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Course: Art of Asia > Unit 7
Lesson 5: 600–1200 C.E.- The Great Relief at Mamallapuram
- Shore Temple, Mamallapuram
- Durga Slays the Buffalo Demon at Mamallapuram
- The multireligious caves at Ellora
- Sacred space and symbolic form at Lakshmana Temple, Khajuraho (India)
- Queen or goddess?
- Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja)
- Three Hindu gods
- Rajarajesvara temple, Tanjavur
- Hoysaleshvara temple, Halebidu
- The Buddha triumphing over Mara
- The Buddha triumphing over Mara
- Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
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Queen or goddess?
Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi as the Goddess Parvati, Chola Dynasty (reign of Queen Sembiyan Mahadevi), 10th century, bronze, 107.3 x 33.4 x 25.7 cm (Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, F1929.84) Speakers: Dr. Emma Natalya Stein, Curatorial Fellow for Southeast Asian Art, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Visit the Freer Gallery.
Video transcript
(gentle music) - [Narrator] We're standing
in the Freer Gallery of Art in a room that features a
fabulously beautiful sculpture of the Hindu goddess, Uma. - [Narrator] In India,
Gods all have bodies. They have a formless form, but
they also have what's known as a manifestation a
kind of embodied presence that's represented like a
beautiful perfected human being. - [Narrator] It makes sense
to show a divine figure as ideally beautiful as perfect. - [Narrator] Look at her slender waist, the way that her clothing
clings around her legs and gives her this
intensely physical form. It's also a royal image in that
she has all of this jewelry, she wears a necklace, a sacred
thread around her torso, armlets, bangles, rings
on fingers and toes. - [Narrator] She stands in a position that seems relaxed and confident and there's something very
serene about her expression. - [Narrator] She's standing in
this gently swayed position, known as a tribangha or three-bend pose. - [Narrator] Here we
are in the Chola period in the south of India. - [Narrator] During this time,
this kind of idealization of the human form to
depict the deity in bronze, reached an incredible level
of expertise and popularity. - [Narrator] So the Chola dynasty is known for commissioning these
bronze images of deities and we find them prominently
placed in their temples. - [Narrator] Just before the year 1000, one Queen Sembiyan
Mahadevi was responsible for converting many temples from brick and wood into the more durable, and more costly material of stone. - [Narrator] So Sembiyan's
very pious, very devout and commissioning and
endowing temples at a scale which was unprecedented. We know from written sources that Sembiyan's birthday was celebrated in the village that was named for her. - [Narrator] There is an
inscription in Sembiyan Mahadevi on a beautiful temple that was sponsored by the Queen herself
that mentions provisions for using a portrait
sculpture of the Queen, donated to the temple
by Rajaraja the first. - [Narrator] And there's some
interesting recent scholarship about the figure that we're looking at that suggests that there may be a blurring of lines here between the
goddess and the queen. - [Narrator] Mahadevi means great goddess. So already in her name,
there's a kind of conflation between this Queen and the divine. - [Narrator] The label on the base that the sculpture stands on says, goddess or queen, in a way she's both. - [Narrator] There are certain features in this particular image of Uma that are atypical and that
suggest that this might in fact be that very bronze
portrait of Sembiyan. - [Narrator] Indian gods
and goddesses typically have more square shoulders, the way that her torso tips
forward with that sense of presence and liveliness
is also unusual. - [Narrator] She has a relative restraint that sets her apart from
other figures of Uma, even her jewelry is relatively limited. - [Narrator] So here we seem
to have a blurring of the lines between the divine Uma and
this beloved, very pious, very devout, very generous queen. - [Narrator] Some of the reason
that she was so loved comes from her patronage of
temples which created jobs for people in the villages. She also sponsored irrigation
networks that helped to water the rice paddy fields that
were people's livelihoods. - [Narrator] We can see
that she was likely carried because we've got these
apertures on the base where poles would have been inserted for her to have been carried and processed and dressed with silks,
with jewelry, with flowers. So we have to imagine her
very different than the way that we're seeing her today in the museum. This was a sculpture that
had a life in the community that is very different
than the way that we see her reverentially isolated
in the museum galleries. - [Narrator] The inscription
that describes the festivities for her birthday, talk about this practice of dressing her, ornamenting
her with gold jewelry and gems and pearls. Her earlobes would have been
decorated with veal earrings. Everything that's cast on her body as an ornament would also be
overlaid with a real ornament. - [Narrator] The purpose of
this kind of a procession, is so that the maximum
number of people can receive the blessings of the divine. - [Narrator] It was incredibly
important to see and be seen. - [Narrator] In Hindu belief,
the mutual exchange of gazes between the human and
the divine is the way that blessing is conferred. There's a word for that it's darshan, and this is a practice that's
still very much in play in India today. - [Narrator] The experience of
precession was multi sensory, there a flower offerings,
there's incense burning, there's song, there's music. - [Narrator] So although
we're not seeing her the way that she would have been
seen at around the year 1000, we do get to have this
really close-up view. - [Narrator] We're lucky that
we get to see this bronze in such a remarkable condition,
preserved here in the Freer, though it's not serving
the same kind of purpose that she once did. She is here as a remarkable testament to the sophistication of bronze
casting, artistic creation and beauty that was valued
in the Chola period. (gentle music)