Studies on Fortifications in India

Objectives

To bring together several essays on the most prominent fortifications carried out in South India. For each period, he has made a selection of typical and outstanding examples of defensive works which serve to illustrate the development of military architecture. He has thus been able to establish the typology of the structures, to emphasise their special significance and convey a more comprehensive idea of the immense extent and variety of defensive works in India and of their great importance and value to the country.

Partners

Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient

Funding

• French Institute of Pondicherry
• Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient

Team

Dr Jean Deloche, Head of the Project

Outputs

Books

• Studies on fortifications in India

Jean Deloche, Collection Indologie n° 104, IFP / EFEO, 2007, 267 p., including 70 p. of ill., plans
Language : English.

This book, based mainly on intense fieldwork and personal investigations carried out by the author over the past twenty years, brings together essays on some prominent defensive works which have been constructed over many centuries across the Indian subcontinent, particularly South India.

For each period a selection has been made of outstanding examples of fortification in order to analyse the building techniques, considering the evolution of military technology, particularly the development of artillery, to establish the typology of the structures and to bring into focus a reliable method for identifying and dating defensive works in India.

This study, with draws attention to the considerable skills and ingenuities of Indian fort builders, has something to engage the interest of all those concerned with India military monuments, be they engineers, archaeologists or historians.

Keywords: South India, fortifications, architecture

• Senji (Gingee), A Fortified City in the Tamil Country

Jean Deloche, Collection Indologie n° 101, IFP/EFEO, 2005, 391 pp.

Senji, immortalized by Desing’s ballad, still popular in South India, is a significant place in the Tamil country. Successively occupied by the Hindus of Vijayanagar, the Nayakas, the Muslims of Bijapur, the Marathas, the Mughals and finally by the French in 1750, it was, at the end of the 16th century, one of the biggest cities of the peninsula. This study is not a descriptive monograph of the monuments, but an essay at the junction of several disciplines (archaeology, history and human geography), trying to show the evolution of the defence systems of the stronghold, the development of the urban centre, as well as the different aspects of water and grain storage which are at the root of its surprising growth. The book is abundantly illustrated with 44 line drawings and 334 photographs.

Keyword: Tamilnadu (India), 15th-18th century, Fortifications, Urbanism, Water and Grain Storage.

Articles

• DELOCHE J., 2007. Etudes sur les fortifications de l’Inde, V, La forteresse de Daulatabad au Maharashtra , B.E.F.E.O., 2007.

• DELOCHE J., 2005. Gunpowder Artillery and Military Architecture in South India (15-18th century), Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 573-595.