Imperial Frontiers: Building Sacred Space in Sixteenth-century South India

Aspects of a Hindu temple founded at Krishnapuram in southern India in the 1560s, under the patronage of the Madurai Nayakas, governors of the Vijayanagara Empire, are resonant with meaning. Conservative design features and the temple's status as an architectural "copy" of a famous sacred site commemorate the past and sacred geography of the Tamil poet-saints. Innovative architectural sculpture demonstrates the temple's engagement with both the cultural and political past of the Tamil country and the more immediate imperial reality of the fragmenting Vijayanagara Empire as the Nayaka patrons sought to define themselves in a dynamic cultural and political arena