Out of quarantine and out into the wild volcanic Highlands of Central Java. The 7thC temples of Gedong Songo are strung up the ridge of an eerie volcano, where plumes of sulphurous steam belch out of the ground and mingle with thick cloudbanks scudding up bamboo slopes.
The temples themselves look sometimes Gupta, sometimes Pallava, with a hint of Kashmir- all topped with curving Chinese-style flying eves- a mixture you'd see nowhere in India and yet are contemporary with the earliest Indian stone mandirs in MP and coastal Tamil Nadu.
The guards, all Muslims, all reported regular night time sightings of Hindu queens and their spirit courts.
One told me how a princess had appeared in a dream and directed him to a place where he found a 7thC Sanjaya gold necklace, which he handed in "because stealing treasure brings bad luck on a family." It is now on display in the National Museum in Jakarta.
Candi Gedong Songo on Mount Ugaran. “It is at Gedog Songo rather than Dieng that the model for the Javanese temple was established.”
Gedong Songo means ‘nine buildings’ in Javanese, though many more have been found. These are considered to be the 2nd-oldest extant Javanese temples, contemporary with later Dieng constructions, though dating is more a matter of interpretation than reference to any inscription.
"Each of the Gedong Songo temples is square in plan, with a tiered superstructure of three false storeys which varies from temple to temple in proportion of height to width rather than compositionally"
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ZEBRAS & ZODIACS:
JAHANGIR & THE MUGHAL ART REVOLUTION
The Emperor Jahangir was a true connoisseur of beauty. His reign witnessed a flourishing of art, particularly through his patronage of workshops of brilliant artists who between them created a series of extraordinary masterpieces.
The reigns of Jahangir saw the artistic highpoint of the Mughal atelier, and with it the moment of greatest celebrity for the masters at court. Jahangir awarded his two master artists, the brilliant animal painter Mansur and his rival Abu’l Hasan, the titles Nadir al-Zaman, ‘Wonder of the Age,’ and Nadir al-Zaman, “Wonder of the Times.”
Abu’l Hasan seems to have been a particular favourite of Jahangir. “I have always considered it my duty to give him much patronage,” wrote the Emperor in his own autobiography, the Jahangirnama, “and from his youth until now I have patronised him so that his work has reached the level it has.”
The oldest surviving sculptures of the Buddha in Southeast Asia. Found at Oc Eo, now on the Vietnamese side of the Mekong Delta, and the presumed site of one the very first Indic-influenced courts in the region, known to the Chinese as Funan.
The Chinese called this city state Funan – the Indians, Vyadhapura. We do not know what it was called by its own inhabitants. A Chinese court envoy who came to Funan in the third century ce left the first eyewitness portrait of this nascent trading world. ‘This place is famous for precious rarities from afar,’ wrote the Chinese Xue Zong in the third century ce: ‘pearls, incense, elephant tusks, rhinoceros’ horn, tortoise shell, coral, lapis lazuli, parrots, kingfishers, peacocks, rare and abundant treasures enough to satisfy all desires.’
To 21stC eyes, the tall waterlogged wooden Buddhas found at the site are astonishingly beautiful- like Giacometti's Walking Man, and even more than that, the Etruscan bronze know as The Shadow of the Evening which inspired some of his best work
To close 2024 @tweeter_anita & I look at the chaotic first attempts of the English crown to open diplomatic relations with Mughal India
THE ROOTS OF THE RAJ-
Sir Thomas Roe at the Court of Jahangir
The East India Company realised that if it was to trade successfully with the Mughals, it would need both partners and permissions. This meant establishing a relationship with the Mughal Emperor himself.
The man chosen was a courtier, MP, diplomat, Amazon explorer, Ambassador to the Sublime Porte and self-described ‘man of quality’, Sir Thomas Roe.
"The Nabateans are a silent partner in everything that goes on in the high summer of the Ancient period” - Bettany Hughes
By the time of Jesus’ birth, a mysterious empire had built its wealth through trading two of the gifts present at the Nativity: frankincense and myrrh.
Aromatic crystals harvested from the sap of gnarled trees, frankincense and myrrh were highly desirable commodities known as the tears or the breath of the gods.
We are proud to present the first episode of our Christmas mini-series-
WHO WERE THE THREE WISE MEN?
Featured in every Nativity scene in school plays, churches, and art around the world, the Three Wise Men are key characters in the Christmas story. But they are actually only mentioned once in the Bible, appearing in Matthew’s gospel. He describes them not as Kings, not as generalised Wise Men, but specifically as Magi.
So what exactly did he mean by that?
The word ‘magi’, derives from the Old Persian ‘magus’, and specifically refers to the Zoroastrian Persian high priesthood, who were renowned throughout the Middle East for their knowledge of the stars and for their expertise in astrology.
The name title stood out in the gospel for being one of the only words in Persian. It is also the root of the English word 'magic' for which the Magi were renowned.
"Early in his reign, Akbar had made it clear that he had no time for ultra-Orthodox Muslim opinion which objected the depiction of the human form: “There are many that hate painting,” he wrote, but such men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had a quite peculiar means of recognising God; for a painter in sketching anything that has life, and in devising its limbs, one after the other, must come to feel that he cannot bestow individuality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God, the giver of life."
As a child, Akbar was dislexic: no one was able to teach him how to read. But he still loved literature - the Indian and Persian epics and Ferdowsi poetry and were read to him by travelling picture showmen and discussed in detail. This seems to have inspired his love of visual arts: ‘one of the biggest paradoxes of art history: the prolific production of illustrated manuscripts was initiated by a man who could not read them himself’.
Akbar began the tradition by which the Mughals, perhaps more than any other Islamic dynasty, made their love of the arts and their aesthetic principles a central part of their identity as rulers.
They consciously used jewellery and jewelled objects as they used their architecture, art, poetry, historiography and the dazzling brilliance of their court ceremonial – to make visible and manifest their imperial ideal, to give it a properly imperial splendour, and even a sheen of divine legitimacy. As Abu’l Fazl put it, ‘Kings are fond of external splendour, because they consider it an image of the Divine glory.’