Hindu Temple

The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meanings and Forms by George Michell, 184 pages

For millennia, Hindus have constructed temples to their gods, some of which rival the great cathedrals of Europe in both grandeur and intricacy.  This book by George Michell serves as a brief introduction to the various expressions of the fundamentally conservative form of the temple-mountain, not only on the Subcontinent, but also in Cambodia, Java, and Bali.

As is inevitable in such a short book attempting to cover such a vast topic, The Hindu Temple is both dense and dry.  The text is only slightly marred by the dual reductionism so characteristic of postmodern Westerners writing about traditional non-Western religions, attempting to elicit the sympathy of readers by awkwardly aligning the religion with their presumed values even while deconstructing the religion with an anthropological approach.