Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented his Indian counterpart, Shri Narendra
Modi, with “Parrot Lady” sculpture
during an event Wednesday on Parliament Hill.
The life-sized, red sandstone statue, believed to be some 900 years old,
depicts a dancing woman with a parrot resting on her head. The woman is meant
to be seen as a “naayika” — [Sanskrit term for heroine] — while the bird is her
confidante.
Parrots,
also known as psittacines are birds of the roughly 372 species that make up the
order Psittaciformes. Though we may never understand those differences, for
sure, we get attracted by that great green parrot with red beaks. Commonly, in India we see astrologers with
green parrot in cage, parrot sliding out of the cage, picking up a card and
fortune being read from the card so picked.
The
attractive birds are subject to folklore and literature too. In
Sangam literature, ‘Kurinji thinai’ describes the beautiful landscape of the
mountains along with the fauna and flora. The girls in love living close to
nature, play in water falls, develop
bond with birds like parrots, swans, cranes asking them to convey their state
of mind to their love.
About a couple of
months back, Indian Express had reported of a medieval sculpture of a woman known as “parrot
lady” or “parrot woman”, probably stolen from a temple in India, having
been found in Canada. A team of three officials — two from the
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and one from the Geological Survey of
India (GSI) — were to travel to Canada to inspect the statue and
explore the possibility of bringing it back to the country. The ASI’s Director
(Antiquity), D N Dimri, told The Indian Express that Canadian investigators who
intercepted the piece noticed similarities with Indian art, and alerted the
Indian High Commission. “The picture they have sent us indicates clearly that
the sculpture is a piece of Indian art. How the piece was stolen, from where
and exactly when, and how it reached Canada, is a matter of investigation,”
Dimri said.
The ‘parrot lady’
is a sculpture of a naayika or heroine seen at several medieval temples in
central and southern India. The sculpture typically denotes a woman in a
dancing or preening pose, talking to a parrot that is perched on her hand or
shoulder, with the bird appearing as a friend (sakhaa) or confidant of the
naayika. Naayikas have been represented at Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples,
and became especially popular in the medieval period, when they began to be
regarded as auspicious.
This valuable antiquity
turned up in Canada in 2011 in the possession of someone who did not have
proper documentation, it was seized under the Cultural Property Export and
Import law, which controls antiquities and other cultural objects being
imported from foreign states. It was then turned over to the department of
Canadian Heritage in Edmonton. Some
reports suggested that the Canadian
authorities did contact the Indian High Commission in Ottawa to ask whether
anyone was looking for a statue, but was told after some time that no one in
India was aware that one of their relics had gone missing.
Now, this 800-year-old Indian sculpture is to
return home, after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Wednesday handed
over to Indian Prime Minister Sri
Narendra Modi. The sculpture dates back to the 12th century.
It was returned in accordance with the 1970 UNESCO Convention, tweeted External
Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin.
The prized Indian statue was returned at the
Library of Parliament in Ottawa. Mr. Narendra Modi in exchange presented Mr. Harper
with a miniature painting of Guru Nanak Dev with his disciples. The painting is
by Jaipur-based artist, Virendra Bannu.
“The Parrot Lady is what is known as a
naayika, or heroine. She is just one of many erotic stone ladies that were
created to adorn the Khajuraho temples,” says the Canadian daily. The Khajuraho Group of Monuments is a group
of Hindu and Jain temples in Madhya Pradesh, situate about 175 kilometres (109 mi) southeast of Jhansi. The temples are famous for their Nagara-style
architectural symbolism and their erotic sculptures. Most Khajuraho temples were built between 950
and 1050 CE by the Chandela dynasty.
On
Tuesday, a day before Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper gifted Prime Minister
Narendra Modi this ‘parrot lady’, the New York District Attorney asked a court
for the custody $100 million dollars worth of artefacts associated with tainted
arts dealer Subhash Kapoor. This is the largest seizure of antiquities in the
history of the US – there are 2,622 artefacts in the Kapoor collection. The
next time Mr. Modi visits the US, President Barack Obama might become the
latest in a growing list of national leaders who seem to be using the prime
minister's trips as an opportunity to earn diplomatic goodwill by returning
stolen artefacts. In January 2014, the US returned three sandstone sculptures
of Vishnu, Laxmi and Buddha to India, to signal improved diplomatic relations
that had soured over the Devyani Khobragade episode. In September, Australian Prime Minister Tony
Abbott returned a dancing Nataraja and an Ardhanarishwara statue, both stolen
by Kapoor, as a gesture of goodwill. January brought the news of another ghar wapsi, this time of a
2,000-year-old Buddha statue smuggled by Kapoor that the National Gallery of
Australia had for years denied any wrongdoing around. This came even as
Australian parliament criticised the gallery for not scrutinising the statue’s
documentation at the time of purchase.
Lot happening
during the visits of Sri Narendra Modi
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
17th
Apr. 2015.
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