Frontline magazine of The Hindu Group has published a coffee-table book The Art of India: Sculpture and Mural Painting in the Ancient and Medieval Period authored by art historian Benoy K Behl. The two-volume publication is priced at ₹5,000.
The book has over 450 photographs, taken by Benoy, and is supported by a narration based on a series of articles published over the years in Frontline and on courses in art history that Benoy was invited to give for Delhi University and for the College of Art, Delhi. Benoy set out to study the Chitrasutra, the ancient Indian treatise on art in the process of documenting Indian art, beginning in 1991 with the paintings of Ajanta. Before he knew it, Indian art had taken over his life.
His travels took him across the length and breadth of the country and Asia — from the eighth century Sun temple at Martand in Kashmir; the trans-Himalayan Buddhist monasteries; breath-taking architecture of the Ramanathaswamy Temple in Rameswaram; the rock-cut Jaina reliefs at Kazhugumalai; the glorious Konark Temple in the east; the Jaina temples in Rajasthan; to the Sun Temple at Modhera in Gujarat, one of the most profusely carved in the subcontinent. Copies of the book can be bought at THE HINDU head office in Chennai, and its branch offices.