Visit of Art Gallery

 Hello friends,

We all know that Studying any arts subject helps us to develop our critical thinking and it gives us the ability to interpret the world around us. This art also has its own meaning. This art can be a painting, poem, story, dance, song, advertisement, film etc. 

One of these art forms we had seen at the Khodidas Parmar Art Gallery held by Shree Khodidas Parmar Art Foundation, in Bhavnagar. This foundation organized an art exhibition about paintings of Ajanta Caves. On 26th September, 2021 we visited this art gallery. So let's discuss it. 

Before discussing about these paintings let's have look on Ajanta Caves.

The Ajanta Caves

The Buddhist Caves in Ajanta are approximately 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 CE in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in India. The caves include paintings and rock-cut sculptures described as among the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian art, particularly expressive paintings that present emotions through gesture, pose and form. 

(Cave 19, Ajanta, a 5th-century chaitya hall)

They are universally regarded as masterpieces of Buddhist religious art. The caves were built in two phases, the first starting around the 2nd century BCE and the second occurring from 400 to 650 CE, according to older accounts, or in a brief period of 460–480 CE according to later scholarship. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  To read further click here.

This art gallery has paintings of Ajanta Caves. When Chinese sant Hu-en-tsang visited Ajanta Caves he saw these paintings. This cave have U shape so sunlight can't stay long time in the cave. So paintings are not seen by people easily. These paintings are almost 1000 year old. Let's have virtual visit through this blog.

These all paintings are painted by the students of Khodidas Parmar. And this all students are belongs to Bhavnagar.

Khodidas Parmar is well known Indian painter. Though hailing from a poor family, his parents were determined for him to get a good education. He did his M.A. with Gujarati and Sanskrit, learnt painting even as he studied and went on to become a guide to students doing doctoral research on folk literature for their Ph. D. He was trained in art by Guru Somalal Shah from 1948 – 1951 whom he met at the Alfred High school.

Fascinated with traditional art, particularly the folk style of Gujarat, Parmar, spent his last years documenting and collecting motifs for a book on the arts of the region of Kutch and Saurashtra. He also wrote and published several award winning books on the region like the Folk Embroidery of Saurashtra, Gujarati Folk Tales Collection and Krishna: Legend, in Gujarati. A recipient of several awards, he has participated in several group shows and his works are a part of several permanent collections like the Museum of Modern Art and National Art Gallery, New Delhi. Parmar passed away in March 2004 in Bhavnagar.

Here is one informative Gujarati article about Khodidas Parmar, click here

The other interesting thing about these paintings is the use of colour. Most of the colours are natural colours. છાણ અને ઠીકરું વગેરે ઘસીને બનાવેલ કલરનો ઉપયોગ આ પેઇન્ટિંગમાં કરેલ છે. All these paintings are very interesting to study also. 

Here are some glimpses of that visit.

Here we see paintings.

So these are the paintings which are in the Ajanta Caves. Actually they are the same to same copy of the cave. Well I haven't visited Ajanta Caves, so can't identify about it clearly ! But paintings are beautiful !!

Thanks you.

The Home and The World

 Hello friends !

Here I'm going to discuss famous Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore. Who is remembered for his notable work. Here I want to discuss the writing style of Rabindranath Tagore and his art of characterisation in "The Home and The World". Before beginning the discussion of his writing style we have to know about Rabindranath Tagore. So let's discuss it. 

The writer of Indian National Anthem, the writer of Bangladesh's National Anthem, the person to have inspired Sri Lanka's National Anthem with his work, the first Non-European and also the first lyricist to win a Nobel Prize in literature - Rabindranath Tagore. 

Not just this, he was a renowned poet, painter, writer, composer, and philosopher.  Due to his achievements, Rabindranath Tagore is also known as the 'Bard of Bengal'.

The novel "The Home and The World" is a 1916 novel by Rabindranath Tagore. The book illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas of Western culture and revolution against the Western culture. Here our main concern is his art of characterisation. 

The ‘Home and the World’ is a superb study in the psychological analysis of character. In the novel, we feel Tagore’s adept use of the multiple points of view technique which makes for a clear renunciation of the motives and states of mind of the principal characters. The device of presenting separate segments of the story through different characters helps Tagore to highlight the internal conflicts and convulsions. The principal characters in the novel are Nikhil, his wife Bimala and his close friend Sandip. 

In the character of Nikhil, we see a true picture of a patriot who reflects the extra-national ideas that one should possess. Nikhil, a landlord of substantial means, is a man of noble ideas. Gently, rational and thoughtful, he cannot approve of any political programme based on violence and cunning. Nikhil has a rationalistic and constructive approach with emphasis on self-reliance and righteous means, to the problem of Indian emancipation. Nikhil though supports Swadeshi has not wholeheartedly adopted the spirit of Bande Matram. His “dull, milk and watery Swadeshi” does not appeal to his wife Bimala. Nikhil, though perturbed and pained by Bimala’s growing infatuation with Sandip, refuses to intervene and waits patiently for her to realize the truth of circumstances and recent herself headlong rush to ruin. He even refuses to banish foreign goods from the markets and argues that it is for the people to choose between indigenous and foreign goods. He declares, 

“To tyrannize for the county is to tyrannize over the country” 

He believes in the eventual triumph of the good. 

As opposed to Nikhil’s genuine patriotism, sandip is opportunistic and means for achieving personal power. He is a hypocrite, unscrupulous, capable of sweeping along everyone with magnetism, sophistry and rhetoric. He is a man of action, dynamic, adventurous, experienced in the use of stratagems. Sandip goes about inflaming the people with the cult of Bande Matram and the concept of freedom by force Sandip exploits Bimala, Nikhil’s wife by exploring her as the “Queen Bee” of the Swadesh workers. Through clever flattery she lays a share for her mind and body by hailing her as the “Shakti of the Motherland” A juggler of words, Sandip succeeds however in winning the sympathies of Bimala and also prepares her to steal the gold sovereign’s from her own house. Tagore has represented Sandip as a black-hearted Patriot who shut the door on humanity and truth, and for his own utterly selfish and inflamed, immature minds to frenzy in the name of patriotism.

In characterizing Bimala, Tagore has put his great efforts to expose, beautiful young wife torn between two men she loves and likes. Bimala has lived the sheltered a life of a Hindu wife and the “Home” is the world for her until Sandip makes his disturbing appearance. In the opening chapter, we are acquainted with Bimala as a true house wife, devoted to her husband and shares his ideals until she is swept off her feet by the eruption of the Swadeshi Movement. It breaks down the barriers between the home and the world for Bimala. In this critical situation the fiery eloquence of Sandip holds Bimala spellbound. She admires the seemingly glowing patriotism of Sandip. Bimala’s attraction for Sandip at first is purely intellectual but soon changes from admiration to infatuation. Bimala is temporarily swayed by the maddening cry of “Bande Matram” and robs her own house. Like a cunning thief, for the sake of so called national cause. But, she is horrified when in lucid interval the ugly truth flashes on her, and she detests wholeheartedly the filthy means of Sandip to worship the Mother. His greed and lust masqueraded and paraded as nationalism, are extremely repulsive to Bimala now. She repents sincerely for her folly in looking down on her husband Nikhil, as an impotent idealist, whom she misunderstood up till now. 

Tagore’s perception of Indian reality and the contemporary issue is modern in the projection of themes. Though his novelistic technique lacks the skill of craftsmanship he remains a pioneer in initiating the psychological novel based on social reality. Though he has not contributed anything strikingly new towards the novelistic technique, his novels mark the transition from the tradition of historical romance which characterized the Indian novel up to his time to the realistic tradition that has set it with him. It is Tagore who introduced the spirit of social realism and liberal humanism into the Indian novel and it is to him that the modern Indo-Anglian novel owes its moral and humane concern to its projection of contemporary reality. 

Bimala's Character

At the beginning of the novel, Bimala's character represents Bengal 's Womanhood . She is a very simple woman . The mark of Hindu wifehood and the symbol of all the devotion that it implies. Bimala is an ideal wife of Nikhil. When the proposal came for her marriage, an astrologer was sent, who consulted her palm and said , 

"This girl has good signs . She will become an ideal wife"

In the second part of Bimla's story we can see Sandip Babu with his followers came to Bimla's neighborhood for Preach Swadeshi movement. They all were meeting together and Triumphant shouts of 

"Bande Mataram"  

Bimla said about Sandip Babu and his speech that from beginning to end of his speech, each one of his utterances was a stormy outburst. There was no limit to the confidence of his assurance. She said that she was no longer the lady of the Raja's house, but the sole representative of Bangal's womanhood.

When she returned her home she told about her feelings that 

"The storm within my had shifted my whole being from one centre to another" 

and also she said that "Had my outward ornaments been connected with my inner feelings, then my necklet, my armlets, my bracelets, would all have burst our bonds and flung themselves over that assembly like a shower of meters". 

In the beginning of the third chapter Bimla told about her sister-in-laws remarking to Bimla's husband : "Up to now the women of this house have been kept weeping. Here comes the man's turn".  When Sandip called Bimla the 'Queen Bee' of the hive, she was acclaimed with a chorus of praise by all our patriot workers. Sandip Babu made it clear how all the country was in need of her. Here Sandip told about woman that was interesting that,

"Men can only think. You women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape".  

The mood of our Bimala has changed. In this chapter we found a totally different Bimla. The Opening lines clearly mention this. 

“At first I suspected nothing, feared nothing; I simply felt dedicated to my country. What a stupendous joy there was in this unquestioning surrender. Verily I realized how, in thoroughness of self-destruction, man can find supreme bliss.”

Her perception toward Sandip was changed.  She also makes herself busy in her roomarrngement and household work. She constantly avoids meeting with Sandeep Babu. And one day Sandip sent a msg that he wants to meet her. 

Bimla started lying. And now she has regrets for it. She feels guilty for Amulya and also has concern about her husband Nikhil. Feeling guilty, and wanting to die(but everything is still alive in her heart). This chapter ends with this question, "God can create new things, but does he even have the power to create afresh that which has been destroyed ?" 

 At last we can say that :-

“The emphasis in The Home and the World is weighted toward the theme of a sheltered Indian wife’s inability to cope with the intrusion of militant nationalism”.

Digital Humanities

Hello friends, what do you think about digital humanities ? Well I thought it was related to human beings and their morality. But it was not so. This digital humanities have nothing to do with morality. So now you have an idea of what I'm going to discuss today. Before jump to the other things I would like to clear the concept of what digital humanities is ? So let's see.

•What is Digital Humanities ? 

According to Wikipedia source,

Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application. 

The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope. It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing. 

So DH connected with art, science, sociology, history and many other subjects. It is the computational or we can say computing system of study. 

•What is the need of Digital Humanities ? 

The question that comes to our mind is, after all What is the importance and need of digital humanities ? So the digital humanities teaches us how to become Real Human being. That humanities sees that people will not become a Robot. 

Digital humanities have a connection with the English departments. These are the reasons given by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum to explain what DH is doing in English Departments. 

• We see the simultaneous explosion of interest in e-reading and e-book devices like the Kindle, iPad, and Nook and the advent of large-scale text digitization projects, the most significant of course being Google Books.

• The openness of English departments to cultural studies, where computers and other objects of digital material culture become the centerpiece of analysis. 

• A modest but much-promoted belle-lettristic project around hypertext and other forms of electronic literature that continues to this day and is increasingly vibrant and diverse.

• The widespread means to implement electronic archives.

• After numeric input, text has been by far the most tractable datatype for computers to manipulate. Unlike images, audio, video, and so on, there is a long tradition of text-based data processing that was within the capabilities of even some of the earliest computer systems and that has for decades fed research in fields like stylistics, linguistics, and author attribution studies, all heavily associated with English departments.

• There is the long association between computers and composition, almost as long and just as rich in its lineage.

This is very true, because we as students of the English department use various digital tools. 

Examples :-

Let's understand it through the example. 

The first example I want to give is my own. We have celebrated Virtual Teacher's Day.  For Virtual Teacher's Day I have prepared an auto generated certificate for participants. This was an example of digital humanities. We are using digital tools everyday. So these all are digital humanities. We can get any information through the use of digital tools. Even we analyse all the data with a different perspective also.

Here are also given very interesting questions to discuss in the course. One of them I want to share with you is,

This course also gives questions to think what we have understood after watchi video. The screenshot I have shared is very important question about digital humanities. These digital tools became a part of our everyday life.

Now I would like to discuss CLiC activity. This is a very interesting activity for digital humanities. The full form of CLiC is Corpus Linguistics in Context. It was also a useful Activity to read the data. 

This CLiC activity gives us every little information also. Let's understand it through some examples :-

In this activity we have to look at the noun chin. We can find different ways in which the noun is used to describe fictional characters. To begin with, we can check how frequently chins appear in Dickens compared with other authors, or compared with general usage. You can also try !

Activity 9.1 Looking for chins in Dickens :-

1. Go to the CLiC Concordance tab (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concodance). 

2. Select DNov – Dickens’s Novels in the “Search the Corpora” box. DNov is a corpus of all of Dickens’s novels. 

3. In “Only in subsets”, make sure “All text” is selected. and select the subset “All text”. 

4. In ‘Search for terms”, enter chin. Hit Return. 

Here is what I got -

This will give you a set of concordance lines in which chin appears across Dickens’s works. 

Let's try another activity.  For the creation of fictional worlds, the setting and atmosphere play an important role. While each novel creates its own particular world, it is still possible to identify similarities across novels and we can interpret accounts of settings against the social and historical context of the time. Charles Dickens is often referred to as an author who was concerned with living and working conditions in the city, Jane Austen, in contrast often shows us social life away from the city. A starting point to compare the type of fictional worlds that these two authors write about is a ‘key comparison’. 

Activity 10.1 Keywords comparing Austen and Dickens :- 

1. Go to the keywords tab either directly here (http://clic.bham.ac.uk/concordance) or by selecting the “Keywords” box on the right side of CLiC. 

2. Select all of Austen’s novels as “Target corpora” (you will have to enter each one separately from the scroll-down list; if you start typing “Aus” into the Target box, then Austen’s novels will be collected at the top, which will save a bit of time). And select all Dickens’s novels as “Reference corpora” (easily done by selecting “DNov”). 

3. Select “All text” from the option box “...within subset” and keep the default settings (which will give you words as 1-gram, and so on), as follows. 

4. This will give you a list of keywords for Austen (in comparison with Dickens) down the left hand side, ordered by their degree of difference from the Dickens corpus. 

5. To find the keywords in Dickens, compared with Austen, simply reverse the choices you entered in the “Target” and “Reference corpora”. 

6. Compare the two keyword lists and try to find words that seem relevant to setting and atmosphere.

And here is what I have received :- 

So in this activity we come to know about the words and it's frequency. How many times they have been used. We also compare them with other works also. 

So all the data gives us very little information which is useful to analyse any text. The other important benefit of this activity is we get any information second with the use of digital humanities. Traditional humanities are very time consuming. But digital humanities take only a few seconds to find the data. 

Thinking Activity on Dino Daan

 Hello friends. I'm Latta Baraiya and today in this blog I'm going to discuss one famous poem "Dino Daan" by Rabindranath Tagore. Before beginning the discussion I would like to throw some light on the poet. 

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath – poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Before jumping on the questions and answers let's have look at the poem :-

Said the royal attendant, “Despite entreaties, king,

The finest hermit, best among men, refuses shelter

In your temple of gold, he is singing to god

Beneath a tree by the road. The devout surround him

In numbers large, their overflowing tears of joy

Rinse the dust off the earth. The temple, though,

Is all but deserted; just as bees abandon

The gilded honeypot when maddened by the fragrance

Of the flower to swiftly spread their wings

And fly to the petals unfurling in the bush

To quench their eager thirst, so too are people,

Sparing not a glance for the palace of gold,

Thronging to where a flower in a devout heart

Spreads heaven’s incense. On the bejewelled platform

The god sits alone in the empty temple.”

At this,

The fretful king dismounted from his throne to go

Where the hermit sat beneath the tree. Bowing, he said,

“My lord, why have you forsaken god’s mighty abode,

The royal construction of gold that pierces the sky,

To sing paeans to the divine here on the streets?’

“There is no god in that temple,” said the hermit.

Furious,

The king said, “No god! You speak like a godless man,

Hermit. A bejewelled idol on a bejewelled throne,

You say it’s empty?”

“Not empty, it holds royal arrogance,

You have consecrated yourself, not the god of the world.”

Frowning, said the king, “You say the temple I made

With twenty lakh gold coins, reaching to the sky,

That I dedicated to the deity after due rituals,

This impeccable edifice – it has no room for god!”

Said the tranquil hermit, “The year when the fires

Raged and rendered twenty thousand subjects

Homeless, destitute; when they came to your door

With futile pleas for help, and sheltered in the woods,

In caves, in the shade of trees, in dilapidated temples,

When you constructed your gold-encrusted building

With twenty lakh gold coins for a deity, god said,

‘My eternal home is lit with countless lamps

In the blue, infinite sky; its everlasting foundations

Are truth, peace, compassion, love. This feeble miser

Who could not give homes to his homeless subjects

Expects to give me one!’ At that moment god left

To join the poor in their shelter beneath the trees.

As hollow as the froth and foam in the deep wide ocean

Is your temple, just as bereft beneath the universe,

A bubble of gold and pride.”

Flaring up in rage

The king said, “You false deceiver, leave my kingdom

This instant.”

Serenely the hermit said to him,

“You have exiled the one who loves the devout.

Now send the devout into the same exile, king.” 

1) The poem is written before 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time? 

Yes, I find that the poem is relevant to pandemic time also. In the corona pandemic thousands of people died and there was no space in hospitals. Countries like India have lakhs of people who believe in God except rather than humanity.  During the corona pandemic we see that everything was closed. People have to stay at home. Even temples were also closed !  People talked a lot about this topic. When the money came people built a temple rather than a hospital, so now temples are closed so where will they go ? Same thing is happening in this time also that there are people like this king who are using money only to become famous and popular. There is no humanity in their hearts. People face a lot of problems during the corona pandemic. But the thing is that God is not in temples but in you ! And that can be reflected through your behavior, your way of treating others ! 

2) Why do you think the King is angry on the Sage?

King is angry with the sage because the sage doesn't accept the proposal of the king. King offered him a beautiful temple for living there and for worship. But the sage denied his offer by saying that God is not there in the temple, God has gone away with the poor people. There is no need for this beautiful temple if you can't help poor people who are your (King's) responsibility. The sage speaks truth and all we know that,

"Truth is always bitter !"

So that's why the king thought that the sage was insulting my decision. The sage hurts the ego of the king. This is why the king is angry with him. 

3) Why do you think the Sage denies to enter in the temple?

The sage denied to enter in the temple because he believes that God is not living in the gold temples. He thinks that God is living with the pure and kind people. What should we do with this gold, if the gold came from poor people's hard work. If they don't have enough food for survival, this gold temple is useless ! Instead of living there God will choose to live under the trees because the  poor people take rest under that tree. 

4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayoydhya Ram Mandir? 

Yes ! There is a connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayodhya Ram Mandir. When our prime minister bricks the first stone in Ram Mandir Ayodhya that time this poem came out on social media and became viral. It's deep connection with this poem and Ayodhya temple. As we know, people around us are very religious. They spend crores of rupees to build temples. See the position of poor people in India, there are millions of people who are not able to get food at one time and on the other side people are wasting money to build statues and temples. Even our government is spending money on building these stuff rather than building hospitals and schools !   If you develop your country you should make your health and education system strong. And I think temples are not going to help you in building a developed country.

Thank you.