The Role of the Community in Artistic Endeavour Essay -- Islamic Grave

The Role of the Community in Artistic EndeavourImagine a gravestone nearly a metre in height on a large base with incised geometric vine patterns. An elaborately form collar with lotus motifs on a background pattern of a spiders web is found above this base. In the center of the stone, finely mold inscriptions of Sufi or Islamic mystic poems concerning death executed in Naskh calligraphic style are framed in decorative panels redolent of Persian illuminated manuscripts. The poem reads Listen. Verily the world is perishable, the world is not everlasting.Verily the world is like a Web woven by a spiderFlanking the inscriptions are elaborate floral motifs that protrude outward and curl upwards, resembling wings. This whole governing body is surmounted by a multi-tiered arrangement of forms symbolizing Mount Meru, the abode of Hindu gods, with the Muslim profession of doctrine or shahadah inscribed upon it. This stone is besides one of several styles of a type of gravestones known as Batu Aceh (Type C, Appendix). Batu Aceh are a highly typical genre of early atomic number 34 Asian Islamic gravestones manufactured in Aceh, North Sumatra from the late 13th century to the 19th century and exported to various(a) parts of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago. They were elaborately carved and expensive, and were a grievance of distinction, being close for the graves of royalty and other important or wealthy persons. Although produced to mark Muslim graves, they are peculiar in exhibiting motifs drawn from Hindu and Buddhistic religious philosophy. In this aspect they belong to the wider tradition of syncretism in Southeast Asian art and culture, in its inherent tendency to combine or reconcile differing beliefs and traditions. Can Bat... ...s directly to indigenous aesthetic ideals, the harmonious junto of Hindu/Buddhist, Islamic as well as indigenous elements in Batu Aceh not only proves the resilience of the underlying autochthonous culture and tradition, bu t points also to the creative synthesis and adaptive flexibility expressed by their anonymous carvers. Works CitedOthman bin Mohd. Yatim. Batu Aceh Early Islamic gravestones in peninsular Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur United Selangor Press, 1988 Bougas, Wayne A. Some Early Islamic Tombstones in Patani In JMBRAS vol. 59 part 1 1986 Best, David. The Rationality of Feeling Understanding The Arts in Education. capital of the United Kingdom The Falmer Press, 1992 Hall, D G E. A History of South-East Asia. London Macmillan, 1985 Bourassa, Stephen C. The Aesthetics of Landscape. London Belhaven Press, 1991 Last updated 24 June, 2003