![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/cholabronze.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which had been established in 1851, had been concerned about a \u201cdisease\u201d that had afflicted hundreds of archaeological bronze idols in the museum\u2019s collection.<\/h3>\nThe museum was the official showpiece of Madras, present-day Chennai, and its bronze collection was highly prized, so this was no small matter. Bronze disease spread by degrees, destroying the surface, converting the interior of the bronze icons into amorphous whitish green dust.<\/h3>\nThe bronze idols were of religious deities, many of which had originally been commissioned by South Indian rulers, notably the Cholas, from the 9th to the late 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century.\u00a0These idols, the\u00a0utsavamurthis<\/em>, were portable versions of the stone idols found in temples. \u00a0When the powerful kingdoms of the south disintegrated, many of these bronze idols were buried for safekeeping. Under the Indian Treasure Trove Act of 1878, the unearthed bronze idols had found their way into museums.<\/h3>\nA young scientist S Paramasivan, who was only in his twenties, was picked for the job of saving these corroding idols. He had no experience in conservation science, which, in any case, was a nascent field. What made him the man for the job was the fact that he had studied electrochemistry.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt is well known that corrosion is an electrochemical process, and a reversal of this process will restore the corroded object back to its original state,\u201d he would explain. Fulbright scholar Sanchita Balachandran, a conservator at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in the United States, has\u00a0documented Paramasivan\u2019s work\u00a0<\/a>in detail.<\/h3>\nBefore the authorities in charge had placed the advertisement for an archaeological chemist, they had tried to hire a traditional Indian craftsman specializing in bronze casting to take care of the idols. But while traditional methods of care serve temple idols well in the normal course of affairs, the long-interred bronzes were a different matter altogether. The bronze idols, made largely of copper and tin, had corroded because of chemical reactions underground.\u00a0<\/h3>\nWhen the product of corrosion was copper carbonate, there was little cause for worry. But salts such as copper chloride and copper sulphate ate into the idols, causing disfigurement.\u00a0\u201cSome of the bronzes have malignant patina on them,\u201d Paramasivan would write.\u00a0\u201cA patch of it, not larger than a pin\u2019s head, may remain passive for years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly become active.\u201d\u00a0<\/h3>\nCaring for bronze statues<\/strong><\/h3>\nParamasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign.\u00a0 A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India \u2013 the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an \u201cindustrial scale which demands a technique of its own\u201d.\u00a0 He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.<\/h3>\nParamasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum\u2019s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it \u2013 \u201csix hours a day, six days a week\u201d \u2013 on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.<\/h3>\nAn expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The museum was the official showpiece of Madras, present-day Chennai, and its bronze collection was highly prized, so this was no small matter. Bronze disease spread by degrees, destroying the surface, converting the interior of the bronze icons into amorphous whitish green dust.<\/h3>\nThe bronze idols were of religious deities, many of which had originally been commissioned by South Indian rulers, notably the Cholas, from the 9th to the late 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century.\u00a0These idols, the\u00a0utsavamurthis<\/em>, were portable versions of the stone idols found in temples. \u00a0When the powerful kingdoms of the south disintegrated, many of these bronze idols were buried for safekeeping. Under the Indian Treasure Trove Act of 1878, the unearthed bronze idols had found their way into museums.<\/h3>\nA young scientist S Paramasivan, who was only in his twenties, was picked for the job of saving these corroding idols. He had no experience in conservation science, which, in any case, was a nascent field. What made him the man for the job was the fact that he had studied electrochemistry.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt is well known that corrosion is an electrochemical process, and a reversal of this process will restore the corroded object back to its original state,\u201d he would explain. Fulbright scholar Sanchita Balachandran, a conservator at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in the United States, has\u00a0documented Paramasivan\u2019s work\u00a0<\/a>in detail.<\/h3>\nBefore the authorities in charge had placed the advertisement for an archaeological chemist, they had tried to hire a traditional Indian craftsman specializing in bronze casting to take care of the idols. But while traditional methods of care serve temple idols well in the normal course of affairs, the long-interred bronzes were a different matter altogether. The bronze idols, made largely of copper and tin, had corroded because of chemical reactions underground.\u00a0<\/h3>\nWhen the product of corrosion was copper carbonate, there was little cause for worry. But salts such as copper chloride and copper sulphate ate into the idols, causing disfigurement.\u00a0\u201cSome of the bronzes have malignant patina on them,\u201d Paramasivan would write.\u00a0\u201cA patch of it, not larger than a pin\u2019s head, may remain passive for years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly become active.\u201d\u00a0<\/h3>\nCaring for bronze statues<\/strong><\/h3>\nParamasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign.\u00a0 A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India \u2013 the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an \u201cindustrial scale which demands a technique of its own\u201d.\u00a0 He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.<\/h3>\nParamasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum\u2019s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it \u2013 \u201csix hours a day, six days a week\u201d \u2013 on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.<\/h3>\nAn expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
A young scientist S Paramasivan, who was only in his twenties, was picked for the job of saving these corroding idols. He had no experience in conservation science, which, in any case, was a nascent field. What made him the man for the job was the fact that he had studied electrochemistry.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt is well known that corrosion is an electrochemical process, and a reversal of this process will restore the corroded object back to its original state,\u201d he would explain. Fulbright scholar Sanchita Balachandran, a conservator at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in the United States, has\u00a0documented Paramasivan\u2019s work\u00a0<\/a>in detail.<\/h3>\nBefore the authorities in charge had placed the advertisement for an archaeological chemist, they had tried to hire a traditional Indian craftsman specializing in bronze casting to take care of the idols. But while traditional methods of care serve temple idols well in the normal course of affairs, the long-interred bronzes were a different matter altogether. The bronze idols, made largely of copper and tin, had corroded because of chemical reactions underground.\u00a0<\/h3>\nWhen the product of corrosion was copper carbonate, there was little cause for worry. But salts such as copper chloride and copper sulphate ate into the idols, causing disfigurement.\u00a0\u201cSome of the bronzes have malignant patina on them,\u201d Paramasivan would write.\u00a0\u201cA patch of it, not larger than a pin\u2019s head, may remain passive for years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly become active.\u201d\u00a0<\/h3>\nCaring for bronze statues<\/strong><\/h3>\nParamasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign.\u00a0 A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India \u2013 the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an \u201cindustrial scale which demands a technique of its own\u201d.\u00a0 He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.<\/h3>\nParamasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum\u2019s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it \u2013 \u201csix hours a day, six days a week\u201d \u2013 on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.<\/h3>\nAn expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
When the product of corrosion was copper carbonate, there was little cause for worry. But salts such as copper chloride and copper sulphate ate into the idols, causing disfigurement.\u00a0\u201cSome of the bronzes have malignant patina on them,\u201d Paramasivan would write.\u00a0\u201cA patch of it, not larger than a pin\u2019s head, may remain passive for years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly become active.\u201d\u00a0<\/h3>\nCaring for bronze statues<\/strong><\/h3>\nParamasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign.\u00a0 A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India \u2013 the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an \u201cindustrial scale which demands a technique of its own\u201d.\u00a0 He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.<\/h3>\nParamasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum\u2019s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it \u2013 \u201csix hours a day, six days a week\u201d \u2013 on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.<\/h3>\nAn expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Paramasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign.\u00a0 A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India \u2013 the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an \u201cindustrial scale which demands a technique of its own\u201d.\u00a0 He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.<\/h3>\nParamasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum\u2019s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it \u2013 \u201csix hours a day, six days a week\u201d \u2013 on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.<\/h3>\nAn expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
An expert conservationist<\/strong><\/h3>\nUsing appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying.\u00a0 Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.<\/h3>\nRecognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Recognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAs an upshot, the museum\u2019s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts \u2013 made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals \u2013 came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.<\/h3>\nThe archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The archaeological chemist\u2019s post, however, remained temporary.\u00a0 The museum superintendent\u2019s letters to the government of Madras emphasized Paramasivan\u2019s scientific knowledge. In response, one officer had commented: \u201cSince 1930 he [Paramasivan] has not been able to get a better paid job and he is not likely to get one hereafter. Even if he leaves it should be quite easy to get an equally competent man.\u201d\u00a0 Due to a technicality that limited the length of time a government position could remain temporary, Paramasivan became a permanent staff member eight years after he had responded to the ad.<\/h3>\nEven before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. \u201cThere are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,\u201d he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran\u2019s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay\u00a0Malignant Patina: A Love Story<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/h3>\nWorking with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Working with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan\u2019s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.<\/h3>\nThe Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.\u00a0<\/h3>\nEventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. 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Eventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. \u00a0Early in Paramasivan\u2019s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University\u2019s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of\u00a0the \u201cpeculiar problems\u201d of preservation<\/a>. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as\u00a0Nature<\/em>.<\/h3>\nAfter retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a \u201cmobile laboratory\u201d to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.\u00a0<\/h3>\nAn enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scroll-india-by-publication","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5999,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.vijeejournalist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
An enigma<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn the\u00a0centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras<\/a>, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan,\u00a0who died in 1987.<\/strong> Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory.\u00a0 How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? We don\u2019t know anything of his thoughts and feelings about the icons but there is no denying the fact that the man worked above his pay grade, as the American expression goes, to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.\u00a0<\/h3>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. 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\u00a0<\/p>\n
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 \u201cArchaeological Chemist, temporary \u2026 at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929\u2013\u201930 \u2026 required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,\u201d read a job description in the \u201cwanted\u201d columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. 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