The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch, 448 pages, AmazonCrossing (December 7, 2010)
Oliver Pötzsch’s historical thriller is set in 17th century Schongau, a small town in Bavaria. This is a place where chamber pots are emptied into the streets, coffee is not served in inns like in Paris, and streets are not lighted. This not Istanbul or Amsterdam where there are layers of history, but a town which has parochial politics and social issues.
The novel starts with the murder of an orphan boy who has a mysterious tattoo. Soon other orphans are killed and this gets the attention of the hangman Jakob Kuisl who decides to investigate. An expert of not just torture and murder, Kuisl knows medicines very well too. The matter gets urgency when the town’s midwife — the one who bought Kuisl’s children into the world — is accused of witchcraft and murder and has to be interrogated. Before a pre-ordained justice is inflicted on Martha, Kuisl has to find the real culprit with his homespun skills.
As Jakob Kuisl navigates through the clues, many strange events happen: a man known as the ‘Devil’, is spotted by a few people in suspicious circumstances; a storage facility is burned; the building site for a leper colony is vandalized. Before the arrival of Count Sandizell, the Elector’s secretary, the mastermind has to be found, else many women in the town could be burned as witches.
After the initial brouhaha, events move at the pace of a Roman Polanski movie, but right after the midpoint, it moves as fast as a Nicholas Cage-Jerry Bruchkeimer movie. The segments are short, the action is quick. Also as the investigation proceeds, we get an idea of the social structure of 17th century Bavaria. The Thirty Year War was over and people had returned to their small town with haunting memories and broken limbs. Witchcraft was feared, so was the hangman. Law and order is maintained by the stentorian town clerk, ruling as a proxy for the Count. He is assisted by a council, a few moneybags who got their position by virtue of birth. Various guilds practiced trade; trade routes and their safety were important. The book provides just enough information about the period, though a bit more on the local traditions and daily rituals would have made it richer.
Among the characters, the hangman, due to his profession is quite interesting. Unlike Jason Goodwin’s eunuch detective Yashim, who has admirable social skills, Kuisl is feared by the town. He is strong, being an ex-army man, and is able to challenge the villains physically. At the same time, he is doting father of gentle heart who hates to see a innocent burned on the stake.Though Kuisl is the main character, there are scenes written from the POV of other characters like the town clerk and the young doctor Simon Fronwieser who makes some major discoveries. Some scenes are written from the point of view of Magdalena, the hangman’s daughter, but she plays only a minor part in the proceedings. But compared to Kuisl, other characters are not multi-dimensional.
The book is a good read and it would have been better if it was shorter.
First farmers of South India
Pick any book on ancient India and you will find pages and pages on the origins and decline of the Harappan civilization. You will also find details on the Aryan-Dravidian controversy. But when it comes to South India during the same period, there is nothing that exciting. There are no big cities or controversies. There is no Sarasvati or Rg Veda. South Indians were not among the first to domesticate crops and animals;this technology came from the North. On the whole the place looks jaw-droppingly jejune.
Now we know a lot more: on what developed indigenously and what was imported, on rituals unique to the region and on how Neolithic globalization influenced the social structure.
First, not all crops were domesticated in Gujarat, Indus and Gangetic plains. Moong dal, urad dal, horse gram, browntop millet and hooked bristlegrass were domesticated in the south. Winter crops like wheat and barley were domesticated elsewhere and imported. Animal domestication too, it seems, was introduced from outside.
Second, cattle and cow dung had some significance. The zebu, for instance, is prominent in rock art and terracotta figurines. Also prominent were ash mounds, created by burning heaps of cow dung. Some of these ash mounds — unique to South India — were located outside the primary settlement and may have been used a place of gathering for some ritual and the burning of dung was symbolic. It probably had something to do with their belief system. In this gathering there was feasting and people exchanged beads, copper objects, cattle or the valuable Hiregudda axe. Maybe marriage alliances, which helped during times of need, were also made. You know what they say – marriages are made near the cow dung heap.
Finally, changes start affecting this idyllic community. Following the decline of the Harappan civilization, wheat and barley appear in the region. We also see crops from Africa and Indonesia, possibly through contact with seafaring traders. Remember that the Polynesians were doing sea cruises during this time and ships from Meluhha were reaching Mesopotamia. This trade, along the Indian Ocean rim, affected the Neolithic belief system and social structure. Hilltop settlements were abandoned and people moved to the plains. There were burials with grave goods which look elitist. Hierarchies started forming.
References:
- Boivin, Nicole, D. Q. Fuller, R. Korisettar, & M. Petraglia (2008) First farmers in South India: the role of internal processes and external influences in the emergence and transformation of south India’s earliest settled societies. Pragdhara 18: 179-200
- K.A Nilakanta Sastri (the late), R.C. Champakalakshmi, and P.M. Rajan Gurukkal,The Illustrated History of South India, First Edition. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2009).
- Moong Dal picture via Wikipedia
Indian History Carnival – 36: Cholas, Malabar Soldiers, Forts
- Giacomo Benedetti writes about an article by a Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Illinois which proposes that Western Law and Civilization owes a lot to the culture of Indus Valley.
- Vijay takes a look at a rare bronze statue from Melaikkadambur
- You may have heard of ragamala in the context of music. But have you heard of ragamala in the context of paintings? peacay has a post with numerous ragamala miniatures.
- Charles Baudelaire, the French romantic poet, owed his creativity to a Malabar girl. Calicut Heritage writes
- Maddy has a post on the Malabarese soldiers who fought along with the Portuguese.
- There was a time when Tamil was considered unsuitable for Carnatic music. Sriram writes how that changed.
- fortmapper is a new blog which tries to document as many forts as possible. If you want to volunteer and help the author with this effort, please leave a comment on that blog.
I have read it, and I find it really rich and stimulating, including philosophy of law, history, linguistics, anthropology, Indo-European studies and also interesting references to the ‘Oriental Renaissance’ of Schwab and the practice of meditation as a part of the Indo-European heritage which should be recovered.
This particular image is from Bengal made in the time of the Pala rulers who were contemporaries of the Cholas of Tamilnad. This metal image belongs to 9th – 10th cent. It might have been brought by the Rajaguru of Kulottunga who hailed from Bengal. It is one of the finest and early bronze image of the Pala dynasty but found in Tamilnad. It also establishes a close link between Bengal and Chidambaram in the Chola times.”
“In [the ragamala] painting[s] each raga is personified by a colour, mood, a verse describing a story of a hero and heroine (nayaka and nayika), it also elucidates the season and the time of day and night in which a particular raga is to be sung; and finally most paintings also demarcate the specific Hindu deities attached with the raga, like Bhairava or Bhairavi to Shiva, Sri to Devi etc. The paintings depict not just the Ragas, but also their wives, (raginis), their numerous sons (ragaputra) and daughters (ragaputri).
Born in Paris, Baudelaire grew up as a spoilt and rebellious child resentful of the loss of his father when he was very small and the mother’s second marriage to a young and dapper colonel. The stepfather wanted to discipline the young boy and sent him off to Calcutta in 1841. A shipwreck saw the young Baudelaire landing on the shores of Mauritius, instead of Bengal. There he meets the Girl from Malabar in an account from which it is difficult to sift facts from fiction.
So for a lot of Nairs in the Cochin, teaming up with their better paying Portuguese collaborators was but natural. In history they are termed Malabarese. Many a Moplah also joined these groups. Interestingly as you pore through these musty old history books, you come across many battles fought in Malabar where the Zamorin or the Cochin king had many tens of thousands of Nairs whereas the Portuguese or Dutch had tens to hundreds of white soldiers with guns and a score of armed auxiliaries, but in many of these cases the Portuguese or Dutch win the battle.
It was at this juncture that an announcement appeared in The Hindu dated 28th July 1941 under the caption “Encouragement of Tamil Songs”. The Annamalai University Syndicate had “approved a scheme for the composition of new Tamil songs and the popularisation of old songs”. The announcement stated that “a conference of votaries of music in this part of the country will be held .. in August and all that songs that will be sung there will be in Tamil only.”
With this post, the Indian History Carnival completes three years. The next post will appear on Jan 15, 2011. Please send any nominations via e-mail (varnam.blog @gmail) or Twitter (@varnam_blog)
The Disappearing Wall Paintings
Shortage of epigraphists is a problem. Shortage of people who can restore wall paintings is a bigger problem. OP Agrawal, director general if Indian Council of Conservation Institutes identifies the problems.
I believe one of the main reasons for such a situation is lack of awareness and lack of understanding of the importance of these mural paintings in the general public. I have come across cases in which beautiful old paintings in some temples were scraped off and painted anew with oil or even enamel paint. Such examples are in plenty. Therefore, perhaps lecturers and courses in the appreciation of the beauty of paintings may be of some help.
A connected problem is lack of funds for conservation of wall paintings. Money for raising a new temple, a new church may be raised in no time but there may not be many takers to save an old temple and an old church. There are some well-meaning corporate houses, which do come forward to help in the conservation of old arts and old cultural heritage, but there are not very many.
Training in conservation and restoration of wall paintings is another area that needs urgent attention. There is no institution in India, which offers an in-depth course in conservation of wall paintings. A untrained person may cause more harm to the paintings than caused by no treatment.[Wall paintings of India: Will they survive for long?]
Briefly Noted: Mongol(2007)
Sometime in the 12th century, a boy was born in a small nomadic tribe in steppes of north-east Asia. Little did anyone guess that this boy, born in a society which did not have agriculture or cities and grew up drinking mare’s milk, would one day unite not just the warring tribes but unify China with the Muslim and Christian kingdoms to create an empire. That boy, Temüjin — who later asked the Pope to come and submit to him — is better known as Genghis Khan. Sergei Bodrov’s big-budget movie shows the life of the most famous Mongolian till he becomes the Great Khan.
The boy did not grow up amid unsurpassed luxury. Life in the steppes is hard; the Mongol tribes face extremities of weather as well as competition from other tribes for resources. Besides the usual existential threats, the boy had to face death, not once, but at least three times. Once when a rival leader takes over the clan after Temüjin’s father’s assassination, he is marked, but spared because he is a boy. This event repeats once more. The third time, as an adult, he is sold into slavery and kept in a cell with one window. He survives all adversities like Louie Zamperini, the hero of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.
But the movie is a love story as well – between Börte whom he chose as his wife when he was 9. When she is abducted by a rival tribe, Temüjin with his blood brother rescue her. When Temüjin is held as a slave in the far away Tangut kingdom, Börte offers herself as a concubine to a merchant to hitch a ride and bribes the guards to save her husband. Börte is a strong woman which is not surprising. When the men go off to war, it is the women who watch the animals and take care of the tribe; When a Khan dies, until a new one is elected, his mother or wife is in charge of the tribe.
Besides this, the Mongols are driven by two other relationships to reduce conflict. One is that of the blood brother: when two individuals from different tribes become blood brothers each one is obliged to help the other. When Temüjin was once almost frozen to death as a child, he was saved by another kid, Jamukha, who becomes his blood brother. It is this blood brother who later helps him save Börte. But these relations are not forever; it is the same Jamukha who sells him into slavery. The second relationship is with the Khan. Once someone is recognized as a great leader, people remain loyal to him. The Khan, in return for this loyalty, offers booty.
A large part of Mongol life is spent in skirmishes: over women, over horses, over resources. It is after attaining freedom from the Tangut prison that Temüjin thinks of putting an end to hot-tempered personal ambitions and unifying the tribes with shared values. In the movie he does that by defeating his blood brother turned enemy Jamukha in a lavishly filmed battle scene. He also comes up with some rules of conduct — “Don’t kill women or children. Don’t forget debts. Fight enemies to end. Don’t betray the khan”. Not shown in the movie is the fact that Temüjin also used the Pakistani strategy of channeling anger towards an external enemy. It works and Genghis Khan is born. The movie ends here, but according to the reliable Wikipedia, Sergei Bodrov is working on the second part of the trilogy.
(Credits: Image via Wikipedia)
Wanted: Epigraphists
Though there are sufficient epigraphists in ASI, some posts are vacant due to the lack of qualified candidates. Without epigraphists, who read inscriptions and make sense out of it, ancient and medieval history cannot be studied properly. That is the opinion of Noboru Karashima, a pre-eminent scholar on the medieval history of south India
Of epigraphy IAS officers did not know anything, and as a consequence the Epigraphical Office has suffered. For a considerable period until recently there was no recruitment of new epigraphists in the office. When I first went to Ooty in 1962 to the Epigraphical Office, the atmosphere was active and intellectually dynamic. Dr. K.V. Ramesh, Dr. B.R. Gopal (he is no more) and Dr. S.H. Rithi were young epigraphy assistants who subsequently did very good work. Now that atmosphere has been lost, as there has not been any encouragement for epigraphists for a long time. Unless the knowledge of epigraphy develops, no ancient or medieval history of this country can be studied. These days most scholars, Indian and foreign, depend on summaries of the inscriptions that appear in the annual reports. They therefore don’t go into the material.[An interview with Japanese scholar Noboru Karashima (via IndiaArchaeology)]
The Harappan Diet
How do we find out what the Harappans cooked and ate? We know that they ate wheat, barley etc. but beyond that it was hard to know. But now using a new technique — analysis of microfossils such as starch grains — we have some answers.
Starch finds corroborate the conclusions drawn from the analysis of the macrobotanical remains of wheat, barley, millets (indigenous millets: Panicum and Setaria) and pulses (South west Asian and tropical pulse Macrotyloma). In addition, we have added tropical pulses (Vigna species), millets (of African origin, cf. Sorghum), vegetables such as cucurbits and eggplants — this being one of the earliest evidence of eggplants in South Asia, the earliest occurring in Bagor (Kashyap 2006) —, fruits like mango and date, and roots and tubers like Dioscorea, Zingiber and Curcuma species to the Harappan diet at Farmana (Table 1). Our study is thus making a new contribution to understanding human dietary behaviour in South Asia. [Harappan plant use revealed by starch grains from Farmana, India (H/T Carlos)]
Secret Chambers etc.
From the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators dept comes this news. A secret chamber, without an entrance, has been found in National Library, Calcutta. Now, you may ask, how do you find a chamber which has no opening? Will I hear the sound of one hand clapping if I enter this chamber? We may find answers as soon as ASI gets a response from the Drilling Permission section of the Ministry of Culture.
Was it used as a punishment room by Hastings or one of the Lt Governors who succeeded him? It was common practice among the British to “wall up” offenders in “death chambers”. Some sources say this enclosure has exactly the same look and feel. The British were also known to hide riches in blind chambers as this.
“It could be just about anything. Skeletons and treasure chests are the two things that top our speculations because it is not natural for a building to have such a huge enclosure that has no opening. We cannot break down a wall, considering the importance of the building. So we have decided to bore a hole through the wall to peer inside with a searchlight,” said D V Sharma, regional director, ASI.[Secret chamber in National Library via IndiaArchaeology]
Yoga's Hindu Roots
The article which was e-mailed more than the WikiLeaks article or Thomas Friedman’s column on the The New York Times website yesterday was titled Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul. Over 15 million Americans practice yoga and it is a 6 billion dollar industry. What is taught mostly is Hatha Yoga, but without the “baggage of Hinduism“. The Times article describes the activism of second generation of Hindu-Americans and what it has achieved.
The HAF website has more information on the Take Yoga Back campaign
A piece in the LA Times, Bending yoga to fit their worship needs, quoting yet another yoga instructor denying any and all religious roots lead not only to a Letter to the Editor, but also to the publication of The Theft of Yoga, the beginning of what eventually became know as The Great Yoga Debate: Shukla vs Chopra on the Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith site. As HAF’s Dr. Aseem Shukla proudly brought to light yoga’s Hindu roots, Dr. Deepak Chopra penned his disagreement. Shukla’s reply, Dr. Chopra – Honor Thy Heritage, was met with continued resistance from Chopra
…
Even months after the initial launch of this campaign, the issue remains very much alive. On September 23, David Waters, the former editor of On Faith, quotes heavily from HAF’s stance paper in his piece “Should Christians practice yoga? Shouldn’t everyone?” And on October 3, Ms. Shukla once again voiced HAF’s stance in the “yoga debate” on air in a segment on Common Threads (click here to listen to Part 1 of the recorded segment and click here to listen to Part 2).
Briefly Noted: Nanook of the North (1922)
In 1910, Robert Flaherty was hired by William Mackenzie, a Canadian railway entrepreneur, to prospect in the area east of Hudson Bay (Canada) for railway and mineral potential. He made four lengthy expeditions and came into contact with the Inuit people who lived in that frigid and extreme climate. During one of his expeditions, he bought a movie camera along and made a documentary — a genre which did not exist — about their lives and survival techniques. That film called the Nanook of the North was released in 1922.
The movie follows an Inuit family — husband, wife, kids, dogs — as they go about their lives foraging for food. For them, food is the primary concern and they go wherever food is available. Sometimes they find a region with lot of fish; sometimes there is a walrus or a huge seal. Since the game is unpredictable, the entire family is on the move. Once they make the kill, they eat, feed the dogs, build an igloo and spend the night. The next day, the nomadic routine starts all over again.
While we see snowy white all over, the Inuit sees the landscape differently. He for example knows exactly where the fox trap is. Without such intimate knowledge of the land, there is no chance of survival. There are other strategies to survive too. In an area, the size of UK, there are 300 Inuits, but no one lives alone. They live as a group with total co-operation. At the same time, the group cannot be very large. With small groups, a small amount of food — a walrus or seal — is sufficient. Also, small groups don’t finish off all the available resources.
Since they are constantly mobile, they don’t carry unwanted luggage, but just what is hard to replace or time consuming to make (e.g. tools). It is an amazing scene as they settle for the night. It takes the Inuit an hour to build an igloo, complete with a window. They undress and use their dress as the mattress and blanket. The dogs stay outside and pups stay in a small igloo. The next day, they just walk away from the igloo like any modern American householder who has put 0% down payment on his house.
This black and white silent movie with English intertitles is not very authentic in some places. The family shown in the movie was not a family, but just a photogenic cast. The Inuits had started using rifles and Western wear by this time. Some hunting scenes were staged. Despite this, the movie is interesting for one reason. Agriculture has been around for only 10,000 years; 99% of human history was spent as foragers. Now that our supermarkets offer potato chips with varying levels of cholesterol, it is interesting to see how people lived without agriculture, how they killed fish by biting off its head and how they lived eating raw walrus meat.
References:
- Lecture 10, 11 & 12 of MMW1 by Prof. Tara Carter, UCSD.
- Image via Wikipedia