Indian Monuments

About the Book:

Many of the great monuments of Indian antiquity like Ajanta and Mamallapuram have had a chequered history. With a few exceptions they were forgotten in the middle Ages. It was with the arrival of the Europeans that they became known again. Many of them suffered at the hands of the Portuguese. But the British sought them out, wrote on them and gradually made the West realise that India had once had a great art.

This book shows how the monuments it deals with were slowly recovered from obscurity, mainly in the nineteenth century. Where there are references to them in the periods before the Europeans, these too have been discussed. The aim is to provide a full account as far as possible of what travellers and, in later times, archaeologists thought of the monuments.

So far as we are aware, this is the first book of its kind in India.

About the Author:

The author is Assistant Editor, "The Indian Express", Madras. He has written eight other books on Indian history and art history.