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Reflections of India

~ by facing my shadows

Reflections of India

Category Archives: Indian Art

Dura and Ganga fight Adivasi style

13 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art, Tribal India

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durga, Ganga, Manimala Chitrakar, patua painters

Durg and Ganga fight

Durga and Ganga fight 

According to Adivasi legend the conflict between  Durga and Ganga was a verbal but fond abuse between two village women.

Why is Ganga perched in Shiva’s head, Durga wants to know.

“It is Shiva himself who has folded me into his long tresses” says Ganga but Durga demands to know why Ganga qualifies for the honour.

“My water is supposed to be purifying”, Gaga replies. This only makes Durga furious to hear “That Old windbag”, muttering “So Mahadevi, the god of gods, needs her purifying touch. is it?”

“Who am I to talk of pure and impure? Why don’t you go and ask your husband?’

“Hold it” shouts Durga “you think I should bother Shiva over such trifles?”‘

“Well, bless yourself that I have not begun to sing your praises!” says Durga

Durga retorts “Killing eight new born’s, a blot on motherhood, that is what you are, don’t you question my reputation”

“The infants tat were born to me from king Shantanu were Ashta vastu and I had to kill them to lift the curse of them, otherwise which mother would do such a thing? So easily you abuse me, yet the world knows me as Triok-tarini. What about you?”

“None can equal my virtue” says Durga. “The world trembles at my power.”

“Well done, virtuous lady, married your own son? In the beginning you alone as Primordial energy permeated the world. Shiva himself was born of you. With this knowledge, how could you take him as your husband?”

“Your dumb, how would have creation happened otherwise?”  replies Durga. “Besides, I had already taken 108 births and rebirths before I married Shiva.”

…..  And so back and forth the debate continues unravelling the many myths of Durga and Ganga until each must admit the power and virtue of each other that strikes the chord of friendship.

Here the myth is painted and sung by the Patua painters of Bengal. The artists Manimala Chitrakar and Shri Gurupad Chitrakar are from the Midrapur region of Bengal. The art work is painted on a sora, or terracotta plate.

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An Ayurvedic prescription for Individuality in tradition

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art

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artistic individuality, parampara, Parampara and the individual, Ramesh Chandra Shah

navratri 082res

The Way to do is to be.

– Lao Tse

People should not consider so much what they are to do, as what they are.

– Meister Eckhart

I think the purpose of religion is to live life like a poem, To look carefully and see life, not to possess it, but to be it. To make life a sacrament. It is expressed in different way in different traditions. Traditions can seem to weigh people down, and yet the great sages of may traditions are uniquely individual.

In their uniqueness shines a perennial philosophy or sanatana dharma, which has always and everywhere been the metaphysical system of the prophets, saints and sages.

For example, in Hindu thought, the ultimate reality is the word principle (shadba-tattva) from which the whole cosmos manifests. Even for Westerners this should not be hard to understand. In Judaism words do things (“In the beginning God said, then it was so.”Genesis 1) and Christians claim Jesus is the Word “all things were made through him” (Jn 1:2).

In Hinduism the word is imperishable, the first born of truth. Mother of the Veda, hub of immortality.

The first creation is mahat, the intellectual principle, the seventh the creation of humans. The word is measured in four degrees (pada),  three kept closely hidden (guhu nihita) and  men speak only of the fourth degree of wisdom. This perception guides human life and culture.

But knowledge does not remain static. It multiplies  like the deposition of knowledge like the layers of matter caused by a flood, and becomes a tradition, or Paramapala.

Tradition is extremely important in India, there are 18 classes of texts, expressed in samhita, or revealed hymns, Brahaman , a human composition of  ritual acts, and Aranyaka, or rituals as symbols of hidden truth. The Upanishads mostly  debate the aranyaka.

But Parampala is derived from pauranika the appearance and disappearance of knowledge. Perhaps some things have been buried under the weight of millennia of history.

At times it seems the individual has no part in Indian culture. Individuality seems alien and disruptive in a culture with scant regard for privacy where tradition forces a “correctedness” with others and an ever widening circles of family. However, in all social forces we find an equal and opposite reaction.

The great sages were very unique.  So does tradition frustrate or inspire individuality?

Every tradition (paramaara) cycles through periods of ascent and decline. Sometimes because of contact with other cultures. The sages reveal that self awareness can recharge paramapara through the awakened individual. Greatness of a unique individual in the Gita is not his individuality in himself but the supra-individual that radiates through him as a channel of a greater energy.

While not a perfect fit, in the West one may think of the artists muse, or the divine spark within, speaking  out.

But as the poet Jaishankar Prasad reminded us in the poem Kamayani, an ego centric and unrestrained individualism is the worst enemy of the person himself.

Or as the Gita says “Whatever a great man does, people will imitate, they follow his example.”

Which is why traditions grow and decline. A civilization can also stagnate in the weight of tradition.

navratri 018res

An Ayurvedic Prescription: Individuality Vs Community

Ramesh Chandra Shah  in Parampara and the individual,  explains the word Vyashti does not quiet mean by individual person, (but is now used that way today) but contrasts with samashti, the monocentric human collective. He prefers the word abhivyakti to describe the modern worlds individuality.

Shah writes “Whereas Western civilizational values were threatened by the consequences of its own over-adventurism – by its own calculative enterprise of conceptual control of the universe, Indian culture, on the other hand, seemed to be threatened by its inertia and loss of creative self confidence.”

After the psychic onslaught of colonialism Indian paramapara has become congealed and dependent on defence mechanisms against the other, he suggests. Modern Indian Parampara is a response to secular western thought on tradition and modernity.

Shah tconsiders the Hindi poet, Agyeye, with his adaptive rather than a literal renderings, and T.S. Eliot who used the word Tradition closer to parampara,  inclusive of the gifted individual. What is needed, he argued,  is more the spiritually artist individuality to inspire Indian tradition. So Agyeye upgraded individuality to the principle of creativity and adventure or  maulikata. To build a nation of critics. As Yeats described: “In dreams begin responsibilities.”

The secret is balance. A very Ayurvedic prescription. The disease of the West is an over active rajoguna.In the East, their is a  weakening of the rajas and a preponderance of tamas. There is Uthi – a mere tradition hardened into a defence mechanism.  Post mediaeval there is stagnation, what Sri Arobindu called “great poverty of life”  in his “The Life Divine”.

Thousands of years earlier, in chapter 4 of the Gita, Krisna states he  taught the tradition  to Vivasvat who taught Manu but that over time it was lost.

But, a brighter side is possible if western ideas catalyse India’s own native capabilities.

In 1929 K C Bhattacharya spoke of a shadow-mind resistance to  the “svaraj in ideas’ or what Mahatma Gandhi later called ‘our hard-hearted  intelligentsia’. Looking at the virus of politicisation of every aspect of Indian life, with its unprecedented corruption, they seem right.

The individual can be thwarted by the shadow of  tradition congeals into rurhi. On the other hand an overactive value- blind (mulya-marh) indviduality will cost the community and nation.

While initially helpful, the loosening of rurhi has turned against us and become counter productive.

However, as much as India has been maligned  for her passivity , she is showing she does absorb new ideas.

navratri 089resishu

How will we bring back the poetry to tradition and life?

Erich From in “To Have or to be” describes how Tennyson picks a flower and describes it, Basho sees it but does not touch it, and Goethe,” the great lover of life, one of the outstanding fighters against human dismemberment and mechanization” picks up the plant root and all and transplants it in his garden.

Each poetically describe a flower, Tennyson must have it, but kills the object he describes, all Basho does is “look carefully” to “see” it .Self knowledge gave the West Rilke and Holderline who sung of departed gods and mans homelessness. We want more than the rootless changing technology of the marketplace.

This deep experience being is central to Indian paramapara. Could it offer the West a sacred centre?

“It is the nature of wisdom to be illusion-proof and clear sited. It does not claim immortality for itself, but for that from which it emanates” writes Shah. It is what Yeats called “the great memory”.

 Who has this inspiring Parampara?

The sages reveal that self awareness can recharge paramapara through the awakened individual. An individual self or jivatman who is illuminated through either intuition or discipline may realise the unity of being .

This is the unity sought by religion and civilization.

But there have been many modern sages. Yet we don’t say they gave us parampara, they revealled  a parampara called a yoga and revolves around meditation. This contrasts with Heideggers descriptve metaphor s that nuclear fission is logical consequence of the West’s objective, calculative  thought. It is atomistic. Individualism rather than individuality.

“What is the experience of the self where the duality between subject and object is lost and the individual artist becomes empowered to transmit the quintessence of a parampara in ever renewing forms of contemporary relevance?” writes Shah  “The answer, it seems, is contained in the question itself, because it appeals to that highest common factor of all religions, that perennial philosophy or sanatana dhama, which has always ad everywhere been the metaphysical system of the prophets, saints and sages. “

Then he quotes Aldous Huxley from his Introduction to the his translation of the Gita:

“It is only in the act of contemplation when words and even personality are transcended, that the pure state of the Perennial Philosophy can actually be known. The records left by those who have known it in this way make it abundantly clear that all of them, whether Hindu, Buddhist, Hebrew, Taoist, Christian, or Mohammedan, were attempting to describe the same essentially indescribable Fact.”

Navratri Bhopal 2012

Navratri Bhopal 2012

That is the source of Paramapara?

 “But the struggle of the individual towards this paramparika wisdom – the live process as well as attainment – is nowhere better exemplified than in the work of the artists and the poets. It’s this kind of internal evidence that speaks directly to us in our confusion and distress, because it’s the poet, the artist, who shares not only our aspirations to Unity of Being, but also our fragmented existential condition.”

 

As William Butler Yeats wrote:

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

(Among School Children, from The Tower, 1928)

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The first Patua painter

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art, Religion & Spiritualty, Tribal India

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Midnapur, patua painting, Smt. Manimala Chitrakar, West Bengal

Patua Painting Myths

Patua Painting Myths

In the Midnapur region of West Bengal it iis said that the primordial god, Maranf-Burung, summoned the crab, the tortoise and snake from the netherworld.
He asked them to restore earth to the surface of the water and put them to work.
Then he created first two cows Ain gaye and Bain gaye. The cows created two birds from their saliva who laid eggs from which came the first man and woman, Pichu Haram and Pichu Burhi.
Pichu Haram and Pichu Burhi had seven sons and seven daughters who married each other against the concerns of their parents. So feeling guilty and ashamed the parents departed the world.
The oldest son, Jadab Guru painted his parents portraits and performed Chokkhudan, the ritual of making eyes on the faces of a painting, or offering of the eyes.
Thus the first Patua painter was born and the tradition of Patua painting began.
Here the artist Smt. Manimala Chitraker paints two myths on either side of a 15 foot stone slab.

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Bringing India’s ancient dream to a modern world

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art, Religion & Spiritualty

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Swaminarayan Akshardham

Akshardham71res
When visiting Delhi for the first time, I was immediately impressed by the gleaming clean stone temple ahead. Ancient in style, but I was too tired to realise the obvious. It had been 48 degrees centigrade, and as the sun was setting, I asked the young ladies with us how old the structure was but they did not know.

After reading of a young guru who traversed India in the entrance, it suddenly hit me. The stones gleamed because they had no patina, they were new. The Swaminarayan Akshardham transformed barren land by the Yamuna river in only five years from laying of its first stone November 8, 2000 until the 6th of November 2005.

For someone who studies archaeology I laughed at my own stupidity (and exhaustion).

In pink sandstone and white marble, the monument is  the centre piece of a  40.5 hectare  cultural showcase of indian art, architecture, wisdom  and spirituality. It stands  43 metre high and  96 metre long  with 234 intricately carved pillars, nine magnificent domes 20 pinnacles and 20,000 sculpted figures. At its centre of the inner sanctum stands a serene 3.3 metre golden  murti of Bhagwan Swaminarayan.

The whole monument is surrounded by  a water body called the Narayan Sarovar and is garlanded by a 2.2 kilometre double story parikrama.

“Divinity has been glorified by the beautiful artistic carvings par excellence. It enriches the serenity of devotion and faith which is sublime. In addition, this is an artistic wonder with human imagination which gives a fantastic experience made melodious with water and music. My pranam to Swamiji and all the devotees” said the President of India Smt. Pratibha Patil in 2012.

“Let noble thoughts come to us from all sides” says the Rig Veda. The message of Unity in Diversity is  symbolised in the welcome pathway of ten gates each for the ten directions symbolizing freedom of thought in Sanatan Dharma. The Visitor Centre is built in a traditional design. Small shrines of bhakti lead to the ornate Bhakti Dwar or Gate of Devotion and two Bhakti Dwar (Peacock gates) pay tribute to India’s national bird.

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However, it is the sense natural harmony that I most enjoyed. The 100 metre Gajenda Peeth with its 148 stone elephants bedecked for a spiritual ceremony portray harmony of elephant, man, nature and God in harmony, faith, love and service.

Designed by architect Satish Gujural, it  was inspired by Pramukh Smanmi Maharaj to fulfil his gurus wish and is considered the eternal abode of Bhagwan Swaminarayan (1781-1830).

its 11,000 sadhus, volunteers and artisans took  300 million man hours to carve 300,000 stones and assemble the structure. The stones were quarried 400 km away at Bansipahadpur were carved at Pindvada (600 km), Sikandra (250 km), and other Rajasthan workshops then assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

SwaminarayanFilm, light and sound shows present the story of India’s cultural heritage within two exhibition halls, that include cultural gardens, ornate gate, a film theatre, musical fountain  and food court.

The Hall of Values presents the values taught by Bhagwan Swaminarayan: ahimsa, courage, endeavour, honesty, harmony, and faith.

In the second hall, a 14 minute boat ride shows 10,000 years of Indian culture. Past 800 statues, you visit an ancient Vedic village, the worlds first university, or Takshashila, and learn some of ancient India’s scientific discoveries.

The life of the 11 year old guru who traversed India from the Himalayas to south of the continent, is shown in a well presented 40 minute film on a 25 metre screen.  Shot in 108 locations across the continent, I  recommend buying the film.
yogihriday kamalres2

It is a delight to see a sacred site so beautifully presented in a garden setting. The whole complex is beautifully presented in a 22 acres of lawns and over 900,000 saplings. Sadly, many Indian temples are not well cared for or their heritage respected.

Yet, I must admit an initial disquiet. It reminded me of my first reaction to Bhopal’s Tribal Museum which at I first felt Disneyfied  the Tribal experience, then realised that this very modernity allowed  new generation to be educated. I came to appreciate that Indigenous art has never stood still and has always mediated with the present. The same is true of modern Hinduism.

Just as we should not expect Indigenous artists to strip down to their dhoti to be accepted as legitimate, why should I expect a temple to conform to my expectations? The Taj Mahal was once a modern architectural marvel, as was Khajuraho. Perhaps future generations will look back at the Akshardham similarly.

I remembered the concept of parampara, a nearly self -sufficient partial modality of human manifestation ruled by dharma (order).The word is often synonymous with tradition, but need not just imply a static set of ideas as the english word implies. Parampara is a dynamic flow with room for change, like a  majestic river – perennial, colourful and soul sustaining and forever in new forms, yet built from the past..

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I have also have a personal dislike for the commercialisation of religion. How ever, it is not forced on you by vendors, the boat ride and theatre are charged for those who want them, and a food court and souvenir shop have offerings. In honest reflection, all organisations have costs and religious commercialism is just more blatant elsewhere.

In a sense, the Swaminarayan Akshardham is a movie set. It does not pretend to be a 1000 year old temple, although built in the style of one.  In a setting that is peaceful and serene, were are reminded to reflect, and pray for a greater faith, discipline and service to humanity. It portrays for the world, the beauty of freedom believed be taught in the Vedas with a modern, theatrical experience.

It is an invitation to a view of how the world might be.

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India is a land of (technologically changed) images

24 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art

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bharat mata, India art, Jivya Same Mache, Satya Dheer Singh

image005

It is not just the stunning asparas of Ajanta, or intricacy of a Nataraj. Visual images made possible by nineteenth century printing transformed India’s art then as it now assaults our eyes from billboards, calendars, and posters or from stickers, magazines, posters, and television.

Large scale distribution of Indian imagery in its modern form came via the printing presses of Germany and Britain as Hindu mythological figures found there way in the subcontinent. Aided by new materials and techniques including litholography, oleography, photography, Colonial art emphasized realism, and its use of perspective helped make idealized traditional figures and divinities more tactile and sensual.

Look at a bill board and it is easy to see how imagery is shaping the Indian population´s identity. Images shape how we see gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and power Images are changing peoples personal and social values.

We should not rush back to the good old days. This is nothing new.

hind_devi

Inspired by the Enlightenment, the British seemed driven by a fear of dirt, with skin scrubbed white clean with an almost chromophobic view of Indian senuality and colour. Meanwhile, artists like Ravi Varma (1846 – 1906) revived a sense ‘classical’ Hindu mythology by distributing romanticized images

This allowed (perhaps spoiled?) the diverse expressions to become more homogenised, and universally grasped by a people negotiating the new and old, sacred and profane, erotic and political.

I am reminded of the Bharat Mata, the pure image of India, so Romanticized I imagine her draped in flowing Grecian robes. Or Aurobindu Ghost calling on Kali to fight for Independence.

Joy of Life  by Satya Dheer Singh

Joy of Life by Satya Dheer Singh

Technology also opened the fun of Satya Dheer Singhs’ exbuberant hybrid flying tigers in acrobatic freehand fusion. I remember his Joy of Life exhibit at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery for all its fun. The contrasts inspire a bright mix and match, much as Singh mixes Hindu and Muslim motifs just as transformative as the Sufis alchemical black light and the bright almost unnaturally bright hues made possible by new chemistry. I wondered what  the late scholar Coonaswamy would make of it.

Cowdung and mud on paper. Train station - Jivya Soma Mashe

Cowdung and mud on paper. Train station – Jivya Soma Mashe

Change can also be more subtle yet deeply pervasive. Brown paper and white paint transformed painting as a fertility act for the Avashini or Warli artist, to an expression of life within the fields, that has now allowed even a man, Jivya Same Mache to take up a role once know only to women, and bring its language in a modern form.

This transformation seems deeply personal. A space for the artist to understand himself as part and apart from his community.

Individuality is a concept modernity takes for granted. Jivya, reminds us in his art of the wholeness of unity with an that awareness difference makes the whole.

Perhaps he can remind our disjointed modern world to remember to see our self as different from others but we are part of larger unified reality.

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Carved with the mind of a mystic or poet

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Indian Art

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Agra, Radha Soami Satsang, Shiv Dayal, Soamiji Maharaj

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From a distance the Holy Samadh of the Radha Soami Satsang lacks the aura of the Taj Mahal. Look closely and you will be spell bound. Its Intricate exquisite carving is shaped with mind of a mystic or poet.

It may take another twenty five or even a century to complete. Workers have spent entire life there. There are no whirring machines or bellowing overseer to hurry them. Upon the gurus request, the same family of artisans have worked there for generations.

What matters is the deep mindful attention to their work, where time or the world no longer matters.

It fits no traditional style and is expected to use 9,900 cubic metres of marble. fine pietra dura inlay details the inner walls. The 33 metre high memorial unifies the tenets of many faiths by combining temple, gurudwara, vihara and mosque. Personally, I could only describe intense adulation for the intricate rose carved onto pillars the feeling of subdued solemnity upon entering.

I was immediately struck by the intricate detail at the entrance and the use of coloured flowers similar to the work of the Taj Mahal. However, I was unsure how to describe the design, annoying my Muslim and Hindu companions as I tried to decide if the arches were Gothic? Roman style? They did not have Indian descriptors either.

soami 1

The Radha Soami is a describes itself as a philosophic organisation considered by devotees a true way to God realisation: a Sant Mart, or path of saints.

The word ‘Radhasoami’ combines ‘Radha’ ( the soul or spiritual essence) and ‘Soami’ (spiritual master;swami); and refers to the “Lord of the Soul” or God. It also can be interpreted to mean the “Master Soul” or “Spirit Master” who guides the disciple to higher states of consciousness.

The faith requires allprinciples must be accepted only if supported by natural laws and facts. Stress on actual realisation based on personal experience or intuition. Listening to inner sound through mantra or simran is essential for spiritual advancement,, combined with personal loyalty to a living Master.

samomi 5

I purchased a number of the groups books and as outsider it seems the Radha Soami encourages religious tolerance, and merges ideas from Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism and Buddhism.

The founder Soamiji Maharaj died (or took samadhi) on June 15 1878. It was the the 3rd guru Pandit Brakm Shankar Mishra, called “Hazur Maharaj” or Maharaj Saheb 1861-1907) who suggested a monument.

Architect Frizoni of Italian architectural firm prepared design started in 1904. Is that why I thought of European descriptions for the arches?

The 2nd guru, (or the 2nd Preceptor of the Radhasoami Faith) Rai Saheb Saligram, had put Soamiji Maharaj ashes in a casket in the exact place he used to give his lecture and a bhajan hall was built around it. Saheb had been the first Indian to hold the post of India’s Post master general.

In 1911 (during 4th guru Madhav Prasad Sinha) a more detailed blueprint was visualised by the Indian engineer Lala Tola Ram.

Members of the faith believe that Radhasoami is the real name of the supreme creator given himself.

He manifested himself in 1818 Agra in Shiv Dayal Singh whose sanctity drew people to him founded faith in 1861. He wrote 5 volumes of practical devotional methods of the sants,or Soar Bachan.

There is no caste and unlike patriarchal societies, when the 3rd guru Padit Brahm Shankar Misra  died in 1907 he was succeeded by his sister Buaji Saheba who died in 1913.

saomi 2

 

Reference: During my visit pictures within the memorial were forbidden. Internal pictures of the Satsang are courtesy of the blog Where’s My Backyard Stories , a blog dedicated to the stories of many with Alzheimer’s. The linked post describes a tour of the Rhada Soami Satsang.

 

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Goddess or Courtesan

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Indian Art

≈ 6 Comments

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courtesan, Goddess, Mohenjo Daro, Wendi Doniger

The Surasundari - Indias ideal woman?

The Surasundari – Indias ideal woman?

How do we know whether a statue of buxom woman is a goddess or a courtesan? I love archaeology reading reports of digs from Sanchi to Megiddo.

I am always intrigued by the assumptions.  History – His Story – is a narrative f meaning we and society create. Historians are the wandering minstrel and tellers of folk tales to a modern audience.

Read the history of the Middle East and every buxom idol is called a goddess.

Historian Wendy Doniger rightly suggests, in my view, that we guess to much in trying to interpret the meaning or use of sculpture, especially of woman. It is all to common for historians to assume a large breasted woman is a goddess, but why not a courtesan?

 Will future archaeologists assume a playboy centerfold is a goddess?

Mohenjo Daro Dancing Girl

Mohenjo Daro Dancing Girl

Doniger lists the descriptions of the Mohenjo-Daro dancing girl: The archaeologist Marshal a “youthful impudence.”, John Keay a slender nymphet happily flaunting her puberty, flaunting wanting to be admired, others describe “gaunt and boyish femininity: her provocative “footless stance, haughty head. and petulantly poised arms, “something endearing· in “the artless pose of an awkward adolescent. .She is said to have “proto-Australoid” features that are also attested in skeletons in the Indus Valley.

Just as 19th century historians attempted to fit discoveries into the mold of Herodotus, Thucydides or Diodorus Siculus, and the The Mahabharata, Vedas and Ramayana shaped how historians described saw India .

Another filter was Christian chronology. .

For example,, the excavation reports of Sanchi incorrectly assumed that Buddhism was more a snake worshipping adaption of Vishnu worship. The later more refined art was then linked incorrectly to chronology of Christian esoterica.

British historians have been criticised by Hindu nationalists for distorting Indian history. Sometimes fairly, sometimes not.

There is little doubt that colonialist researchers were influenced by their traditions, just as Indian writers were influenced by theirs.

It is wrong to completely dismiss 19th century scientific examination. Science was a this time also challenging many of Christendom’s assumptions.

 Hindsight often misreads an earlier phenomenon by assuming that it meant then the same thing that it meant later, reading the past through the present, forgetting that we cannot simply lay the present over the past like a plastic map overlay. The false Orientalist assumptions that India was timeless and that the classical texts of the Brahmins described an existing society led to the equally false assumption that the village and caste organization of colonial or even contemporary India was a guide to their historical past.

The meanings given in Hinduism may not have been the same in Harappa or Mohenjo-Daro. It may also be wrong to assume no carry over from the past.

Of course some Indian scholars rightly criticise European historic assumptions.

However, others such as the Aryan Invasion theory suited the powerful (Aryan) Brahmin Caste.  So while, Archaeology  has since developed tools to question some of the histories developed from a literary analysis of ancient texts. Happy to enjoy a dig at the mistakes of former Imperialist masters , for reasons of politics some are less happy when the same techniques and questions  on their own traditions.

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There is only Radha-Krishna

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art, Poetry

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Gopi, Krishna Radha-Krishna, Radha

Krishna Tends to Radha's Feet

Krishna Tends to Radha’s Feet

There is an artist in Bhopal who, when meeting her, immediately reminded me of Radha. Her face reminded me of the idealized porcelain features, brilliantly coloured garments that I had studied at GOMA, Brisbanes Gallery of Modern Art.

The gazes of Radha and her Lord do not meet in modest adoration. It is a formulaic beauty found in Rajasthani and Pahari paintings.  The image probably would not fit reality in the in the exquisite finery detailed landscape.  Yet, the stories of Radha and Krisna, as well as the nayikas that idealised this love, stunned me.

At times shown in painting, at times in Ragas that sub classify for different styles and forms appropriate different seasons, times of day and emotions. Some musical forms were even personified as deities .

This image is portrayed in so many ways.

Consider Uddipan Vela, the moment when lamps are lit, the shennai resonates as we gather flowers to celebrate of love to begin.

Sensuous and yet spiritual bridging secular and sacred evocative heart throbbing love – heart rendering longing inhabiting courts and haveliis throbbing in pleasures and forests.

The artistic expression of romantic emotion, shringara rasa, is considered the king of emotions,  the rasa of unsurpassed majesty and grandeur. Its subtle nuances Resonate in musical ragas and raginis colours and seasons, and the foothills that have inspired millennia of nayika.

The nayika was the romantic heroine and sensual woman proud and self assured apply finishing touches of her appearance, to reconfirm her beauty, anticipation of meeting her beloved.

Can she see her beloved in the mirror? Radha longs for that special moment when with the light on her face two hearts would become one. The mirror holds their gaze together before she breaks into a sweet smile. Vibrating prukriti of trembling sensuality and the serene purusha of majestic spirituality.

She has unique individuality and a melting of surrender into wholeness of love. The surrender of bhakti

A realisation and delight of realisation of the true self, where purusha and prakriti, heaven and earth,  merge joyously into ananda, or bliss.

Hence, the nayika is the perfect embodiment of shringara rasa.

Let the earth of my body be mixed with the earth
my beloved walks on
let the fire of my body be the brightness
in the mirror that reflects her face
Let the breath of my body join the waters
of the lotus pond she bathes in .
Let the breath of my body be the air
lapping her tired limbs
Let me be the sky, and moving through me
that cloud dark, Kisnay, my beloved

It is as if the forests and streams of Vrindavana are the delights of paradise reflected by a cosmic mirror to the plains of the earth (Walter Spink, The Quest for Krishna, from ‘A celebration of love’ by Harsha V Dehelia).

 The dark gods flute in blossoming pastures – a gods youth of delight. It is also the area that suffers attacks by demonic forces. Mysterious attractiveness a divine beauty that is irresistible focus of the ardour of gopis – their teasing elusive insistent paramour . The flute that drinks of the nectar of Krishna’s lips. The rivers that the bamboo of his flute now blossom forth lotuses – tears of joy in the form of juice.

Krisna wanders through the dreams and passions of devotees: wandering forgetfully, with fickleness and despairs of love, the darkness of light, and the darkness and of despair of night.

In the most divine glaring of the sun, and in the most mundane, he is the god that must experience to return to wholeness.

Their dance of desire is a mandala of god and man. The body a temple of gladness, an altar of joy, swept by Radhas hair. The sprinkle of her pearl necklace an altar offering, her breasts waterjars, her curved hips plantain trees. The tinkling bells of her waist the young mango shoots, for the arts of love beautify her, outshining a thousand moons.

A quickening of love, a distraught search with the ardour of religious devotion a longing of body and spirit. Radha’s yearning that He place “with fingers cooler than sandalwood place a circlet of musk on this breast.”

As the mirror to my hand
the flowers to my hair
kohl to my eyes
tambul to my mouth
musk to my breast
necklace to my throat
ecstasy to my flesh
heart to my home
as wing to bird
water to fish
life to living
so you are to me.

Madhava, beloved,
who are you?
who are you really?
Vidyapati says they are one another

(Dimlock, Edward C. Jr., and Levertov, Denise (tr). In Praise of Krisna: Songs from th Bengali, New York, Archer Books, 1967.)

The story passes the ephemeral boundary of spiritual and secular. With Ineffable poignancy it has become the metaphoric ideal for a maidens love. Even men imagine themselves as women in love with their lord.

The gopi personifies the souls search for salvation were hungry for fulfilment of love and the insistent dark skinned Shyama was hungry too. The union of the individual partial manifest self joined to the universal in elusive fields and streams that fuel the human heart.

Here in the play of gopis and Krishna the Vaishnava’s is a mirror illusion a reflection f an eternal Vrndavan where Krishna forever dwells. The power of  prakrit, and purusha, are the same.

In searching for the other you search for yourself.

There is no Radha, there is no Krishna. There is only Radha-Krishna.

For You are the meaning of all prayer.

References

Uddipan Vela – as we light the lamps – Harsha V Dehelia

Walter Spink, The Quest for Krishna, from ‘A celebration of love’ by Harsha V Dehelia

(Dimlock, Edward C. Jr., and Levertov, Denise (tr). In Praise of Krisna: Songs from th Bengali, New York, Archer Books, 1967.)

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Ajanta 1000 years before Rembrandt, Matisse and Gauguin

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by opus125 in India, Indian Art

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ajanta, ajanta caves, Gauguin, Matisse, renbrandt, Vishvantara Jataka

Vishvantara Jataka, called The Courtier, from cave 17 early 5th century, Ajanta

Vishvantara Jataka, called The Courtier, from cave 17 early 5th century, Ajanta

The Sahyadari ranges are a boldly shaped landscape of a violent bygone age where now only his scars remain. From this shift of tectonic plates, have formed placid lakes, ocean, wide plains, rainforest. But here in Ajunta there is the contrasting textures of cliff face and scrubby bush.

In a crescent valley, a deep rock gorge, cut by the River Waghura meandered through dense forest. Thinking to have found a Tigers lair, the British saw the highest façade of what is now cave number 10.

Ajanta had been gradually forgotten and the jungle reclaimed valley. I remember seeing Ajanta for the first time and thinking the eternal struggle against nature is something very British. No wonder the Engrezi found the caves.

Within the thirty hand cut cave are found 5 chaitya, 5 basalt monatries are found masterpieces of tempura.

They impress us with the eternal beauty of nature: ceilings of flowers, plants, fruits, animal ,birds creatures of myth and beings semi divine.

But I will leave the masculine perfection of cave 2’s bodhisatva for another post, the spiritual countenance and triflex posture, as if dancing, show a purity of heart and character worthy of a post all its own.
Another post must reveal the development of art from the earliest Hinyana caves, where the Buddha not represented directly but symbolized by the stupa, Bhodi tree, a footprint or wheel of the law, to the Mahayana worship of his image.

Let us instead look beyond the classical forms for now.

Taken from nature, their palette is a simple choice of yellow, red, blue, white black and green. Red and yellow from ochre, Green glaucaniteot volcanic rock residue, White– kaolin and gypsum, lamp black and blue from imported lapis lazuli.

However, within the many beautiful classical forms the artists take art beyond the classical traditions of the age.

The Vishvantara Jataka, called The Courtier, shown above, from cave 17 early 5th century, is side lighted in the manner of Rembrandt or Caravaggio in specks of yellow light used to infuse luminosity and a three dimensional quality.
”This piece is a perfect illustration of the quotation in the Mahayana Sutralamkara, citre …. natonnaram nasty cam dryate atha ca “there is no actual relief in the painting, and yet we see it there” wrote Madanjeet Singh (Ajanta p. 11 Thames and Hudson, London, 1965).

 the Wailing Woman, sibi jataka, from cave 1 early of the 6th century, Ajanta Caves.

the Wailing Woman, sibi jataka, from cave 1 early of the 6th century, Ajanta Caves.

Consider the Wailing Woman, sibi jataka, from cave 1 early of the 6th century. Here we see animnonnata , or a flattened perspective of restricted tonal range, that compares to the cloisannage of Gauguin by deeply demarcating plain surfaces by pure primary colour.

plate67res

A Matisse like Bhodisattva?

Does not the bodhisattva of cave 2 have curious Matisse like movement by virtue of its unfinished character?

The Biblical book of Ecclesiastes is very Buddhist like, the Buddhist teacher Ajahn Brahm once said. It has a realistic assessment of life.

“There is nothing new under the sun” says Ecclesiastes. When it comes to the Ajanta caves of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art, perhaps he is right.

Gauguin , Rembrandt and Matisse found languages to expressions that are part of us all. They extended expressions already part of the human spirit already touched in the art of India.

In art, there is nothing new under the sun.

 

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For a return of natural Indian architecture

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by opus125 in Indian Art

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Tags

hindu architecture, India

banyan tree

“Hindus: Mother! The flowers of our worship have crowned thee!

Parsees: Mother! The flame of our hope shall surround thee!

Mussulmans: Mother! The sword of our love shall defend thee!

Christians: Mother! The song of our faith shall attend thee!

All Creeds: Shall not our dauntless devotion avail thee?

Hearken! O queen and O goddess, we hail thee!”

–          Sarojini Naidu

These lines were recited, appropriately enough, at the opening of the Indian National Congress in 1915. If such a spirit continues to guide her statesment, there is no doubt but that India will again be numbered among the great nations of the earth.

“Oh I am tired of strife and song and festivals and fame

And long to fly where cassia-woods are breaking into flame.”

–          Sarojini Naidu


There is little doubt that Hindus revere nature; however, they have rarely felt the need to mold nature into a design of their own. Banyan trees were never trimmed or cut down; instead, they are allowed to spread their drooping creepers into the middle of any village square or road. The tree is revered for itself, personifying perfection with-out human interference.

This Hindu reverence for nature also spilled over into architecture, resulting in Hindu towns, palaces, temples, and buildings grow organically, with no geometric discipline. The Islamic tradition, informed by the Greek passion for order and logic, produced gardens and architecture that were guided by regimented lines in order to achieve perfect symmetry.

Indian landscapes are vibrant, textured, and colorful, and encompass the imprint of many a ruler that has invaded and controlled the subcontinent. Through all the invasions of the subcontinent, from the Greeks to the Mughals to the English, Indian civilization and Hindu religion have displayed remarkable adaptability, and it is that adaptability, the ability to assimilate, which has allowed Hinduism to flourish.

It is possible that the Rajasthani city of Jaipur was planned by principles of Vaastu shastras. But this is highly debatable. The Rajput rulers themselves were Central Asian transplants that felt the influence of  sixteenth-century Islamic design.

Hindu traditions informed design has been celebrated by Charles Correa’s work. Bhopal’s Vidhan Bhavan (State Assembly) won the Aga Khan award is a pastiche inspired by the nearby Buddhist stupa of Sanchi’.

In this city once ruled by a Muslim Afghani Khan dynasty Hindu design continues to struggle between recovering the great Hindu tradition and inventing the brave and promising future.

Palace_of_Assembly_Chandigarh_2007

Other examples include Frenchmen Le Corbusiers modernism in the capital city of Chandigarh in the 1950’s. It was chosen by Prime minister Nehru  Albert Mayer’s vision inspired by Indian villages and bazaars,.

Or Julius Vaz auditorium for the capital city of Bhubaneswar, inspired by Buddhist stupa at Dhauli.

Now the tension between history and development are unresolved.

A growing middle class demand exports and luxuries that are fatiguing India’s environment. Even banyan trees are now being transplanted for road ways.

Hopefully increasingly urban India will turn to an architecture created from the natural world.

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