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Preface
The American Institute of Indian Studies is proud to cöpublish with the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology the latest in a series of scholarly works on Indian art and architecture. This most recent volume, The Temples in Kumbhāriyā has been authored by M.A. Dhaky and U.S. Moorti, both of the American Institute of Indian Studies' Center for Art and Archaeology. M.A. Dhaky commenced this project some forty years ago, but due to the time and energy needed to produce the American Institute of Indian Studies' on going massive multi-volume Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture project, he was not able to complete it fully. Then in 1999 Shrenik Kasturbhai Lalbhai and Jitendra Shah proposed that with the help of the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology documentation on the temples of Kumbhāriyā might be recommenced, thus giving renewed impetus to the production of this monograph. M.A. Dhaky then invited U.S. Moorti to serve as cöauthor of this text on the important Jaina temples of Kumbhāriyā.
The volume, the very first on the temples of Kumbhāriyā, fills a major lacuna in Indological studies. While the Jaina temples of Mt. Ābu, Rāṇakpur, and Osiāñ are well-known to pilgrims, scholars, and tourists, those of Kumbhāriyā, dating between the 11th and late-13th centuries, barely are known. Yet since some of these temples predate those of Mt. Abu and other sites better established in both popular and scholarly literature, the temples at Kumbhāriyā hold considerable importance for an understanding of the development of the western Indian temple. This is compounded by the fact that so few temples in western India of this period are extant. We thus are grateful to M.A. Dhaky and U.S. Moorti for preparing this important scholarly contribution on the temples at Kumbhāriyā. We also would like to acknowledge the roles of Shrenik Kasturbhai Lalbhai and Jitendra Shah, both of the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology, as well as that of Dr. Pradeep
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