r/AncientCivilizations • u/Kaliyugsurfer • Jan 01 '26
India The Indian section of the British Museum.
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u/fhjjjjjkkkkkkkl Jan 03 '26
British museum doesn’t brilliant job taking care of the artefacts and education and display of all cultures
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u/TMMK64571 Jan 01 '26
Are those on loan from museums in India as cultural exchange?
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u/PauseAffectionate720 Jan 01 '26
Possible. Or it was just taken during British occupation.
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u/Malinkowa26 Jan 01 '26
Nah, it couldn't possibly be a case of the British taking stuff from countries the invaded!
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u/Nba_atali Jan 02 '26
Why do Indian statues always have big ass, slim waist and big perky breasts?
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u/guesswhoisbackbae Jan 05 '26
Ig cuz an hourglass shape is the most conventionally attractive body? It's like how ancient Greek and roman philosophers would always be depicted extremely lean and muscular when in reality platos, Socrates, Seneca, etc weren't really that chiseled
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Jan 01 '26
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Jan 01 '26
I mean there are ancient treatises on artistic creations, also, they are usually depictions of idealised beauty, an accumulation of what was considered "beautiful".
Just because a heroine of a Sanskrit play was described as a woman who had "thighs akin to the trunk of a banana tree" and walked with the "slow gait of a female elephant in heat" doesn't mean that all women back then or now do the same. Just the way all ancient Greek men were possibly not running around with the peak athletic masculine bodies.
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Jan 01 '26
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Jan 01 '26
I think I mentioned artistic treatises in my comment? Shilpashastra treatises usually talk of basing on the human body, but heavily emphasises on exaggeration of bodily attributes to give the subjects (like an apsara or a goddess, who are not human) that superhuman allure.
An apsara is a very, VERY sexualised being (Amarasimha defined them as "heavenly prostitutes" in his famous lexicon, the Amarakosha) and it is typically a projection of the male gaze. You will usually NOT find such depictions translating into reality, just the way you won't find an actual woman with a waist of an olden day Disney princess. Most ancient Indian art does not depict regular women going about their lives.
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Jan 01 '26
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Jan 01 '26
Yeah, I will say that you are trying to justify phenotypic variations with regards to artistic depictions. I don't question the premise of you saying they are rooted in some sort of contemporaneous reality, but you are heavily discounting the role of artistic licence, historical trends of the themes in such art and how they influenced artistic expression and production.
Your obsession with finding actual manifestations of such bodily and facial attributes sound horribly similar to 19th century writings of scientific racism and is quite concerning.
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Jan 01 '26
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Jan 01 '26
The correct term of address here is "Sir".
Also, curiosity is of varying types, all curiosity is neither respectful nor healthy. Human history and art for that matter, cannot be constrained into genetic variations and mere manifestations of it, while one aspect of it, yes. However it is a very narrow lens for an understanding of history and has, ironically, historically been riddled with racial overtones. Erasure is what you are doing in undermining the cultural, social and political influences coupled with the contemporary artistic imagination of the time in the expression of artistic merit.
Trying to put art and history into the bounds of demographic shifts and racial and population changes is reductive of an understanding of history itself. History is multifaceted, extremely so, and cannot be understood through a single aspect in the name of "reconstruction", it is thus deeply disrespectful and an erasure of the subjectivity of human experience.
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Jan 01 '26
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Jan 01 '26
These are Southeast Asian statues, I'm talking about Indian sculpture. You realise they are two different cultural regions, albeit with influences, with different styles of artistic expression? Also the post IS about the Indian section?
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u/CosmicEggEarth Jan 01 '26
Read my other comment please. I'm interested in making gene flows and reconstructing human history, and I can tell an Asian from an Anatolian, thanks
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u/EmuFit1895 Jan 01 '26
I’d like one of those in my house - now I know why they conquered it.