The Indian Temple Traceries by M. A. Dhaky, dean of Indian architectural historians, is a fascinating study of the variety to be found within a single element of the fabric of Indian temples—the jāla or jālaka (Sanskrit), jālī (Hindi), tracery, pierced screen, grill, or lattice. Dhaky’s starting point is the terminology of the Sanskrit architectural treatises, which provide names for the types of jāla but generally do not define them. Providing plausible identifications depends not only on comparing the terms in different texts but on an encyclopedic knowledge of the appearance of jāla through the ages. Dhaky’s analysis is accompanied by 348 illustrations of jāla at Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Islamic, and other structures, from all parts of India (plus a few from Java), ranging in date from the second century BCE to the early twentieth century. Nearly all the photographs were taken by the survey team of the American Institute of Indian Studies and are a demonstration of what an extraordinarily important resource the institute photo archive has become.

In Dhaky’s summary chart, thirteen texts are listed along with sixteen different jāla types; each text names anywhere from four to ten types, with a terminology not consistent from text to text. Only two of the texts have been translated into English, and seven have never been transcribed and printed. They are mostly southern Indian in origin, and range in date from the tenth to the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Dhaky plausibly surmises that the nomenclature is applicable to much earlier structures and to temples in the north as well as the south. On the basis of the names appearing in the texts, Dhaky devises eight encompassing categories: auspicious symbol types, geometric, architectural, vegetal, figurative, composite, Sakhaṇḍaka jālaka, and unclassified. In fact, what Dhaky has done is to put himself in the position of a modern-day compiler of a Sanskrit architectural treatise: he provides nomenclature for a complete overview, not merely an explanation of the names in the texts. The term sa-khaṇḍaka (“having sections”) is his own invention. Some taxonomists might assign the earlier examples of this type to the Puṣpakaṇṭha (“flower throat”) class. The later examples are grids of squares, each one of which is itself filled with a jāla of one sort or another, and for these Dhaky can find no appropriate name in the texts (they somewhat resemble “album” quilts sewn by Methodist ladies in nineteenth-century Baltimore).

It is in the pages of illustrations, and in the accompanying commentary, that the virtues of Dhaky’s encyclopedic intentions can be appreciated. Each type is treated in turn, using the Sanskrit term, and the illustrations of each type appear more or less in chronological order. In one sense, the illustrations comprise a handbook, a timeless repository of alternative patterns. In another sense, the differences that are due to regional and chronological factors come to the fore when jāla of the same class are juxtaposed. On one set of facing pages, for instance, “Vallī jālaka” (here, scrolling vines) from eighth-century Alampur, on the left, contrast with those from fifteenth-century Ahmedabad, Sultanate period, on the right. At the same time, an extended sequence of Sakhaṇḍaka albums in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Gujarat demonstrates the extent to which the same patterns appear in both mosques and Hindu temples. Equally instructive are instances in which the illustrations widely separate jāla of different classes at the same temple, as in the case of Vallī and Gulikā at the Virūpākṣa temple at Pattadakal (743 CE).

Each illustration is identified by jāla type, temple name, location on temple, ruling dynasty, and date. These dates, being the result of many years of study, have an independent value. The fifty-five pages of commentary on the illustrations add terse descriptions as well as value judgments, which can considerably augment the reader’s enjoyment while perusing the plates. Occasionally they are negative (“not too pleasing”; “over intricacy,” at the Taj Mahal) but more frequently positive (“unpretentious but effective”; “apogee of perfection”). In the case of a jāla in the form of a stylized wheel, somewhat reminiscent of a Japanese mon, Dhaky writes, “The jāla’s simple looking design is, in point of fact, subtle and sophisticated, is very balanced, crisply cut, and looks like a sacred symbol exuding noble and exhalted sadness” (234).

If The Indian Temple Traceries is in one sense a Sanskrit text updated for the twenty-first century, it also has among its ancestors a paradigm of twentieth-century scholarship, namely Stella Kramrisch’s The Hindu Temple, published in Calcutta in 1946, especially as a piece of bookcraft—with thick paper, topical organization, the inclusion of Sanskrit texts in Devanāgiri script, extended commentary on the plates, and illustrations chosen for their aesthetic appeal. A peculiar feature in Dhaky’s book, the inclusion of a chapter titled “The Gothic Traceries,” may nevertheless owe more to the author’s view of the Sanskrit tradition than to Kramrisch. “The Sanskrit texts on vāstu were composed before the advent of British rule,” writes Dhaky, and “in the corpus of the Sanskrit nomenclature of the jālas, Gothic finds no mention” (70). In other words, Gothic traceries might have been included, given a time warp. Furthermore, India has appropriated Islamic architectural conventions with such spectacular aesthetic effect, creating “among the most beautiful Islamic jālis of the world” (64). Why shouldn’t it equally appropriate Christian stained-glass windows? Similarly, the work of a British architect (though one working in an Indo-Islamic rather than a Gothic style) is incorporated: John Griffiths, architect of the Ganga Deri, a marble structure comissioned in 1872 by a maharaja in Gujarat to commemorate his deceased wife. (The work of Griffith’s American contemporary, the designer Lockwood De Forest, does not appear, however.)

One interesting feature of the Gothic traceries chapter is the preponderance of English examples—twenty-two (French, seven; German, two). Another is the way the analysis of a prominent feature within a relatively narrow span of time opens a way to the discourse of formalist Western art history. (Dhaky writes on page 99: “But France did not stop at this remarkable achievement. It freely experimented with the possibilities of constructions in the field of Rayonnant traceries where it proved itself an unsurpassed master.”) In the Indian case, although Dhaky is well aware of challenges faced at certain moments in time, the geographical and chronological spread and the treatment of jāla (secondary elements, until the Islamic period) as items in a repertory preclude the same sort of historical focus. The Gothic chapter is illustrated with line drawings rather than photographs, and as expertly executed as they are, they fail to convey Dhaky’s enthusiasm fully (for “the classic, the handsomest, and an awesome example of tracery in the Curvilinear class” [97; emphasis in original] at Carlisle Cathedral, to cite one instance).

Although thick and heavy, The Indian Temple Traceries has a relatively brief text, and Dhaky has been rigorous about setting himself limits. The position of each tracery within the temple fabric is always stated, but the majority of photographs show an isolated jāla. When Dhaky comments on the function of a jāla in context (as “a relieving agent,” for instance), it is not always possible to share or reject his judgment. Furthermore, nothing is said about what appears in the texts about the proper placement of traceries, and there is no general discussion of their use at various times and in different regions—as a window on the temple’s main story, as a pair of screens flanking an entranceway, on the superstructure, and elsewhere. Some striking pairs of photographs contrast exterior and interior views of the traceries, but no wide-angle photographs of interiors reveal the quality of light inside. Furthermore, the usage of the technical terms outside the context of jāla is not explored, nor is the question of which patterns may be unique to jāla. The literal meaning of some of the names is referred to glancingly but not discussed at length, with the exception of nandyāvarta (one of the auspicious symbols), which is problematical because its meaning changed over time, and its original referent (when it appeared in texts concerning auspicious marks on the body of the Buddha) has been disputed. For Dhaky, the word conjures an ox harnessed to a grinding wheel—an image only partly congruent but perhaps reconcilable with the designs discussed by Anna Maria Quagliotti in Buddhapadas (Kamakura: Institute of the Silk Road Studies, 1998). The limits Dhaky has set to his discussion and his belief that a single category in Sanskrit texts, namely jāla, provides a worthy subject of study are also strengths, which yield—when combined with the exquisite photography of the American Institute of Indian Studies—a new virtual museum, one dedicated to a heretofore unrecognized genre and filled with individual rooms for each of the jāla types. As in all good museums, contemplation of the new relationships discoverable within these rooms will lead to still more insights.