Mechanical Engineer . love to teach. As a GS educator for UPSC and RAS

Rohit Dadhich

One of the most enduring achievements of Indian civilization is undoubtedly its architecture. Indian architecture, which has evolved through centuries, is the result of socio-economic and geographical conditions. Different types of Indian architectural styles include a mass of expressions over space and time, transformed by the forces of history considered unique to India. As a result of vast diversities, a vast range of architectural specimens have evolved, retaining a certain amount of continuity across history.

Crack UPSC CSE Prelims and Mains Exams. Know how to prepare for UPSC 2019 and 2020, complete syllabus, exam patterns, latest notifications to join IAS, IFS, IPS and other cadres of Civil Services.

UPSC CSE - GS

UPSC - Civil Services Examination (IAS) Preparation

Hindi

(Hindi) Indian Architecture

Art and Culture

Practice & Strategy

Art & Culture

Art & Culture free courses for UPSC IAS prelims exam 2018-2019 including syllabus, NCERT summary, strategy, MCQs etc.These courses are taken by India's best educators, led by Roman Saini.

UPSC CSE

Ace the toughest competitive and government exams in India 

Test Preparation

Union Public Service Commission Exams (UPSC)

Crash Course

Here we discuss about the overview of syllabus of our Indian architecture part which is very important topic for upsc prelims and mains exam.  
One of the most enduring achievements of Indian civilization is undoubtedly its architecture. Indian architecture, which has evolved through centuries, is the result of socio-economic and geographical conditions. Different types of Indian architectural styles include a mass of expressions over space and time, transformed by the forces of history considered unique to India. As a result of vast diversities, a vast range of architectural specimens have evolved, retaining a certain amount of continuity across history.

Course Overview (in Hindi )

Architecture is a passion, a vocation, a calling – as well as a science and a business. It has been described as a social art and also an artful science. Architecture must be of the highest quality of design. Architecture provides, in the words of Marcus Vitruvius, the great Roman architect and historian, “firmness, commodity and delight."

Architecture provides a sense of place and support of all types of human activity. Architecture helps the man-made fit in harmony with the environment while promoting health and well-being, enriching lives aesthetically and spiritually, providing economic opportunities, and creating a legacy that reflects and symbolizes culture and traditions.

Introduction and Important Aspects of Architecture and Indian Architecture (in Hindi)

There was a sophisticated concept of town planning in the Indus Valley Civilization. From the excavated remains, it is clear that it possessed a flourishing urban architecture.  There were well-planned grids with broad main roads and smaller lanes intersecting at right angles. There were large networks of hundreds of wells, which supplied water to the residents. A sophisticated drainage system was in existence and even the smallest houses were connected to it. Houses were made of bricks. The standardised dimensions of these bricks, found in the many cities across this civilization, are remarkable. The houses had several storeys. Picture credits: Himanshu Kamdar - http://discoverindiabyroad.blogspot.in

Indus Valley Civilization and Vedic Architecture (in Hindi)

Kautilya in the Arthashastra advises the use of brick and stone for their durability. Yet he devotes a large section to safeguards to be taken against conflagrations in wooden buildings indicating their popularity.
According to Strabo, the gilded pillars of the palace were adorned with golden vines and silver birds. The palace stood in an extensive park studded with fish ponds. It was furnished with a great variety of ornamental trees and shrubs. Excavations carried out by Spooner and Waddell have brought to light remains of huge wooden. Picture credits: Vikas Amarjeet Singh

Mauryan and Shunga Architecture (in Hindi)

Sculptures of Amravati represents the architecture development of the Satavahana periods. They built Buddhist stupas in Amravati (95 feet high).They also constructed a large number of stupas at Goli, Jaggiahpeta, Gantasala and Amravati Bhattiprolu and, Shri Parvatam. Caves IX and X of Ajanta paintings were patronized by Satavahana. Ashokan Stupas were enlarged the earlier bricks and wood works were replaced with stone works. In the field of carving and paintings, Satavahanas art was marked, in the caves of Ajanta the paintings was started with the Satavahanas. The most famous of these monuments are the stupas. Among, them the Amravati Stupa and the Nagarjunakonda Stupa are most famous

Saatwahan Architecture (in Hindi)

The Gupta period is generally regarded as a classic peak of North Indian art for all the major religious groups. Although painting was evidently widespread, the surviving works are almost all religious sculpture. The period saw the emergence of the iconic carved stone deity in Hindu art, as well as the Buddha figure and Jain tirthankara figures, these last often on a very large scale. The two great centres of sculpture were Mathura and Gandhara, the latter the centre of Greco-Buddhist art. Both exported sculpture to other parts of northern India. Unlike the preceding Kushan Empire there was no artistic depiction of the monarchs, even in the very fine Guptan coinage, with the exception of some coins of the Western Satraps, or influenced by them.

The most famous remaining monuments in a broadly Gupta style, the caves at Ajanta, Elephanta, and Ellora (respectively Buddhist, Hindu, and mixed including Jain) were in fact produced under later dynasties, but primarily reflect the monumentality and balance of Guptan style. Ajanta contains by far the most significant survivals of painting from this and the surrounding periods, showing a mature form which had probably had a long development, mainly in painting palaces.The Hindu Udayagiri Caves actually record connections with the dynasty and its ministers,and the Dashavatara Temple at Deogarh is a major temple, one of the earliest to survive, with important sculpture.

Kushana and Gupta Architecture (in Hindi)

In ancient Indian texts, a temple is a place for Tirtha - pilgrimage. It is a sacred site whose ambience and design attempts to symbolically condense the ideal tenets of Hindu way of life.All the cosmic elements that create and celebrate life in Hindu pantheon, are present in a Hindu temple - from fire to water, from images of nature to deities, from the feminine to the masculine, from kama to artha, from the fleeting sounds and incense smells to Purusha - the eternal nothingness yet universality - is part of a Hindu temple architecture

The architectural principles of Hindu temples in India are described in Shilpa Shastras and Vastu Sastras. The Hindu culture has encouraged aesthetic independence to its temple builders, and its architects have sometimes exercised considerable flexibility in creative expression by adopting other perfect geometries and mathematical principles in Mandir construction to express the Hindu way of life.

Important Famous Temple Styles (in Hindi)

The Badami cave temples are a complex of four Hindu, Jain and possibly Buddhist cave temples located in Badami, a town in the Bagalkot district in northern part of Karnataka, India. The caves are considered an example of Indian rock-cut architecture, especially Badami Chalukya architecture, which dates from the 6th century. Badami was previously known as Vataapi Badami, the capital of the early Chalukya dynasty, which ruled much of Karnataka from the 6th to the 8th century. Badami is situated on the west bank of an artificial lake ringed by an earthen wall with stone steps; it is surrounded on the north and south by forts built in later times.
The Pallavas were instrumental in the transition from rock-cut architecture to stone temples. The earliest examples of Pallava constructions are rock-cut temples dating from 610–690 and structural temples between 690–900. A number of rock-cut cave temples bear the inscription of the Pallava king, Mahendravarman I and his successors.

Among the accomplishments of the Pallava architecture are the rock-cut temples at Mahabalipuram. There are excavated pillared halls and monolithic shrines known as Rathas in Mahabalipuram. Early temples were mostly dedicated to Shiva. The Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram and the Shore Temple built by Narasimhavarman II, rock cut temple in Mahendravadi by Mahendravarman are fine examples of the Pallava style temples. The temple of Nalanda Gedige in Kandy, Sri Lanka is another. The famous Tondeswaram temple of Tenavarai and the ancient Koneswaram temple of Trincomalee were patronized and structurally developed by the Pallavas in the 7th century.[citation needed]

Chalukya and Pallavan Style of Architecture (in Hindi)

Temple building received great impetus from the conquests and the genius of Rajaraja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola I. The maturity and grandeur to which the Chola architecture had evolved found expression in the two temples of Thanjavur and Gangaikondacholapuram. The magnificent Shiva temple of Thanjavur, completed around 1009, is a fitting memorial to the material achievements of the time of Rajaraja. The largest and tallest of all Indian temples of its time, it is at the apex of South Indian architecture. The temple of Gangaikondacholisvaram at Gangaikondacholapuram, the creation of Rajendra Chola, was intended to excel its predecessor. Completed around 1030, only two decades after the temple at Thanjavur and in the same style, the greater elaboration in its appearance attests the more affluent state of the Chola Empire under Rajendra.The Brihadisvara Temple, the temple of  Rashtrakutas contributed much to the architectural heritage of the Deccan. Art historian Adam Hardy categorizes their building activity into three schools: Ellora, around Badami, Aihole and Pattadakal, and at Sirval near Gulbarga. The Rashtrakuta contributions to art and architecture are reflected in the splendid rock-cut cave temples at Ellora and Elephanta, areas also occupied by Jain monks, located in present-day Maharashtra. The Ellora site was originally part of a complex of 34 Buddhist caves probably created in the first half of the 6th century whose structural details show Pandyan influence. Cave temples occupied by Hindus are from later periods.

Pandya, Rastrakuta and Chola Architecture (in Hindi)

Islamic architecture encompasses a wide range of both secular and religious styles from the foundation ofIslam to the present day. What today is known as Islamic architecture was influenced by Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and all other lands which the Muslims conquered in the 7th and 8th centuries. Picture credits: 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.

Islamic Architecture Style (in Hindi)

The Delhi Sultanate refers to the five short-lived Muslim kingdoms of Turkic and Pashtun (Afghan) origin that ruled the territory of Delhi between 1206 and 1526 CE. The early rulers of the Delhi Sultanate are often viewed as iconoclastic pillagers, best known for their indiscriminate destruction of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples and enacting prohibitions of anthropomorphicrepresentations in art. The Delhi Sultanate's greatest contribution to Indian fine arts, however, was the introduction of Islamic architectural features, including true domes and arches, and the integration of Indian and Islamic styles of architecture.Built by the first sultan of Delhi, the Qutb Minar is the tallest minaret in India, the walls of which are covered with Indian floral motifs and verses from the Quran.

Sultanate Architecture or Delhi Style (in Hindi)

Mughal architecture is an architectural style developed by the Mughals in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries throughout the ever-changing extent of their empire in Medieval India. It was an amalgam of Islamic, Persian, Turkic and South-Asian architecture. Mughal buildings have a uniform pattern of structure and character, including large bulbous domes, slender minarets at the corners, massive halls, large vaulted gateways and delicate ornamentation. Examples of the style can be found in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Picture credits: www.solobackpacker.com

Mughal and Sur Architecture (in Hindi)

Shivaji built Lal Mahal in Pune. He captured forts made by Muslims like Torna, Sinhagad, panhala, etc. he also built many strong forts. like sindhudurga, raigargh, pratapgarh, lingana, etc. Shaniwarwada is a palace fort in Pune . it was the seat of the Peshwa rulers of the Maratha Empire.
Sikh Architecture, is a style ofarchitecture that is characterized with values of progressiveness, exquisite intricacy, austere beauty and logical flowing lines. ... Although Sikh architecture was initially developed within Sikhism its style has been used in many non-religious buildings due to its beauty.

Sikh and Maratha Architecture (in Hindi)

The British arrived in 1615 and over the centuries, gradually overthrew the Maratha and Sikh empires and other small independent kingdoms. Britain was present in India for over three hundred years and their legacy still remains through some building and infrastructure that exist in their former colonies.

The major cities colonized during this period were Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Agra, Bankipore, Karachi, Nagpur, Bhopal and Hyderabad.

St Andrews Kirk, Madras is known for its colonial architecture. The building is circular in form and is sided by two rectangular sections one is the entrance porch. The entrance is lined with twelve colonnades and two British lions and motto of East India Company engraved on them. The interior holds sixteen columns and the dome is painted blue with decorated with gold stars.

British Architecture and Gothic Style (in Hindi)

Director - CivilsPLus IAS. I have 9+ years experience as Mentor and Trainer for UPSC aspirants for the subjects History, Art and Culture and

Ranganathan Svn Kondala

In this course, Nathan provides an outlook into the Indian Cave and Mural paintings. This course is targeted for UPSC CSE and other aspirants.

Indian Cave and Mural Paintings

Story teller.Lets reconstruct our hi(story) together📚 
Use code:ARTI1702
Join my community: https://unacademy.com/community/FVOPNU 


Arti Chhawari

the course covers the Ancient Indian literature which is an important topic in Art and culture

(Hindi) Ancient Literature - UPSC CSE

[Rachna Shukla] PSIR Optional Faculty, CS Engineer, M.A. in Political Science. Use code : "ASHNASISODIA" to unlock classes.

Ashna Sisodia

It is course in which Ashna Sisodia will deal with the entire art and culture in a great depth. This will be a complete and exhaustive course to cover the toughest part in history.

Crash Course on Art and Culture for UPSC CSE

 History lecturer, Faced UPSC & State PSC interviews.

Sunil Singh

In this course, I will discuss CCRT art and culture notes. I will cover art forms, architecture etc in detail. It will help you to understand art and culture of india.

Lessons

14 lessons • 3h

Invalid Date

NaN

Course Overview (in Hindi )

Invalid Date

NaN

Introduction and Important Aspects of Architecture and Indian Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Indus Valley Civilization and Vedic Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Mauryan and Shunga Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Saatwahan Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Kushana and Gupta Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Important Famous Temple Styles (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Chalukya and Pallavan Style of Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Pandya, Rastrakuta and Chola Architecture (in Hindi)

Invalid Date

NaN

Islamic Architecture Style (in Hindi)

+ See all lessons