Amazon.com has one customer review of Adam Hardy’s earlier study, Indian Temple Architecture: Form and Transformation, the Karṇāṭa Drāviḍa Tradition, 7th to 13th Centuries (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1995), from a reader “fascinated by ancient Indian temples,” looking for “beautiful pictures with some descriptive text spattered about here and there,” who concluded from its over-many “hand-drawings of details after details” and black-and-white plates that the book “was not for me (a reader with a casual interest in temple architecture), but probably is an excellent source for the academic architect.” Hardy’s new study addresses this audience, condensing his architectural analysis, examining many more of India’s architectural traditions, and illustrating them generously not only with hand drawings and black-and-white plates but also a beautiful selection of color photographs, supplied in large part by that indefatigable photographer of Indian architecture, Gerard Foekma. I think Amazon’s reader, however, might come to a similar conclusion. Hardy has spent his career deeply committed to training students to see and understand “the set of parts” that, in his view, is used to make up Indian temples. “The aim of this book, however, has not been to provide recipes for transforming a great architectural tradition into new architecture, but...