A Vahana from Karnataka awaits its Lord
India has made giant leaps in its fight against illicit trafficking of antiquities in the past eight years with some remarkably successful restitutions and they are definitely growing in number. Indian art is no longer fair game but then success, as is the norm, has many fathers. Witnessing one more such restitution event last week, I was reminded of my school teacher admonishing me despite an almost perfect score: She would always write “can do better” on my marksheet. I was indeed annoyed then, but age and maturity helped me look inwards: What more could I do? And instead of rolling in laurels, I asked myself if my work warranted such high praise as I wished.
Here we try to apply the same “can do better” to the Centre’s claims of success. Has there been any change in the laws and regulations to even classify heritage crimes? Is there a national art crime squad to work on looted antiquities and have old closed FIRs reopened? Have any legal claims been lodged against auction houses, collectors and museums that continue to blatantly sell, hold and display stolen Indian artefacts? The list is long but the fundamental point is that nothing has changed except for the fact that the bureaucracy is at least acknowledging that India has an idol theft problem.
Going back to last week's event, Union Minister for Culture G Kishan Reddy said, “History belongs to its Geography. As a continuous living civilisation, India’s heritage belongs to the temples and places it was taken from. Bringing Our Gods Home is one such initiative that is rooted in preserving, promoting and propagating our heritage.” We present in this article the case of the looted Karnataka murthis stuck in The Metropolitan and Penn Museums. The evidence we present below is based surprisingly on their own research via published open access journals and thus should be an open-and-shut case for the culture ministry.
For starters, we are relying on the magazine article on the Penn Museum website titled “Finding the original home of the museum’s Brahma” by John Henry Rice and the same author’s journal article in Artibus Asia. Before we go on to studying it, we must point out that the Penn Museum chose one Alexander Scott for an honorary post in 1914. He is said to have used this “to visit excavation sites … and searched for valuable objects to purchase for the museum. Many of his purchases came from private hands” between 1915 and 1918. An interesting sentence in a summary of his deeds says: “Occasionally, Scott took personal financial risks and purchased objects that he believed could not be passed up”, obviously for his personal collection. It is now pertinent to point out that India had already passed The Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904, specifically to target such kind of wanton removal from ‘private hands’. It is also pertinent to note that none of these private sales or purchases have ever been documented or their source revealed.
We will analyse Scott’s expedition in an subsequent column but the need for this rather lengthy introduction is to highlight the main dealer associated with many iconic murthis now housed in prestigious Western museums—including the famed Chola bronze of Uma (alias Sembian Madevi) of the Freer Gallery and the rather unique Chola Parvati at New York’s Met Museum. The Met lists the Parvati’s provenance as “Unknown dealer, Pondicherry, India, by 1935; sold to Kevorkian; Carneg Kevorkian, Paris, from 1935”. The Madras-Pondicherry-Paris smuggling route was active from 1924 till 1946 and is linked to a well-known French scholar. It is surprising that Kevorkian never revealed the source of the purchase.
We now look at Kevorkian’s connection to our two main murthis of this article: the Penn Brahma and The Met Vishnu. Rice has noted in his paper: “Somewhat intriguingly, Kevorkian wrote in another letter to the Penn Museum's Director, well before he had identified the site of the Brahma's origin as ‘Kalkerry’, that the Philadelphia and the New York pieces were ‘brought over at the same time’. Finally, although the Metropolitan Museum currently suggests that the Kesava may have come from Belur—presumably due to Dasoja's prominent role there—early records of the museum assign the sculpture to the lesser-known site of Kikkeri. It is just possible that this earlier provenance, otherwise puzzling, was a misinterpretation of Kevorkian's rather obscure ‘Kalkerry’.”
There is an interesting choice of words: “Brought over at the same time”. No details exist on how the idols were acquired and brought. But the extract also introduced the key player: Sri Dasoja. The Met Museum’s Vishnu has a pedestal inscription which reads: “A work of the sculptor Dasoja of Balligrame of the Sarasvati-gana.”
Locals are aware that the main deity Kesava of the Janardhana temple at Kikkeri in K R Pet taluk of Mandya district is indeed the one in the Met Museum and requested our help to get it back. Sadly, the temple, without its main deity, is now abandoned and in a very bad shape. The case for the Penn’s Brahma, however, is a clear no-brainer as the pedestal with His vahana—the goose—is still in situ, clearly showing the original installed murthi was a Brahma and not the current Naga Nagini.
Further evidence is discussed by Rice from the re-reading of the inscription at the base of the Brahma. “Cavundoja—a son to all women, a disciple of the learned, of the Sarasvati-gana … the son of Gulugoja, who was architect of the Trailokyamalle-svara of Kuruvatti—made the image of Brahma”.
Now, there is an in situ (read unstolen) murthi of Surya in the same temple. The “close stylistic association of the Brahma and Surya images is reinforced by the epigraphic evidence”, Rice adds. The base of the Surya idol has this inscription: “The sculptor Malloja … of the Sarasvati-gana, younger brother of …goja, made the image”.
To summarise, both the Penn and Met museums do not have any proof of legitimate purchase of the murthis from India by Kevorkian nor is there any evidence of legitimate export from India or import into the US. Thus both the museums do not have clear title.
The hamsa pedestal in the Kalakeri temple’s south sanctum bears the emblem of Brahma’s vehicle, the goose. Its size and profile are well matched to Brahma’s base. There exists a note from Kevorkian connecting the Met’s Vishnu to Kikkeri (as the original site).
Isn’t it time for both the museums to do the right thing and reunite the Gods to their abodes? Will the goose be able to carry its Master again? History should, does and will belong to its geography.
Co-founder, India Pride Project and author of The Idol Thief