"Imagining Architects explores the nature of visual inventions in the religious architecture of India using an analytical framework that gives makers of religious monuments a visibility commonly denied to them in the historiography of Indian art and architecture. The exploration is based on a series of unusual formal experiments documented in a group of stone temples built in the eleventh century in the Karnataka region of southern India. The author shows (in these experiments) a deliberate search for a new architectural principle, using textual evidence and inscriptions referring to architects. The author also demonstrates a self-conscious modernity of Karnataka's makers, who negotiated architectural traditions and religious ideas to radically change a previous architectural norm dominating the region."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This is a complete guide book to monuments at Aihole, a site with the rich architecture of the early western Chalukyas. Aihole “The Cradle of Indian Architecture” once known as Aryapura is considered to be the first settlement of the Chalukyas. The present Aihole is popular for remains of Early Western Chalukyas. This village is rich with monuments of varied Architecture and is scattered all over the village. The major attraction here are the temples in the "Central Site of Monuments" an enclosure housing remains of earliest temples. There are also other temples and caves found around the central site.

You may have a lot of questions about the art and architecture of Karnataka. There may be queries about the various heritage touring circuits. You might like to understand what went into designing, planning and constructing monuments over a thousand year ago. You may still wish to know how art and architecture progressed during the ancient and medieval times in Karnataka. This book attempts to answer a lot of these questions, for example: 1.What is the name of the first established Village in South India and where is it located? 2.Where did the earliest gold miners live in Karnataka? 3.Which was the first Agrahara established in Karnataka? 4.Which is the first existing temple dedicated to Siva in Karnataka? 5.Which is the first existing temple dedicated to Krishna in Karnataka? 6.What roles did temples have other than being the places of worship? 7.Which is the first temple dedicated to Rama in Karnataka? 8.What was Karnataka referred to as in the Puranic times? 9.Which is the first existing temple dedicated to Shakti in Karnataka? 10.How old is the Kannada language?

From 1800 onwards, the Hindu temple occupied a fragile and uneasy proximity to Imperial governance in India. The colonial state sought to regulate and extract the wealth of large temples. Imperial scholars classified the extraordinary diversity of architectural forms from across India, and selected temples were defined as monuments and brought into the custody of Imperial archaeology. Over time, the Imperial literary imagination transformed the Hindu temple from a place of worship and devotion into a space of wealth, sensuality, and violence. However, the Hindu temple also tested the Imperial state. Devotees and trustees manipulated and rejected attempts at governance, and the Hindu temple became a site at which the authority of the state was persistently modified or curtailed. Ruling Devotion combines historical, literary, art historical, and archaeological perspectives to explore the idea of the temple in particular localities, through the formation of pan-British-Indian policy and in the broadest of transnational realms of Imperial culture. Drawing on a huge range and diversity of archival materials, the book explores the preoccupations and frailties of the colonial state in India.