Singapore American • October 2014
T h e A m e r i c a n A s s o c i a t i o n o f S i n g a p o r e ’s
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MCI (P) 178/01/2014
October 2014
Since 1958
TRAVEL
welcome back 4-5
Images of Tribal Children Playing Tug-O-War in Bhopal Tribal Museum
travel
Central India: World Heritage Gems and More
17-27
By Abha Dayal Kaul
A
food & dining
31-32
American Association
2-3
Welcome Back
4-5
CRCE & Business
6-7
Community News
8-12
Living in Singapore
14-15
Travel
17-27
Health & Wellness
29-30
Food & Dining
31-32
Sports
33-34
What's Happening
35
Member Discounts
35
study tour to Madhya Pradesh (MP) in February this year was a richly rewarding experience. Our travels took us to three premier UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India’s large “Middle State” and off the proverbial beaten path. Eighteen intrepid, international members of Friends of the Museums, Singapore, joined me on this foray—to see, learn, and enjoy what Central India had to offer. Our journey began in MP’s peaceful lakeside capital, Bhopal, known for its four progressive Begums or women rulers from recent history, and where we relished our stay at the lovely Jehan Numa Palace Hotel, once a royal family residence. From here, we ventured to India’s foremost prehistoric site, Bhimbhetka, our first world-heritage stop. At this sprawling, natural ‘art gallery’ draped over hillsides, we were astonished to see numerous, striking hunter-gathererstyle drawings and paintings in Stone Age rock shelters—dwellings of earliest known inhabitants. There were hunters on elephants chasing wild bull in white; clusters of rhinos, deer, boars and tigers in red; even a yellow flower vase with white lotuses and green
leaves. Featuring horses, riders, women, cats, birds, snakes, centipedes, flowers, and more, this splendid set of petroglyphs, created over different periods, is well preserved in hidden nooks amidst strange rock formations shaped over centuries. We enjoyed walking about the few forested caves open to visitors, amazed that this incredible site was discovered barely six decades ago. Since then, scholars have established that certain ‘cupules’ or cupshaped hollows found at Bhimbetka are the world’s oldest-known prehistoric art! Later that afternoon, we were guided through one of India’s best archaeological collections at Bhopal’s modern State Museum, with its especially fine and rare Hindu temple sculptures excavated throughout the state, spanning a thousand years from 2nd c BCE to 12th c CE. Most have never been seen anywhere else. Across a courtyard, a visit to the brand-new, ultra-modern Tribal Museum was an absolute delight. The subcontinent and MP’s most ancient tribes, the adivasis or “original inhabitants,” are celebrated here via vibrant and creative reproductions of their homes, lives and traditions, in stunning displays of artworks fabricated from everyday
materials such as twigs, leaves, clay and rope. Then we headed to MP’s next world heritage site, India’s most ancient Buddhist stupa and monastery complex that still exist, intact but restored, atop a hill at Sanchi, near Bhopal. Before visiting Sanchi, we stopped at a sprinkling of other historical sites in Vidisha, a bustling and prosperous crossroads 2,000 years ago, now a quiet, rural region filled with remarkable ruins. At Udaygiri’s 5th c Hindu rock temple caves, we marveled at fine but fairly eroded Gupta-period relief carvings, especially the enormous, famed Varaha, boar avatar of Preserver-God Vishnu rescuing Earth-Goddess Prithvi from primordial waters. In a village field, once a vast Vishnu temple, we admired the 2nd c inscribed Heliodorus Pillar, erected with a now-missing Garuda capital in honour of Vasudeva (a name of Vishnu) by a Greek Hindu ambassador from Taxila in the northwest, currently in Pakistan. At Vidisha’s modest, treasure-filled District Museum, we were interviewed by the local newspaper and even featured in the Sunday supplement next morning as a “Cultural Delegation from Singapore” drawn to MP for its incomparable history and food! Continued on page 24
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