prasad1
Active member
Reality ends beyond the cracked mud huts of Sripuranthan, 300 km off Chennai. A rubble path winds past scraggy cattle and frolicking children, into the eerie quiet of a tumbled ruin: Brihadeeswara temple. A man-sized stone warrior guards the doorway, half-sunk in sand. Hundreds of bats whirl overhead, shrieking at the intrusion. Exposed beams, textured by time and mould, add to the musty smell in the air. Cobwebs on prayer lamps enhance the sense of abandonment. The altar is stripped bare, like a frame without a picture: It's a temple without a god. The 1,000-year-old guardian of the temple, Shiva Nataraja, is missing from his abode.
he Lord of Cosmic Dance has travelled 9,000 km to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Canberra, Australia. How did he get there? Ask Subhash Kapoor, 65, a New Delhi-born and New York-based antiquity dealer, considered an art connoisseur as well as one of the biggest idol smugglers in the world. He sold the Nataraja to NGA for Rs.31 crore in 2008.
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Beware the wrath of Shiva. The Lord of Sripuranthan is dancing his terrible cosmic dance, villagers whisper. He won't stop until he returns home. Nor will he rest until the raiders who sold him are scorched by his fire. Palaniswamy, who was suspected by the police as an accomplice, is overjoyed. "I was innocent. So the gods made sure that real thieves were caught," he says.
Six of the 28 gods have already been identified in museums and private collections across the world: Canberra, New South Wales, Chicago, Ohio to Singapore. The Australian government has ordered NGA to remove the Nataraja from display. EOW has started a census of the 45,000 temples of the state. But with the trial on course, the villagers are desperate to claim their god back. They are raising money to repair the temple. "When are you bringing him back?" asks a woman casually as she strolls by, dragging a goat on a string. But will Nataraja want to return to a nation that allows cobwebs to settle in temples? The outcome of the case will tell if his wrath has been appeased for now.
Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/brihadeeswara-temple-sripuranthan-shiva-nataraja/1/355127.html
Are we Worthy of preserving such Art, when we do not care for it?
Where are those protectors of Hindus? May be they are just paper tigers?
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