
3 Hindu Ontology / Cosmology
It should be reiterated that the idea of one Hindu emanative cosmology” is a gross over-simplification of a subtle, complex and varied body of thought stretching over more than three millennia. It is a fortiori even more problematic to extend this generalization to Buddhism, a religion which has propagated widely diverse beliefs and practices as the adopted faith of much of East Asia. Its description here and throughout these two websites is intended to provide the user with the minimum necessary background to appreciate the architecture. Such conceptual latitude may be somewhat mitigated by the loss of doctrinal nuance unavoidable in its translation into the “vernacular” of chisel and stone. The need for a sthapaka (described below) seems to suggest that, in architecture too, “traduttore, traditore.”