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Hindu, India
Feb 10 2008
The vandalisation of heritage
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
Murals from the 14th to 17th centuries in temples across Tamil Nadu
are being painted over or `restored' gaudily by unqualified
personnel. It is time we acted more responsibly to preserve these
masterpieces of a bygone era, feels David Shulman, renowned
Indologist. Excerpts from an interview...
Photo: The 17th century paintings on the ceiling of Devasiriya
Mandapam at Thyagarajaswamy temple IN Tiruvarur are masterpieces of
south Indian cultural heritage. If they are not conserved very soon,
they will be lost.
Neither subtle nor nuanced: The `restored' painting (right) at the
Jaina temple at Tiruparuttikkunram, near Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu.
David Shulman is a man with formidable attainments. An Indologist, he
is a scholar in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit literature and arts. He
graduated in Islamic Studies and read Persian and Arabic. He received
his Ph.D. in Tamil literature for his dissertation on the
sthalapuranams of temples in Tamil Nadu. That led him to study mural
paintings in temples in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Dr. Shulman
knows a dozen languages including Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Hebrew,
English, Russian and Persian. He has written several books including
Tamil Temple Myths, Songs of the Harsh Devotee and The Hungry God:
Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion, all published by prestigious
U.S. universities. He is currently Professor, Department of Indian,
Iranian and Armenian Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
Israel.
Dr. Shulman was in Chennai recently to attend a conference on
`Painting Narratives: Mural Painting Traditions in the 13th -19th
Centuries', organised by the Madras Craft Foundation and its heritage
museum Dakshina Chitra. Excerpts from a conversation...
You know the sthalapuranams of many temples in Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh. You have studied the mural paintings in temples in these two
States. How did you get interested in sthalapuranams and mural
paintings in temples?
My interest in sthalapuranams goes back 37 years. I was a Ph.D.
student at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the
University of London under John Marr. His was a famous name in Madras
(Chennai). He was my guru. John Marr was a student of a student of
U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer. In the course of looking for a Ph.D. topic for
me, we began to talk about the fact that nobody had done any serious
work on Tamil sthalapuranams. It was a huge literature. We know of
about 2,000 surviving sthalapuranams in Tamil alone. Some of them are
in manuscripts, some in printed versions. It is an enormous, rich
literature and it had been hardly touched before. So it seemed to be
a good topic for a Ph.D. dissertation. I studied the Tamil puranas of
temples such as Tiruvannamalai, Nagapattinam, Rameswaram, Kumbakonam,
Chidambaram, Kanchipuram and others.
Responsibility to the past: Dr. David Shulman.
I lived with my wife at Mandavelipakkam in Madras in 1975-76. I would
wander around these temples because I needed to see them. When you
read the sthalapuranam, you obviously need to see the temple, the
sthalavriksha (the sacred tree), the kulam (the pond) and the
murthis. These are highly specific to these individual places. So I
would basically roam around the Tamil country, mostly in Thanjavur
district and also in the south.
In the course of my wandering, I happened to come across many
beautiful mural paintings. In the Tamil country, among the hundreds
of temples, many had and some still have, these beautiful murals.
Some of them are quite old, some not so old, some going back to the
16th century and some to the 19th century. Pieces of these mural
paintings survive all over the Tamil country.
I always thought that we should have a conference like this to bring
these paintings to the attention of the public and the scholarly
public so that people would begin to think about them, preserve and
conserve them.
You touched on preservation. What is your impression about the status
of these murals in Tamil Nadu? The paintings in Tiruvellarai temple
near Tiruchi have been whitewashed. The murals in the Jaina temple at
Tiruparuttikkunram near Kanchipuram have been repainted to look
dazzlingly new.
I went to Tiruparuttikkunram on January 25, 2008. I saw the paintings
on the ceiling. They have been destroyed by re-painting.
Are these paintings in temples on the brink?
It is not yet too late. But the problem is very urgent. If action is
not taken soon, that is, immediately, these treasures of Tamil Nadu,
which are part of the national heritage, will disappear. In some
temples, these paintings have been preserved and they are not in such
a bad shape. But in many places, they are on the verge of
disappearing. Some of them have been painted over or whitewashed or
repainted in such a way that it destroys the integrity of the old
paintings.
For example, I was working in Tiruvarur. There was a beautiful,
famous 17th century set of paintings about Muchukunda Chakravarthi on
the ceiling of Devasiriya Mandapam in the Thyagarajaswamy temple at
Tiruvarur. This set of paintings is well known to the public and the
scholarly world. They are masterpieces of south Indian painting. That
ceiling in Devasiriya Mandapam is in a miserable condition. The
Mandapam has a special place in the history of Tamil Saiva
literature. That is the Mandapam where Sundaramurthy Nayanar had a
vision of all the 63 Nayanmars (Tamil Saivite saints). Today, people
are using it as a godown. It is filled with all kinds of junk, old
logs, rusting nails and dead rodents. It is a terrible situation.
These 17th century masterpieces have suffered from shameful neglect.
There is now some hope that INTACH (the Indian National Trust for Art
and Cultural Heritage) will go into action at the Tiruvarur temple
and conserve these paintings.
If you go there today, you will see that there is a long series of
paintings [on the ceiling] along the window in the Mandapam. Many of
the panel of paintings closest to the window, that I saw 30 years ago
have now been completely lost through water damage, smoke, insects,
birds nesting, cracking of plaster and sheer neglect. Some of these
murals no longer exist. I want to say again that these are
masterpieces of south Indian cultural heritage. If they are not
conserved very soon, they will be lost.
Yesterday, I went to Sri Varadarajaswamy temple at Kanchipuram. In
the enclosure wall around the main shrine of Sri Varadarajaswamy,
there are incredibly beautiful paintings of the 17th century. Again,
they are masterpieces. They urgently need to be preserved. Preserved
means not painted over. If they are painted over by new artists, they
will be destroyed. Preservation means they have to be cleaned
professionally by experts who know about these kinds of frescoes.
They have to be carefully treated in such a way that no further
damage will take place. If somebody wants to do some new paintings,
there are many surfaces in all the temples in Tamil Nadu. But let
them not paint over all these old masterpieces. That will definitely
destroy them. That is what has happened in many places.
That has happened at the Jaina temple at Tiruparuttikkunram near
Kanchipuram, which is under the State Department of Archaeology?
It definitely happened at Tiruparuttikkunram. The paintings have been
ruined by being painted over. This is quite a common thing in Tamil
Nadu. If you repaint it instead of conserving it, the subtlety will
be lost, the old colours will be lost. This is disaster. These
paintings have to be preserved as they were at their height. The way
people do it in Europe. Frescoes in Italy, France and Germany are
treated by professional people, whose job is to do that. For example,
in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which has Michelangelo's famous
paintings, they went through a long process of cleaning, restoring
and conserving these paintings.
I heard you were denied entry to the thousand-pillared mandapam in
the Thyagarajaswamy temple at Tiruvarur although it is nowhere near
the sanctum sanctorum.
I don't want to say much about it. We had a letter of authorisation
from the Minister for Endowments. When we came to Tiruvarur, it was
still very difficult to get permission to enter the mandapam. They
eventually gave us the permission. All we needed to do was to take a
few photographs to complete the set of existing photographs because
we had good quality pictures taken 20 years ago. It should have been
a simple matter and the authorisation was there. Still it was a
rather difficult bureaucratic procedure. Although in the end we were
allowed to take pictures. I am grateful to the temple authorities for
that. But the process was traumatic.
Whitewashing and sandblasting of paintings in temples is going on in
Tamil Nadu under the name of performing kumbabhishekams. How do you
sensitise the temple authorities not to indulge in vandalism like
this?
We talked about the idea of bringing some of the temples' archakas
and administrators to a conference like this. Let them see and hear
from experts what it (the destruction of paintings) actually means.
They have control over these masterpieces but they don't always
understand what this (heritage) means. They, therefore, at times too
easily, as you said during the temple kumbhabhishekam or renovation,
simply whitewash them away. It happened at Madurai.
Around the wall of the `Pottramaraikulam' (the pond of the golden
lotus) which had murals, in the Meenakshi temple?
Across from Pottramaraikulam, there was a beautiful series of Nayaka
paintings. I saw them years ago. They have been completely
whitewashed away. They are completely lost. There is no way we can
recover them...You cannot simply wipe out a wall like this. It is a
terrible thing...
All of us, the general public, the archakas, the temple
administrators and so on have a special responsibility in protecting
these murals. We have to act now before it is too late. It is already
too late for some of the paintings. Before we lose more, there should
be a public awareness to properly conserve the treasures of the Tamil
paintings of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/02/10/st ories/2008021050210700.htm
Feb 10 2008
The vandalisation of heritage
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
Murals from the 14th to 17th centuries in temples across Tamil Nadu
are being painted over or `restored' gaudily by unqualified
personnel. It is time we acted more responsibly to preserve these
masterpieces of a bygone era, feels David Shulman, renowned
Indologist. Excerpts from an interview...
Photo: The 17th century paintings on the ceiling of Devasiriya
Mandapam at Thyagarajaswamy temple IN Tiruvarur are masterpieces of
south Indian cultural heritage. If they are not conserved very soon,
they will be lost.
Neither subtle nor nuanced: The `restored' painting (right) at the
Jaina temple at Tiruparuttikkunram, near Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu.
David Shulman is a man with formidable attainments. An Indologist, he
is a scholar in Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit literature and arts. He
graduated in Islamic Studies and read Persian and Arabic. He received
his Ph.D. in Tamil literature for his dissertation on the
sthalapuranams of temples in Tamil Nadu. That led him to study mural
paintings in temples in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Dr. Shulman
knows a dozen languages including Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, Hebrew,
English, Russian and Persian. He has written several books including
Tamil Temple Myths, Songs of the Harsh Devotee and The Hungry God:
Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion, all published by prestigious
U.S. universities. He is currently Professor, Department of Indian,
Iranian and Armenian Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
Israel.
Dr. Shulman was in Chennai recently to attend a conference on
`Painting Narratives: Mural Painting Traditions in the 13th -19th
Centuries', organised by the Madras Craft Foundation and its heritage
museum Dakshina Chitra. Excerpts from a conversation...
You know the sthalapuranams of many temples in Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh. You have studied the mural paintings in temples in these two
States. How did you get interested in sthalapuranams and mural
paintings in temples?
My interest in sthalapuranams goes back 37 years. I was a Ph.D.
student at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the
University of London under John Marr. His was a famous name in Madras
(Chennai). He was my guru. John Marr was a student of a student of
U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer. In the course of looking for a Ph.D. topic for
me, we began to talk about the fact that nobody had done any serious
work on Tamil sthalapuranams. It was a huge literature. We know of
about 2,000 surviving sthalapuranams in Tamil alone. Some of them are
in manuscripts, some in printed versions. It is an enormous, rich
literature and it had been hardly touched before. So it seemed to be
a good topic for a Ph.D. dissertation. I studied the Tamil puranas of
temples such as Tiruvannamalai, Nagapattinam, Rameswaram, Kumbakonam,
Chidambaram, Kanchipuram and others.
Responsibility to the past: Dr. David Shulman.
I lived with my wife at Mandavelipakkam in Madras in 1975-76. I would
wander around these temples because I needed to see them. When you
read the sthalapuranam, you obviously need to see the temple, the
sthalavriksha (the sacred tree), the kulam (the pond) and the
murthis. These are highly specific to these individual places. So I
would basically roam around the Tamil country, mostly in Thanjavur
district and also in the south.
In the course of my wandering, I happened to come across many
beautiful mural paintings. In the Tamil country, among the hundreds
of temples, many had and some still have, these beautiful murals.
Some of them are quite old, some not so old, some going back to the
16th century and some to the 19th century. Pieces of these mural
paintings survive all over the Tamil country.
I always thought that we should have a conference like this to bring
these paintings to the attention of the public and the scholarly
public so that people would begin to think about them, preserve and
conserve them.
You touched on preservation. What is your impression about the status
of these murals in Tamil Nadu? The paintings in Tiruvellarai temple
near Tiruchi have been whitewashed. The murals in the Jaina temple at
Tiruparuttikkunram near Kanchipuram have been repainted to look
dazzlingly new.
I went to Tiruparuttikkunram on January 25, 2008. I saw the paintings
on the ceiling. They have been destroyed by re-painting.
Are these paintings in temples on the brink?
It is not yet too late. But the problem is very urgent. If action is
not taken soon, that is, immediately, these treasures of Tamil Nadu,
which are part of the national heritage, will disappear. In some
temples, these paintings have been preserved and they are not in such
a bad shape. But in many places, they are on the verge of
disappearing. Some of them have been painted over or whitewashed or
repainted in such a way that it destroys the integrity of the old
paintings.
For example, I was working in Tiruvarur. There was a beautiful,
famous 17th century set of paintings about Muchukunda Chakravarthi on
the ceiling of Devasiriya Mandapam in the Thyagarajaswamy temple at
Tiruvarur. This set of paintings is well known to the public and the
scholarly world. They are masterpieces of south Indian painting. That
ceiling in Devasiriya Mandapam is in a miserable condition. The
Mandapam has a special place in the history of Tamil Saiva
literature. That is the Mandapam where Sundaramurthy Nayanar had a
vision of all the 63 Nayanmars (Tamil Saivite saints). Today, people
are using it as a godown. It is filled with all kinds of junk, old
logs, rusting nails and dead rodents. It is a terrible situation.
These 17th century masterpieces have suffered from shameful neglect.
There is now some hope that INTACH (the Indian National Trust for Art
and Cultural Heritage) will go into action at the Tiruvarur temple
and conserve these paintings.
If you go there today, you will see that there is a long series of
paintings [on the ceiling] along the window in the Mandapam. Many of
the panel of paintings closest to the window, that I saw 30 years ago
have now been completely lost through water damage, smoke, insects,
birds nesting, cracking of plaster and sheer neglect. Some of these
murals no longer exist. I want to say again that these are
masterpieces of south Indian cultural heritage. If they are not
conserved very soon, they will be lost.
Yesterday, I went to Sri Varadarajaswamy temple at Kanchipuram. In
the enclosure wall around the main shrine of Sri Varadarajaswamy,
there are incredibly beautiful paintings of the 17th century. Again,
they are masterpieces. They urgently need to be preserved. Preserved
means not painted over. If they are painted over by new artists, they
will be destroyed. Preservation means they have to be cleaned
professionally by experts who know about these kinds of frescoes.
They have to be carefully treated in such a way that no further
damage will take place. If somebody wants to do some new paintings,
there are many surfaces in all the temples in Tamil Nadu. But let
them not paint over all these old masterpieces. That will definitely
destroy them. That is what has happened in many places.
That has happened at the Jaina temple at Tiruparuttikkunram near
Kanchipuram, which is under the State Department of Archaeology?
It definitely happened at Tiruparuttikkunram. The paintings have been
ruined by being painted over. This is quite a common thing in Tamil
Nadu. If you repaint it instead of conserving it, the subtlety will
be lost, the old colours will be lost. This is disaster. These
paintings have to be preserved as they were at their height. The way
people do it in Europe. Frescoes in Italy, France and Germany are
treated by professional people, whose job is to do that. For example,
in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which has Michelangelo's famous
paintings, they went through a long process of cleaning, restoring
and conserving these paintings.
I heard you were denied entry to the thousand-pillared mandapam in
the Thyagarajaswamy temple at Tiruvarur although it is nowhere near
the sanctum sanctorum.
I don't want to say much about it. We had a letter of authorisation
from the Minister for Endowments. When we came to Tiruvarur, it was
still very difficult to get permission to enter the mandapam. They
eventually gave us the permission. All we needed to do was to take a
few photographs to complete the set of existing photographs because
we had good quality pictures taken 20 years ago. It should have been
a simple matter and the authorisation was there. Still it was a
rather difficult bureaucratic procedure. Although in the end we were
allowed to take pictures. I am grateful to the temple authorities for
that. But the process was traumatic.
Whitewashing and sandblasting of paintings in temples is going on in
Tamil Nadu under the name of performing kumbabhishekams. How do you
sensitise the temple authorities not to indulge in vandalism like
this?
We talked about the idea of bringing some of the temples' archakas
and administrators to a conference like this. Let them see and hear
from experts what it (the destruction of paintings) actually means.
They have control over these masterpieces but they don't always
understand what this (heritage) means. They, therefore, at times too
easily, as you said during the temple kumbhabhishekam or renovation,
simply whitewash them away. It happened at Madurai.
Around the wall of the `Pottramaraikulam' (the pond of the golden
lotus) which had murals, in the Meenakshi temple?
Across from Pottramaraikulam, there was a beautiful series of Nayaka
paintings. I saw them years ago. They have been completely
whitewashed away. They are completely lost. There is no way we can
recover them...You cannot simply wipe out a wall like this. It is a
terrible thing...
All of us, the general public, the archakas, the temple
administrators and so on have a special responsibility in protecting
these murals. We have to act now before it is too late. It is already
too late for some of the paintings. Before we lose more, there should
be a public awareness to properly conserve the treasures of the Tamil
paintings of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/02/10/st ories/2008021050210700.htm