Madhusudan Dhaky was one of the few Indian scholars working on early Indian architecture and under his guidance the American Institute of Indian Studies bloomed from 1976 to 1996. Four amazing volumes of encyclopaedias of Indian temple architecture was edited by him. His work saw medieval temple architecture from a unique lens because he brought fresh methodologies to analyse them. For instance, he categorised Western Indian temple architecture into maha-maru, maha-gurjara and marugurjara, the latter an amalgamation of the former two schools. More importantly, he tried to bring to the study of architecture an approach that was not connected to dynastic histories. He saw architecture from an aesthetic point of view instead. He published many important tomes such as The Ceilings in the Temple of Gujarat.
The great thing about Dhaky was that aside from art and architecture, he was equally erudite about music, Jain studies and philosophy. Based in Ahmedabad, he was friendly with art circles all over. Bhupen Khakhar was a close friend of his. He represented a group of intellectuals from Ahmedabad in the 1950s who took to surveying Indian culture at a particularly special time, for India was then a young country seeking to discover its rich heritage.
His scholarship has influenced many great India Studies scholars the world over, including Michael Meister from the University of Pennsylvania. He was my guru. You could have long chats with him. He even used to sing with much passion, because to him, architecture was a form of music as well.
Source: http://www.mumbaimirror.com/others/sunday-read/Madhusudan-Dhaky/articleshow/53470639.cms
The great thing about Dhaky was that aside from art and architecture, he was equally erudite about music, Jain studies and philosophy. Based in Ahmedabad, he was friendly with art circles all over. Bhupen Khakhar was a close friend of his. He represented a group of intellectuals from Ahmedabad in the 1950s who took to surveying Indian culture at a particularly special time, for India was then a young country seeking to discover its rich heritage.
His scholarship has influenced many great India Studies scholars the world over, including Michael Meister from the University of Pennsylvania. He was my guru. You could have long chats with him. He even used to sing with much passion, because to him, architecture was a form of music as well.
Source: http://www.mumbaimirror.com/others/sunday-read/Madhusudan-Dhaky/articleshow/53470639.cms
