Architecture of Sovereignty Stone Bodies, Colonial Gazes, and Living Gods in South India

"Architecture of Sovereignty focuses on the Pudu Mandapam (in Tamil, 'new hall'), which is a Hindu structure in Madurai, a major pilgrimage town in Tamil Nadu. From various stages in South Indian history, the site has symbolically encoded the power of several regimes as far back as Nayaka rule in the seventeenth century. The proposed monograph 'reads' these layers of political power as embodied in aesthetic forms in and around the Pudu Mandapam. Relying upon sources including temple manuscripts and legends, physical architecture, sculptures, ritual, letters, travelogues, bronze models, paintings and drawings, photographs, tourism ephemera, and interviews, the narrative employs a multidisciplinary approach to illustrate how religious, economic, domestic, and foreign influences converge in shaping and conceptualizing the Pudu Mandapam as a place, and India as an object and problem of government. In so doing, it shows how the art and architecture of the Pudu Mandapam have been put to different uses towards diverse ends by ruling groups from early modern times to British colonialism to the postcolonial period"--