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date: 16 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Hindu culture possesses unique ways of seeing and shaping religious art; this chapter explores the “keys” that are needed to interpret some of its characteristic art-forms. The visual arts, like music, provide a universal language that unites the immensely diverse regions of South Asia. Hindu art, in particular, reflects the belief in a polycentric and pervasive divinity that becomes visible in the plastic arts. Rooted in medieval traditions of aesthetic philosophy and ritual divinization, Hindu Art pervades the daily experience of the community, encountered in elaborate ornamental styles, spirits and gods crowding the temple-towers, ritually consecrated sacred architecture, statues and posters that are “alive” with the god’s presence, and evocative films that help the viewer to stay receptive to the effect of these intense art forms.

Keywords: aesthetics, visual arts, deities, divine, embodiment, emotion, temples, films, decorative

Jessica Frazier

Jessica Frazier is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent, and a Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies, and author of The Continuum Companion to Hindu Studies, and Reality, Religion and Passion: Indian and Western Approaches in Hans-Georg Gadamer and Rupa Gosvami.

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