From the Jacket

This publication for the first time is a full account of the Dharmaraja Ratha, the largest and most versatile of the famous monolithic Vimanas of Pallava origin in Mahabalipuram. With its full descriptive text and illustrations of all the sculptures, most of them hitherto unpublished, and including all the architectural views, too, it is a complete and fully illustrated treatise on the monument from the points of view of technique, architecture, sculpture, iconography, epigraphy and chronology. It is the outcome of the patient and critical study of a scholar with many years service and experience in the Archaeological Survey of India, particularly in the architectural and iconographic survey of temples, which made him the organizer and the first officer in charge of the Temple Survey Project (South). As a close and integrated study of a typical Pallava monument and with its ample photographic illustrations the book in opening up new vistas altogether is expected to stimulate interest and further research in the field of Indian architecture and sculpture, particularly south Indian.

The author, K. R. Srinivasan (b. 1910) after taking his M. A. degree and further training in Museology and Archaeology worked in an Indian State for 11 years as Curator and Archaeologist and then in different parts of India for 23 years as an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India. In that service he rose to the position of Deputy Director General before his actual retirement. In 1969. Versed in different branches of archaeological work in India, he specialized in the architectural and iconographic study of Indian temples, particularly those found south of the Vindhyas as also in the methods of their conservation. As such he was deputed, in 1949, to visit and study the monuments of Indonesia and, later, was appointed to organize a new special branch in the Archaeological Survey of India for the conduct of a combined architectural and iconographic survey of the temples, his assignment being the Southern region as against that of another officer appointed for the Northern region. As a result he published his first monograph, in that capacity, entitled 'The Cave Temples of the Pallavas'. His other monographs in the series await publication by the Survey. He is also the author of 'Temples of South India' published recently by the National Book Trust, India. He has to his credit many contributions towel-known publications on these and other aspects of Indian Archaeology and Art. He was till recently the President of the Archaeological Society of South India, and has been associated with many learned bodies and the Universities in the south having Faculties in Archaeology, Indology and allied disciplines.