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Sikh holy city in Punjab, northern India. Lying on a flat stretch of agricultural land between the rivers Beas and Ravi, close to the Pakistan border, Amritsar (Skt amrit sarowar, ‘pool of nectar’) is the location of the Harmandir, the holiest of Sikh shrines at the heart of the Darbar Sahib temple complex, also referred to as the Golden Temple (see also Indian subcontinent: Iconography and subject-matter and §III, 7(ii)(a), fig.). It was the third Sikh guru, Amar Das (1552–74), who was first drawn to the area by the peace and tranquillity of its forested terrain and the pool where the Harmandir was later built. His successor, Guru Ram Das (1574–81), bought the pool and the surrounding land. Some historians believe that the Mughal emperor Akbar (reg 1556–1605) offered the land as a gift, but that Ram Das declined in keeping with the Sikh tradition of self-reliance (...

(b Cobham, Kent, June 9, 1862; d Cobham, Feb 4, 1946).

English architect and writer, also active in South Africa and India. He was articled to a cousin, Arthur Baker, a former assistant of George Gilbert Scott I, in 1879 and attended classes at the Architectural Association and Royal Academy Schools before joining the office of George & Peto in London (1882), where he first met and befriended Edwin Lutyens. Baker set up in independent practice in 1890 but moved to South Africa in 1892 to join his brother Lionel Baker. In Cape Town he met Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, who directed his attention to the traditional European Cape Dutch architecture of the province and asked him to rebuild his house Groote Schuur (1893, 1897), now the official residence of South Africa’s prime ministers. Applying the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement to local conditions, Baker produced a series of houses, both in the Cape Province and the Transvaal, which were instrumental in the revival of Cape Dutch architecture. In ...

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

(b Bo’ness, 1866; d Edinburgh, Feb 23, 1937).

Scottish architect, active in India. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and Royal Academy Schools. At the RIBA he was a Silver Medallist (1894). After a period articled to Hippolyte Blanc (1844–1917), he worked with Alfred Waterhouse and R. W. Edis before going to South Africa as architect to the Real Estate Corporation. In 1901 he became Consulting Architect to the Government of Bombay, before succeeding James Ransome (1865–1944) as Consulting Architect to the Government of India in 1908, the first to be employed outside the ranks of the Public Works Department engineers. He remained in this post until 1921.

He was proficient in a wide variety of styles. He designed barracks and housing for the new cantonment at Delhi and devised a standardized design for the Post and Telegraph departments, of which the Nagpur Post Office and Agra Post Office (1913...

(b London, Jan 11, 1840; d Southsea, Hants, May 28, 1915).

English architect, active in India. One of the most versatile architects to work in British India, he practised briefly in Calcutta before arriving in 1865 in Madras, where he became the first head of the School of Industrial Art. An ardent advocate of the Indian revival in arts and crafts, he designed in a variety of styles, using Italianate for the Lawrence Asylum (1865; altered), Ootacamund, Gothic Revival for the Post & Telegraph Office (1875–84), Madras, and eclectic Indo-Saracenic for the Senate House (1874–9), University of Madras, with four corner towers crowned by onion domes. He also designed the Presidency College (1865) for the university and alterations to the Board of Revenue Offices (1870), formerly Chepauk Palace (see also Madras, §1). In 1881 he moved to Baroda (now Vadodara), where he took over the design of the colossal Laxmi Vilas Palace, begun by ...

(b London, Jan 23, 1814; d London, Nov 28, 1893).

British archaeologist, numismatist and engineer. He obtained an Indian cadetship in 1828 through the patronage of Sir Walter Scott and received his commission as Second Lieutenant, Bengal Engineers, in 1831. After training at Addiscombe and Chatham, he was sent to India in 1833. Friendship with James Prinsep encouraged an immediate interest in Indian antiquities and led to his excavation of the Sarnath stupa (1835–6). After three years with the Sappers at Calcutta, Delhi and Benares (Varanasi), he was appointed an aide-de-camp (1836–40) to Lord Auckland. A geographical mission (July–September 1839) to trace the sources of the Punjab rivers in Kashmir provided access to the antiquities of the region. While Executive Engineer to Muhammad ‛Ali Shah, the ruler of Avadh (1840–42), he discovered the Buddhist site of Sankasya (Sankisa).

As a field engineer, he saw action during the Bundelkund rebellion (1842), at Punniar (...

(b Whetstone, London, Dec 3, 1843; d Shanklin, Isle of Wight, Dec 26, 1924).

English architect. He trained first under William Habershon (1818–92) and Alfred Pite (1832–1911) and then under William Burges. He went to India in 1864 with Burges’s drawings for a new building for the School of Art in Bombay, but in the event they were too expensive to use. His own family connections secured him work in India, where he designed the Crawford Markets (1865–71), Bombay. His church (1870–73) at Girgaum, near Bombay, is in a French Gothic style. His other work in India in this period includes Allahabad Cathedral (1871–1929), in a Gothic Revival style, and Muir College (1872–8), also in Allahabad, combining Gothic and Saracenic elements. On his return to England he won the first competition (later abandoned) for Liverpool Cathedral in 1886 and designed the church of SS Mary and James (1887), Brighton, the Clarence Wing (...

(b Ayr, Scotland, Jan 22, 1808; d London, Jan 9, 1886).

British art historian, active in India. His interest in the study of architecture was formed and developed in India, where he went at an early age to join a merchant firm with which his family had connections. He left this mercantile establishment to begin his own indigo factory in Bengal, and in the course of his career as an indigo merchant began a pioneering survey of Indian architecture. Travelling extensively across India between 1835 and 1842, armed with a draughtsman’s pad and a camera lucida, he acted as a ‘one-man architectural survey’ making drawings and taking notes and measurements. The labours of these years not only produced all his major writings on Indian architecture but also formulated his basic methods on the study of architecture in general.

Although firmly committed to European classical standards of artistic excellence, Fergusson, unlike most Western scholars of his time, did not impose these on Indian architecture. Rather, he applied to European and world architecture a set of analytical principles he had evolved through a direct, detailed study of Indian monuments. For instance, in all his studies, his reliance on pure architectural evidence for his conclusions grew out of his intimate survey of old Indian buildings. His strong criticism of all post-...

(b Jan 14, 1841; d Weybridge, Dec 4, 1917).

English engineer, architect and writer, active in India. He was educated at Cheam and then at the East India Company Military College at Addiscombe where he was one of the last batch of graduates. He entered the Bombay Artillery in 1858, qualifying five years later as a surveyor and engineer. After initial service in the Public Works Department, and a brief spell with the Aden Field Force in 1865–6, he was appointed Chief Engineer to Jaipur state where he spent his entire working life.

An extremely prolific engineer and architect, he was responsible for a large number of important irrigation schemes but was also a pioneer and one of the most accomplished exponents of eclectic ‘Indo-Saracenic’ architecture. His Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details (1890), published for the Maharajah, is a vast, scholarly compendium of architectural details of north Indian buildings that became a recognized pattern book and standard reference work. His principal works include the Anglican church (...

(Rahman)

(b Dhaka, Bengal [now Bangladesh], April 3, 1929; d Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, March 27, 1982).

American civil engineer of Bangladeshi birth. Khan revolutionized the design of tall buildings in both steel and concrete through his innovation of tube structural systems which assisted in advancing the construction of modern super tall buildings in steel and concrete.

Khan studied at University of Calcutta’s Bengal Engineering College prior to receiving a Bachelor’s degree from University of Dhaka in 1951. In 1952 he received a Fulbright scholarship and a Pakistani Government Scholarship and attended the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Khan graduated in 1953 with a master’s degree in structural engineering and a second master’s degree in theoretical and applied mechanics and before returning to Pakistan to work with the Karachi Development Authority as an Executive Engineer. In 1955 Khan was back in Chicago joining the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), where he advanced to Participating Associate (1961), Associate Partner (...

(b Paris, Jan 3, 1870; d Phnom Penh, Feb 22, 1949).

French architect, art historian and archaeologist. Born into a family of artists, he attended the Lycée de Reims, where he was taught drawing by his father, and in 1891 entered the architectural faculty of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1896 he was employed by the Public Works Office in Tunis, where he learnt about archaeology and published a plan and reconstruction of a temple at nearby Carthage. In 1900 he joined the Mission Archéologique d’Indochine (later known as the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient) to document Siamese historical monuments. His early career was dominated by the discovery, exploration and study of the monuments of the Champa. During 1902–4 he excavated a Buddhist monastery at Dong Duong, a complex of temples at Mi Son and an important temple at Chanh Lo. When he returned on leave to Paris, he married the writer and poet Jeanne Leuba, who took an active part in his later fieldwork, often undertaken in hazardous circumstances at inaccessible sites. He was appointed head of the archaeological service of the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient in ...

(b Thoby Priory, Essex, Aug 20, 1799; d London, Apr 22, 1840).

English scholar, architect and assayer. He was one of eight brothers (including artists William (1794–1874) and Thomas (1800–30)), several of whom gained prominence in India. James Prinsep began training under the architect A. C. Pugin (see Pugin, A(ugustus) C(harles)), but eye problems prompted a change to assaying. On arrival in India in September 1819 he was appointed assistant assay-master to Horace Hayman Wilson at the East India Company’s Calcutta Mint. In 1820 he became assay-master of the Benares (now Varanasi) Mint for ten years. During this time he established a literary institution, served on a committee for municipal improvements, restored the mosque of the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb (d 1767), was the architect of a new mint and church for the city and built a bridge over the Karamnasa River. He also completed a series of sketches of Benares that were reproduced as lithographs by ...

[Raja, Rama]

(b Tanjore, c. 1790; d Mysore, 1833).

Indian writer. His posthumously published work, Essay on the Architecture of the Hindus (published for the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1834), was a pioneering attempt at acquainting the West with the ancient Hindu ‘science’ of architecture, through a translation of some surviving fragments of Sanskrit treatises. Coming from an aristocratic but impoverished family of Karnataka, Ram Raz rose from the position of clerk to that of Head English Master at the College of Fort St George, Madras, eventually becoming a local judge and magistrate at Bangalore. His translation from Marathi into English of an indigenous code of revenue regulations brought him to the attention of Richard Clarke, a British official of the Madras government. It was under Clarke’s initiative that he turned his linguistic skills towards the elucidation of the ancient temple architecture of south India. While the British turned to a ‘Hindu’ to uncode the age-old precepts ‘locked’ in the Sanskrit language, Ram Raz himself had to rely on traditional Brahman scholars and on the practising craftsmen of the ‘Cammata’ clan of Thanjavur in deciphering the abstruse language and technical vocabulary of the texts. Highlighting the difficulties of his study, he noted the gap in communication between the Brahmans, with their closely guarded high knowledge, and the working ‘lower orders’ of artisans; the result was that the original theories were either lost or vastly distorted....

(b Bath, 1847; d Bombay, March 5, 1900).

English architect, active in India. He was articled to Charles Davis, Superintendent to the Bath Corporation, for five years before he arrived in India in 1867, where he worked first in Pune and later in Bombay under General John Augustus Fuller (1828–1902). In 1876 he was appointed examiner to the Bombay School of Art. His first important work, the Royal Alfred Sailors’ Home, Apollo Bunder, Bombay (1872–6; now Council Hall), was followed by his major work, the spectacular Victoria Terminus, Bombay (1878–87), the finest Victorian Gothic building in India with its extravagant use of polychrome. In 1884 he resigned from government service to set up his own practice. As his style matured it developed a more pronounced eclectic Indo-Saracenic form expressed in his work at Municipal Buildings, Cruikshank Road and Dadabhai Road (1888–93) and Churchgate Railway Station (1894–6), both in Bombay. Elsewhere in Bombay he designed the Oriental Life Assurance offices, Post Office Mews, Apollo Bunder, and the Chartered Bank offices. Outside the city he designed Government House, Naini Tal (...

[anc. Kāsī: ‘City of Light’KashiVārāṇasīBanārasBenares]

Sacred city and pilgrimage centre on the banks of the Ganga River between the Barna, or Varuna, and Asi rivers in Uttar Pradesh, India. It is the most holy of the seven sacred cities of Hinduism (the others being Ayodhya, Mathura, Hardwar, Kanchipuram, Ujjain and Dwarka) and has been the focus of Brahmanical learning and religious pilgrimage from ancient times.

The existence of the city from earliest times is attested by myriad references in the sacred texts. The kingdom of Kashi is mentioned in the Vedas, and the kings of Kashi are referred to in the Mahābhārata, although not until the Puranas is Varanasi mentioned as the capital city of Kashi. Around the time of the Buddha (600 bc) 16 great city states flourished in north India, the three most prominent being Maghada, Koshala and Varanasi. Owing to its strategic position at the confluence of the Ganga and Varuna rivers, Varanasi was a significant trading and commercial centre. In many tales of the previous lives of Buddha (Skt ...

(b Scotland, 1880; d Oct 11, 1926).

Scottish architect, active in India . After completing his articles in Perth, he worked with Sir George Washington Browne in Edinburgh and later in York. In 1904 he went to Bombay as assistant to John Begg, and three years later he succeeded him as Consulting Architect to the Government of Bombay. He was most active between 1905 and 1919, after which he gave up government service for more lucrative local private commissions. The Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Bombay, dominated by a huge tiled concrete dome and comprising a whole series of ranges based on a scholarly interpretation of the Muslim architecture of the Deccan, was commenced to his designs in 1904, and Mumbai §1 ).

Wittet’s bold and inventive use of local building stone was carried through on his most notable work, the famous Gateway of India (1927) at Apollo Bunder, Bombay. This triumphal arch was raised to commemorate the landing of King George V and Queen Mary ...

(Joseph )[Johannes Josephus John ]

(b nr Frankfurt am Main, March 13, 1733; d Strand-on-the-Green, nr Kew, London, Nov 11, 1810).

German painter, active in England. Born Johannes Josephus Zauffaly, he was the son of Anton Franz Zauffaly (1699–1771), Court Cabinetmaker and Architect in Regensburg to Alexander Ferdinand, Prince of Thurn and Taxis. After an apprenticeship in Regensburg under the painter and engraver Martin Speer (c. 1702–65), a pupil of Francesco Solimena, Zoffany left in 1750 for Rome, where he studied under the portrait painter Agostino Masucci and came into contact with Anton Raphael Mengs. By 1757 and after a second trip to Rome, Zoffany was commissioned by Clemens August, Prince-Archbishop and Elector of Trier, to produce frescoes and paintings for his new palace at Trier and the palace of Ehrenbreitstein at Koblenz. All Zoffany’s early work at Ehrenbreitstein and Trier has been destroyed, but it may have been in the German Rococo manner of Cosmas Damian Asam and Johann Baptist Zimmermann. A number of small easel paintings such as ...