Washington D.C. is apparently full of all kinds of interesting monuments – like the White House, for instance – but they weren’t even on my list of places to visit when I went there for spring break. Instead I did a whirlwind tour of the amazing Smithsonian Museums, and in particular, the Freer Art Gallery.

The Freer has a large collection of art work from the South Asian region, which was where I made my first stop. There was religious art work from all over the Indian subcontinent, and from several different religions. The exhibit begins with Hinduism in South India.

An immediately recognizable figure for me was the statue of Nataraja (loosely translated as the Dancing God Shiva). Combining realism and abstraction, the Nataraja evokes a great sense of power as his dance crushes the demon of ignorance beneath him. Another statue with the same theme was the throne leg, depicting a divine being in the shape of an elephant-cum-lion crushing a demon beneath him. The beautiful detailing of a mountain landscape in the leg, which includes both human and animal features, particularly caught my eye. And right in the center of the room was an elegantly sensuous statue of the Queen Sembiyan from the Chola dynasty¹ of South India, modeled after the Goddess Mahadevi (the Great Goddess).

Divine dance of Nataraja Photo: Metal Chris

A figure, part elephant, part lion, tramples a demon Photo: absentmindedprof

Queen Sembiyan as Goddess Mahadevi Photo: Thiago TH

Another major religion in the South Asian region is Islam, and there is a room devoted to Islamic works of art from the Mughal emperors² time in North India. To me, these had a special beauty in the way they combined Islamic script and imagery in pottery used for even everyday purposes. The words, artfully hidden within the images themselves, were often common phrases of good wishes for the owner, or proverbs. Sometimes even the writing itself was visual poetry. Something else I found interesting was the influence of the West on Mughal art – for instance, the huge flask that might have been commissioned by a Christian traveler to the East, which depicts Christ and scenes from the Bible.

Iranian dish with Islamic words painted into the design Photo Source

A Mughal era flask with Christian depictions Photo Source

It isn’t possible to discuss South Asian religions without mentioning Buddhism, and there were indeed many Buddhist art works on display as well. One of them was a stone mural of the life of Buddha found in the Gandhara kingdom³ in present day Pakistan, which was a crossroads between the East and West. Much to my surprise, I learned that the Buddha depicted there has distinctly Roman features, like draped clothing and sharp Greco-Roman features. But elsewhere in South Asia, Buddha representations seem to combine Hindu aspects as well – for instance in Nepal, where the god Avalokiteshwara (known as the Buddha of Compassion) is pictured here carved out of a single piece of wood.

Buddha as Avalokiteshwara in Nepal Photo: Brad Pennock

Depiction of the Enlightenment of Buddha Photo: Cyradis

One of the most amazing things about the museum was the amount of traveling I did – not around the rooms, but around the world, through the art displayed. Buddhism, for example, reached Japan 1000 years after its conception in India, and took on new forms of expression there. And eventually, South Asian art and religion found their way to the West and into the hands of enthusiasts like Charles Freer, who founded the Museum with much of his own art, including his Asian collection.

Washington D.C. is an odd place to have a revelation of sorts about South Asian art and religion, but it was at the Freer that I began to try to put my feelings into words. What I felt when I saw the art works was a sense of distance from the “religion” side of the art; this might have been a result of the museum experience, where the way the pieces are collected and categorized is practically a science in itself. But that didn’t stop me from feeling a sense of reverence for all the art there, regardless of the religion or region they were from. They were works of love and devotion, the result of years of practice by craftsmen who probably felt they were honored to be able to create a representation of their Gods. And that was what, to me , made all the pieces of art truly beautiful.

Footnotes

¹ The Chola dynasty ruled in South India around the 10th-13th centuries

² The Mughal emperors ruled much of South India from early 16th to mid 19th centuries

³The Gandhara kingdom ruled in the regions around Pakistan, Punjab and Afghanistan, from 6th century BC to 11th century AD

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