Devotion, Antiquity, and Colonial Custody of the Hindu Temple in British India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3628446 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Deborah Sutton (0000-0002-0603-3458, Lancaster University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 135-166 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x11000655 |
| OpenAlex | W2140673788 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 9 |
In 1904, the British Indian government passed the Ancient Monuments Protection Act and, in doing so, radically enlarged the state's bureaucratic claim to structures defined, for the purposes of the Act, as monuments. The project of conserving the Hindu temple was beset by disagreements. The claims of the colonial state and local Hindu devotees were separated by different precepts about religiosity and alternate orders of aesthetics, time, and history. However, it is clear that there were also confluences: legislative authority could masquerade as custody of the antiquarian and, in practice, the secular veneration of material antiquity blurred with Hindu divinity. This paper combines an exploration of the principles of archaeological conservation, as they were formed in the European bourgeois imagination, and then traces their transfer, though imperial administration, to case-studies of specific temples. Of particular interest is the deployment of the Act by local administrations and the counter-challenges, appropriations, and manipulations of the same legislation. How were the aesthetic codes of conservation-and the legislation that sought to order and enforce their introduction-compromised by religious claims and practices
Ancient history · Art · Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Divinity · Hinduism · Legislation · Legislature · Political science · Politics · State (computer science · Veneration · Cambodian History and Society · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |