CU Library's South Asia Collection receives gift of valuable slides

Indian architectural elements from the Maurya period are part of a collection of more than 3,700 slides of Indian and Southeast Asian art and architecture given to Cornell Library by C.K. Gairola. Cornell University Library

A valuable collection of more than 3,700 slides of Indian and Southeast Asian art has been added to Cornell University Library's renowned South Asia Collection. The collection was given to Cornell by C. Krishna Gairola, a retired professor of Indian history and archaeology who assembled the collection during his travels as a student and later, professor, in various parts of South and Southeast Asia.

The Gairola Slide Collection is a unique set of images that includes a significant representation of Indian art and architecture from the dynastic periods through the early-1960s, as well as art from Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Indonesia. The variety of subject matter should prove useful to students and scholars of South Asian architecture, art, anthropology and history. The images, photographed by Gairola himself between 1950 and 2000, offer a perspective that differs from that of official or commercial photographs of Indian art works and historical sites.

C.K. Gairola was born in Dehra Dun, India. He received an M.A. in history from the University of Allahabad, India, in 1946 and a Ph.D. in Indian history and archaeology from the University of London in 1949. He studied art history and completed a diplome de l'école at the School of the Louvre, Paris, in 1953. After working for the embassy of India and the Indian Foreign Service in Switzerland and New Delhi, he accepted a position as professor and department head at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India, in 1962. Gairola also worked as a journalist for the Hindustan Times and Week End Review in New Delhi before immigrating to the United States in 1967.

In the United States, Gairola held professorships at Kansas State University, the University of Washington in Seattle and Virginia Commonwealth University, before retiring in 1987. Among the many honors he received was the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, awarded by the German government, as well as fellowships from the French government and the Smithsonian Institution. Gairola died in July 2003.

For more information, contact Adnan Malik, curator of Cornell Library's South Asia Collection, at 255-9479 or e-mail asm48@cornell.edu.