Important Indian Artefacts - Part 1
You’ve heard about Mona Lisa & The Thinker’s sculpture … but did they teach you about Bharat’s most historically important museum pieces & artefacts that every Indian should know?
Here’s the tea.
1) The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro
This bronze statue, with details of ornaments on the figure, dates back to at least 2500 BCE from our Indus Valley civilisation.
It shows how advanced our Harappan ancestors were in metal work, and also hinting at the free creative expression of women as artists in those era.
You can catch her at the National Museum in Delhi.
2) The Pashupati Seal & Nataraja Statue
Although both of these belong to different time periods & materials, they’re linked to the same God - Shiva.
Before he took on that name, he was the Yogic Master & King of Spirits & Animals, the Pashupati. Proof of that lies in this baked soapstone seal, once again dating back to Mohenjadaro, present-day Pakistan, from ~2500 BCE.
While the original is possibly, in Pakistan, our museums also have replicas or versions of it.
On the other hand, his bronze sculpture as the cosmic dancing avatar as the Nataraja, however, roughly dates back to the 10th-13th centuries CE, from South India’s Chola Dynasty.
Today, you can find it at the Government Museum in Chennai.
3) Bhutesvara Yakshis Reliefs
These red sandstone sculptures show our awareness of the mysterious Yakshis, deep forest spirits of fertility & nature, tasked with guard treasures & grant boons or curses to travellers.
They were found near Mathura in UP and show our society’s openness to depict women in the rawest forms.
You can hang out with them at the Indian Museum @ Kolkata.
4) The Konark Wheel
This Wheel can be found at the Sun Temple in Konark, Odisha, with its dating going back to 1250 CE.
The temple itself is designed like a chariot on 24 wheels, drawn by horses, each wheels having spokes inside.
This is mind-blowing because it not only talks about how we worshipped the Sun as Surya Dev but we also understood how to track its movement because the wheels built like a complex sundials or time calculators that allegedly helped our ancestors measure sunrise, sunset, hours, days & months.
5) Madhubani Paintings
These folk paintings, born in the Mithila region of Bihar, trace back over 2,000 years and are said to have begun when King Janaka commissioned his kingdom’s women to decorate walls for Sīta’s wedding to Rama.
Traditionally drawn with natural dyes and fingers or twigs on mud walls, they feature gods like Krishna, Shiva, Lakshmi and Durga, alongside peacocks, fish and the Sun.
Then, during the 1960s drought, women began painting on paper, turning a sacred ritual into a global art form.
You can see them in the Bihar Museum at Patna, also in Japan, Mumbai, Delhi, Darbhanga, and all over.
Want me to do Part 2?