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Articles: Arts and Culture | Indian Culture - Inspiration of my Paintings
- Mr. Sai Krishna Tummala
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The history and achievements of Indian civilization were reflected in our Temple Art.
It was suggested that temples were not mere places of worship but they were and are the abode of learning of fine arts and in particular dance, drama, music and culture. Among the 64 fine arts poetry, sculpture, dance music and drama were considered very important for the life of a civilian.
I am always inspired by our extraordinary depiction of daily life of the time and drama, dance, music, dressing and ornamentation and ornaments of the time. They always tell us the story of evolution of the civilization of that time. It is but natural that I was inspired by our temple art since childhood. It was my endeavor and ambition to study our temples to improve my creative work. It was unfulfilled ambition to study some of our great temples for inspiration and guidance and to understand the Hindu thought.
Each temple is a reflection of our civilization and evolution of our cultural heritage of that time. They reflect finearts of the time. Contrary to my wish I could visit only on temple for the art study in my life time until now. I stayed at Ramappa Temple for two days and studied with awesome wonder the level of the creativity of our forefathers and started to sketch in pencil all the forms that I could grasp during the limited time I have spent at the temple.
Although the temple is quite small in its size it is very rich in its architecture and sculpture. The sculptures are unique in the Indian temple art and basically depict possibly the dance forms, the music, the civilian life and tantra cult of the time. The speciality of the temple is the Nagini dancers. The exact theme is not clear. These serpentine human forms had an impact on my drawings and paintings in my later years. In all about 400 sketches were made and I have classified them into 20 different thematic forms such as – dancers, naginis, civilian life, puranic stories, musicians, sringara etc.,
I was always thinking that we can share the beautiful forms of the Ramappa temple and interpret in different ways. For example a poet might write a poem after each form and a story teller can write a story, a dancer can interpret the Karanas, some can tell about the puranic background and yet some one can tell us the real theme behind each sculpture as each one tell us a story or civic and cultural life of the time.
So my endeavor is that each one of us can interpret them in different ways and share our creativity. I am sure by this way we can enrich ourselves and improve our creative abilities. This might help our younger generations and help them create interest in our great arts and culture. Mind that there are only two living cilvilizations on this planet - Indian and Chinese.
Depending upon the creative interest each one of you can interpret the Ramappa Sculpture in different way. Your suggestions and contribution would be very much welcome.
This is one of the sculptural form of Rammappa. There are several sculptures that depict the daily adornments (sringara) by the Nayikas of the time. As per our cultural heritage women can adorn themselves in 16 ways known as Sola Sringara and this was mentioned in Rasikapriya written by poet Kesav Das. This work classifies Nayika and Nayak and their moods and emotions.
According to him the adornment of the women are:
1) Bathing 2)Dressing 3) Applying red dye to the feet 4) Hair Dressing 5) Anga Raga 6) Sandal mark of the fore head 7) Placing a mark on the cheeks 8) Applying the Saffron on the body 9) Henna on the palms 10) Wearing the Ornaments 11) Decorating the braid with flowers 12) cleaning the teeth 13) chewing the betel and Cardamoms 14) rubbing the mistry on the teeth 15) reddening the lips 16) painting the eye lashes with collyrium
Some of these were reflected in the sculpture of the Ramappa Temple and the first drawing depicts Anga Raga – placing vermilion on the parting of the hair/ fore head bindi.
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