Contributions of M. A. Dhaky
Padma Bhushan awardee Professor Madhusudan Amilal Dhaky (31.7.1927–29.7.2016) was one of the most prolific scholars in the field of Indian temple architecture. His extensive work on decoding and interpreting temple architectural details, with a focus on structural-stylistic analysis, is groundbreaking. His voluminous writing in three different languages—English, Gujarati, and Hindi—covers different facets of temple forms and imagery. Dhaky has proposed the use of classical terminology from the Vaastu Shastra texts in his work. Dhaky was a polymath who carried out immense work on Jain literature, beadwork from Kutch, Indian classical music, and several others.
While exploring the understanding and significance of temples or sacred spaces, Dhaky explained:
'…from among the many millions of pilgrims, hundreds of priests, and scores of the devout who went to the temples to make their ritual offerings and to submit their prayers, a few at least seem to have halted in the temple’s precincts to contemplate the meaning of the building itself. Some among them seem to have been struck by what they saw. It was an awesome, staggering, incredible cognition, which some later tried to convey in texts through metaphors…[T]he particular aspect each author sensed depended upon his standpoint. Those who saw the temple from a distance consensually perceived it as a Single entity, the Puruṣa or universal Self ... Those who viewed the temple at close quarters saw in its organization and stratified divisions, its details, voids, and masses, the embodiment of Prakṛti or Nature – cosmos, creation, Manifest or empirical reality – with its interminable, though coherent amalgam of tangible and intangible, seen and unseen, sensed and unsensed verities.'[1]
Select Readings of M. A. Dhaky:
‘The Chronology of the Solanki Temples of Gujarat.’ Journal of the Madhya Pradesh Itihas Parishad 3, 1961, 1-83.
‘The Date of the Dancing Hall of the Sun Temple, Modhera.’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay N.S. 38 (Dr. Bhau Daji Special Volume), 1963, 211-22.
The Vyāla Figures on the Mediaeval Temples of India. Varanasi: Prithivi Prakashan, 1965.
‘Kiradu and the Māru-Gurjara Style of Temple Architecture.’ Bulletin of the American Academy of Benares I, 1967, 35-45.
‘Prāsāda as Cosmos.’ Brahmavidyā: The Adyar Library Bulletin 35.3/4, 1971: 211-26.
‘Notices on Buddhist Architecture in Western Indian Vāstuśāstras.’ Sambodhi 2.4, 1974, 1-3.
‘The 'Gothic' in Indian Temple Architecture.’ East and West 24.1/2, 1974, 137-39.
‘The Genesis and Development of Maru-Gurjara Temple Architecture’. In Studies in Indian Temple Architecture, 1975, 114–65.
‘The Western Indian Jaina Temple.’ In Aspects of Jaina Art and Architecture, edited by U.P. Shah and M.A. Dhaky. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1975, 319-84.
The Indian Temple Forms in Karṇāṭa Inscriptions and Architecture. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1977.
The 'Praṇāla' in Indian, South-Asian and South-East Asian Sacred Architecture.’ In Rūpa Pratirūpa: Alice Boner Commemoration Volume, edited by Bettina Bäumer. New Delhi: Biblia Impex, 1982, 119-66.
‘Bhūtas and Bhūtanāyakas: elementals and their captain’. in Discourses on Śiva. Proceedings of a Symposium on the Nature of Religious Imagery, edited with an introduction by Michael W. Meister, 240-56 & pls. 203-25. Bombay: Vakils, feffer & Simons ltd. 1984: 242-43.
‘The Vāstuśāstras of Western India.’ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay N.S. 71, 1997, 65-85.
The Indian Temple Traceries. New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies and D.K. Printworld, 2005.
Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, 8 Volumes. New Delhi: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1983-1996.
Footnote:
[1] Dhaky, M.A., ‘Bhūtas and Bhūtanāyakas: elementals and their captain’. in Discourses on Śiva. Proceedings of a Symposium on the Nature of Religious Imagery, edited with an introduction by Michael W. Meister, 240-56 & pls. 203-25. Bombay: Vakils, feffer & Simons ltd. 1984: 242-43.