Borobudur, begun around 825, is the quite simply the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It is decorated with around 500 statues of Lord Buddha, arranged in terraces of decreasing size, as if on the sacred slopes of Mount Meru.
It was built possibly by the Sangramadha Nanjaya Sailendra dynasty of Mataram, Central Java, or maybe “charismatic religious leaders rather than kings.” For surprisingly there is no great temple or palace complex associated with it.
The only inscription associated with Borobudur dates from 842 and is from a woman who gave land to sustain it. For all the mystery, this is the climax of the ninth century golden age of Java, when so many remarkable monuments were built here, both Hindu and Buddhist.
Like many other monuments of this period Indic ideas have been taken and dramatic new forms created with and from them.
Shaped in the form of a mandala, and topped with a Gandhara-style stupa, it seems to represent some Indic cosmological theory, possibly the Three Realms of Mahayana Buddhism; or the Six (or ten) Perfections.
It also shows strong syncretic tendencies and contains a single image of Lord Shiva, complete with trishul and rudraksh.
But perhaps it's principle pleasure are the four tiers of long galleries of ancient stories it contains: familiar tales from the Life of the Buddha, less familiar Jataka Tales and other much less known Buddhist texts notably the fairly recherche story of Prince Sudhana.
The story of Prince Sudhana is told in a long programme of no less than 460 panels, taken from a text called The Gaṇḍavyūha, which itself forms a part of the a collection called the Avataṁsakasūtra.
The Gandavyuha describes the journeys of the traveller Prince Sudhanq, who is inspired to take to the road, and the sea, by the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī and whose life becomes a long succession of adventures.
These different tales together painter a wonderful picture of ancient India and Javanese life, moving from court dramas in Royal palaces to animal fables and morality tales set in the ancient jungles.
Wandering alone in these galleries its easy to lose track of centuries and to imagine yourself back in the ancient Buddhist world where this remarlable ancient gallery was first sculpted
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.’