The new issue of Marg magazine is a collection of essays on the architectural vocabulary, styles, metaphors, structures, talents and skills that were refined and shared across imperial, religious and public monuments in northern India between the 16th and 19th centuries. Cover, “Beyond the Mughal Arch: Temples in Early Modern Hindustan”, Marg 77 (3), March 2026.There is another argument that is articulated in the essays, one that winds itself through architectural exploration like a double helix: the historical period now presented to us as one of brutal iconoclasm and wanton temple destruction was also a period when new temples where constructed and older temples were maintained and patronised by non-Hindu rulers, most notably by the ‘invader’ Muslims. This premise is substantiated by factual evidence – the syncretistic culture of the Islamicate courts, the friendships and alliances between the imperium and various Hindu kings and local lords, the layered and complex system of temple patronage through land grants, firmaans and donations from mercantile castes, a host of other factors that form the relationships between rulers and the ruled, between different religions that cohabit in a shared geographic and cultural landscape and the ways in which art is created over centuries. The other assumption that underpins the volume is that no culture develops in a hermetically sealed silo. However oppositional cultures might be to each other spiritually and aesthetically, the creative arts – literature, painting, music, sculpture, architecture – transcend these differences and allow us to express our deepest feelings anew, using an enhanced hybrid vocabulary and a vaster imagination.Jugal Kishor Temple, Vrindavan.Photograph: Samuel Dalrymple.The case for art historyThis volume of Marg is guest edited by Sam Dalrymple, a rising star in a new generation of historians of India. In his Introduction, he says: “The widespread practice of temple patronage in the Mughal Empire (both by the Mughals and their mansabdars) needs greater acknowledgement. Indeed…many of the temples destroyed by Aurangzeb were themselves constructed (or reconstructed) under Aurangzeb’s Mughal predecessors. This volume examines the phenomenon of construction and destruction alongside each other, considering both the architectural styles used in Mughal-era temples as well as the legal provisions made by the Mughal state to aid their repair, upkeep, reconstruction and the even the construction of new shrines.” The scholars and practitioners Dalrymple has selected as contributors to discuss the contexts and implications of this give and take in aesthetic as well as the political realms include Pushkar Sohoni, Aditi Jain, Samuel Wright, Shandip Saha and Giles Tillotson. Their essays cover respectively, the eras defined by the Sultanates, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb and the eighteenth century temples of Jaipur. Apart from his Introduction and a short coda about other non-Muslim places of worship, Dalrymple own contributions are co-written with Sushant Bharti (Akbar and his policies) and Rana Safvi (the later Mughals and the temples of Shajahanabad). The interior of Orccha’s Chaturbhuj Temple. Photograph: Samuel Dalrymple.General editor Naman P. Ahuja writes an excellent Foreword which sets out the problems inherent in thinking coherently about and interpreting the centuries the volume covers. He makes a persuasive case for art history as a mediating discipline that might untangle the many knots of that complex period. He also suggests that the perspective of art history (firmly based as it is on material and documentary evidence), could be the more neutral position from which to assess the conflicting ideologies being employed and emotional rhetoric being instrumentalised to (re)claim an historical era.As with all Marg publications, this one too, is anchored by its photographs, almost all of which, here, are taken by Dalrymple himself. The photos are solid: they respond to the needs of the articles they illustrate as well as allow readers to extend for themselves the arguments being made about the continuity of architectural features and the syncretic of decorative elements. Clearly, Dalrymple’s filmmaker’s eye is at work. A still photo must suggest a longer narrative and a single captured moment must evoke centuries of aesthetic refinement and execution by exceptional artisans of varied ethnic backgrounds.‘Sometimes they got it right’Orccha’s Chaturbhuj temple.Photograph: Samuel Dalrymple.The texts that accompany images in Marg magazines have never been easy reading. That is, in fact, a point of pride as their detail and density demonstrate the rigour of Marg’s contributors and point to the faith Marg places in their readers who may or not be scholars but are treated as if they were. The articles under review here maintain the high standards of research and fieldwork that Marg has always demanded from its writers. Yes, there are parts in all of them where a reader might be overwhelmed by the technical vocabulary of architecture or the details of administrative systems and the shifts of power between local castes and communities. The articles are restricted to the ‘maidan’ of northern India, as Ahuja calls it. They open up ways for us to think with greater nuance about that political and cultural landscape. Maybe what we observe here can be usefully applied to understanding temple structures and decoration in other parts of country, too.The volume does not only present us with the cliched, romanticised idea of the past that is currently attributed to leftists and liberals and therefore, easily dismissed as a wishful and essentially rhetorical position. There are newer hypotheses, careful footnotes, more general and more particular examples of deliberated co-existence, however precarious. Despite that, there is a sameness to all the chapters which diminishes the sparkle of the volume as a whole.I was taken aback when I learned that Muslim rulers were not always keen on mass conversions to Islam among their subjects – if everyone became a Muslim, who would pay the jiziya tax levied on dhimmis (non-Muslims) that filled the royal coffers? The essays here persuade us that Muslim rulers, like any other rulers, were simultaneously generous and petty, capricious and thoughtful, visionary and small-minded. And also, that they constantly negotiated the shifting sands that were the consequence of being a powerful ruling minority that governed an enormous territory and a diverse polity. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes they got it wrong.Harideva Temple at Govardhan, the earliest known temple to be constructed in Mughal Braj. Photograph: Henry Hardy Cole, 1873.Dara Shukoh as an aspirationIn a larger context, this kind of forensic method studies what lies under the surface and produces solid, well-researched, credible scholarship about the past. It provides a fuller and therefore, more realistic way of knowing how people actually lived together. In these times of intellectual siege – when the drums of an atavistic nationalism beat louder and louder and the gravest threat to our culture at the moment is posed by a four inch figurine of a naked woman from five thousand years ago – these voices of plausible arguments, verifiable historical methods and reasoned discourse must be listened for and they must be amplified.Embedded in this volume, like a small jewel nestling in an ornate locket, is an exquisite pictorial essay from Supriya Gandhi’s recent work on Dara Shukoh. It contains portraits from what appears to be the prince’s personal portfolio which, as Gandhi suggests, functions as a photograph album would for us – pictures of our favourite people and our significant moments that we can carry around with us as the world turns. It is deeply, deeply moving. While this piece doesn’t quite match with the rather more granular analyses of monuments in their larger contexts presented by the other scholars, the short accompanying text does speak of Dara Shukoh’s royal patronage which extended well beyond Islamicate arts and practices. Perhaps we can think of Dara Shukoh as a symbol of the culture and polity to which some of us still aspire. In the context of this Marg volume, Gandhi’s short essay is a talisman for the credible and verifiable version of the past this collection of essays resurrects.Arshia Sattar works with the epics and storytelling traditions of India.