Marking India’s space in an ancient time
In this curatorial dialogue, India quite literally takes centre-stage – a statement made palpable with the astounding red sandstone sculpture ‘Yajna Varaha: Boar Incarnation of Vishnu’, from the Sunaari village, Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, being placed in the middle of the Greek, Rome, Assyrian and Egyptian marvels
MUMBAI: An imposing limestone sculpture, Lotus Medallion, from 2nd Century CE, marks the starting point of the exhibition, Ancient Sculptures: India. Egypt. Assyria. Greece. Rome, at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS).

The remarkable piece, part of a railing crossbar, is from the famous site of the Great Buddhist Stupa of Amaravati in present-day Andhra Pradesh. “The lotus in particular, has held a sacred rank in the Indian subcontinent. It symbolises purity, prosperity, peace and beauty. As a plant, and as an abstract idea, it has also been of great importance to the cultures of ancient Egypt and China,” points out Joyoti Roy, project curator for the CSMVS Ancient World Project and assistant director at the CSMVS Museum.
It sets the premise for the rest of the exhibition of sculptures that are gathered in the Rotunda of the museum. “The conversation began soon after the landmark exhibition, ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’, which concluded in 2018, and the culmination of that dialogue is the current show,” says the CSMVS museum director, Sabyasachi Mukherjee. “We wanted to explore the role India played in the ancient world; our shared interconnected histories with Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome.”
In this curatorial dialogue, India quite literally takes centre-stage – a statement made palpable with the astounding red sandstone sculpture ‘Yajna Varaha: Boar Incarnation of Vishnu’, from the Sunaari village, Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, being placed in the middle of the Greek, Rome, Assyrian and Egyptian marvels. “Under the dome of the CSMVS, stand the gods of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. And in the centre, appropriately, is the monumental Yajna Varaha from Vidisha, the boar incarnation of Vishnu rescuing the world, sculpted around a thousand years ago,” says Neil MacGregor, advisor to the Getty on the ‘Sharing Collections Project,’ adding: “On his snout stands an image of Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and learning: the saving of the world is inseparable from the wisdom she embodies. It is a totally different, entirely Indian, way of imagining the divine and the relationship between gods and humans. It is a powerful evocation of that hopeful moment when the whole earth is given the chance of a new beginning.”
The project is a collaboration between CSMVS, the Getty Foundation, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and The British Museum, in association with the District Museum of Vidisha, National Museum, New Delhi, and Bihar Museum, Patna. Endorsed by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, this project is organised to coincide with the commemoration of 75 years of Indian Independence. The selected artefacts demonstrate to the Indian viewer how other cultures thought about the world, and how they gave their ideas a physical form, while sharing similarities.
A sandstone sculpture ‘Hapy: God of the Annual Flooding of the Nile’ – Thebes (modern Karnak), Egypt, 22nd Dynasty; c. 900 BCE – from The British Museum shares a different perspective on the occurrence of floods, for instance. “Every Egyptian knows that if the Nile doesn’t flood, nothing happens. It keeps the culture, family, society alive. Therefore, you worship the God of Flooding in Egypt,” points out MacGregor. “To a British, this is a different idea. But if you are from India, and have grown up with the stories of worshipping the Ganga, this notion is not a new one. Here’s a different ancient civilisation doing the same thing.”
The marble sculpture of Aphrodite (Greek) or Venus (Roman); Goddess of Love and Passion – Italy; C. 150 CE – from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin offers a disparate point of view. Incidentally, it is the same imagery as in The Birth of Venus, a painting by the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli. For the Greeks and Romans, the form of the Goddess is a naked human body. But the key point is that it must be extremely beautiful.
The notion of ‘beauty standards’ is also touched upon by a sculpture of Apollo (Greek) or Phoebus (Roman); God of Sun, Healing, Music and Art from the Roman Imperial period. “This is how you know in ancient Greek that it is a sculpture of a God, because the emphasis is on a ‘perfect body’,” MacGregor says.
The Gods and Goddesses in India, look and even look at the worshipper differently. During the interaction, Mukherjee once asked, ‘how do you worship a God when they look away; Greek and Roman Gods don’t look at you’. This question to a European curator was fascinating and new.
Through their various educational initiatives, aimed at generating a wider understanding of the connected ancient world, the exhibition offers to explore more such questions. “Most histories of antiquity have been written by Europeans and North Americans, all in some measure the children of Greece and Rome. Here the pressing question is: How does India understand its place in the ancient world,” says MacGregor.

Stay updated with all the Breaking News and Latest News from Mumbai. Click here for comprehensive coverage of top Cities including Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and more across India along with Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News.
Stay updated with all the Breaking News and Latest News from Mumbai. Click here for comprehensive coverage of top Cities including Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and more across India along with Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News.