism and multi-pronged political thrusts all over India in their heyday, the cave-art syndrome would circumstances, as something repetitive, patternised and commandeered-which surely it was not. The book deals with the five monoliths at Ellora, in their own historical architectural, iconographic-religious perspectives, and elucidates how they were greatly diversified and pregnant with rich potential for the reconstruction of the art situation; and it compares them also with their compeer monoliths elsewhere in South India, in the same ilk, as in the Pallava and Pandya zones of the past. The chief aim of the book is to give a satisfactory formal picture of these with the credit of being land-marks in the arche-tyupes they sought to represent. Profusely illustrated and with a helpful set of charts and glossary, it is designed to cover a felt need in art studies at Ellora.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR K.V. Soundara Rajan
K.V. Soundara Rajan (b. 1952) who additionaol Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, needs no introduction to scholars and academics in art, archaeology and architecture, in India and outside. His contributions to Indian Culture have the mark of secular values, being related to not only Hinduism and its allied facets of Buddhism and Jainism but also to the creative art productions of Islam in architecture. Trained by Mortimer Wheeler and F.E. Zeuner in field archaeology and Prehistoric studies, in which career he has excavated several sites of varying nature in different parts of India, from the Harappan, through the Megalithic to Indo-Roman centres, it is his primary grounding in Sanskrit and its ancient legacy that made him a legitimatae and effective practitioner in interpretative thrusts in both archaeological and traditional studies in an integrative manner. He has a score of books and hundreds of research articles in his name and had, besides being an alumnus of Allahabad University, been the chairperson of several learned societies traveled in the Old world and the New, having lectured and studied their monuments and museums and is respected for his fluent exposition of our cultural heritage. His ‘Essence of Hinduism’ with its succedding Dictionary Volumes of Hindu usages, is perhaps the creation closest to his heart as the quintessential presentation of our cultural legacy. His abiding interests include also Classical music and the Stage.
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