Advisory Committee Chair
Cathleen A Cummings
Advisory Committee Members
Heather McPherson
Mindy Nancarrow
Catherine Pagani
Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
2006
Degree Name by School
Master of Arts (MA) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Many Hindu temples have been built in the United States over the last thirty years. While the sociological reasons for this phenomenon have received scholarly attention, there is little published work on their architecture and iconography. My research redresses this by focusing on the architecture and iconography of the recently completed temple at Eads, Tennessee, selected because it was built to resemble traditional temples in south India. Eads was designed by a prolific Hindu temple architect and reflects current trends in American Hindu temple design. Specifically, this study identifies, analyses, and documents transformations from traditional temple design occurring in the temple at Eads. A detailed on-site examination of the architecture of Eads is compared to temples built during the south Indian Chola dynasty (ninth to thirteenth centuries). The iconography was identified in part through discussions with the temple priests, and additional information was obtained from interviews with the founding chairman of the board of trustees, the chief priest, and the architect. The research identifies a uniformity of architectural style and a balanced iconographical content that reflects accommodations reached by different sects within the Hindu community who collaborated successfully to build the temple. It also reveals that the linear spatial arrangement traditional in Chola temples had been modified to facilitate a congregation style of worship. Lastly, it finds that the architectural and iconographical iv style at Eads is conservative, reflecting the community’s desire for temple worship based on commonly held theological precepts. These findings suggest that the uniform architectural style at Eads communicates the solidarity of the disparate Hindu community to the devotees and their subsequent generations. It also presents a unified identity to the outside world, facilitating greater social influence. The building of a congregational space shows that devotees value communal worship, which visibly transmits Hindu values between different sects, across generations, and to dispersed Hindu populations visiting the temple from afar. Finally, the conservative style of the architecture and iconography at Eads underscores their crucial importance as components of Hindu temple worship. Studying them, therefore, provides a valuable extension of our understanding of American Hindu communities.
Recommended Citation
Smythies, Adrian Greville, "The Architecture And Iconography Of The Hindu Temple In Eads, Tennessee" (2006). All ETDs from UAB. 3636.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/3636