Monuments of Indian Christian Art: Problems of Genres, Dating, and Context

This essay is part of the Catalogue of the splendid exhibition 'Christianity in Asia: Sacred Art and Visual Splendour', organised at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, shown from 27 May to 11 September 2016. In this essay I tried to summarise what we can know about the indigenous Christian art, mostly focusing my attention on church architecture, the diverse types of crosses and standard decoration. I tried to trace the specific Indian element in the Syrian Christian religious art, without claiming a "pre-Portuguese' dating for the extant monuments. Also, I tried to place the question of indigenous Christian art in the multireligious context but must admit that I have considered only the Hindu parallels. A more thorough comparative study should include the Mappila Muslim and the Jewish traditions, too. Also I tried to address the thorny question of the dating of individual monuments and styles.