From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a region encoded with deep meaning, one approached by millions of Hindus as a primary focus of pilgrimage.

Nachiket Chanchani's innovative study explores scores of stone edifices and steles that were erected in this landscape. Through their forms, locations, interactions with the natural environment, and sociopolitical context, these lithic ensembles evoked legendary worlds, embedded historical memories in the topography, changed the mountain range's appearance, and shifted its semiotic effect. Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains alters our understanding of the transmission of architectural knowledge and provides new evidence of how an enduring idea of India emerged in the subcontinent.

Mountain Temples & Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas, Nachiket Chanchani, Niyogi Books, University of Washington Press, Hardcover, 284 pp, $55.00

Nachiket Chanchani is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art and the Department of Asian Languages and Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

CONTENTS: Mountain Temples & Temple Mountains
Acknowledgments		ix
Notes on Transliteration		xiii
INTRODUCTION		3
CHAPTER 1	Headed to the Himalayas	25
CHAPTER 2	Gateways and Guardians	45
CHAPTER 3	Saiva Ascetics and Kings in a Flaming Forest	75
CHAPTER 4	Great Temples and Little Kingdoms along the Vishnu Ganga River	113
CHAPTER 5	New Seekers and Settlers	143
CONCLUSION		173
Appendix: Temple Sites in India's Central Himalayas		199
Glossary of Key Architectural Terms		209
Notes		213
Bibliography		239
Index		257