In this study of violin playing techniques in western classical and south Indian classical music Dr.Lalitha elaborates her understanding of contrasting techniques used in playing the violin in two distinct musical traditions. The violin was a late and foreign entrant in Indian classical music.
James Kippen’s book on the tradition of tabla in Lucknow first came out in 1988, as part of the series of books entitled Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology. Re-reading the work at this distance dimly recreates the excitement of our introduction to ethnomusicology: for many of us, it was a new kind of writing on music, that generated both admiration and resistance strongly.
Pichwai painting is one of the best documented painting traditions in India. There have been several studies of pichhwai painting’s background, themes and iconography, such as Robert Skelton’s Rajasthani Temple Hangings of the Krishna Cult (1973), Talwar and Krishna’s Indian Pigment and Paintings on Cloth (1979) and Amit Ambalal’s Krishna as Shrinathji (1987).
For most people, the term ‘Buddhist monuments of India’ automatically brings to mind the Sanchi stupa and the magnificent cave complex at Ajanta; or perhaps the medieval monastery at Nalanda. Names like Lalitagiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri in all probability draw a blank.
This slim volume provides the reader more than what the title page promises. Besides the immensely readable English translations by Vasanthi Sanakaranarayanan of ‘Ramayana retellings’ by two outstanding contemporary Malayalam literary figures,
It is interesting that popular stories often bordering on the scandalous and the profane should now be so freely and evocatively retold in the English language for, as a student of history, I am apt to recall that only about a hundred years back, the same had been indignantly assailed by the first crop of English educated Indians.