I wake up and head off to the V&A, otherwise known as the Victoria and Albert museum. Back when we first got here, our tour guide told us that an alternate explanation for the acronym V&A is "very awkward," and when I get here I can see why.
First, this place is absolutely huge -- spanning five massive and densely populated floors -- and it has everything from glass galleries to paintings, from pottery to weaponry. I start out learning about the Middle East and its culture via sculptures, pottery, and various paintings. It's exceedingly confusing and complex, but here's what I pull away from it.
Its religion is very interesting and full of various gods, something akin to Roman or Greek mythology, and this explains my keen interest in it. Apparently (and my info may not be entirely correct, but I believe it to be rather close) they have five major dieties -- Visnu, Siva, Durga, Ganesa, and Surya.
Surya is the sun god, and he has two wives, Pratyasha, the goddess of twilight, and Usa, the goddess of dawn. Usa is said to slay Pratyasha every night so that the sun can rise unimpeded.
Siva is the god whose divine dance is said to have shook the world and created life, but now is the great destroyer and reproducer. He controls the rhythm and fate of life, and is also called the Great Teacher, the one who teaches yoga, music, knowledge, and arts and sciences. He rides around on the bull Nandi and his matted hair is said to have Ganga, the goddess of the river Ganges, living inside of it. (How's that for a room with a view?) He is said to live in the Himalayas and spend most of his time getting high while smoking dope. He has a third eye and his symbol (most of these gods have characteristic symbols they carry to make for easy identification) is the trident, that ever-cool looking three-pronged fork.
Durga is the female energy of Siva (not quite sure what that means, exactly, but that's what the placard says, so that's what i'm telling you...) and she is an 8-armed goddess that is known for being a vicious slayer of evil, specifically the buffalo demon, Mahisasura, that plagued their lands. She is said to be the dark side of Siva and rides around town on a tiger.
Parvati, on the other hand, is the beautiful side of Siva and he had two kids with her (how does that work if she's actually part of him? He basically has sex with himself, gets himself pregnant, and then spits out a pair of kids, one of which happens to look like an elephant. Oy, vey...) -- Skanda, the god of war (who happens to have 6 heads) and Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of wisdom and prosperity (mainly in the agricultural world). (The cool story behind his head is this -- his father was away on a prolonged vacation and came back to find his wife in a room with a young man. Enraged, he cut off this person's head, only to find that it was his son who, in his absence, had undergone a little growth spurt and thus was unrecognizable to daddy dearest. Parvati made him bring Ganesh back to life, but he could only do so by using the head of the first living thing he saw, which just happened to be an elephant. How's that for bad luck?) (Ganesh, by the way, rides around on a rat -- again I must ask, how does that work? An elephant cruising around India on a tiny rat? I don't think Siva is the only one sitting around smoking stuff...)
Some other interesting mystical entities are Laksmi, the goddess of beauty and wealth, Jyesta, her sister, who represents misfortune, Kubera, the god of wealth (there seems to be some overlap of these dieties' responsibilities, something I'll attribute to naming the same people differently depending on what religious sect you hail from -- kinda like Ares and Mars both being the god of war in Roman and Greek culture).
Hariti was the devourer of kids, but then converted to the protector of the young, and is now the fertility goddess. Avalokitesvara is the Lord of compassion who has 11 heads (kind of appropriate -- who other than a person born with 11 heads could need more compassion?). Brahma is the Hindu god of creation and, along with Siva and Visnu, form the triangle of power. Visnu himself is known as the preserver, and he preserves the balance of the world with the help of his four arms. There are 24 Jinas, which are liberated souls, and they seem to be the equivalent of saints in Christianity.
Amidst this sea of dieties, there are multitudes of representations of Buddha. He is always shown with a prominent hair knot in the center of his head (called the usnisa), a dot in the middle of his forehead (called the urna), and elongated ear lobes from when he used to wear earrings as a prince.
Whew! Sorry about all that, but there was a ton of stuff there. Mixed in with all this, I learn about lotas (water pots), nagas (snakes), tantra (esoteric texts that guide life), stupas (great shrines erected as offerings to gods), and spice boxes (they have two types -- pandan are boxes that hold spices for making bread, and masala are boxes that hold spices for cooking.) I find out that Islam literally means "submission to God," and a Muslim is "someone who has submitted to God." (I also learn that 'skywalker' in Indian is dakinis, so think about what would have happened if George Lucas had grown up in India -- we'd be following the exploits of Han Solo, Jabba the Hut, and Luke Dakinis. "The Force is strong in you, Dakinis. Use it wisely...")
After this I take a gander at the Raphael cartoons and resulting tapestries, giant paintings depicting various religious scenes and then copies made out of fine silk and cloth. They're quite impressive, especially the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, and I learn an interesting thing about this process of converting paintings to tapestries -- they're mirror images of each other. The weavers take the giant drawings and start weaving right on top of the paintings, so the face of the painting and the face of the tapestry that directly touches it are considered the front. Thus, when they are separated, they are mirror images of each other. Very cool, and you can see what they mean with the Miraculous Draught since they have both the painting and the tapestry in the same room.
It's in this room that I also learn about St. George. You want to talk about the Mother of all bad days? Talk to him. He kills a dragon and saves the princess from her impending demise, but at the big celebration in town, he denounces their pagan gods, thus pissing off Dacian, the town ruler. Dacian thus decides to torture Georgie in as process so lengthy it makes Titanic look like a commercial.
First, George is tied to a cross and scraped with scores of fish hooks. Next, he is poisoned. Then, he is tied down and nailed - literally. Then he's imprisoned; tied between two wheels to go for a dismembering spin; sawed in half; put in a pot of molten lead; drawn naked behind a horse through the city streets; and then finally, after everything else failed to kill or even pain this guy, he's beheaded. Yikes. Note to self: do not piss off anyone named Dacian. My luck isn't as good as George's...
After a quick brain break for lunch, I head back into the fold to learn a little more. I learn that St Peter and Paul are credited with founding the Christian Church, I learn monstrances are big ornate altarpieces that are used in Communion and are said to contain the consecrated Body, I learn ewers and basins are simply fancy names for a wash jug and dish, and acanthus is the name for the popular pottery pattern where the leaves seem to roll and crawl up the surface. I see the Great Bed of Ware - a mammoth thing that is nine feet wide and an equal amount long that is carved out of solid wood and dates way back to 1590. I see statues, pottery, and tapestries. I see shields, seats, and shirts. I learn dragons are said to be the protectors of water and oceans and are called to send rain, while still protecting the lands from floods. To dream of a dragon and rain is a good thing - for men it means you will have a successful career, for women it means you will bear a son (none to trivial a thing in Japanese society.) I see the great Cast Courts which are filled with gigantic plaster casts of stoneworks, statues, doorways, etc. (Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise are cast there, as are Trajan's Column, and both famous versions of David - Michelangelo's and Donatello's).
On the whole, this museum is too much - much too much for one day, maybe for an entire lifetime. It's absolutely endless - you spend five minutes walking down the halls filled with swords, armors, shields, and the like, and then you turn the corner to find miles and miles of silver items. Then you turn another corner and it's an endless exhibition of tapestries; then furniture; then communication devices - it never stops. It's a spectacular example of excess; an aristocratic playground; the place where you can go to find everything you could possibly want, yet would never need (if Harrod's is closed, of course...) I stagger away around 3 o'clock, my head ready to explode from information overload, having only completed the first floor and portions of the second. At least I have something to do another day...
