Archives West Finding Aid

Full Biography:

Professor R. Nath was born in Agra on 9th March 1933 to an Agarwal family with a flourishing business of cotton durries and woollen carpets in Gujarat and Bombay, which enabled him to visit the monuments of western India extensively as a child. His academic taste and innate interest in historical architecture led him to rejoin St. John's College Agra. He did his M.A. (History) in 1965 in First Dn with First Position in the University. He did his Ph.D. and D.Litt. on Mughal monuments of Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Delhi, from Agra University.

He taught at Agra College and University of Rajasthan Jaipur, from where he retired, in 1993, as Professor and Head of the Dept. of History and Indian Culture. Having studied Ancient and Medieval Indian Architecture in the field, and worked at more than 50 historical sites as Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Mathura-Vrindaban, Dig-Bharatpur-Goverdhan, Jaunpur, Sasaram, Gwalior, Chanderi, Khajuraho, Dhar-Mandu, Jaipur-Amer, Ajmer, Chittorgadh, Ahmedabad and Lahore, and authored 65 books, 13 monographs, 190 research-papers and 300 popular articles, during the last five decades, he is considered one of the front-ranking scholars and art-historians of the country and an authority on Mughal Architecture.

He has been a recipient of several research fellowships, including fellowship of the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council Bombay. He delivered lectures at the Heras Institute Bombay, Fine Arts Department at Harvard University, Iran Society Calcutta, Salarjung Museum Hyderabad and many other premier Institutions. He has been a regular at National and International Seminars and Conferences on Mughal Architecture. With one book on standard terminology (glossary) and two on basic bibliographies; five books on style, theory, sources, nomenclature, techniques, symbolism and Aesthetics; one book on methodology and historiography; four books on ornamentation; one book on constructional data; nine books on specific sites; and four multi-volume series and numerous papers, he has directed the course of the study of Indo-Muslim Architecture into scientific channel, and made it a perfect discipline, instead of a compendium of romantic tales, fanciful anecdotes and hearsay legends. His 4-volume monumental series: HISTORY OF MUGHAL ARCHITECTURE is a classic of which first three volumes, Supplement to Vols-I-II and Part-1 of Vol-IV have been published. He has traced the evolutionary process of this style, point by point, and emancipated it from sectarian and racial misnomers. The series is his magnum opus.

He has also studied the Krishna Temples of the Braja region, of the reigns of Akbar and Jehangir (1556-1627 A.D) which mark the efflorescence of the ‘ideas’, ‘feelings’ and ‘skills’, which travelled from Medapata-Gopadri (Mewar-Gwalior) – to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri – to, finally, Vrindaban, to make up, probably, the most creative and versatile architectural style in Medieval India. He has also worked on the ‘Historical Study of Architectural Prototypes’.

Fluent in English, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit and Gujarati, Professor Nath has written several books on Ancient Indian Art, Architecture and Aesthetics, based on Sanskrit texts, of which the Art of Khajuraho has been widely acclaimed. It is essentially a work on ‘Aesthetics’, on which subject his novel book : Ideals of Indian Womanhood (as described in classical Sanskrit texts and depicted in Plastic Art) is to be published. Chittorgadh Kirtti-Stambha of Maharana Kumbha (The Idea & the Form, 1440-60) is his other classic on Ancient Indian thought, art and architecture. Architecture is a veritable chronicle in stone, he writes. The stamp of an age and people – their tastes, beliefs, ideals, values, standards, achievements, ideas, feelings and skills – everything that makes up a Civilization, is most faithfully imprinted upon its monuments. History of Architecture is, in fact, a faithful record of those tender feelings, sublime thoughts and subtle ideas which go to make a Civilization, not of those political intrigues and feuds, and military conflicts which destroy it. It is extremely difficult to decipher the language of STONES of the past ages, and one has to belong to the region and its cultural milieu where grew the architectural style, and to its language and literature which made it up. To be able to study architecture of a region, one requires a life-time’s training in the field; he has virtually to live with the monument, to know it. Without such a constituent affiliation with it, study of architecture is as superfluous as cruising on the surface of the sea, without knowing what lies underneath, he writes.

Prof. Nath has been living with Mughal monuments for more than half a century. Precisely, History of Architecture, as of any other fine art, is made in the context of, and with reference to, the cultural milieu, which produced it; it is history of civilization in its most manifest form. Prof Nath’s work is thus, essentially, a study of the Land, the People and the Culture.