Volume 1 : Visnu was supported by a contingency grant of the ICHR. It contains the result of the author in literature and the field. Monuments of the early medieval period all over South India was visited and the literature in Tamil and Sanskrit consulted. Being the first in a series of four volumes, it has a chapter under the subheads 'Upper Deccan', 'Lower Deccan' and 'Far South'.
Volume 2 : Siva is result result of the project submitted to the UGC fetched funds for fieldwork. The field was visited few more times from Elephanta in the west to Vilinam in the Far South. The American institute of Indian Studies offered a senior fellowship to do library work at Varanasi.
Volume 3 : is on Sakti Goddesses. The field was visited few more times in South India. The first chapter presents an account of sources in both Tamil and Sanskrit. The Tamil source examined are those of the Cankam classics and the pre-Pallava Cliappatikaram and Manimekalai. In addition to the Devimahatmyam, some liturgical works (e.g. Lalitasahasranama) and the Mattavilasaprahasana are examined. The result of these sources have been published simultaneously in journals, East and West and Acta Orientalia. The nutshell of ideas from these articles in corporated in the present volume.
Volume 4 : is in two parts. For the present study, the field was visited few more times. The first part deals with Ganapati and Skanda-Murukan. The second part deals with Brahma and other deities. The volume is designed in four chapters, the first dealing with source and the others with iconographical forms found in the upper Deccan, Lower Deccan and the far South. The distribution pattern is discussed in a separate chapter. The chapter bearing on sources discusses th data forthcoming from Tamil and Sanskrit. In an overall perspective, the present series is an important contribution because it has a special bearing Tamil sources dealing with the major and minor deities of the Hindu pantheon. To our knowledge, no other researcher in iconography has done this job satisfactorily. Few American-Indian and British scholars have examined the Tamil sources in an entirely different context. They either are translations of the poems or discuss their cultural setting and not iconography. |
