About Indian Museum in Kolkata 🇮🇳 10% to Steem-Travelers Community, Steemexclusive

in Steem-Travelers3 years ago (edited)

In December 2014, I arrived in Kolkata, West Bengal on a train from Varanasi. After New Year celebration, after several days of walking, I decided to spend time indoors. I chose the Indian Museum first of all.

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A fragment of Three Pillars with a coping stone showing yakshis trampling evil forces, 2nd c. C.E. - Uttar Pradesh, India

It is one of the oldest museums in the world founded in 1814. I had read it had a wide range of ancient Indian artefacts.

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Look closer on google.maps

The Indian Museum turned to be a slightly poorly-equipped museum with a lack of gloss and light. No surprise because the whole city generally was in a state of neglect.

10% of this post's rewards will go to the community account of Steem-Travelers. This is a young, quickly growing community about traveling. Created and managed by @papi.mati and @willeusz

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This one resembles art of the XX century, doesn't it? But this is Yakshi statue of circa 1st century B.C.E. - Madhya Pradesh, India.

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The art of filigree. Silver basket - Odisha, India, 19th century C.E.

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One of the Egyptian items: Akhenaton's offerings to the solar disk, Dynasty XVII.

This article participates in a contest of museum reviews in Steem-Travelers Community. I invite @kaminchan and @olga.maslievich to take part in that contest.

What I liked the most was a collection of ancient statues of Buddha. I got used to images of Buddha in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and Nepal I visited before India. But here in the Indian Museum, my idea of Buddha's image was shattered. I found statues there that rather looked like ancient Greek gods.

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Buddha offering protection, circa 2nd century C.E.

Now I know this is the direction of sculpture was born at the intersection of the Greek and Indian civilizations called Greco-Buddhism.

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Standing Buddha, circa 2nd century C.E.

This art and culture emerged when Alexander the Great, a famous king of Macedonia and conqueror, extended his rule to the East where the Mediterranean culture, as the result, met the teaching of Buddha. You can read what happened next on Wikipedia: Greco-Buddhism 😎

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They also have surprisingly Asian-looking statues from Eastern and Central India.

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Mahavira from Karanbel Tewar, Madhya Pradesh (Central India), 11th century C.E.

They have Buddhas from other countries too. For example, from Java, Indonesia:

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Buddha - Java, Indonesia, 10th-12th centuries C.E.

If you are interested in art and history and suddenly find yourself near Calcutta, be sure to check out the Indian Museum. It lacked gloss (and, at some places, cleanliness) when I visited it but the collection was great.

#steemexclusive

This is not a cross-post, all images have been taken by me, the article has been specially written for Steem-Travelers Community.

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Nailed it @datych 👏 This is a fantastic review of the Indian museum in Kolkata not to say better and more informative than some museum brochures I've seen. I find the map incorporated in your post quite useful. All the best of luck in the contest my friend 💁‍♀️

Thank you @petface!

I wanted to write something shorter for the contest but, then, step by step ... I got this ... brochure :D

A map is always a good thing for a travel review, I think.

You're more than welcome @datych Same here, I always say to myself that this would be another just one photo and few sentences post but that's barely ever the outcome. Maps are a must for travel related content. You would have made a great work colleague of mine in terms of brochure production 🤝

Очень интересные работы! Мне особенно египетский сюжет понравился, выглядит одновременно древним и современным.

) Спасибо. Да, интересный музей)

Ancient globalism :D I did know about Alexander the Great, of course, but I never gave it a thought about how it influenced conquered cultures. I have to admit, it's very interesting! |

Thank you so much for this publication! I couldn't enjoy it more

This post is plagiarism-free

Thank you @papi.mati! This story about penetration of the Greek culture into South Asia shows how much things were interconnected - not like today of course :D but the civilisations were linked. I heard talks for example that Jesus could travel to India. No proofs... But it could be, who knows.
There was regular sea trade between the Middle East and India since early times, this is how Christianity arrived in Kerala (India) earlier than in some European regions.

 3 years ago 

Hight quality post, thank you, your participation is everything that we are looking for with this contest!

Silver basket from the 19th century was my favorite!

Поздравления!

#affable #onepercent #travelers-say

Thank you @willeusz :)

 3 years ago 

This is so lovely and nice to look at, I really enjoyed those art work. Thanks for sharing @datych.
#traveler-says

Thank you!

 3 years ago 

А фотки попадают под категорию NSFW :)

:)

Thanks for sharing.. it's awesome to see how well these sculptures are made centuries back. I really enjoyed seeing the Buddha's sculptures.

Thank you Viraj. Great to see them well-preserved in spite of so much destruction during these many centuries. Alas, some pieces of art were not so lucky, for example, Buddha statues in Afghanistan, probably you have heard:

The Buddha monuments in Bamiyan province had stood for 1,500 years but their destruction was ordered in 2001 - from here.

Yes, that was a devastating news for us. Still sad for what happened there.

 3 years ago 

Hi @datych,
Excellent entry, well documented and with links leading to the original and detailed information.

I don't know with which camera the pictures were taken, but at least the framing and focus are well taken care of.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience.

Thank you @xaviduran. I decided to mention all these details because some visitors from the Google search can find these photos and they may be in need of exact descriptions.

The camera was Nikon D3100, the most basic Nikon's DSLR with a crop sensor. I liked it.
Lens: Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G DX