Review: The Hegemony of Heritage: Ritual and the Record in Stone, by Deborah L. Stein

Abstract

Deborah L. Stein The Hegemony of Heritage: Ritual and the Record in Stone Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018, 312 pp., 154 color illus. $39.95 (paper), ISBN 9780520296336 The history of architecture tends to privilege an object's moment of origin as the “authentic” focus of the discipline. The “lives” of an object, however, often extend far beyond the initial context of creation, as the object is moved and modified, forgotten and remembered, and reclaimed and redefined. In The Hegemony of Heritage: Ritual and the Record in Stone , Deborah L. Stein departs from the preoccupation of architectural history with origin stories, arguing instead for a “diachronic history of temples” (1). Taking the “lives” of two interconnected medieval Hindu temple sites in Rājāsthan as her point of departure, Stein explores how temples prompt various actors to construct historical narratives, define identities, perform rituals, and make aesthetic choices in multiple moments over time. She asserts that the architectural remains of a Hindu temple are not only indexical traces of past practices and aspirations but also “catalyst agents” for present and future actions (1). As the book's subtitle suggests, ritual is the key strand linking the multiple moments in this diachronic history. Applying methodologies from ethnohistory and material culture studies, Stein considers the architectural spaces and sculptural programs of the temples as material residues of past practices. Their resonances with present-day rituals therefore provide a broader context beyond textual and epigraphic sources. Rituals performed by a wide range of social groups also reveal unintentional, and often nonelite, “positions, beliefs, ideas, and experiences rather than the imposition of a singular overarching historiographic frame” (16). As Stein points out, ritual has played a prominent and critical role in the most recent “lives” of medieval Hindu temples, including the two key temple sites examined in the book: in twenty-first-century India, Hindu temples designated as archaeological monuments have been restored to active use, transformed into living temples where the claims of private trusts, …