One of the first things that strike the Western viewer of Indian art is the multiplicity of heads, arms and eyes. This convention grows out of imagery conceived by Vedic sages to explain creation. This book for the first time investigates into the meaning of this convention. The author concentrates on its origins in Hindu art and on preceding textual references to the phenomenon of multiplicity.The first part establishes a general definition for the convention. Examination of all Brahmanical literature up to, and sometimes beyond, the 1st - 3rd century A.D., adds more information to this basic definition.The second part applies this literary information mainly to icons of the Yaksa, iva, V sudeva-Kr sn a and the Goddess, and indicates how Brahmanical cultural norms, exemplified in Mathur , can transmit textual symbols.Both Part I and Part II provide iconic modules and a methodology to generate interpretations for icons with this remarkable feature through the Gupta age.

One of the first things that strike the Western viewer of Indian art is the multiplicity of heads, arms and eyes. This convention grows out of imagery conceived by Vedic sages to explain creation. This book for the first time investigates into the meaning of this convention. The author concentrates on its origins in Hindu art and on preceding textual references to the phenomenon of multiplicity. The first part establishes a general definition for the convention. Examination of all Brahmanical literature up to, and sometimes beyond, the 1st - 3rd century A.D., adds more information to this basic definition. The second part applies this literary information mainly to icons of the Yaksa, Śiva, Vāsudeva-Kṛsṇa and the Goddess, and indicates how Brahmanical cultural norms, exemplified in Mathurā, can transmit textual symbols. Both Part I and Part II provide iconic modules and a methodology to generate interpretations for icons with this remarkable feature through the Gupta age.

In Religions and Trade a number of international scholars investigate the ways in which eastern and western religions were formed and transformed from the perspective of "trade." Trade changes religions. Religions expand through the help of trade infrastructures, and religions extend and enrich the trade relations with cultural and religious "commodities" which they contribute to the “market place” of human culture and religion. This leads to the inclusion, demarcation and densification as well as the amalgamation of religious traditions. In an attempt to find new pathways into the world of religious dynamics, this collection of essays focuses on four elements or “commodities” of religious interchange: topologies of religious space, religious symbol systems, religious knowledge, and religious-ethical ways of life. Contributors include: Christoph Auffarth, Izak Cornelius, Georgios Halkias, Geoffrey Herman, Livia Kohn, Al Makin, Jason Neelis, Volker Rabens, Abhishek Singh Amar, Loren Stuckenbruck, Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Peter Wick, Michael Willis, and Sylvia Winkelmann.

"Published by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition Yoga: The Art of Transformation, October 19, 2013 - January 26, 2014. Organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the exhibition travels to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, February 22-May 18, 2014, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, June 22-September 7, 2014."

This study argues from textual and material sources that Skanda-K?ttikeya’s cult in the north of India during the Ku???a and Gupta eras moves from being a broad-based Graha and M?t? tradition to one that advanced the ruler’s prestige and authority.

South Asian religious art became codified during the Ku a Period (ca. beginning of the 2nd to the mid 3rd century). Yet, to date, neither the chronology nor nature of Ku a Art, marked by great diversity, is well understood. The Ku a Empire was huge, stretching from Uzbekistan through northern India, and its multicultural artistic expressions became the fountainhead for much of South Asian Art. The premise of this book is that Ku a Art achieves greater clarity through analyses of the arts and cultures of the Pre- Ku a World, those lands becoming the Empire. Fourteen papers in this book by leading experts on regional topography and connective pathways; interregional, multicultural comparisons; art historical, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and textual studies represent the first coordinated effort having this focus.

This deft and lively study by Robert DeCaroli explores the questions of how and why the earliest verifiable images of the historical Buddha were created. In so doing, DeCaroli steps away from old questions of where and when to present the history of Buddhism’s relationship with figural art as an ongoing set of negotiations within the Buddhist community and in society at large. By comparing innovations in Brahmanical, Jain, and royal artistic practice, DeCaroli examines why no image of the Buddha was made until approximately five hundred years after his death and what changed in the centuries surrounding the start of the Common Era to suddenly make those images desirable and acceptable. The textual and archaeological sources reveal that figural likenesses held special importance in South Asia and were seen as having a significant amount of agency and power. Anxiety over image use extended well beyond the Buddhists, helping to explain why images of Vedic gods, Jain teachers, and political elites also are absent from the material record of the centuries BCE. DeCaroli shows how the emergence of powerful dynasties and rulers, who benefited from novel modes of visual authority, was at the root of the changes in attitude toward figural images. However, as DeCaroli demonstrates, a strain of unease with figural art persisted, even after a tradition of images of the Buddha had become established.