The Introduction will discuss secondary writings on temples as a place for public worship of the deity which is done through several daily, monthly and annual rituals performed in different spaces in the temple complex. Moving away from the ethnographic and textual studies of Hindu rituals which focus on contemporary ritual praxis, this chapter examines temple rituals in a historical context wi…
The Introduction will discuss secondary writings on temples as a place for public worship of the deity which is done through several daily, monthly and annual rituals performed in different spaces in the temple complex. Moving away from the ethnographic and textual studies of Hindu rituals which focus on contemporary ritual praxis, this chapter examines temple rituals in a historical context wi…
How and when did the Hindu temple come to be associated with dynasties, rulers and political processes? The chapter traces the beginning of scholarship on the Hindu temple in the late 19th century and its subsequent ‘discovery’, nomenclature and listing by colonial archaeologists. In their attempt to construct a political history of India based on texts and inscriptions, scholars used templ…