Across The South of Asia

All too often, modern scholarship limits its scope according to the boundaries of contemporary nations and current geopolitical borders. Academic expertise frequently ties itself artificially to these pre-defined spaces and in so doing often does a disservice to the past. It is no great revelation to point out that people of the past defined the limits of their political and cultural reach in ways that were very different from those found on modern maps. Ancient rulers, merchants, and priests understood the reach of their influence and defined foreignness in ways that would be deeply unfamiliar to those only knowledgeable of the modern world. Yet, despite the well-recognized truth in these observations, it is still relatively rare for scholars to research in ways that transcend modern boundaries. This collection of essays invites readers to take a broad view of South Asian art and culture by providing a wide geographic and chronological scope. The articles are united only by their focus on art - historical and archaeological concerns and their concentration on South Asia-ranging from Afghanistan to the island kingdoms of Indonesia. Each essay on its own constitutes a solid, well-grounded academic study, but taken collectively they provide a wide and inclusive view of issues of art and material culture that span the region and invite comparison. By taking this approach, this volume is a tribute to Prof. Robert L. Brown whose lifetime of teaching has always emphasized connections as well as differences. Over his professional career, he has trained a large cohort of students (many of whom are contributors to this volume) whose expertise truly does reach across the south of Asia.

Robert DeCaroli is Professor of South Asian Art History at George Mason University. He is the author of two books: Haunting the Buddha: Indian Popular Religions and the Formation of Buddhism (2004) and Image Problems: The Origin and Development of the Buddha's Image in Early South Asia (2015). He is also the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and catalog essays. He recently co- curated Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia at the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

Paul A. Lavy is Associate Professor of South/Southeast Asian Art History at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His research and publications are focused on the history and development of the circa fifth-eighth- century Hindu-Buddhist artistic traditions of pre-Angkorian Khmer civilization, Thailand, and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, as well as their relationships with the art of South Asia. He is currently writing a book on early Southeast Asian sculpture entitled The Crowned Gods of Early Southeast Asia.

It is fortuitous that this volume of essays dedicated to Robert L. Brown Bob, as he is affectionately known is being published at a particularly significant moment in his career. As I write the foreword, Bob is completing his final year as a full-time professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he has taught for the last thirty-three years. This year also marks Bob's last year as a curator in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where he has held a special appointment, concurrent with his UCLA professorship, since 2001. Few may be aware that Bob's professional career actually began at LACMA, in 1981, shortly after he received his PhD from UCLA. Although Bob worked at LACMA for just a few years before returning to UCLA, in 1986, as a faculty member, the museum has figured prominently throughout his teaching and professional life. Though some may still view the university and the art museum as antipathetic, Bob's erudite scholarship - which has often drawn tremendous insights from a centering of vision upon the object - is instructive of the ways in which these two worlds can successfully be bridged. Bob's embrace of both the gallery and the classroom as spaces for the cultivation of eye and intellect is among the many things that made him a compelling and effective teacher. The wide range of his research interests, his facility with cultural traditions and materials drawn from across broad geographical and temporal boundaries, and the very nature of much of his writing reflect the mind of a consummate scholar-curator. How Bob arrived at his career as an art historian is a tale that can be told only in its broad sketches; despite his warm personality and generous nature, Bob has always been a private man. He was born in Colorado and raised largely in South Dakota and upstate New York. His family settled in New Mexico, where Bob completed high school and later received his undergraduate degree in English from the University of New Mexico. He joined the US Peace Corps in 1966, serving for two years as an English instructor at the Ubol Teachers College in northeastern Thailand. Thus began Bob's earliest sustained exposure to the country in which an important portion of his work would later be based. This episode in his life also brought him into the broader South Asian ambit; it was on his way home from Thailand that Bob made his first visit to India. US military forces were still heavily engaged in Vietnam in 1968, and Bob was conscripted into the army as soon as he returned stateside. Fortunately, he was posted to the island of O'ahu, Hawai'i. His primary duties involved running the massive military computers at Schofield Barracks. It was on O'ahu that Bob received his first formal training in art history through a course on Indian art taught by Prithwish Neogy at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa. Neogy had been one of Stella Kramrisch's students at the University of Calcutta. Bob recalls that Neogy, on the first day of class, expressed strong doubts that a non-Indian could ever truly know Indian art, but the two became good friends. In 1971, with this single course under his belt, Bob decided to enter the doctoral program at UCLA under the tutelage of J. Leroy Davidson.

ALL too often, modern scholarship limits its scope according to the boundaries of contemporary nations and current geopolitical borders. Academic expertise frequently ties itself artificially to these pre-defined spaces and in so doing often does a disservice to the past. It is no great revelation to point out that people of the past defined the limits of their political and cultural reach in ways that are very different from those found on modern maps. Ancient rulers, merchants, and priests understood the reach of their influence and defined foreignness in ways that would be deeply unfamiliar to those only knowledgeable of the modern world. Yet, despite the well-recognized truth in these observations, it is still relatively rare for scholars to research in ways that transcend modern boundaries. This collection of essays invites readers to take a broad view of Southern Asian art and culture by providing both a wide geographic and chronological scope. The articles are united only by their focus on art historical and archaeological concerns and their concentration on Southern Asia, reaching from the borders of ancient Persia to the island kingdoms of Indonesia. Each essay on its own constitutes a solid, well-grounded academic study, but taken collectively they provide a wide and inclusive view of issues of art and material culture that span the region and invite comparison. With this ambitious scope in mind, contributors to the volume were free to explore topics that impacted any aspect of the region. Naturally many opted to concentrate on a single issue or regional topic but others decided to take on topics that explicitly examined trans-regional or transnational ideas. Even those essays which seem more narrowly focused hold implications for wider issues that impact the ways we understand far-reaching processes and innovations. By taking this approach, this volume is a tribute to Prof. Robert L. Brown whose lifetime of teaching has always emphasized connections as well as differences. His own scholarly publications reach from Afghanistan to Indonesia, with special emphasis on the early history of India and the Dvaravati tradition of Thailand. Over his professional career, he has trained a large cohort of students (many of whom are contributors to this volume) whose expertise truly does reach across the south of Asia. This publication was made possible, in part, through funding provided by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Southern Asian Art Council. We wish also to thank Kay Talwar and Helene Cooper both former chairpersons of the council- for their generous support.

**Contents and Sample Pages**