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Vanity Fare Lavish guide to India's perennial obsession-the glitter of jewellery. By Vimla Jagannath DANCE OF THE PEACOCK Advocates of the coffee table book could argue that, often if not always, its selective, shorter text pinpoints the salient and unknown facets of the topic, while the high quality and number of illustrations add appeal and value. The book under review is one of the finer examples of the modern art and craft of the book. Tracing the origin of primitive jewellery from man's innate desire for self-adornment and the stylisation of natural objects and forms to its evolution into meaningfulness as symbol, form of saving and social cachet, Dance of the Peacock emphasises India's being unique in respect of jewellery. After all, its fabulous riches of gold and precious stones were the lure that "led the principal trade routes of the ancient world to this country" as also invasions that shaped the nation's history from the dawn of chronicled time. There also emerged a profound ritual significance investing the wearing of jewellery by man, woman, child and even divinity. Belief in the talismanic properties of gold and gems, deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche, resulted in an unprecedented magnitude of jewellery. There emerged a richness and variety of design, which made it "an art form, at par with architecture, sculpture and painting". Internal evidence suggests the book owes a debt in its thematic divisions, certain conclusions and 40 common illustrations to A Golden Treasury: Jewellery from the Indian Subcontinent (Victoria and Albert Museum-Mapin, 1988) by Susan Stronge, Nina Smith and J.C. Clarke. Even so the new book breaks fresh ground in four seminal chapters. In a fascinating account, "Trade" envisions India as the primary supplier of gemstones to almost all of the civilised world. Influenced by factors like the spread of Buddhism, the discovery of the monsoon winds by Hippalus, opening of direct trade by Emperor Augustus, emergence of the Vijayanagar empire and the discovery of the sea route via the Cape of Good Hope bringing the Portuguese and other Europeans, this culminated in the strengthening of the Armenians and Jews in the jewellery trade under the East India Company. An interesting fact pinpointed by the authors is the primacy of south India as the main source of India's gold, the world's diamonds and the Gulf of Mannar pearls, which were only replaced by Basra and Bahrain when Mannar became barren. Also highlighted is jewellery for gods and men, since the Indian male was as resplendent as the peacock and bejewelled from head to foot, featuring exotica like kalgi, sarpatti, karacham and ta'zim for the feet. Another novel aspect is the survey of symbolic jewellery such as the yagnopavita and mangalsutra representing the trinity, the M-shaped thali representing tiger claws placed adjacently, the kali-yiru of Chettiar women depicting the Chidambaram temple, the botu being emblematic of the female breast, the snake motifs symbols of fertility, the kundalini of sex energy. Even Jahangir's earring signalled his being the ear-bored slave of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, who saved him during a critical illness. Insight is provided into the craft of jewellery where the Indian goldsmith, using primitive tools, produces exquisite pieces while preserving the stylistic continuity of this artistic tradition, serves as the assertion of the individual as a creative being. With repetitive items in the illustrations revealing a pronounced south Indian bias, distinctive forms from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Bengal and Assam have been overlooked. So the book falls just short of being definitive. Even so it would be churlish to call the book anything but what it is -- a collector's item. NEW RELEASES Doing Business in India Kasturba Osho Millennium Cuisine from Coorg Housing & Urbanisation Street Children The Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow Authorspeak C.P. Snow would never have heard of Rajesh Kochhar but the man who wrote of "Two Cultures" may have liked to meet the other. A scientist among whose previous books is a guide to Indian astronomy co-authored with Jayant Narlikar, Kochhar, 53, is also a Sunday historian. His The Vedic People: Their History and Geography (Orient Longman) started as a whim, a self-confessedly theoretical exercise that saw him "applying the analytical tools of a physicist" to available archaeological evidence, literature, linguistics and so on. At the root of Kochhar's endeavours was a belief that the Puranas and the ancient Indian epics, while grossly exaggeratory in their rendition, were not always inaccurate and included a kernel of history. So when the exertions of archaeologist B.B. Lal had him arguing that the Mahabharat was older than the Ramayan because the sites in contemporary Hastinapur (Meerut district) indicated a date prior to the excavations in Ayodhya, Kochhar was not convinced. The garnishing of myth and magic notwithstanding, "history couldn't be so wrong, I was certain the geography was incorrect". In simple terms this meant the locations currently associated with the Ramayan and the Mahabharat were not the original ones. While the archaeology of Ayodhya has been the subject of excruciatingly intense academic scrutiny over the past decade, Kochhar is not out to make a political point. What his book affirms -- reaffirms, given the number of primary sources he has studied and cited -- is that Indian civilisation has been on a constant march eastwards. Comparing the Avestan culture of Iran to Vedic life in India, he sees them as flowing from the same fount. His next argument is that the Rig Veda was largely composed by a migratory people when they were in modern-day Afghanistan, before moving into the plains of the Punjab. Now heading a scientific think tank in Delhi, Kochhar is not the only one to have taken this journey back in time. Among his fellow travellers are an entire school of historians and professional surveyors of our yesterday. For them though it's a vocation; for Kochhar, it's a labour of love. By Ashok Malik |
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