Tag: india

Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders Board Game, United Kingdom, 1895, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The board game “Snakes and Ladders” originated from “Vaikuntapaali” or “Paramapada Sopanam”, a game from India based on morality.    It was often known as in Ancient India as Moksha Patamu.

In the game, the ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder and theft. The moral of the game was that a person can attain salvation through performing good deeds whereas by doing evil one takes rebirth in lower forms of life. The number of ladders was less than the number of snakes as a reminder that treading the path of good is very difficult compared to committing sins.

The game was transported from India to England by the colonial rulers in the latter part of the 19th century, with some modifications. Renamed as “Snakes and Ladders”, the number of snakes and ladders were equalized and the game was stripped of its moral and religious aspects.

Akbar Padamsee

Akbar Padamsee, “Imbecile”, 1991, Oil on Board, 89 x71 cm.

Akbar Padamsee i;sa a contemporary Indian artist and painter, born in the region of Gujarat. He is considered one of the pioneers of Modern Indian painting. He works in various mediums from oil painting, plastic emulsion, watercolor, lithography and computer graphics.

Padamsee was associated with the Progressive Artists’ Group, PAG, and had his first solo show at the Jehangir Art Gallery in 1954, soon becoming one of the leading artists. He currently lioves in South Mumbai and works at his studio in Prabhadevi.

Padamsee was awarded the Lalit Kala Akacemi Fellowship in 1962, a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1965, the 1997 Kalida Samman for Plastic arts from the Madhya Pradesh Government, and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honor in 2010.

Well of Chand Baori

Photographer Unknown, Well of Chand Baori, Abhaneri, India

The Well of Chand Baori is situated in the village of Abhaneri in the state of Rajasthan, India.. There are 3500 narrow steps extending for a height of thirteen stories. It extends approximately one hundred feet into the ground making it one of the deepest and largest stepwells in India. It was built by King Chanda of the Nikumbh dynasty between 800-900 CE and was dedicate to Hashat Mata, Goddess of Joy and Happiness upon completion.

The well was designed to conserve as much water as possible in the extremely dry area of Rajasthan. At the bottom of the well, the air remains about 6 degrees cooler than the temperature at ground level. it is used as a gathering place for locals during intense heat of the day. The site has been used as a filming location for the movies “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”.

Amos Chapple

Amos Chapple, “Harvesting Water Chestnuts, Jhalawar, India”, 2005

Amos Chapple is a New Zealand freelance photographer who in 2005 took a full-time postion shooting UNESCO World Heritage sites. In 2012 he started doing freelance news and travel photography. He took this modified drone photograph of a wife, husband and uncle in Jhalawar, India, while they were harvesting water chestnuts to sell.

Reblogged with thanks to the artist’s site: http://www.amoschapplephoto.com

Kiran Ahluwalia and Timariwen, “Mustt Mustt”

Kiran Ahluwalia and Timariwen, “Mustt Mustt”, 2011

Kiran Ahluwalia is an Indian singer, songwriter who infuses African desert blues and Western musical styles. She was born in Patna, grew up in Delhi and moved to Toronto at the age of nine. After completing her MBA at Dalhousie University, she returned to Toronto with the plan of being in the financial services industry. However, she changed her mind and went back to India to study music and then returned to Toronto to build her career as a musician. Kiran Ahluwalia is married to guitar player and co-arranger Rez Abbasi, and currently lives in New York.

Tinariwen (Tamasheq: “deserts”) is a Grammy Award-winning group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. The band was formed in 1979 in Tamanrasset, Algeria, but returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s. The group first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001 with the release of “The Radio Tisdas Sessions”, and with performances at Festival au Désert in Mali and the Roskilde Festival in Denmark.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

The Theyyam Ritual

The Theyyam Ritual

Theyyam is a popular ritual form of worship of North Malabar in Kerala, India, predominant in the Kolathunadu area (consisting of present-day Kasargod, Kannur Districts, Mananthavady Taluk of Wayanad and Vadakara and Koyilandy Taluks of Kozhikode of Kerala) and also in Kodagu and Tulu nadu of Karnataka as a living cult with several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs.

The performers of Theyyam belong to the lower caste community, and have an important position in Theyyam. People of these districts consider Theyyam itself as a God and they seek blessings from this Theyyam.

There are different patterns of face-painting. Some of these patterns are called vairadelam, kattaram, kozhipuspam, kottumpurikam, and prakkezhuthu. Mostly primary and secondary colours are applied with contrast for face painting. It helps in effecting certain stylization in the dances. Then the dancer comes in front of the shrine and gradually “metamorphoses” into the particular deity of the shrine.

He, after observation of certain rituals places the head-dress on his head and starts dancing. In the background, folk musical instruments like chenda, tudi, kuzhal and veekni are played in a certain rhythm. All the dancers take a shield and kadthala (sword) in their hands as continuation of the cult of weapons. Then the dancer circumambulates the shrine, runs in the courtyard and continues dancing there.

Bodhisattva Padmapani

Bodhisattva Padmapani, Mural Painting, Late Fifth Century, Ajanta Cave One, India

This extraordinary mural painting of Bodhisattva Padmapani survives from early medieval India, likely dated to 477 AD, and is preserved in the interior of the rock-cut Buddhist monastery of Ajanta. It provides the earliest visual evidence of elaborate crowns being worn as signifiers of both princely and divine status. The crowns depicted are the antecedents of those used in Buddhist ritual today by the Vajracharya priests in Nepal.

The Ajanta Caves system has been described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as “the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting,” and consists of about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from approximately the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE.

In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara, also known as Padmapain, is the Bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He is depicted and portrayed in different cultures as either male or female. An English translation of the Bodhisattva’s name, Avalokiteśvara, means “the lord who gazes down at the world”.

This segment from Helen Gardner’s 2009 “Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives”, originally published in 1926,  describes the scene shown:

“The Bodhisattva Padmapani sits among a crowd of devotees, both princesses and commoners. With long, dark hair handing down below a jeweled crown, he stands holding his attribute, a blue lotus flower, in his right hand. […] The artist has carefully considered the placement of the painting in the cave. The bodhisattva gazes downward at worshipers passing through the entrance to the shrine on their way to the rock-cut Buddha image in a cell at the back of the cave.”

Note: There is very limited lighting done inside the caves to protect the paintings from heat and no flash allowed.

Asit Kumar Patnaik

Paintings by Asit Kumar Patnaik, Details of Male Figures

Asit Kumar Patnaik, Indian painter, was born in Orissa, India, in 1968. A National Scholar and MFA honor student from BHU, he has received several provincial and national awards, the latest being a grand felicitation from the Government College of Art and Crafts, his alma mater in Khalikote, Orissa. A semi-realistic figurative painter, Patnaik has enjoyed much critical acclaim and popular appreciation over the past few years.