Download Religious Change and Colonial Rule

Religious Change and
Colonial Rule
By: Shalaka
and
Dun McDunarrun
India
 Viewers usually kept Indian paintings
as books or albums. Indian paintings
after the thirteenth century are
divided into several schools, including
Mughal and Rajput. The Hindu kings
and their courts in Rajasthan and the
Punjab Hills patronized Rajput
painting. The Mughal emperors
commissioned Mughal paintings.
Bichitr, Jahangir Preferring a Sufi
Shaikh to Kings
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The Mughal court, especially under Akbar,
Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, lavishly patronized
the arts. The artist BICHITR (active early
seventeenth century to late 1650s) painted
a portrait of Jahangir seated on an hourglass
throne. Bichitr's picture states Jahangir's
supremacy over time, the secular, and the
sacred. The Mughal artists learned realistic
techniques from Western models, available
at the court in European books and
engravings.
Bhadrakali within the Rising Sun
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The bold areas of color, stylized
figures, and flat picture plane of
a work produced in Basohli, a
Hindu court in the Punjab Hills,
contrast markedly with the Mughal
work's realism. The painting,
accompanied by a poetic stanza,
depicts Bhadrakali as the force
activating the world matter. A
comparison of Devi's positioning
with Jahangir's placement in Bichitr's
Mughal painting reveals a contrast
between the Hindu court's deity-centered
world and the deified but human emperor
as world center.
Great Temple, Maduri
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The Hindu Nayak rulers in south India
during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries oversaw construction of some
of the largest temple complexes in India.
The builders expanded the temples
outward by erecting ever-larger
enclosure walls with monumental
gopuras. Late temples also typically
include numerous large mandapas and
great water tanks. Such temples
continue to sponsor many yearly
festivals, attended by thousands of
pilgrims, worshipers, merchants,
and priests.
Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai
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Wat Mahathat was the city's most
important Buddhist monastery.
The central monument, a stupa,
although not a circular mound,
housed a relic of the Buddha.
A central lotus-bud tower and
eight surrounding towers stand
on the stupa's lower podium. Only
a small portion of the brick
structure's stucco decoration
remains. The halls (vihan) in front
do not survive, but the stone pillars
still stand. Two monumental
standing Buddha images flank the stupa,
each enclosed in a brick building (mondop).
Walking Buddha
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The Sukhothai Buddha images were the
city's crowning artistic achievement. In
the unique Sukhothai walking-Buddha
statuary type the artists intended to
express the Buddha's beauty and
perfection. A flame leaps from the top of
the head, and a sharp nose projects from
the rounded face. A clinging robe reveals
fluid rounded limbs. The handling of the
bronze is well suited to the forms' elasticity.
Schwedagon Pagoda
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Burma, like Thailand, is overwhelmingly
a Theravada Buddhist country today.
One of the largest stupas in the world is
the Shwedagon Pagoda, which houses two
of the Buddha's hairs. The great wealth
encrusting the stupa was a gift to the
Buddha from the Burmese laypeople to
produce merit. The stupa is centered in
an enormous complex of buildings,
including wooden shrines filled with
Buddha images.