ABSTRACT
As is well known, much of the architecture influenced by Hindu and Buddhist thought is intimately associated with myth. 1 Although some of the greatest architectural achievements in Asia are inspired and regulated by myth and have myth engrained in every aspect of their plans and forms, these buildings receive little or no attention in university courses on architectural history and theory. This neglect might be the result of a Eurocentric exclusivism, now engrained in architectural education, even in Asia, but also possibly stems from discomfort felt when confronted by the ‘irrationality’ of the myths that engender this architecture. Some architectural historians and theorists might well be embarrassed by mythopoeic modes of thought, seeing them as expressions of ‘beliefs’ that are neither true nor meaningful, but as giving explanations of the world that modern science has rendered obsolete and negligible. In this view, the architectural forms generated by myth are so closely associated with exotic and antiquated beliefs and customs, now falsified by science, that they defy translation into any terms relevant for the present practice of architecture.
