Assam’s lost masterpiece returns

India Today

The Vrindavani Vastra is finally coming home. After centuries of travelling through Bhutan, Tibet and London, Assam will get to see its 16th-century masterpiece again.

Transcript

00:00Vrindavan Vastra. Isn't it wild that this, yes, this piece of cloth is one of the high,

00:11high points of Assamese artwork. It is also a piece of cloth that remembers most history books.

00:17It feels like the homecoming of an ancestor. Once upon a time on the banks of the Brahmaputra,

00:22Srimanta Shankadeva sat with a dream. Let's weave Vrindavan itself, he thought. Not on paper,

00:28on silk. At the request of Coach King Narana Narayana and his brother Chilarai, he designed

00:33a Vastra so long it could cover a room. Scenes of little Krishna stealing butter, dancing with gopis,

00:39fighting demons, even other avatars like Rama and Kalki. To weave this dream, Maturadas Burha Aata

00:44from Barpeta gathered his team of 12 weavers. Thread by thread, using a complex Lampas technique,

00:52they turned silk into cinema, a 9 meter Bhakti blockbuster centuries before Netflix. They called

00:58it the Vrindavani Vastra, the cloth of Vrindavan. It was worn, worshipped and hung in sacred spaces

01:03in Assam. And then, like so many things from our part of the world, it began its long exile. First

01:10to Bhutan, then to Tibet, where monks stitched its panels together and used it as a monastery hanging.

01:16In 1904-05, during the British expedition to Lhasa, a journalist named Percival Landon

01:22carried it off to London. The British Museum catalogued it as a Tibetan Silt Lampas. Only

01:27later did scholars join the dots and said, no, this is Assam. We have seen the gallery here. There

01:33are a lot of exhibits from across the India, but nothing from Assam. For years, people in Assam begged

01:41to see it again. In 2013, the state government admitted it could not afford insurance and security

01:46conditions set by foreign museums. The Vastra was literally out of reach. Can you imagine that?

01:53But, history sometimes turns. After exhibitions like Krishna in the Garden of Assam in the British

01:58Museum in 2016, the pressure to send it home kept growing. And now, Assam's leaders have worked out

02:04a deal. The British Museum has agreed in principle to loan the Vrindavani Vastra to Assam in 2027

02:09for about 18 months. A 16th century silk story woven under Shankar Deva's eye, traveling from Assam

02:16to Tibet to London. And now, the whole state is building a home so it can visit again under bright

02:22lights but on its own soil. Tell us what you think. Like and share this video so that more

02:27non-SMEs get to know about it. And follow our channel for more no fluff experience like this one.

02:32I'm Manish Adhikali. Thank you for watching The Culture Project on Mo.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended