“Gems
and wrought gold, never sold – brought for me to behold them;
Tales
of far magic unrolled – to me only he told them,
With
the light, easy laugh of dismissal ‘twixt story and story –
As
a man brushes sand from his hand, or the great dismiss glory.”
A Song in the Desert
By
Rudyard Kipling (1927)
‘A Song of the Desert’ is a poem
written in 1927 by Rudyard Kipling in remembrance of his friend, Perceval
Landon, who had died that year at the age of 59. In 1904, aged 35, Landon had
accompanied the Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa. The ‘expedition’ was a
military one, sent to forcibly open up a trade route between Tibet and British
India. Landon was one of four correspondents, what we might now think of as
‘embedded journalists’, who travelled with the British Military Force, sending
reports back to various newspapers in Britain and India. Along the way, as did
many members of the British expedition, Landon acquired and collected various
trinkets, curios, and objets d’art
some of which he later donated to the British Museum. One of these objects is
currently the centrepiece of an exhibition at the BM, titled: Krishna in the Garden of Assam (closing
August 15th 2016).
The Vrindavani Vastra (British Museum) |
The Vrindavani Vastra is a nine metre long textile, made up of twelve
strips of woven silk, each figured with depictions of the incarnations of
Vishnu and scenes from the life of Krishna as described in the 10th
century Hindu text, the Bhagavata Purana.
The textile, which is thought to have been created around 1680, was
discovered by Landon in the monastery at Gobshi, near Gyantse in
southern Tibet. But how did this textile depicting Hindu religious scenes end
up in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet some 300 years or more after it was
originally made?
Krishna in the garden of Assam: the cultural context of an Indian textile
The exhibition, along with an
accompanying book and film, by my friend and colleague, Richard Blurton,
explains the fascinating detective story of archival research and contemporary
fieldwork which has helped to rescue and restore the cultural context of this
very rare work of art. Very few textiles of this kind from this period, which
originate from the Assam region of northeast India, have survived; and indeed,
the weaving techniques used to create such a cloth are no longer practiced
there. For almost 80 years after it was given to the British Museum by Landon
the textile has languished in obscurity, wrongly classified as being of Tibetan
origin due to its provenance, it is only now that the real facts regarding its
history have come to light.
Yet many questions still remain
unanswered. Not least the manner in which Langdon acquired the textile – it is
not known if the item was bought, bartered, ‘appropriated’ or stolen. There
were certainly instances of looting which occurred during the Younghusband
offensive, but equally there were also many instances of trade, barter, and salvage
from rubbish heaps. What sets Perceval Landon apart from his peers in the
Younghusband mission though is his attitude and appreciation of Tibetan art and
culture. Whilst many of Landon’s contemporaries clearly appreciated the
magnificence of the flora and the spectacular scenery of the Himalayan ranges through which
they were travelling, they frequently deplored the perceived squalor and
superstitions of the local communities and the social systems of the cultures they
encountered. Frequently they looked down on the local art and technologies as
‘primitive’ and ‘antique.’
Writing about the British
occupation of Lhasa, Landon’s fellow correspondent, Edmund Candler, observed
that the “British officers haunt [the]
bazaars searching for curios, but with
very little success. Lhasa has no artistic industries; nearly all the
knick-knacks come from India and China. Cloisonné ware is rare and
expensive, as one has to pay for the 1,800 miles of transport from Peking.
Religious objects are not sold. Turquoises are plentiful, but coarse and
inferior. Hundreds of paste imitations have been bought. There is a certain
sale for amulets, rings, bells, and ornaments for the hair, but these and the
brass and copper work can be bought for half the price in the Darjeeling
bazaar.”
Landon’s eye was attuned very
differently. An uncommonly artistic correspondent, his own two volume account
of the expedition, simply titled Lhasa (1905), was illustrated with his own
photographs and watercolour paintings. And, as Clare Harris has noted, Landon
frequently uses an artist’s vocabulary to describe what his camera and his
watercolours could not; for example, describing the entrance to Lhasa’s Jo
Khang thus: “Granite, dun, grey, yellow,
pointing white, Prout’s brown yak hair curtains, dull crimson pillars, valance
Isabella-colour, sacred monogram gold, sky ultramarine.” Landon was a great
champion for what he termed as the ‘National Art of Tibet.’ He and Laurence A.
Waddell acted as members of the official Collecting Committee, allocating the
most significant discoveries to the official Government collection. Certainly,
many such items were collected during the mission at all social levels from the
officers to the soldiers, and hence, a great number of Tibetan art works in
museum collections across the world have frequently been found to derive from
this source, with many family heirlooms still surfacing and being taken to
museums for identification even to this day.
It is thanks to Landon’s discerning
eye that we have this remarkable textile, an Indian artefact long preserved in
a Tibetan sanctuary, unknown and misunderstood but prized and highly valued
nonetheless, transcending cultures over the course of three centuries. At last,
its story is finally being unfolded.
Richard Blurton - Curating Krishna in the garden of Assam
The British Museum, London
21 January - 15 August 2016 (free entrance)
References and Further Reading:
Krishna
in the Garden of Assam, by T. Richard Blurton (The British Museum Press:
London, 2016)
The
Unveiling of Lhasa, by Edmund Candler (Thomas Nelson & Sons: London,
1905)
‘Officers, Gentlemen and Thieves’,
by Michael Carrington, in Modern Asian
Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2003), pp. 81-109
Bayonets
to Lhasa: The British Invasion of Tibet, by Peter Fleming (Rupert
Hart-Davis: London, 1961)
The
Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet,
by Clare E. Harris (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2008)
Lhasa,
by Perceval Landon (Hurst and Blackett: London, 1905)
Tibet:
A History, by Sam Van Schiak (Yale University Press: New Haven, 2011)
Perceval Landon (standing, far left) & Rudyard Kipling (standing, far right) on Glovers Island during the Boer War, circa 1900 (Getty Images) |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments do not appear immediately as they are read & reviewed to prevent spam.