Constructing Community: Tamil Merchant Temples in India and China, 850-1281
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation studies premodern temple architecture, freestanding sculpted stones, and Tamil language inscriptions patronized by south Indian merchants in south India and China. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, Indian Ocean trade was at its apex, connecting populations on European and Asian continents through complex interlocking networks. Southern India's Tamil region, in particular, has been described as the fulcrum of the Indian Ocean circuit; however, knowledge of intra-Asian contact and exchange from this period has been derived mostly from Arabic and Chinese sources, which are abundant in comparison with the subcontinent's dearth of written history. My project redresses this lacuna by investigating the material culture of Tamil merchants, and aims to recover their history through visual evidence, authored by individuals who left few written traces of their voyages across the Indian Ocean. The arguments of my dissertation are based primarily on unpublished and unstudied monuments and inscriptions, weaving together threads from multiple disciplines--art history, literature, epigraphy, and social theory--and from across cultures, the interconnected region of the eastern Indian Ocean and the South China Seas, spanning the Sanskritic, Tamil, Malay, and Sinocentric realms. My dissertation challenges traditional narratives of Indian art history that have long attributed the majority of monumental architecture to royal patrons, focusing instead on the artistic production of cosmopolitan merchants who navigated both elite and non-elite realms of society. I argue that by constructing monuments throughout the Indian Ocean trade circuit, merchants with ties to southern India's Tamil region formulated a coherent group identity in the absence of a central authority. Similar impulses also are visible in merchants' literary production, illustrated through several newly translated panegyric texts, which preface mercantile donations appearing on temple walls in t…
abstract: This dissertation studies premodern temple architecture, freestanding sculpted stones, and Tamil language inscriptions patronized by south Indian merchants in south India and China. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, Indian Ocean trade was at its apex, connecting populations on European and Asian continents through complex interlocking networks. Southern India's Tamil region, in particular, has been described as the fulcrum of the Indian Ocean circuit; however, knowledge of intra-Asian contact and exchange from this period has been derived mostly from Arabic and Chinese sources, which are abundant in comparison with the subcontinent's dearth of written history. My project redresses this lacuna by investigating the material culture of Tamil merchants, and aims to recover their history through visual evidence, authored by individuals who left few written traces of their voyages across the Indian Ocean. The arguments of my dissertation are based primarily on unpublished and unstudied monuments and inscriptions, weaving together threads from multiple disciplines--art history, literature, epigraphy, and social theory--and from across cultures, the interconnected region of the eastern Indian Ocean and the South China Seas, spanning the Sanskritic, Tamil, Malay, and Sinocentric realms. My dissertation challenges traditional narratives of Indian art history that have long attributed the majority of monumental architecture to royal patrons, focusing instead on the artistic production of cosmopolitan merchants who navigated both elite and non-elite realms of society. I argue that by constructing monuments throughout the Indian Ocean trade circuit, merchants with ties to southern India's Tamil region formulated a coherent group identity in the absence of a central authority. Similar impulses also are visible in merchants' literary production, illustrated through several newly translated panegyric texts, which preface mercantile donations appearing on temple walls in t…
author: Lee, Risha
language: English
keywords: Hindu architecture, Hindu temples, Inscriptions, Tamil, Merchants--Intellectual life
date published: 2012
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:22Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8W95H8W