Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape Experience in South Asia
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Professor Robert MacDougall, (B.Arch 1963, Ph.D. Anthropology, 1971) was a member of the faculty in the Department of Architecture from 1972 until 1987. From 1979-1987 he was the dean of the School of Continuing Education.
About this collection
Beyond the Taj is a collection of visual and written materials assembled to support instruction and research on South Asian architectural expression in the joint perspectives of architecture and ethnography. The visual core of the collection consists of approximately 7000 photographs of works of architecture, pilgrimage locales and domestic life taken in India and Sri Lanka by Professor Robert D. "Scotty" MacDougall (1940-1987), an anthropologist and an architect. This digital collection is a result of a long-term collaboration between Professor Bonnie G. MacDougall, Department of Architecture and Margaret N. Webster, Director of the George W. & Adelaide Knight Visual Resources Facility in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. Additional digitization funding was provided by Cornell University Library.
Historical context
This digital collection references the canonical works or "major moments" that have come to be regarded as important in the study of South Asian architectural traditions. Images of rites, festivals and customary practices enrich and clarify the material record and situate canonical architecture in broader understandings of landscape experience and artistic production. A sub collection of images from 89 Aiyanar temples in Tamil Nadu, South India is one special aspect of this database. It draws on Robert MacDougall’s unfinished study of a folk tradition. Another unique aspect of the database is a collection of images of domestic architecture and community life in Sri Lanka. These images are drawn from a joint ethnographic study conducted by Professors Robert MacDougall and Bonnie G. MacDougall in the Kandyan highlands. The Sri Lanka images are linked to a monograph from that community study, Sinhalese Domestic Life in Space and Time. It appears with other digitized written resources on South Asian architecture that have been developed as part of this overall project by Bonnie G. MacDougall. They can be found on eCommons as part of the MacDougall South Asian Architecture Collection.
Using the collection
The digital surrogates in this collection depict a number of architectural forms, which can be explored using the Work Type facet. For more information about this collection, contact the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu.
More information
- Collection steward
- Evan Earle, Peter J. Thaler University Archivist
- Metadata creation
- Cornell University Library
- Funding
- Faculty Grants for Digital Library Collections: Advancing E-Scholarship program, 2004; President’s Fund on Educational Initiatives, Cornell University; the Dean’s Office in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning; and the Cornell South Asia Program
- Credits
- This collection overview was last reviewed by Evan Earle in 2025 and derived from material written by Bonnie Graham MacDougall in December 2008.
- Collection sources