History of Indian and Eastern Architecture is James Fergusson’s pioneering survey of the building traditions of India and the wider East, one of the first comprehensive Western studies of the subject. Fergusson examines Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples, Islamic mosques and tombs, and the architecture of Burma, Cambodia, and beyond, drawing on his own travels and observations.
A leading nineteenth-century architectural historian, Fergusson sought to classify and explain these traditions within a global history of architecture. His judgments reflect the assumptions of the colonial era and should be read critically, but his descriptive scope and attention to monuments were remarkable for their time. The work remains a landmark in the Western study of Asian architecture and its great monuments.