Indian Art History
Changing Perspectives
The study of ancient and medieval Indian art and
architecture emerged as a nascent pursuit about
two centuries ago.1 In the late eighteenth and
through a major part of the nineteenth century, it
grew out of a keen and unrelenting interest in
Indian antiquities – as curiosities, as admirable
‘handicrafts,’ as mysterious ‘monstrosities,’ and
above all, as ‘artefacts’ or sources of past histories
of a country then colonized by the British.2 These
objectives set the tone for and determined the
methods adopted in the study of Indian
archaeology and art history during the nineteenth
and early decades of the twentieth century.
Despite the marked colonial bias, this period is
crucial to the formal inception and institutionalization
of art history in India
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