Restitution claims are the number one desired result in any effort against the illicit trafficking of antiquities, and pre-theft in situ dated photographic evidence is possibly the most important part of such claims. We demonstrate this with a few examples of how India Pride Project (IPP) helped successfully restitute stolen artefacts and explain how we methodically approach the image crawling, identification, and matching process.
Bronze casting
The bronze casting of processional deities in south India reached the pinnacle in the late 9th Century CE under the Chola dynasty. Chola bronzes are considered the high watermark of not just Indian art but also world art. As a result, the art market places a high price tag on them, and they are traded in the millions.
The process of casting these solid bronzes through the lost wax method implies that the final product cannot be scientifically dated; but, since each mould has to be broken to reveal the image, each cast is essentially unique. The bronze casting of ceremonial deities has been in vogue in south India from the 6th Century CE well into the 17th Century CE, covering multiple dynasties with their own unique styling. These bronzes have also been under worship for hundreds of years, and have the resultant wear and tear. In addition, there is a tradition of burying such bronzes for safety in times of invasions, and quite often, they turn up as buried hoards, which are characterised by surface oxidation and sedimentation. A researcher thus must have a deep understanding of iconography, iconometry, coming out of years of studying the different styles, the casting techniques, and a keen eye to spot abnormal wear and tear.
Lost and found: The Ganesha idol of the Sripurantan temple was traced to the Toledo Museum, Ohio, U.S. The French Institute of Pondicherry had documented the bronzes in the temple in June 1961. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The case of the Ganesha idol of the Sripurantan temple, traced by our team to Toledo Museum, Ohio, U.S., is the first case study we will discuss. The iconography of each deity is carefully described in the cannons: Silpa texts that define the metric or ‘tala’ for every deity, along with its assortment of attributes, gestures and vahanas (vehicles).
The elephant-headed god in this example is cast in slightly lower ‘tala’ — ‘asta (8) talamana’ because Ganesha is supposed to have lost his head in a fight with his father while being a boy and he received an elephant’s head instead. So the weight of the head pushes down on his torso; so he is depicted in 8 ‘tala’, whereas Shiva, Vishnu and other ‘normal’ gods would be cast in 10 ‘tala’. (‘dasa tala’). The 11th Century CE Chola-era icons stayed true to the description of the head of Ganesha.
The first clue in this case came from a volunteer who saw two bronzes in a private gallery in New York with inscriptions in the base. The inscriptions pointed to a village in a particular district in Tamil Nadu. Further investigations revealed a spate of thefts from two adjacent villages.
The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) had documented the bronzes in situ in the temple in June 1961!. The IFP had not yet digitised its collection (it has now been digitised), so the custodians actually had a transparency slide which, due to lack of knowledge, was shared. This resulted in a reversed image in the look-out notice. Fortunately, thanks to our understanding of the iconography, wherein Ganesha is to have broken his right tusk to write the epic Ramayana, the source photo was correctly inversed.
Purchases and online records
Once we knew of the period of the theft (after 2004), we started analysing museum purchases and online auction records and had a rough hit with the Toledo Museum in its 2007 Annual Report of the purchase of a bronze. We then used our social media outreach to find a volunteer in the U.S., who could make the trip to Toledo and obtain high resolution images of the bronze. As luck would have it, the trunk had two visible casting defects and the IFP archival image had meticulously captured them too. The museum was approached with the evidence, and the fake provenance provided by the dealer (now convicted) was proven. The bronze was successfully restituted in 2016 and has gone back to the temple for worship.
The second case study was tougher. It was a theft in 1971 from the Punnainallur Temple. One of the volunteers attending a conference got a clue; a temple priest requested us for assistance in solving the theft. Searches in the IFP archives did not yield any result as the temple was not documented before the theft. The police case was closed in 1973 and replacement idols were installed at the temple. Hearing of the success of our efforts, #BringOurGodsHome as India Pride Project, the temple priest hoped that we could solve this case. A check of the temple trustee records from 1971 gave us the date of the theft and the details of the bronzes that were stolen.
WhatsApp groups formed
We formed WhatsApp groups in the village seeking information on the pre-theft photographs of the two bronzes. An invoice from a studio, which had been commissioned by the trustees, was found, and the studio was tracked to Thanjavur. The studio provided the pre-theft in situ photographs of the Nataraja idol. The unique styling and casting once again helped us trace the Nataraja idol to Asia Society in New York. The breakages from wear and tear, along with the unique styling, helped to confirm the match. Details were provided to Indian law enforcement agencies. The case was reopened and assistance was sought from the Manhattan DA Office. The Nataraja idol was restituted in 2021 and ceremoniously handed over to the temple in 2022. It has gone back to active worship.
(S. Vijay Kumar is co-founder of India Pride Project)
