What started off a small discussion became the seed for this post.. interestingly which should have been the first post…for what you see below is acclaimed by its creator to be the first ever such work in stone…. 706 Well most Indian mythological heroes are assigned some divine weapon….the bow, sword etc have their parallels across the globe, but one thing unique has been the mace…when i mean unique, not that other cultures did not have the mace, but then the depictions in ours were huge. They would give today’s Olympic weight lifting champions a complex….for their sheer size is mind boggling. Is this the imagination of later day artists…we explored and for the parallels in sculpture we go to where it all started…the mother of all caves….the foremost amoung sculptures of south India. Mahendra pallava …the self titled vichitra citha ( the many talented or weird talented)…he claims that he built a temple for the trinity without using brick, wood, metal or mortar…. 703 Just look at the door guardians….they seem to have that classic vivian richards swagger about them, almost mocking at us puny mortals…. 712 lugging aroung those monstrous maces….( watch closely you can see a cobra circling the mace) 709 One bash with that is sure to knock the living daylights out of you and send you cranium into a mars orbit… for the serious enthusiast, this beauty is the Mangadapattu cave – on the vilupuram sengi main road…about 20kms from vilupuram….take a side road ( mud road) from there…you can see boards ( thank god) and its a km down the road ( if you can call it that….)
Monthly Archives: August 2008
The delicate coils of snake, in stone
We had earlier seen the dance of shiva in many forms and how the cobra is unsettled by the speed of his twirling dance…here you see a different pose… 719 Elephanta Nataraja…the snake has thrown in coils around shiva’s spear and is trying to cross over to his neck…what a wonderful depiction ….mimicking how a snake would swing from one branch to another…( you can see the Lord of creation …the four headed Brahma…just above the snake seated on a lotus pedestal) 722729 What graceful postures of shiva…despite all the ruins and amputation…the grace and calmness in his face is radiant…his many arms kind of portray his fast dance moves….his body twisted in the classic tribanga ….three flexions across the axis so masterly used by the sculptor… 727 sadly these amazing sculptures were not understood or seen in the right perspective and used for target practise by invading Portuguese… 725731
Reward for chopping off his Dad’s legs
Well i am sure you have heard of many weird stories about India and its legends. One of them is Parasurama who raised his hand against his mother…the other is little known but most worshipped chandesa….he occupies a very important place in shiva temples…and is the only credited with almost seperate shrine ( as you circambulate …he is to the main deities left….most of you would see people going and clapping in front of him) It all started with my delightful ( and knowledgeable) American friend Ms. kathie, sending me this picture from the tanjore big temple and asking what it depicted…was it krishna leela (krishna killed kamsa…) ..nope kamsa was torn into two halves…well we will see that too shortly in another post.. 739
Well the story goes like this… Chandesa was a young boy, initiated into shiva worship at a very young age… as a young boy he witnesses a cow herd hitting the cows left with him to fend….so he offers to tend to them…he loves them so much and takes care of them so well, that they produce more than double the normal quantity of produce….so that after giving to the owners ( cow owners buy cows in india and leave them with boys to take out to pasture and bring back for a monthly fee….its even now less than a dollar for a month…can’t image how much it was those days)…incidentally one such famous cowherd was kalidasa…. ok, we come back to subject what to do with the excess milk…the young boy went to the river bed, created an icon of shiva in sand and used the milk to anoint it. Some jealous person went and complained that the kid had gone nuts and that he was stealing milk or wasting it to chandesa’s father…the father decided to spy on the son the next day…deep in devotion when candesa was offering the milk to the lord, the father tried to stop him by beating him with a stick on his back…which had no effect on the boy who was immersed in his faith…the infuriated father kicked the pot of milk in disgust….and chandesa in his anger, took his shepherds staff and threw it at his dad…magically it turned into an ax and chopped of his father’s legs…..shiva appeared then and pleased with his devotion threw his own flower garland on his head and took him into his fold….
Just as i posted this, i got one of our viewers Mr. Srivatsan contributing with the entire panel. He was kind enough to allow me to publish his picture her as well ( which is one of our key visions for this site – to have lot of people contributing from their collections, so that we can collectively build and share a virtual database of images).
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The panel has to be read bottom up- you can see the cows tended by chandesa, and then chandesa has hit his father, who is on the ground, and then chandesa standing in front of shiva. Sadly the images are worn out.
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This scene is beautifully depicted in Rajendra Cholas Gangai Konda cholapuram….such aesthetic beauty…such obedience of chandesa, benevolence radiating in the face of shiva and such motherly affection in the face of parvathi…one of the very best and my fav sculptures….Chandesa anugraha murthy. 735
Just hair
Well after all those serious posts…time to take a break… In todays fast world, fashions keep changing by the minute. Women’s fashion and hair styles have spawned many an industry….a professor of mine would jokingly remark that todays indian women have very long hair that reaches to their SHOULDERS…( ok traditional indian women are known for their bewitchingly long dark raven black hair neatly plaited…reaching down atleast till their waists) 743 Gone are those days….yet captured for eternity in this pillar from a temple in thirumullaivoil….a dancer strikes a pose….flaunting her toe length hair….what grace. would styles like these go retro and we get to see such again…not sure if they will… with dresses not going below waistlines…its hard to imagine this….