Published articles by Crispin Branfoot
in Himanshu Prabha Ray, Salila Kulshreshtha and Uthara Suvrathan (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Hindu Temples: Materiality, Social History and Practice. New Delhi: Routledge (2022), pp. 197-217 , 2022
This handbook is a comprehensive study of the archaeology, social history and the cultural landsc... more This handbook is a comprehensive study of the archaeology, social history and the cultural landscape of the Hindu temple. Perhaps the most recognizable of the material forms of Hinduism, temples are lived, dynamic spaces. They are significant sites for the creation of cultural heritage, both in the past and in the present. Drawing on historiographical surveys and in-depth case studies, the volume centres the material form of the Hindu temple as an entry point to study its many adaptations and transformations from the early centuries ce to the 20th century. It highlights the vibrancy and dynamism of the shrine in different locales and studies the active participation of the community for its establishment, maintenance and survival. The illustrated handbook takes a unique approach by focusing on the social base of the temple rather than its aesthetics or chronological linear development. It fills a significant gap in the study of Hinduism and will be an indispensable resource for scholars of archaeology, Hinduism, Indian history, religious studies, museum studies, South Asian history and Southeast Asian history.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 26.1, pp. 4–13, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
arq: Architecture Research Quarterly, 2022
In around 1912 Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil, a young science teacher from French colonial Pondicherry... more In around 1912 Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil, a young science teacher from French colonial Pondicherry in South India, visited the nearby town of Cuddalore in order to inspect the construction of a new Hindu temple. Since arriving in South India in 1909 he had been travelling to many temples and archaeological sites in order to understand the history of South Indian art. The modern temple that he visited in a suburb of Cuddalore at Tiruppappuliyur was not in fact new but a wholesale renovation of a nine-hundred-year-old shrine on a site sacred to Tamil Shaivas. This was just one of the many temples substantially rebuilt from the 1890s to the 1930s under the patronage of a wealthy merchant community, the Nattukkottai Chettiars, at a time of religious revival and growing Tamil cultural nationalism. The Nattukkottai Chettiars came from the villages and towns of Chettinadu, an arid region in southern Madras Presidency. This region was significant not only for being the provenance of the most prolific patrons of South Indian temple architecture in colonial Madras Presidency but also their builders, for many of the architects and craftsmen working on the temple at Tiruppappuliyur were from villages in Chettinadu. One of these men, M. S. Swaminathan of Pillaiyarpatti, was Jouveau-Dubreuil's chief informant, one of the many 'natives' who were a critical and inextricable element of colonial knowledge production. The understanding of formal composition and terminology that Jouveau-Dubreuil learnt from contemporary architects and craftsmen and his observations of the evolution of architectural design contributed towards the first study of the Tamil temple for both a scholarly and wider public audience from the very earliest monuments of the seventh century through to those currently under construction. This article explores this architectural 'renaissance' in colonial Madras Presidency under Chettiar patronage and evaluates modern temple design through the pioneering scholarship of Jouveau-Dubreuil and his contemporaries.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Arts of Asia, 2006
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Ars Orientalis, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Artibus Asiae, 2012
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Art Bulletin, 2008
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Hinduism in India : the early period, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bulletin of SOAS, 2013
This article explores the repeated renovation of south Indian temples over the past millennium an... more This article explores the repeated renovation of south Indian temples over the past millennium and the conception of the Tamil temple-city. Though the requirement for renovation is unremarkable, some “renovations” have involved the wholesale replacement of the central shrine, in theory the most sacred part of the temple. Rather than explaining such radical rebuilding as a consequence of fourteenth-century iconoclasm, temple
renovation is considered in this article as an ongoing process. Several periods of architectural reconstruction from the tenth to the early twentieth centuries demonstrate the evolving relationship between building, design and sacred geography over one millennium of Tamil temple history. The conclusion explores the
widespread temple “renovations” by the devout Nakarattar (Nattukottai Chettiar) community in the early twentieth century, and the consequent dismay of colonial archaeologists at the perceived destruction of South India’s monumental heritage, in order to reassess the lives and meanings of Tamil sacred sites.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Orientations, 2007
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
South Asian Studies, 2000
... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Arc... more ... SOAS Departments & Centres: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of Art and Archaeology. ISSN: 0266-6030. ID Code: 3263. Deposited By: Crispin Branfoot. Deposited On: 18 Feb 2008 09:50. Last Modified: 19 Feb 2008 11:59. Repository Staff Only: item control page. ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
South Asian Studies, 2002
... Anna Dallapiccola and Anila Verghese's article in this volume confirms that the myth... more ... Anna Dallapiccola and Anila Verghese's article in this volume confirms that the myth of Bhima and Purusamirukam comes from a regional, south ... 1. Taylor (1835 volume II, p. 116); Devakunjari (1979, p. 243), presents further evidence for the construction of this mandapa in the ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Artibus Asiae, 2005
Bhatkal's period of greatest prosperity,a result of the growth of internal and international... more Bhatkal's period of greatest prosperity,a result of the growth of internal and international trade. Amongst them is the Khetapai N?r?yana temple, one of the finest Hindu temples built in the Kanara ... Vaisnava imageryat the Khetapai N?r?yana temple comes as a ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society, 2001
The Nayaka period from the middle of the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries was the most... more The Nayaka period from the middle of the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries was the most active period of temple-building in Tamilnadu after the decline of Chola power in the thirteenth century. Many of the large temples that are a feature of Tamil towns today were founded ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Books by Crispin Branfoot
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Published articles by Crispin Branfoot
renovation is considered in this article as an ongoing process. Several periods of architectural reconstruction from the tenth to the early twentieth centuries demonstrate the evolving relationship between building, design and sacred geography over one millennium of Tamil temple history. The conclusion explores the
widespread temple “renovations” by the devout Nakarattar (Nattukottai Chettiar) community in the early twentieth century, and the consequent dismay of colonial archaeologists at the perceived destruction of South India’s monumental heritage, in order to reassess the lives and meanings of Tamil sacred sites.
Books by Crispin Branfoot
renovation is considered in this article as an ongoing process. Several periods of architectural reconstruction from the tenth to the early twentieth centuries demonstrate the evolving relationship between building, design and sacred geography over one millennium of Tamil temple history. The conclusion explores the
widespread temple “renovations” by the devout Nakarattar (Nattukottai Chettiar) community in the early twentieth century, and the consequent dismay of colonial archaeologists at the perceived destruction of South India’s monumental heritage, in order to reassess the lives and meanings of Tamil sacred sites.