Body, History, Myth

Visitors to the temples and palaces of southern India may find themselves amid a breathtaking array of murals on their walls and ceilings. Narrative paintings portray the histories of holy sites and the gods who dwell there. Painted portraits incorporate historical figures into mythic landscapes, and Tamil and Telugu inscriptions evoke the imagined topographies of devotional poetry. Body, History, Myth reconceives the relationship between art and devotion in South India by describing how the extraordinary sensory experience of a viewing body in motion unfurls a sacred narrative exquisitely designed to teach, impress, and inspire.

Anna Lise Seastrand offers new insights into the arts of early modern southern India, bringing to life one of the most culturally vibrant yet least understood periods in Indian art. She shows how temple visitors become active participants with the paintings through their somatic engagement with visual stories and devotional landscapes. Seastrand highlights the significance of textuality in early modern South Asia, examining the status of professional scribes and the prominence given to authorship in religious literature and art.

Featuring a wealth of stunning images published here for the first time, Body History, Myth provides a multidimensional reading of temple art that fundamentally reframes the artistic, intellectual, religious, and political histories of early modern India.