RUPA-PRATIRUPA: THE BODY IN INDIAN ART

This publication accompanies the exhibition 'Rupa-Pratirupa: The Body in Indian Art' held at the National Museum in New Delhi from 14th March to 7th June 2014. It contains a complete list of all the exhibits and detailed notes on some of the highlights of the exhibition. While it cannot reproduce the selections of music and films on dance and ritual performances, which enrich the experience of the artworks in the exhibition, it lists the films used and a CD of the music is included. These materials extend the remit of the exhibition to performative cultures that are intangible or ephemeral, that seldom have archaeological or material history, and equally rarely leave behind a literature that records the ritual or performance.

The intention of this volume is to aid the visitor's experience of the exhibition. For a more comprehensive stud) of the aesthetic, philosophical, archaeological and historical context, the interested reader may wish to refer to another book: Ahuja, Naman P. The Body in Indian Art and Thought (Ludion, Belgium, 2013; also published in Dutch as India Belichaamd and in French as Corps de'Inde). That book was published on the occasion of the exhibition in Belgium.

While maintaining the same basic structure as well as drawing on some parts of it, this book presents a more descriptive and synoptic view of the objects themselves as well as the overarching ideas of galleries in which they are placed.

It employs a standard transliteration into English of Indian languages, using diacritical marks in the explanatory narrative. However, for ease of reading by all, labels and captions have been transliterated into their commonly-used English equivalents. Thus, labels read 'Krishna' while the text reads 'Krsna.' In cases where Prakrit words are so divergent from Sanskrit ones as to prohibit ease of understanding, Sanskrit terms have been used. Arabic and Persian are also transliterated into their most commonly accepted forms of romanization. However, where Hindustani words better express concepts as they are understood in India, these have been substituted. Place names are provided in standard modern usage rather than in transliterated roman script.