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Durga Slaying the Buffalo Demon, Raktabij, and Kali Lapping up the Demon’s Blood, Page from a Markandeya Purana Series
- Culture: Indian
- Medium: Opaque watercolor on paper
- Place Made: Chamba, Punjab Hills, India
- Dates: 1800-1825
- Brooklyn Museum
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Varaha Rescuing the Earth, page from an illustrated Dasavatara series
- Culture: Indian
- Medium: Opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper
- Dates: ca. 1730-1740
- Brooklyn Museum
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Devotions to Nagadevata
This unusual painting shows a group of individuals—human, divine, and semi-divine—worshipping a snake deity, or naga (with multiple cobra heads), in a temple setting. Indians of various religious affiliations have worshippedsnakes since ancient times: poisonous, but helpful because they eat rodents, serpents are thought to have close ties to the earth and the underworld and are therefore believed to deserve reverence. The multi-headed, white-skinned figure at the left is the Hindu god Shiva. The horse-headed musician at the right is a kinnara, or celestial entertainer. The snake-god’s two wives, with human bodies and snake tails, appear at the right.
- Culture: Indian
- Medium: Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dates: ca. 1790
- Brooklyn Museum
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Krishna Carried Across the River
In the story of the god Krishna’s life on earth, he is born to a royal family but must be taken from the palace immediately in order to hide him from an evil uncle. This unusual painting shows the circumstances of this departure. In the dark of night, while everyone in the palace is asleep (a small gazebo at right stands in for the palace), Krishna’s father carries him across the river Yamuna to the rural community where Krishna will be raised. The father is barely visible here at the center, holding the baby above his head while the giant serpent Vasuki stands above them, offering protection. A lion on the opposite bank of the river might represent the dangers facing them at night, as does the monkey at the upper right and the bolt of lightning. In the upper left is a temple with Krishna enthroned at the center; his four arms indicate that this is his transcendent form, the form that continued to exist in heaven even as he was incarnated as a mortal down on earth. The painting presents the various elements of the story in different areas of the page without attempting to synthesize them into a single scene or setting. This approach is frequently found in Indian painting, which often strives to tell the whole story rather than attempting to capture a single moment.
- Culture: Indian
- Medium: Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dates: First half 19th century
- Brooklyn Museum
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Krishna Conquers the Serpent Kaliya, Page from a Dispersed Bhagavata Purana Series
- Culture: Indian
- Medium: Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dates: ca. 1775
- Brooklyn Museum
March 8, 1010: Ferdowsi completes the Shahnameh (شاهنامه).
Ferdowsi’s “Book of Kings”, a poem consisting of over 50,000 couplets, took him over three decades to complete; the end result was the poet’s magnum opus and a national epic worthy of the long and rich historical and cultural legacy of Persia and Persian speakers. The poems chronicle the history of Iran over three eras - the mythical age, the heroic age, and the historic age, beginning at the creation of the Earth according to the beliefs of prei-Islamic Persians. In his work Ferdowsi wrote of the legendary shahs of Iran (the earliest kings who ruled for hundreds of years each) and of figures like the epic hero Rostam and Prince Siavash, and finally of the last kings of the Sassanid Empire and the conquest of Persia by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century. The Shahnameh was several times longer than both the Iliad and the Nibelungenlied, and its composition was ordered by Mahmud, emir and later sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire; however, Ferdowsi was also heavily influenced by older compilations that had been commissioned by rulers of the Samanid dynasty, who were instrumental in the revival and celebration of Persian culture through their patronage of poets.
Other links: English translation of the Shahnameh by Helen Zimmern.
A tiny Pinboard tip: you can use the
<blockquote>tag in the ‘description’ textarea and Pinboard will style it appropriately. See this bookmark, for example.It makes Pinboard pages much more readable, and doubtless comes in handy if you’re posting from Pinboard to a weblog using ifttt or similar.
cash, n.2
[ad. (ultimately) Tamil kāsu (‘or perhaps some Konkani form of it’), name of a small coin, or weight of money:—Skr. karsha ‘a weight of silver or gold equal to 1/400 of a tulā’ (Williams); Singhalese kāsi coin. The early Portuguese writers represented the native word by cas, casse, caxa, the Fr. by cas, the Eng. by cass: the existing Pg. caixa and Eng. cash are due to a natural confusion with cash n.1 From an early date the Portuguese applied caixa (probably on the same analogy) to the small money of other foreign nations, such as that of the Malay Islands, and especially the Chinese, which was also naturally made into cash in English. (Yule.)]
A name applied by Europeans to various coins of low value in the East Indies and China: esp. a.a The basis of the monetary system which prevailed in Southern India up to 1818; in this system 80 cash = 1 fanam, 42 fanams = 1 star pagoda (about 7s. 8d.).
(From OED)
