This beautiful reprint illustrates the Vr 's unrivalled collection of South Asian sculpture, putting Indian temple sculpture in its context as an instrument of worship intended to embody powerful religious experience. Author John Guy considers the origin, cosmological meaning and role of sculpture within the temple setting, and reveals the vivid rituals and traditions still in practice today. The book is also an absorbing introduction to the principal iconographic forms in the three traditional religions of the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, with the principal deities presented through their myths and manifestations.