The study of ancient and medieval Indian art and architecture emerged as a nascent pursuit about two centuries ago.1 In the late eighteenth and through a major part of the nineteenth century, it grew out of a keen and unrelenting interest in Indian antiquities – as curiosities, as admirable ‘handicrafts,’ as mysterious ‘monstrosities,’ and above all, as ‘artefacts’ or sources of past histories of a country then colonized by the British.2 These objectives set the tone for and determined the methods adopted in the study of Indian archaeology and art history during the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. Despite the marked colonial bias, this period is crucial to the formal inception and institution-alization of art history in India.