Ethereal Imagery: Symbolic Attributes in the Art and Architecture of India

Abstract

Since religious beliefs have long been the foundation of a community’s way of life in India, these beliefs were adopted in all expressions of both temple and domestic architecture. The environment thus reflected the cultural traits of the people. With the help of selected examples from Ahmadabad’s early nineteenth and twentieth century history, this text introduces the presence of ethereal, winged half divinities as an important aspect of architectural and sculptural details in Indian religious architecture. In the second half of the nineteenth century, such forms finally emerged as a result of the entanglement between local and imported Western art forms. European art and imagery thus became identified with the taste and preferences of the colonial state.