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SAMBODHI
the nandyāvarta, the hamsa, the simha, and the cakravyuha under Auspicious class, and under geometric the Turyasra / the Caturasraka, the Sarvatobhadra, the Sakarna, the Vardhamāna, and the Rjukriya, and the Stambha under architectural and the Puspakhanda, the Latā, and the Gomūtra under Vegetal, and, in the Figuritive, the Nāgabhandha, the Gulika, and the Composite jālas are classified. The Sakhandaka jālaka is composed of compartments / boxes set in a grid pattern. In the early medieval period, it had wide distribution in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh; and it became a highly favoured component in the buildings of western India from the 11th century A. D. The author traces how it was adopted in the Islamic architecture of the mosques and maqbarās of the Sultanate period (c: early 15th to early 16th century A. D.) and how it was transformed in the Mughal period at Gwalior, Fatehpur Sikri and Agra. On the aesthetics of later Islamic jāla, Dhaky comments : "The designs now worked become more and more finicky, more veil-like and consequently accompanied with loss of substantiality but gain on the score of delicate elegance".
The type Bahurandhra (many-holed) is ubiquitous in the later Mughal and Rājput architecture that differed from the traditional Indian types as documented in a single work, the Viśvakarmā-vāstuśāstra, a later southern work on architecture of about 16th or early 17th century.
Besides comparing the Indian Śāstric jāla types and Islamic screens, the author also brings into the compass of study the Gothic traceries. Though far apart in concept, form, and purpose from the grille traditions of Medieval India, Dhaky here considers the traceries in Gothic style in detail for comparing and contrasting the visuality of its creations with those of the ancient and medieval Indian (Brahmano-Buddhist-Jaina) as also those of the Pan-Islamic architectural system. The Volume represents a highly rewarding study as it unfolds the evolution of the jāla form, the jāla's architectural setting and its later echoes in the British period.
The rich information and insightful text of the Volume is accompanied by profusely illustrated diagrams and photoplates of good quality with commentary. In the art historical methodology, this Volume by Dhaky stands out as a seminal, substantial, and a unique contribution to the many perspectives of the Indian art history set in global art context as rightly pointed out by Frederick Asher in his erudite Forward.
B. Rajendra Prasad 16-III-642, Ramamurthy Nagar, 2nd Cross road, Nellore-524 003. (Andhra Pradesh)
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