This volume presents the essays that best represent Coomaraswamy's rapidly developing thinking on the hermeneutics of architecture, its "why" not "how". These can best be understood in the order in which they were written. From a discussion of the "Pali Kannika : Circular Roofplate" of ancient wooden construction in 1930, Coomaraswamy moved on to a much more widely ranging metaphysical exploration of "The Symbolism of Dome" (1938). He made a conceptual leap to connect the physiognomy of costume with architectural meaning in the essay on "Usnisa and Chatra: Turban and Umbrella" (1938): profoundly connected "Decoration" to essential meaning in "Ornament" (1939): and extended the "Significant form" of architecture to that which transforms men in "Svayamatrnna: Janua Coeli"(1939). A summing up essay on "An Indian Temple : the Kandarya Mahadeo" (1947), published in the year of his death, placed the form of the temple at the still centre of Coomaraswamy's thought.

MICHAEL W. MEISTER is Professor of South Asia Regional Studies and Chairman of the Department of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He has edited the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture (1983-92), Discourse on Siva, Proceedings of a Symposium on the Nature of Religions.