A book from National Geography.
A wonderful gift I received during 2010 trip to NY.
Siva's Blessings
After I completed the blog on Siva, I circulated an e-mail requesting a few friends to have a look at the same.
I received two responses - one from DJ Ray and the other from Suraj Nowlakha. I have inserted a quote from DJR's e-mail in the ' Comments' column.Suraj has sent a number of Sivalinga's photos . I did not include any Sivalinga's photo in my 1st blog on Siva.Here is the 1st one...that of Somnath temple.......one of the twelve photos he forwarded to me.
The Linga is made of white stone while the Yonipatta is covered with silver .
Milk drips from a bowl on the Linga to soothe the same.
I found an interesting photo of the 'Brahmanaical Triad' in a book on the Asian art collection of Brooklyn Museum ( Unfortunately, the day I visited this Museum, this section was closed to visitors) . This one is from Kashmir, an 8th century green chlorite sculpture. Here we find Brahma and Vishnu standing on the sides of phallic symbol of Siva. Brahma on the LH side has two geese which are his 'chariot'. On the RH side, we find Vishnu with a female and male figures on his two sides. According to the book, the female figure symbolises the mace Vishnu carries and the male his 'Wheel of law'.
8th Century Green Chlorite figure of 'Brahminical Triad'.
Source - Brooklyn Museum.
The most pleasant reward for all the work I did during my Library visits @NY came from Sujash, my elder son and his University-friend Miriam. On 7th August ,2010,we were discussing about NYPL @ Miriam's place over a lunch of salad, after a long walk @ 11oth Street and Harlem. Miriam enjoys reading and travelling. I mentioned the books I enjoyed reading during my visits, but could not copy as many pages as I wanted to ( because @ 30 p/page, the cost is high even @ USA standard) and the only book I could not find there. She asked for the list and yesterday ( 12th August) , I found a packet of three books as a gift from Miriam and Sujash.
The cover of this book has now changed. But, I could not copy the image of the cover from Internet source.
A remarkable book by a person who learnt Indian classical dance and created this wonderful collection of writings and photographs while
elaborating the nuances of Nataraj's postures.
2 comments:
Noteworthy effort. The Natraja sculpture is possibly from a Parmara Temple located at a place called Udyapura, in Madhya Pradesh. The temple is bhumij temple, the first of its kind. The lakulish is possibly from Pratihara age could from the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh.
great/commendable workTUTU
Post a Comment