While generations of scholars have recorded the rock-cut inscriptions found on the walls of southeast Indian temples, not until recently has attention been given to the inclusion of text in murals of the same region and locations. Epigraphists and historians of all stripes have focused mainly on the semantic content of text, largely ignoring the materiality, placement, and legibility of the inscriptions themselves. However, a more recent turn to the study of materiality has refocused attention on these issues. Emerging from an art historical perspective, this essay argues that the study of murals can methodologically enrich a reading of inscriptions, no matter their medium. This essay argues that the images and texts that adorn temple walls, both carved in stone and painted in murals, may be best understood within a larger matrix of aesthetic experience that neither reduces them to their materiality nor removes them from a contextually-specific reading.

中文翻译：

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动机阅读：扩建后的圣殿中的文字和图像

虽然几代学者都记录了在印度东南部寺庙墙壁上发现的岩刻铭文，但直到最近才注意到在同一地区和地点的壁画中包含文字。各行各业的金石学家和历史学家主要关注文本的语义内容，而在很大程度上忽略了铭文本身的物质性、位置和易读性。然而，最近对物质性研究的转向重新将注意力集中在这些问题上。本文从艺术史的角度出发，认为无论采用何种媒介，对壁画的研究都可以在方法上丰富对铭文的阅读。这篇文章认为，装饰寺庙墙壁的图像和文字，无论是刻在石头上还是在壁画上，