Got to keep this going...
The year is halfway thru and this will only be the second 2024 post. I was and am struggling a bit with some 'Post Stress Traumatic Disorder' - but that really is no excuse for the present lousy posting rate...
-------------
Rekesh recently gifted me some serious stuff from the Met(ropolitan Museum of Art), New York. The highlights were a magnificent tome 'Tree and Serpent' on early Buddhist art in India and another gentler volume titled 'How to read Buddhist art. I read the latter with some care over the last weekend. Here is something curious from there.
Here is a 13th century wooden Amitabha Buddha from Japan:
Alongside was given this view into the above sculpture - which is hollow and built using the 'yosegi-zakuri' technique, multiple blocks of wood carved separately and put together by a master artist:
The above 'deconstruction' reveals that the Buddha, in some sense, anticipates 'the Fountain', said to be a remarkable avant garde landmark by Marcel Duchamp and that too by a good seven centuries!
---------------
'Arhat' is title used for a certain category of ascended masters in both Buddhism and Jainism. 'How to read..' and Wiki explain the word 'arhat' as deriving from the Sanskrit root 'arh' meaning to deserve or to merit - here 'worthy of enlightenment'. Jains often spell the word 'Arihant' which could mean 'slayer of enemies'. I guess the enemies referred to are those sins and mental tendencies that prevent one from attaining nirvana and not any real human or other beings.
-------------
'How to read...' mentions 'non-duality' as something integral to Buddhist philosophy and that this school precedes the Advaita (again 'non dual' and very Hindu) by a few centuries. Sankara, the preeminent Advaita exponent has often been accused of lifting concepts wholesale from Buddhist philosophy and using doctored versions thereof against Buddhism itself. I am not taking sides in this debate since I really am not one for philosophy or theology.
Another curiosity mentioned in this book is a trade in of all things, fermented fish sauce ('garum') that flourished in ancient times via the silk route between Europe and Asia.
-------------
'Tree and Serpent' shows the following incredibly sad picture. The caption tells the whole story:
Even if it were just ignorance and not any religious hatred that drove the above 'repurposing', the sadness wouldn't be reduced one bit.
-------------
Leaving Buddhism for the time being, here is a pic from wiki - a mythological painting by a certain Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi, who was both ruler of a princely state in Maharashtra and an artist. Rishyasringa is being coaxed and cajoled to leave his jungle hermitage by 'dancing girls':
As an occasional Bougerou admirer, I can't help mention how practically every figure above is faithfully adopted from the frenchman's 'Nymphs and Satyr'!
Satyrs are often shown with horns of goats - Bougerou himself has done so. And as per our myth, Rishya too was a horned sage - well, he had antlers of a deer, due to certain rather, well, horny circumstances - and in some visual representations (for example the murals at the Mattancheri palace), he is shown with them! So, Balaseheb chose well!
I dunno what interactions Balasaheb might have had with senior and much more famous contemporary Ravi Varma. I also don't know whether Varma himself, if at all, was 'inspired' by any western masterpiece.
----------
Do check out this wiki article on ambigrams. I couldn't find much there or elsewhere on 'bilingual ambigrams'. Here is a very decent one: the establishment name 'Sarangi' written (albeit with some stretches and contortions) in both English and Malayalam scripts:
------
On seeing the above pic of a Babylonian figure (royal, divine, whatever) from the Brit Museum, Rekesh responded: "Nose chopped off it seems. There was this idea in the middle east that Gods don't eat offerings but only smell their aroma. So, to desecrate an idol all one needed to do was to conk off the nose!"
And he added: "Yahweh is shown enjoying the aroma of burnt offerings - mainly the fat of animals burnt in the fire. As was said in Genesis, chapter 8: "Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.…""
That really is something. Even Desi myths say that Gandharvas are divine beings who know the essence of Gandha - smell. And Perian myths do have certain 'Gandarevas'. So, who knows, just as 'Narayana' probably was 'Son of Man', our Gandharvas too might hark all the way back to Yahweh and all those big-bearded Bab guys!
-------------
Rekesh recently gifted me some serious stuff from the Met(ropolitan Museum of Art), New York. The highlights were a magnificent tome 'Tree and Serpent' on early Buddhist art in India and another gentler volume titled 'How to read Buddhist art. I read the latter with some care over the last weekend. Here is something curious from there.
Here is a 13th century wooden Amitabha Buddha from Japan:
Alongside was given this view into the above sculpture - which is hollow and built using the 'yosegi-zakuri' technique, multiple blocks of wood carved separately and put together by a master artist:
The above 'deconstruction' reveals that the Buddha, in some sense, anticipates 'the Fountain', said to be a remarkable avant garde landmark by Marcel Duchamp and that too by a good seven centuries!
---------------
'Arhat' is title used for a certain category of ascended masters in both Buddhism and Jainism. 'How to read..' and Wiki explain the word 'arhat' as deriving from the Sanskrit root 'arh' meaning to deserve or to merit - here 'worthy of enlightenment'. Jains often spell the word 'Arihant' which could mean 'slayer of enemies'. I guess the enemies referred to are those sins and mental tendencies that prevent one from attaining nirvana and not any real human or other beings.
-------------
'How to read...' mentions 'non-duality' as something integral to Buddhist philosophy and that this school precedes the Advaita (again 'non dual' and very Hindu) by a few centuries. Sankara, the preeminent Advaita exponent has often been accused of lifting concepts wholesale from Buddhist philosophy and using doctored versions thereof against Buddhism itself. I am not taking sides in this debate since I really am not one for philosophy or theology.
Another curiosity mentioned in this book is a trade in of all things, fermented fish sauce ('garum') that flourished in ancient times via the silk route between Europe and Asia.
-------------
'Tree and Serpent' shows the following incredibly sad picture. The caption tells the whole story:
Even if it were just ignorance and not any religious hatred that drove the above 'repurposing', the sadness wouldn't be reduced one bit.
-------------
Leaving Buddhism for the time being, here is a pic from wiki - a mythological painting by a certain Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi, who was both ruler of a princely state in Maharashtra and an artist. Rishyasringa is being coaxed and cajoled to leave his jungle hermitage by 'dancing girls':
As an occasional Bougerou admirer, I can't help mention how practically every figure above is faithfully adopted from the frenchman's 'Nymphs and Satyr'!
Satyrs are often shown with horns of goats - Bougerou himself has done so. And as per our myth, Rishya too was a horned sage - well, he had antlers of a deer, due to certain rather, well, horny circumstances - and in some visual representations (for example the murals at the Mattancheri palace), he is shown with them! So, Balaseheb chose well!
I dunno what interactions Balasaheb might have had with senior and much more famous contemporary Ravi Varma. I also don't know whether Varma himself, if at all, was 'inspired' by any western masterpiece.
----------
Do check out this wiki article on ambigrams. I couldn't find much there or elsewhere on 'bilingual ambigrams'. Here is a very decent one: the establishment name 'Sarangi' written (albeit with some stretches and contortions) in both English and Malayalam scripts:
------
On seeing the above pic of a Babylonian figure (royal, divine, whatever) from the Brit Museum, Rekesh responded: "Nose chopped off it seems. There was this idea in the middle east that Gods don't eat offerings but only smell their aroma. So, to desecrate an idol all one needed to do was to conk off the nose!"
And he added: "Yahweh is shown enjoying the aroma of burnt offerings - mainly the fat of animals burnt in the fire. As was said in Genesis, chapter 8: "Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.…""
That really is something. Even Desi myths say that Gandharvas are divine beings who know the essence of Gandha - smell. And Perian myths do have certain 'Gandarevas'. So, who knows, just as 'Narayana' probably was 'Son of Man', our Gandharvas too might hark all the way back to Yahweh and all those big-bearded Bab guys!
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 4:36 AM
0 comments
