Continuance of Heritage & Role of Art through Ages: A Review

GAURAV

Scientist D/HO

RMNH, Bhubaneswar

Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change

Govt of India

 

A country like India may happily count itself one among the five greatest civilizations ever existed on the globe. For more than five thousand years Indian has witnessed great relations with other civilizations and changes on the levels of average communal wisdom, Art, Culture, Religion, Economy and Administration. Changes in any of the said factor lead to great ups and downs to others as all these had been inclusive and complex ingredients for Great Civilizations.

Any statement on the continuance of heritage or conveyance potential of art for heritage, needs the Heritage to be redefined, in terms of inheritance and its functionality as a social system. I believe heritage itself is an active system. Heritage includes tangible and intangible forms of arts and vice versa Arts and artifacts carry several forms of heritage. Intangible heritage exist in inclusive form of Memory (may have a great variety, from rituals to traditions and language to slangs) and Emotions that are factors, responsible to generate verity of intangible heritage. Well Art itself is a heritage and continuance of heritage in a society is a specific Social Art, rather I say both these are each and opposite side of a coin. In a society, heritage may have its continuance in two different forms. One is dynamic form and other is static (or a less dynamic) and on the basis of these two, heritage may also be of two kinds, Dynamic heritage and Static (less dynamic) Heritage.

The active and very dynamic heritage has a tendency of rapid changes or metamorphosis and within few inheritance generations the form of art carried by Heritage or Heritage carried by Art transforms its style, nature and identity. Heritage is yet to be same but appears in a new form. A less dynamic heritage (or static Heritage) may prolong itself for centuries to ages and may carry same form of art. There is another bifurcation of Heritage that suggest terms like Acceptable Heritage (Heritage that we don’t hesitate to relate ourselves with) and Ignorable Heritage ( A Heritage Value present among the society but avoided due to social constraints like abusive words, slangs etc). This may be an issue for debate later on, if art should convey this heritage to the future generation or not & if the discussion should be carried out.

It is also necessary to state that intangible heritage exist in memory while tangible heritage is the cultural expression of intangible heritage through Art as a medium in a limited manner. Dynamicity, stativity, tangibility and intangibility of heritage create a very complex lattice of cultural expression, when mixed with art and at times, it is hard to differentiate various types of heritage in a society that has diversity in its traditions. A society has its own intuition of continuance of heritage through various arts.

Story of the expression of heritage through art dates back to prehistoric age while man (a bipedal anthropoid) was trying to be human (most efficient social animal). Since science has materialized theory of evolution and forensic expertise, we have proof to ensure artistic approach and making of artifacts in prehistoric human lives. Widely accepted theory of “nomads” also explains that 35 thousand years ago man didn’t have speech centers in the brain and used] sign language to communicate as only medium. Process of natural evolution pushed human to innovate other medium for communication to make life better. I assume that an anthropoid in a developing human race would have scratch the damp soil surface in agony or irritated mood while he was upset due to some reason and noticed the mark on the surface made by him. That moment would be one of the instances when art originated. At the same time another idea would have struck to him, picking a stone or soil piece he would have drawn some straight and curved lines either on the same damp soil or some other hard surface. Happiness would have made him dance on this discovery. He would have stricken with another idea to convey his experiences to the coming generation.

I believe this would have been the very first conveyance of Intangible Heritage (experience, parental memory and emotions) through art. Mind of mankind at that time was not grown enough to depict the hunting scene exactly and in a very detail the only skill with expertise at that time was hunting. Like a new born learner kid they would have tried some very basic drawaing on the cave wall to let their infants know about the wild furiousity moving arround outside the cave. All type of Arts are the true reflection of nature having a very basic property of continuous evolution and the same happened to those cave people they conveyed their intangible heritage to the coming generation maximum as possible. I find assumption possibilities for ceremonial events that take one to the state of virtualization of the origin sequence of art, rituals and language.

Several studies related to the caves paintings of Altamira (Spain), Bhim Baitka (Bhopal, India) and Lascaux in south west France etc have a similarity on the level of interpretation. “An act was a language to convey and to express the thought or idea”. It is an assumption that sign of language used by prehistoric man along with all those mimicry oriented actions to explain the curiosity of wild animal to their children were most primitive style of performing art that conveyed the experiences of one to another and art do the same at present. If art is not differentiated (and in case of present scenario I include writing, an art of expression that convey the emotions, very good) in to several styles and classes then it is only expression of experiences and emotions.

Here I conclude, every art is an altimetry product of emotional fluctuation. A variety of fluctuation produces range of art that is diversified in to several categories. Performing art is one of the diversification. Expressions of emotions & experiences through dance have been easiest since came in to its existence. A dance performance in India is not just a medium to express joy or happiness but it also expresses devotion to god (odissi), mythological storytelling (kathakali), style of martial arts (chau) and even natural heritage (naga nritya or snake dance). These expressions needed conveyance to next generations. Dance is an art form that carries dynamic heritage, very prone to be changed or disappear soon if not conveyed to next generation. In absence of video recordings, Guru Sishya Parampara was only medium to convey. Though during that time span, dances could be materialized as tangible by stone carving or sculpting only and had partial conveyance. Rituals and traditions have been inseparable aspect of Indian civilization hence ‘Guru-Sishya Parampara’ led the Indian dance culture to the present era. Most of the dance form inherited through Guru-Sishya Parampara on training basis only for several thousand years.

Natural existence of heritage gave birth to several art forms at one hand and originated traditions and rituals on another. From the period of Nomad Culture (35000 BC) to civilized India (2500 BC) performing art sustained very good and evolved as well. Performing art styles gone through enormous changes during this time gap and intangible heritage lived countless lives in the form of performing art and left its memories in the form of sculptures, cave paintings, and other forms of material arts. A relation among intangible Heritage and material could be said like “Intangible heritage lives its life as Performing Art and leaves the memories as Material or Plastic Art”. Material art after intangible heritage (if it is not conveyed) is a photo album giving selected glimpses only.

Dance in India is considered divine by its origin. 3000 year old mythology refers the great delighting dance concerts that included drama and mime in god and goddess’s heavenly courts. Roots of all ancient dance forms can be traced to Bharata’s Natyashastra.

Natraja; The ancient most (dance known till date) cosmic dance or Tandava by Shiva is believed to encompass origin, sustainability and destruction. It is a belief that all traditional performing art forms have been originated from Tandava style. Mythological history dates back to an unknown period. It is belief that through this dance he regulates the continuance of life process in universe and makes equilibrium between balance and imbalance or between creativity and destruction. Kali, Krishna, Apsara and Gandharvas are other ancient icon performers who are believed to be the follower of the ancient most dance style and have appeared later with their own style like dance of war and death by (Kali), dance of love season, and peace and calm (Krishna), dance of leisure by Apsara and Gandharwas. It is believed that all classical dance forms in ancient India evolved from Natraja. Even at present all the classical dances are styled to the same and can be traced as derivative of tandava nritya. World famous Indian dances like Kuchipudi, Kathak, Bharatnatyam, Odissi, kathkali are basic reflection of the belief.

A tradition have been unconscious conveyance of heritage from one generation to others and dances like Odissi seems to be evolved as a trend of tribute to gods and goddesses as they are very devotional, aims the appraisal and formulate an offerings during most of its performance. Bharatnatyam and Kathakali are another form of dances very close to motive of Odissi. Kathakali is moreover sort of storytelling and plays an important role to convey centuries old stories of gods and goddesses. These dances convey a complete spiritual fragment to the viewer and let the social system preserve itself to be run as a humanitarian body. Several Arts have different messages to convey but the major is social welfare and its continuance. Dynamicity of heritage made it change in every generation while static values prevented major changes. Those dynasties which had high dynamic values have no more existence of intangible heritage while those with high static values, firm continuance, regularity in conveyance, and traditions made for continuance of intangible heritage exist in original or blend form till today. Indian classical dance styles are best example of second case. From the period of Lord Buddha India had a very successful and comparatively more static form of Intangible heritage. A very rhythmic form with thousands of synchronous branches, India had fluency in its Intangible flow. It seems the time, inheritance of intangible heritage was on its optimum and Indian had scored a peak of traditional continuance of intangible heritage.

1173 AD when Muhammad Ghauri captured Ghazni and headed towards Punjab in 1175 AD changed the dynamic and static values of continuance of intangible heritage through art in north Indian regions. Through the perspective of art I don’t call it good or bad but can say a sudden change and consider this attack like throwing a stone in to a pond that has a calm surface. His entrance in to Punjab made the intangible heritage dynamic. This event could be considered as dropping a spicy ingredient in to a sweet recipe. Those wild attacks stirred the synchronous harmony older than 1000 years and produced a very spicy blend of heritage through and after mughal kingdoms as well. He introduced a very dynamic but blood stained, wild and forceful foreign heritage trend within centuries old harmonious system. The relevant dynamicity of the heritage accelerated, and war lead to a disturbed (or almost stopped) continuance of intangible heritage. Dynamicity was on its high since Jalal-u-din-Mohammad-Akbar appeared as a semi-secular Emperor of northern India and realized the communal harmony an essential most factors for social system in 1582. For next few decades North India relished a highly dynamic but comparatively relaxed continuance of a spicy blend of intangible heritage. Again around 1665, this was Aurangzeb, who came up with an identity of top heritage lovers among all mughal emperors who gave the stativity to specific kind of heritage to sustain. Several schools of miniature paining came in to existence during his rulership that scored and preserved great extent of intangible heritage from that period by various means of depictions.

Decade of 1760 to 1770 could be considered as another turning point when continuance of heritage again slowed down from and lasted till 1947. British governor-general Lord Dalhousie banned the practices of ‘Sati’ between 1847 and 1856 with support of Raja Ram Mohan Roy that led to detraction of mass from their traditional practices. A few diaries (i.e. Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi) who documented beyond the facts of that time going beyond the British force claims that various small entrepreneurships like cotton weaving, manufacturing of metal ware etc were banned by Ruling Empire. I believe it would lead to disappearance of several undocumented and un-conveyed intangible heritage as the medium of expression got shortage for several decades. Only tribal areas could sustain with their untouched heritage. That sustainability and continuance of heritage could be seen yet in several crafts like bell metal (influenced from superficial and spiritual beliefs, weaving (influenced from natural heritage and cultural as well) in Madhya Pradesh. This depression of static value continued in British India since people again realized themselves free to follow up traditional values and materialize them by expression of arts.

Present status of art is far better reflection of belief and thoughts. Contemporary art has a very complex philosophy of expression through medium. Artistic approach towards plastic art forces an artist to experiment more and more and the age of science is additional boost for experimentation. As a result enormous art form have developed in past fifty years. Information technology has multiplied the boost several times. Every piece of intangible (sometimes that is not heritage) is expressible now and art goes through wires from one computer to another, from one phone to another, from one’s home to another. Intangible heritage have had very limited plastic medium to be materialized and conveyance have been in reduced form before 1990. At present it is magnetic layer technology that materializes and makes the intangible art plastic so this could be reformed several times at any place. This convenience has both positive and negative effects. At once it makes an important heritage ignored and in another second it makes famous worldwide something that is contemporary and could be ignorable. There is a visible difference in past and present scenario of continuance. At first intangible heritage lead the innovation and technology emerged to preserve it but now technology leads the intangible heritage and reforms it. I can say present is most dynamic state for intangible heritage ever happened. A great content of intangible heritage is on the verge of transformation.

 

Bibliography

1. Art and Cultural Heritage; Law, Policy and Practices, University of Cambridge
2. Digitizing Cultural and Natural Heritage; Presentation, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, School of Art and Media, Pori
3. The Art of Nothing; Immateriality and Intangible Art, Kristen Alvanson
4. www.indhistory.com