are delighted to invite you for the book launch of
The Mucukunda Murals in the Tyagarajasvami Temple, Tiruvarur
by V K Rajamani and Dr. David Shulman
on Sunday, September 4th 2011
at 6 pm
under the Banyan Tree,
Kalakshetra Foundation,
Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 41
Followed by a vocal music concert by Dr. Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam & Party
About the Book
The Tyagarajasvami Temple in Tiruvarur, a major historic site in the heart of the Tamil country, has preserved, among its many treasures, an unfinished set of around fifty painted panels on the ceiling of the Devasiraya Mandapam in the third prakara. The panels depict the story of the monkey-faced Chola king Mucukunda, who is said to have brought the God Tyagaraja from heaven, down to Tiruvarur.
Along with offering a distinctive version of the Mucukunda story (together with inscriptions that accompany each panel and embody directions to the painters), these murals express a distinctive cultural and philosophical vision – one in which we can observe the new subjectivity of the seventeenth century, with its spatial and pictorial correlates, and a particular understanding of the possibilities open to human beings in relation to the depths of their own consciousness, on the one hand, and the divine realm, on the other.
For the last three years, Prakriti Foundation had been undertaking the restoration of these panels. The restoration work has now been completed and on this note, this book has been put together as a collaborative effort.
This book provides a complete record of the Mucukunda murals as photographed by V K Rajamani together with an introduction by David Shulman on the Tiruvarur temple and its deity and an interpretative essay by Maya Dayan Tevet on the experience of entering deeply into the paintings. An appendix includes the surviving Tamil inscriptions accompanying the panels and defining their precise topics, and a detailed case study on the conservation of the mural paintings.
All are Welcome
