Temple Cart Carving: Puppeteer

In museum work, the legacies of colonialism can permanently scar artifacts with missing or altered information. This puppeteer carving–measuring 74 cm in height, 6.7 cm in width, and weighing approximately 4 kg–is one such piece. Originally, this carving was identified as a “temple dancer,” even though the central figure is primarily engaged in puppeteering, not dance. Additionally, temple dancers must originate from temples made of stone, but this carving is clearly made of wood. This notable discrepancy had altered the meaning of this piece in Spurlock’s database since 1998.

To uncover the meaning behind this puppeteer, we at the Spurlock Museum looked to existing research suggesting that its origins lie in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. In this state, puppet theatre, or bommalatam, is an important tradition used to tell famous Hindu stories like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Bommalatam is a common performance in Andhra Pradesh’s Ratha Yatra festival, where Hindu deities are brought out of their temples and paraded around town in a colorful and melodious chariot procession filled with music, dancing and performance.

At a Ratha Yatra, one Andhra puppeteer constructed seven-foot tall puppets to effectively communicate Hindu stories to illiterate children. One of his puppets depicts the deity Garuda, who spends eternity fighting snake-like Nagas in some stories and wears the Nagas as jewelry in others. As the puppet in this carving appears to hold a serpentine figure around their neck, it's possible that this is a representation of Garuda and a Naga from a wooden Ratha Yatra chariot. While this interpretation may seem more accurate than the “temple dancer” interpretation, we may still be perpetuating the colonial scarring of meaning. This scarring can manifest in many ways, but each manifestation slowly chips away at the rich narratives behind Hindu festivals and customs.

1East-West Center. “Cosmic Characters: Wood Puppets of Asia.” https://www.flickr.com/photos/eastwestcenter/albums/72157702504347592/, 2019. https://www.flickr.com/photos/eastwestcenter/albums/72157702504347592/.

2Ghosh, Sampa, and Utpal Kumar Banerjee. Indian puppets. Abhinav Publications, 2006.

3Ghosh, Ujaan. “Chariots of the Gods: The Many Histories of Jagannath, ‘Juggernaut,’ and the Rathayatra in the Nineteenth Century.” History of Religions 58, no. 1 (August 2018): 64–88. https://doi.org/10.1086/697934.

4“Opposites Attack, Part of the Mythic Creatures Exhibition.” American Museum of Natural History, 2008.

5Tosato, Anna. "The Voice of the Sculptures: How the ‘Language of Dance Can Be Used to Interpret Temple Sculptures." Cracow Indological Studies 19, no. 2 (2017): 79-109.