Book contents
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Context
- Part II After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
- 8 The Road from Decadence: Agendas and Personal Histories in the Study of Early Islamic Art
- 9 Connecting Art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian Studies
- 10 ‘Hindu’ Art and the Primordial Śiva
- Part III Post-Colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
10 - ‘Hindu’ Art and the Primordial Śiva
from Part II - After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2020
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Empires of Faith in Late Antiquity
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The Imperial Context
- Part II After Imperialism: Orientalism and its Resistances
- 8 The Road from Decadence: Agendas and Personal Histories in the Study of Early Islamic Art
- 9 Connecting Art and Zoroastrianism in Sasanian Studies
- 10 ‘Hindu’ Art and the Primordial Śiva
- Part III Post-Colonialist, Old Colonialist and Nationalist Fantasies
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Subjects
Summary
This chapter is concerned with the question of time, or rather the absence of it. The absence of time, the notion that something can be primordial or unchanging, is encountered in two very different sorts of textual strategies which impact our understanding of the religion(s) known as Hinduism and also the arts of South Asia in the first millennium. The first textual strategy is the frequent claim in South Asian religious texts that a particular teaching or text is of unprecedented antiquity, either primordial or at least so old as to be functionally primordial, and is therefore authoritative. The second is the thread in colonial historiography of South Asia which presents the history of the region as unchanging, or perhaps even stagnating, except under external pressures – the latter imagined as successive Greek, nomadic, Islamic, and British conquests.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Empires of Faith in Late AntiquityHistories of Art and Religion from India to Ireland, pp. 260 - 290Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020