Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds (VMIS)

Young residents of a Sarai (rest house) at Chhatta in the Mathura District of Uttar Pradesh giving a tour to the AIIS team members who visited the Sarai for an AFCP 2023 oral history documentation.
This 17th century Sarai is located on the old Grand Trunk Road, which linked two Mughal capitals, Agra (India) to Lahore (Pakistan).

Gateway of Sarai in Chhata, Mathura

Chhata, a town in the Mathura district of UP is well-known in the historical records for a 17th century fortified rest house called Akbari Sarai. According to the state gazetteers, the name Chhata is derived from an episode in Lord Krishna’s life, Chhatra-dharana. This town also played an important role in the Indian freedom struggle.

यूपी के मथुरा जिले का एक शहर छाता, ऐतिहासिक अभिलेखों में 17वीं शताब्दी का विश्राम गृहके लिए प्रसिद्ध है, जिसे अकबरी सराय कहा जाता है। राज्य के गजेटियर्स के अनुसार, 'छाता' नाम भगवान कृष्ण के जीवन के एक प्रसंग, ‘छत्र-धारणा’ से लिया गया है। इस शहर ने भारतीय स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में भी महत्वपूर्ण भूमिका निभाई थी।

The Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A) of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) has launched a digital book (https://vmis.in/Resources/digital_publication_other?search=sundarkand) on its website, Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds (VMIS; www.vmis.in). This digital book reassembles the text and paintings of the fifth sub-book of the Ramcaritmanas—the beloved Sundarkand—as they appeared in the Chitra Ramayan, with accompanying notes by Philip Lutgendorf, former AIIS President and a renowned scholar of Hindi, that identify the text accompanying each painting and point out some of the details of the artists’ interpretations.

The late Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh of Banaras agreed, in 1977, that a photographic record of the Chitra Ramayan be created in case its sole original copy was ever lost or destroyed. The Center for Art and Archaeology of the American Institute of Indian Studies photographed the entire manuscript volume-by-volume and page-by-page and carefully preserved the images for half a century in the CA&A archive currently located at the AIIS headquarters building in Gurugram, Haryana, India. A digitisation of this collection has been supported by the Modern Endangered Archives Program at the UCLA Library with funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge. AIIS, Center for Art and Archaeology UCLA Library Arcadia, California American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS)

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AIIS is pleased to announce the award of five student fellowships for digital sonic and visual projects, to be carried out in the summer of 2022. The recipients will carry out original projects using the resources of the two AIIS research centers in India (Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) and Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A)) and resulting in the creation of a digital exhibition, digital curriculum, or other creative products intended for varied audiences. The goal of this opportunity is to: foster the digital production and dissemination of knowledge about India; promote the creation and use of digital resources and media for the study of India; and promote digital collaboration. Read More: https://www.indiastudies.org/aiis-is-pleased-to-announce-the-recipients-of-its-new-dil-student-fellowships/

Our newly launched collection from Kala Bhoomi Museum is available on the Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds: https://vmis.in/ArchiveCategories/collections?search=kala%20bhoomi #museumsofindia #indianart #artofodisha #terracotta #applique #metalart #pattachitra #talapaptrachitra #stoneart #templearchitecture #jagannath #jagganathpuri #bhubaneswar #odisha #kalabhoomi