The ancient Indian Undavalli caves, located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, thought to date to around the 4th-5th centuries AD. It is one of the finest examples of Indian rock-cut architecture, and carved out of solid sandsone on a hillside.
Photo courtesy & taken by Arvind.vindhu
On Sep 13, 1944, a princess from India lay dead at Dachau concentration camp. She had been tortured by the Nazis, then shot in the head. Her name was Noor Inayat Khan. The Germans knew her only as Nora Baker, a British spy who had gone into occupied France using the code name Madeline. She carried her transmitter from safe house to safe house with the Gestapo trailing her, providing communications for her Resistance unit.
76945-costume-research—and-more:
15th- early 16th century Talismanic Cotton. Plain Weave Shirt from India
Textile: L. 25 in. (63.5 cm) W. 38 3/4 in. (98.4 cm) Mount: L. 25 in. (63.5 cm) W. 38 3/4 in. (98.4 cm)
This shirt, made of cotton, has a rectangular profile, wide sleeves and a circular neck. Its surface has painted squares, medallions, and lappet-shaped areas in which the entire Qur’an has been written. These areas are separated by lines and circles outlined in gold, blue and orange, and are bordered by a wide band with the ninety-nine names of God written in gold against an orange background pattern. The text is written in black naskh script with the surah headings in orange. Medallions on either side of the chest have a blue background, an orange circle in the center and the shahada (“There is no God but God, Muhammad is his Prophet”) written in gold. The tops sleeves of the sleeves are decorated with several gold, orange and blue medallions; some are filled with checkerboard patterns and others bear the word ‘God’. A panel at the center of the back contains a proclamation in gold script stating “God is the merciful, the Compassionate”.
(Source: 76945-costume-research-and-more)
The Death of the Demoness Putana: Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana
Date: ca. 1610
India (Rajasthan, Bikaner)
The evil king Kamsa sent the demoness Putana to kill the infant Krishna. Disguised as a wet nurse, she attempted to poison the god with her milk. Krishna, however, drained her breast and took away her very life breath. Here, we see him clutching the breast of the slain Putana while Yashoda, Rohini, and her baby Balarama run to help.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
“The viper is dead; the boy will live,” ca. 1943
At Kasauli, in the Himalayas, is the Central Research Institute which produces serums against snakebites and rabies. Since the identity of the Russell’s viper was known (the father holds the dead snake at left) the frightened lad has a nine-to-one chance for recovery.
The Indian clinic specialized in producing antivenoms and rabies serums. During World War II it was tasked with producing large enough quantities of all manner of antidotes for both military and civilian use.
Today, India celebrates 63 years of being a sovereign, secular and democratic republic.
Every year on this day, our amazing country of approximately 1.17 billion people celebrates Republic Day by commemorating the date on which the Constitution officially came into force, and India finally became a truly independent nation in her own stead.
Sword (khanda) with gilded hilt
- Dated: early 19th century
- Culture: Indian, Rajasthan
Source & Copyright: Royal Armouries
Bihu Dance—Assamese folk dance
Bihu festival witnesses the colorful show of Bihu dance celebrated for the arrival of spring in the Assamese New Year. For Assamese cult, Bihu is a time for celebrating their cultural traditions and livelihood simultaneously. Assamese folk smudge the oncoming festival and enjoy this same with a lot of pomp and show. This is an extremely energetic, fast and an eye-catching dance performance with the rhythmic exuberance of Bihu. Bihu is generic to celebration in agrarian Assam. This joyous dance is performed by both young men and women, characterized by brisk dance steps, flinging rapid hand movement, stylish footwork and a rhythmic swaying of the hips in order to represent youthful passion and reproductive urge and ‘Joie-de-vivre’.
History of Bihu Dance
Bihu dance has been performed from time immemorial during the seedtime. The spring festival “Bohag Bihu” or Rangali Bihu has a long tradition of being celebrated in the middle of April, Bhugali (Magh Bihu) and Kangali (Kati Bihu) marking its unique phase in the farming calendar and also during the season of marriage. The Rangoli bihu marks the agricultural New Year at the advent of seeding time and is celebrated as the Festival of Merriment. The Kati Bihu marks the completion of sowing and transplanting of paddies while the Magh Bihu marks the end of the harvesting period.
Of the three Bihu festivals, Rongali Bihu is celebrated with greatest thrill as it marks the arrival of spring - the agricultural season. People of all faiths and creed celebrate Bohag Bihu by singing traditional Bihugeets and performing group folk dances. Rongali Bihu has its etymological roots embedded in Sanskrit Vishuvam meaning vernal equinox when day and night is of equal duration. At the time of Rongali Bihu people welcome the spring season and pray for a bountiful and rich harvest. Bohag Bihu falls in the first month of the Assamese calendar called Bohag. This corresponds to mid-April according to English calendar year. Rongali Bihu normally starts from the 13th day of April.
Features of Bihu DanceThe dance is a part of the Bihu festival that starts in mid-April, when harvesting work of farming is over pregnant with the essence, feelings of youth and energy. Songs sung in Bihu are woven around themes of love and often carry erotic overtones with people adorn traditional attires like Dhoti, Gamocha and Chadar, Mekhala. The dance is performed in an open space during daytime but there is a clear distinction of separate sexes. The youths perform this dance accompanied by songs of erotic sentiment, loud beating of the Dhol, soft strains of Pepa made from the buffalo horns and manjira, tokka (bamboo clappers) and many more indigenous musical instruments. Sometimes in between, the performers sometimes sing along with dances. In a course of dancing, the dancers commonly form a circle or parallel rows. The dance has been noted for maintaining authenticity and at the same time displaying the traditional Assamese handlooms and handicrafts in their glory and beauty by the dancers.
Verse VI-28 of Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara accounts: “May the bodiless one, the conqueror of the world, accompanied by the Spring season ever grant your happiness, he whose sharp shafts are the beautiful mango blossoms, whose mighty bow is the lovely Kimshukaleaf of which the string is formed by the row of bees, whose spotless white umbrella is the Moon: whose lordly elephant is the breeze from the Malaya mountain and whose bards are the cuckoo birds” and Bihu Dance aptly establishes such atmosphere.
Rabindranath Tagore was the son of Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi. The Tagores were one of the leading families of Calcutta, whose estates and assets were built up by Rabindranath’s grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846) and consolidated by his father, Debendranath, who headed the Brahmo Samaj movement in Bengal. Rabindranath was the fourteenth child and eigth son of his parents. His elder brother, Satyendranath, was the first Indian to compete and pass the ICS competitive exams in London and was posted to the Indian Civil Service in Bombay. Tagore went to Britain in 1878 and attended lectures at University College, London, but returned to India before he could receive a degree. Tagore’s resistance to rote learning inspired him to build a school, Patha Bhavana, at Santiniketan (in the Bengali countryside) in 1901 with only five students.
Tagore is best known as a Bengali literary figure - he experimented in all literary genres (except verse epic), composed about 2,500 songs (words and music), and painted, towards the end of his life, nearly 3,000 paintings. He wrote poems and stories mainly in his mother tongue, Bengali. The Tagore that the world beyond India came to know was catapulted into fame by the award of the Nobel prize for literature. In November of 1912, Gitanjali (‘Song-offering’) was published in a limited edition of 750 copies by the India Society of London. William Rothenstein had brought Tagore’s work to the attention of the India Society and William Butler Yeats provided the introduction. In 1913 it was printed again by Macmillan, and on 16 November 1913, news of the award reached him in Santiniketan.
Subsequently, he toured much of the world and became the world’s first intercontinental literary star. Macmillan published a number of translations of Tagore’s poems and stories after this success. A number of Tagore’s plays were performed in London by British and Indian troupes. Tagore’s international tours were also an opportunity for Tagore to speak against war and nationalism, to promote pan-Asianism, to expound India’s spiritual heritage, his aesthetic and educational philosophy, and his ‘poet’s religion’. With his fame, Tagore amassed more wealth which he was able to invest into his school at Santiniketan and the University, Visva-Bharati. In 1919, Tagore returned the knighthood he had received from the British Government in 1915 as a protest against the Amritsar Massacre.
He died on 7 August 1941 at 6 Dwarkanath Tagore Lane, Jorasanko, Calcutta, in the house where he was born. (via)
Amrita Sher-Gil was a renowned Indian painter. She was one of the most charismatic and promising Indian artists of the pre-colonial era. Most of her paintings reflect vividly her love for the country and more importantly her response to the life of its people.
Amrita Sher-Gil was born in Hungary in 1913. Her father was a Sikh aristocrat and her mother was Hungarian. Both her parents were artistically inclined. Her father, Umrao Singh Majitha, was a Sanskrit Scholar and her mother, Marie Antoinette, was a pianist. Amrita spent her early childhood in the village of Dunaharasti in Hungary. In 1921 her family moved to Shimla. It was at this time that Amrita Sher-Gil developed interest in painting. An Italian sculpture used to live in Shimla. In 1924, when the Italian sculpture moved to Italy, Amrita Sher-Gil’s mother too moved with her along with Amrita.
In Italy Amrita was enrolled at Santa Anunciata, a Roman Catholic institution. Amrita did not like the strict discipline of the Catholic school but on the flip side she was exposed to the works of the Italian masters and this further fanned her interest in painting. In 1927, Amrita Shergil returned to India and began taking lessons in painting under Ervin Backlay. But Ervin’s insistence that Amrita should copy real life models exactly as she saw them irked Amrita and thus her painting stint under Ervin Backlay was short lived.
In 1929, at the age of sixteen, Amrita Sher-Gil sailed to France to study Art. She took a degree in Fine Arts from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. She also learnt to speak and write French. It was in France that she started painting seriously. The Torso, one of her early paintings was a masterly study of a nude which stood out for its cleverness of drawing and bold modeling. In 1933, Amrita completed Young Girls. Critics and Art enthusiasts were so impressed by Young Girls that Amrita Sher-Gil was elected as Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris. Amrita was the youngest ever and the only Asian to be honored thus.
In 1934, Amrita Sher-Gil returned to India and evolved her own distinct style which, according to her, was fundamentally Indian in subject, spirit, and technical expression. Now the subject of his paintings were the poor, the villagers and beggars. In 1937, Amrita Sher-Gil went on a tour of South India. This gave her the opportunity to achieve the simplicity she always wanted in her paintings. In 1938, Amrita Sher-Gil went to Hungary and married her cousin Victor Egan much to the opposition of her parents. In 1939, Amrita Sher-Gil returned back to India and started painting again. After her return her health deteriorated and she died on December 6, 1941. (via)
