D is for ... Dynasty ... Dexterous ... n ... Decorations

Today I have two heavy metal bands for you. The first is the death metal band called Demonic Resurrection with The Dwarf (Vamana) - they are the most successful heavy metal band from India. I have to say that I admire the concept of retelling Indian mythology through Western music, though my listening taste doesn't lean in this direction.  

The Down Troddence is a band originally from Kerala in South India -

Finally, Dhruv Vishwanath, with a gentler vibe that’s more to my taste. Have a listen -

Dancers from a Deep past

The Dancing Girl. IVC. 2700-2100 BCE.

The first dancer I have for you is this one, the original is in the National Museum in Delhi. It is a metal cast statuette less than 6 inches tall, named the Dancing Girl, famed for the expressiveness of her stance - a slight tilt to the head, the right arm bent at the elbow and placed on her hip, the knees flexed, the tribhanga or the triple-bend position which is still used in classical Indian danceforms. 

The Dancing Girl is the oldest bronze sculptural object in the world, dated to 2700-2100 BCE, that makes her nearly 5000 years old. The statuette was found in Mohenjodaro, one of the Indus Valley Civilisation sites, by a team of British archaeologists in 1926. She is now located in the National Museum in New Delhi. She is likely the most famous artefact from the IVC sites. Created by the lost wax process, she illustrates quite a few aspects of that culture/peoples - one, that they had sophisticated metallurgy skills, two, they were into dance and three, they were also big time, into jewellery. 

The statuette is unclothed but wears  a three-pendant necklace and a massive stack of bangles on her left upper arm, and four bangles on her right. Like the dance pose, those upper arm bangles are also worn by women in north-western India today, in an unbroken tradition going back over four and a half millennia.  Incidentally, Indian women in general have a huge, deep-seated obsession with jewellery, clearly handed down from long ago.

Stone bracket figures of dancers from a Hoysala temple.
Around 1100-1200 CE. Karnataka, India. From the British
Museum - China and South Asia Galleries.

The second dancer, or rather group of dancers, I'm showing you today is from a South Indian temple. Elaborately carved from stone, much embellished with floral decorations, these stone bracket figures were placed between the temple wall and roof. They showcase the super sophisticated sculptural skills of the Indian artisans of the 12th century.

The Hoysalas were a dynasty that ruled in modern day Karnataka, parts of Andhra and Tamil Nadu from the 10th to the 14th century. They have left a string of characteristically stone built temples, with intricate and rather exuberant sculptural details. The dancers depicted are from a tradition called Devadasi (lit maidservants of God) wherein young girls were given into the temples, trained in classical dances to serve in the worship rituals. Music and dancing was an innate part of temple worship. However, it must be noted that the Devadasi tradition has not been mentioned in any of the Hindu scriptures. It is thought to be a social development and evolved in the 3rd century.

The Devadasi was given away into temple service in a ceremony much like a wedding, 'married to God.' The king patronised the temple dancers and they were given an education in other disciplines apart from dance and music, instructed in the '64 arts.' A career as a Devadasi was one of prestige and dignity originally, they were perceived as the guardians of knowledge and traditions of music and dance. They were provided with land, property, clothes and jewellery for their exclusive use. The performers were also free to choose male partners, some had children and long, single-partner relationships, some had several, yet others chose not to have any earthly partners. In short, they were independent women following a career in the arts.

From medieval times, the Devadasi tradition has been a hot button topic. It was always open to exploitation, as the girls given over to the temples were too young to make an informed choice. Also, as the kings lost power, the Devadasi tradition lost its patronage and the women were forced to make a living outside of the temples. And once the Muslims and then the British came into the picture, that was it! - the Westerners stigmatised and demonised the Devadasis as prostitutes. The Islamic rulers didn't look upon idol worship and bevies of erotically dancing women too favourably either.

The first British movement against the tradition of temple dancing happened in 1882. Ad-hoc regulations came into force in Bombay and Madras in early 20th century. The entire system of Devadasi was outlawed throughout the nation by the Indian government in 1988. However, there are many young girls/women forced into sexual slavery illegally under the cover of this practice still. There are also several NGOs, some started up by former Devadasis themselves, to rescue and rehabilitate these victims.  

The danceforms that the temple dancers performed were taken up by individual artists in the early 20th century, stripped of their erotic elements, sanitised and repurposed for a modern audience. Bharatanatyam and Odissi are two of the classical temple danceforms of India which have now been destigmatised and revived this way. Many well-known artistes of these vibrant dances teach and perform them worldwide. 

So, what did you think of the death metal band? Have you ever seen a Bharatanatyam or Odissi performance? Do you think women dancers were stigmatised elsewhere in the past or is this particular to India alone?

And of the A-Z posts I dipped into yesterday, these dazzled me the most with their depth of research - Anglers Rest and Writer's Zen. Well done!

Happy to report I'm doing better than I thought - have developed a systematic reading protocol, I do the new blog reading in my mornings, and then the afternoons are for returning visits, comments and answering, squeezed in between the sanistising and disinfecting and hyperventilating at the news. So far making my daily targets on all counts. The posts beyond P are a disaster waiting to happen as of now, but that's another story. We'll see, two Sundays in between will have to suffice. So far so good. One day at a time, one letter at a time - that's the way to demolish every challenge. Hope you and family are keeping safe and well.

A-Z Challenge 2020