Buddhist museum in a bad shape

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Proposals for its development are long pending

Andhra Pradesh, India -- A large chunk of tourists who visit the district every year are attracted by the Buddhist museums at Amaravathi and Nagarjunakonda but few people even know that there is a third and equally important museum which has on display an impressive range of inscriptions, stone sculptures and pottery items belonging to the Buddhist era.

<< The pathetic state of the Baudhasree Museum in Guntur. Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

It is the Baudhasree Archaeological Museum located in the heart of Guntur city (opposite Andhra Christian College) that unfortunately draws a handful of visitors.

Tourist destinations

The Amaravathi and Nagarjunakonda museums stand out as the best tourist destinations due to their beautiful maintenance by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) while the Baudhasree museum slowly fades into oblivion.

Little attention is paid to this historic museum by the Department of Archaeology and Museums of Government of Andhra Pradesh for apparent reasons.

It has ancient sculptures dating back to the 2nd Century A.D up to the medieval period. Several centuries-old antiquities are showing signs of withering due to poor maintenance and many other items are kept in the fore lawns for want of space.

The museum has a meagre budget that is barely enough to keep it going and it has no technical assistant to take care of conservation of the antiquities on display. A non-technical person (junior assistant) who is on the verge of retirement is functioning as the museum in-charge and, ticketing income is negligible.

The Baudhasree Museum was established in 1954 and it came under the purview of State Department of Archaeology & Museums 20 years later. The original building which housed the museum gave way to a new one that was inaugurated in September 1992.

The museum used to attract a sizable number of tourists, which gradually came down and the decline in footfalls was more pronounced later, noticeably after many artefacts were taken away to Amaravathi during the Kalachakra event in 2006.

Speaking to The Hindu, Assistant Director of Archaeology & Museums (Vijayawada) K. Chittibabu said there was a proposal to build a first floor to accommodate more valuable things and upgrade the existing library into a research library but the proposals were pending and estimates have not yet been prepared.

However, he exuded confidence that things would move fast in the near future while admitting that there are constraints in developing this historic museum to global standards.

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Buddha relic likely to displayed at state museum

"ASI authorities have assured us that they will hand over the bone relic to the state government soon," Mohanty said

The relic, considered sacred for Buddhist followers, was unearthed during an ASI excavation at Lalitgiri, a Buddhist site in Jajpur, in 1985.

"We first found a stone pot during excavation. When we opened it, a silver cup was found and finally the bone relic was seen in a gold cover," an ASI official said.

When the state government attempted to collect the relic from the ASI in 1985, it was opposed by some political leaders of Jajpur district.

While the leaders demanded that the relic be housed at Lalitgiri museum, the ASI refused to hand it over to them on security reason.

Meanwhile, Mohanty motivated the Jajpur leaders and got their support to keep the relic at the state Museum here.

"I took one MP, who had earlier opposed the transfer of the relic to the state government, along with me to convince the ASI authorities at Delhi," the minister said.

"The relic will initially be displayed at the state museum and later shifted to Lalitgiri, the place from where it was discovered," Mohanty said.

Meanwhile, the state government has engaged experts to design the box in which the relic would be kept for public viewing. "We are also not ignoring the security aspect

of the relic at the meuseum here," the minister said.

Stating that objective of displaying the relic at the state museum here was to attract Buddihist tourists to the state, the minister said the state government was keen

on bringing the Buddihist special train to the city.

"The state government has requested the Railways to extend the route of the Mahaparinirvan Express till Odisha so that more tourists can visit the Buddhist circuits in the state," he said.

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Emory's Carlos Museum finds its center with 'Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism'

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Atlanta, GA (USA) -- Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum, an often-overlooked gem for local art and culture, is exhibiting Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism through April 15. Mandala brings to Atlanta many rare and beautiful Buddhist thangkas, or paintings, along with other objects intended for initiation and meditation.

<< Kimbell Art Museum
Four Mandalas of the Vajravali Series, c. 1429—56, Central Tibet, Tsang (Ngor Monastery), Sakya order, Thangka, gouache on cotton, KKimbell Art Museumimbell Art Museum

Mandalas are a kind of technology for meditation, meant to work with personal practice to achieve spiritual insight and liberation. The most common mandalas in Tibetan Buddhist art place a deity at the center of a palace filled with other deities and iconography. This palace is an individual and a cosmological map that lines up with a highly proscribed set of meditational practices so that an individual may see him or herself as the central deity. In fact, Buddhist philosophy describes individual and deity as one and the same.

Mandalas act as visual tools for meditators. The basics of mandala practice are fairly easy to imagine - think about a golfer on the green visualizing Arnold Palmer putting in order to perfect his own stroke.

Although intended for monks, religious art in Tibet touched nearly every aspect of society. For many centuries, Tibet was at the center of a vast Empire, trading with Nepal, India, Persia, China, and Central Asia. In addition to bringing technology and high-level artisans, this trade delivered to Tibet a fantastic range of artistic styles. The painted mandalas on display at the Carlos Museum are fantastically detailed, including myriad deities, monks, and symbols. Their arrangement in circular forms adheres to iconographic conventions, from the colors used to the placement of elements.

A mandala from Dallas' Kimbell Museum is so meticulously painted that even on closest inspection it’s difficult to discern irregularities; It looks as thought it was printed using modern technology, rather than being created by hand 600 years ago.

The exhibit features rare forms of the mandala: The 18th-century Mahakala (Tibet’s protector diety) is unusual for its large central triangle and absence of central deity. Instead, objects symbolic of deities and practice are present, placed with unusual, lotus-shaped palaces. The mandala’s minimalistic design includes some gruesome imagery: flayed human skin, skulls, and intestines, all designed to remind the viewer how transient and unsustainable human life is.

A mandala beautifully decorated with flowers also elides deities, showing instead empty thrones to connote the “thus gone” aspect of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and his 16 Arhats (acolytes). Tucked away amid the blossoms are wish-fulfilling jewels and ducks in ponds, while deer, traditional symbols for Shakyamuni adorn the four gates.

In addition to painted mandalas, the exhibition includes cosmological paintings, sculptures, and a fantastic, one-of-a-kind three-dimensional wooden carved model of the Guhyasamaja Mandala.

In association with this exhibition, Oglethorpe's Museum of Art has another kind of mandala on display: images created by patients of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Jung used art as therapy, instructing his patients to create images as a means of expressing the conscious and unconscious, and clarifying mental obstacles.

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Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism runs through April 15 at Emory's the Carlos Museum. The Sacred Round: Mandalas by the Patients of C.G. Jung runs through May 6 at Oglethorpe.

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Buddhist sculpture in Tokyo museum believed to be one that is owned by Naoya Shiga

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Tokyo, Japan -- A wooden Buddhist sculpture at a Tokyo museum is very likely the same one that famous novelist Naoya Shiga held in his Nara home, a professor announced on Sept. 20.

<< The Buddhist sculpture held by Waseda University's Aizu Museum in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, is seen in this photo.

The professor, Mitsutoshi Kuretani of Soai University, is researching Shiga's activities in Nara. After finding information on a blog that the sculpture was in Waseda University's Aizu Museum in Tokyo, he had the museum send him photos of the sculpture. After comparing them against photos of the sculpture held by Shiga, Kuretani judged that Aizu Museum's sculpture and the sculpture Shiga owned are the same.

Kuretani plans to visit the museum in early October to examine the sculpture and make a final judgment.

The sculpture held at the museum depicts a bodhisattva, a person who trains to reach enlightenment and save others. Made out of a single tree and standing 95.3 centimeters tall, the sculpture is thought to have been made around the beginning of the 11th century.

In his essay book "Soshun no Tabi" (journey of early spring), Shiga mentions a bodhisattva sculpture that "was in Tanizaki's home, and now is in my home ..." It is thought that novelist Junichiro Tanizaki gave Shiga the sculpture.

It is known from photographs that Shiga kept the sculpture in a room on the second floor of a house in Nara. Shiga lived in that house from 1929 to 1938. The whereabouts of Shiga's sculpture since around the end of World War II had been unknown.

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