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Over the centuries, the
treasures of India attracted invaders across the seas and continents.
From the time of Alexander of Macedonia and Mahmud of Ghazni, these
invaders came in wave after wave and carried away the precious
articles housed in temples and palaces. Mahmud Ghazni not only
ravaged the fabulous Som Nath Temple but made successive depredations
to pillage the legendary wealth to the Brajeshwari Devi Temple in
Kangra in 1009 carrying away gold, silver and jewels from this
temple. Nadir Shah took away the Takht-e-Taoos (the Peacock Throne)
which is still to be seen in Teheran. Eventually came the British who
made a systematic and sustained endeavor to pillage and transport not
only precious metals, gems and jewels but carpets, paintings, armour
et al. The last to succumb to them was Maharaja Ranjit Singh
whose kingdom extended from the Punjab to Central Asia and to Tibet.
They took away, among all the other valuable pieces, his golden
throne, a rare precious item depicting the grandeur of the great
sovereign.
The Sikh Court was the
centre of cultura, craft and artistic excellence of the days and
showed the religiouis tolerance in which the Europeans, Sikhs, Hindus
and Muslims lived and worked together. The artifacts fabricated
covered the gold decorated weapons of Lahore, the distinctive Kangra
paintings of the Punjab Hills, the vividly coloured Jamawar shawls of
Kashmir and other traditional arts that flourished at the time.
To celebrate the
tercentenary of the Khalsa Panth founded by Guru Gobind Singh in
1699, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has put up a special
exhibition of Sikh art. Among the gems on display, is the golden
throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It looks like an oyster on a
pedestal. Other exhibits include a miniature depicting the signing of
the Bhairowal treaty in 1946, exquisite pashmina shawls belonging to
the period of Ranjit Singh, gilded shelds lined with velvet and
embroidered with silk from the 1830s and a five tiered Akali turban
from Lahore from the same period.
The Royal Library at
Windsor Castle is yet another vital source of knowledge of the Indian
tradition of art and culture. There are some forty manuscripts housed
in the Windsor Castle Library collected by George III or by Queen
Victoria. The volume of manuscripts was presented to George III in
1799 through Lord Teignmouth, Governor General of India. The jewel
among these manuscripts is the Padshahnama (History of the
Emperor or Chronicle of the King of the World), a detailed text
commissioned by Shahjehan in 1639and superbly illustrated. Only one
copy seems to have survived. Paintings of the “highest caliber”
illustrate the Mughal court splendour, the costumes, customs, and
ceremonies of the time. The rare manuscript was lent for an
exhibition mounted at the National Museum, New Delhi, in connection
with the celebration of the fifty years of India’s Independence.
Thus it is to be seen how
much of the artistic cultural heritage of India has been purloined by
museums abroad and is now enshrined these for visitors to see and
admire. The British have the richest collection perhaps housed in
various museums and in the Royal Collections. Even the fabulous
diamond, the Koh-I-noor (Mountain of Light) now the centre
piece of the crown of the British sovereign was a possession of
India.
American museums also
have valuable Indian artifacts. An early American tourist in India,
Frank G. Carpenter, provides examples of India’s exhibits taken
abroad for the promotion of knowledge about India’s heritage.
His fabulous collections are housed in the Library of Congress,
Washington. These came to the Library of Congress in 1951 when
Carpenter’s daughter Mrs. W. Chapan Huttington, presented the
famous photographer’s file. There are 20,000 photographs
depicting street scenes, cities, towns, people of different regions
in native costumes, transport vehicles of various types, vendors and
craftsmen at work in their own environment. These pictures and
accounts depict the Indian scene in the last decades of the 19th
and early 20th century.
Even earlier than Frank
G. Carpenter, a journalist, traveller and author, there were Bayard
Taylor and Reverend William Butter Taylor who visited India in 1853.
His writings depicting landscapes, monuments and the people with
their old civilization and culture were highly popular with the
American people. Reverend William Butler wrote the “Land of the
Vedas” in 1871 which carried many illustrations of the Indian
panorama. Another distinguished American, Mark Twain, visited India
in 1896 and was enchanted by the sounds and sights of India. He
recorded “India is the only foreign land I ever daydream about
or deeply long to see again”.
The American bi-monthly
magazine SPAN issued in Delhi for the months of May/June 1999 carries
an interesting article by Pran Neville who provides valuable source
material for museum treasures that throw light on India’s
ancient heritage, culture and her civilization.
American museums such as
the Metropolitan in New York and the Smithsonian in Washington have
extensive collections of Indian art, bronzes and textiles, too
numerous to enumerate here. But the lesser known Museum of Art in Los
Angles Country has some unusual sandstone sculptures from Madhya
Pradesh from the stone gateways of the Great Stupa of Sanchi which
was probably built in the fifth century after the death of the
Buddha. The gateways were built later, about the time of the birth of
Christ. There is also a Yakshi in red sandstone from Uttar
Pradesh dating to about the first century AD. A standing Buddha in
gilt bronze from north India is dated at approximately the 6th
century. Many bronzes such as of Siva in his Nataraj (dance) form
(10th century), Vishnu Chaturnama in bronze with copper
and silver inlay is believed to be from Kashmir—c 800. There are
also several miniature paintings both from the Mewar school and of
Rama and Sita in the Rajput style from the Kulu school (1690-1700).
The vital contribution of
Germany to illuminate India’s ancient heritage would be
incomplete without expressing the paramount role played by the
Indologist, Max Mueller (1823-1900). The pulsating civilization of
India that had outlived those of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the
Greeks and the Romans has now become the focus of organized study in
some twenty Universities in Germany. Max Mueller’s monumental
work the “Sacred Books of the East” was translated by him
from Sanskrit into German. Collections of Indian scripts in German
libraries, as for example in the Staatbibliothek in Berlin and
the Bayerische Staatbiblioshek in Munich exist and large parts
have been microfilmed. Besides Indian scripts, there are large
collections of Indian heritage reflected in foreign museums.
The Museum fur Indische
Kunst in Berlin-Dahlem has a very large collection of art objects
collected in Eastern India which covers the Indian States of Bihar,
West Bengal and what is now Bangladesh. The collection consists of a
mixture of images made in stone and terra-cotta and architectural
fragments and bronze images more recently acquired.
In 1857, the Museum fur
Volkerkunde i.e. the Museum of Ethnology, was acquired from Hermann
Ansorge who had lived in Calcutta. It has four decorative
terra-cottas from the “ruins of a Hindu temple” which was
built 400 years ago by the Raja of “Krishongor” in
“Bollotpor” in homage to Lord Krishna. In early times it
was a favourite site. The German ethnologist, Adolf Bastian was also
the head of the ethnographic department.
The Linden Museum,
Stuttgart, has a variety of Buddhas from the South, South East and
Central Asia. The collection includes about 400 stones, clay and
metal scriptures, frescoes, paintings and ritual objects. The
selection shows the spread of Buddhism and its stages of development.
It includes a Stupa, the most important Buddhist ritual symbol. The
collection demonstrates the part played by the school of sculptors of
Mathura in North India. The legend of the Buddha’s life is
described in detail on the relief panels of the Stupas and the
monasteries. These exhibits are intended to enable a human being to
break the chain of sorrow which consists of cause and effect. It
brings out that the teachings of the Buddha can satisfy the spiritual
needs of the people in the present world of growing tensions,
violence and economic lure. The coming turn of the millennium
encourages many people to cast their eyes into the past, project
their thoughts into the future and hope for better times. Although
this collection is from other Asian countries, the epicenter was
India from whence Buddhism took birth and spread into other countries
and the Mathura School of Sculpture is the direct inspiration.
Several Museums in
Germany from Hamburg in the north to Munich in the southern part have
valuable collections of Indian art. An interesting museum is the one
dedicated to playing cards only. This museum, the Deutsches
Spielkartenmuseum, is located in Leinfelden-Echterdingen and has a
fine collection of Indian playing cards.
Indian artifacts of South
Indian lie in the collection of Franckesche Stiftungen. Toe knob
wooden sandals with iron nails of an ascetic, a portable shrine of
Vishnu with depictions of some of His incarnations, the Krishna
legends and a wooden model of a palanquin from malabar are among the
collection.
Indian art does not
figure prominently in Russian museums as there was very little
contact between Russia and India for a long time. However, the State
Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow has the largest and best collection.
A large part of the collection has come from the private collectors,
P.I. and S.I. Schukin and K.F. Nekrasov, who were reputed Oriental
art collectors. The most important single exhibit is the “Baburnama”,
which has about 200 splendid masterpieces of miniature paintings.
There are also some 700 textiles, the most outstanding being the
Kashmir Jamawar shawls of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
The Odessa Museum of
Western and Oriental Art was founded in 1920. This Museum combines
the collections of the former City Museum of Fine Arts, Odessa
University and a number of private collections nationalized after the
1917 October Revolution. This museum is located in a building known
as Tolstoy Palace. Subsequently, the collection has been enriched by
the acquisition of some wonderful specimens of silk fabrics, silver
decorations, sandalwood boxes, dolls in national dress of different
provinces, ivory and metal statuettes et.al.
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