If there is one thing that always excites me, it is history lessons. I have always been interested in how our ancestors crafted by carving stones into large, meaningful statues.
Yesterday was a fine weekend, I went to a sculpture exhibition at the National Museum in Jakarta. They displayed many sculptures from various archaeological finds, mostly from the Hindu-Buddhist period, ranging from the 8th to the 13th century.
Some of these sculptures were discovered in the early 20th century, mostly found buried in the ground due to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and so on.
Many of these sculptures were also taken by the Dutch (due to colonialism), but they have been returned to Indonesia.
The most common sculpture I saw was Ganesha, the protective deity depicted as a combination of an elephant and a human, with his trunk drawing wisdom from a cup in his bowl.
There was also a distinctive Ganesha sculpture, where beneath it were carvings of human skulls, indicating that this sculpture follows the Hindu Shiva tradition.
I was very happy to attend this exhibition. Coincidentally, when I visited the museum, there was also an exhibition on Keris. If you don’t know what a keris is, it is a type of dagger that is characteristic of Southeast Asia, with a complex, wavy shape. In many islands in Indonesia, the keris is often associated with spiritual and magical elements, so it is not merely a weapon for stabbing an opponent.
I will write about the keris exhibition in my next post. I hope you enjoyed this writing. Cheers!