Tripura

开篇：润墨网以专业的文秘视角，为您筛选了一篇Tripura范文，如需获取更多写作素材，在线客服老师一对一协助。欢迎您的阅读与分享！

Subir Bhaumik has been a journalist for over 30 years and was Bureau Chief, Eastern and North-eastern India for the BBC for 17 of those. He is the author of Insurgent Crossfire: Northeast India and Troubled Periphery: The Crisis of India’s Northeast. Subir has been a Queen Elizabeth Fellow at Oxford University and a Eurasian Fellow at Frankfurt University. He is also the founder-editor of Seven Sisters Post, the English daily published from Guwahati, and works in the area of risk analysis and media training. Subir uses his deep knowledge of the north-east as he writes about tripura.

Where gods turned into stone

Melas Have Never attracted me. They invariably draw big crowds which I don’t like. But when my brother Samarjit asked me to join him for the ashokastami Mela at Unakoti last april, I could not refuse. He was District Magistrate of Tripura’s North District and Unakoti, barely 10 kilometers from his headquarters in the town of Kailashahar, has some of the best rock cut carvings and murals in India.

Tripura has a rich tradition of rock-cut carvings and stone images. The best and most numerous are found in Unakoti, but many are also found at Debtamura and Pilak in the far south. In the past 30 years, these areas were avoided by locals and tourists as they are located in hilly forests which were infested with tribal guerrillas who kidnapped and killed hostages with alacrity. But by 2007, normalcy had been restored and Tripura became the only state in India’s troubled Northeast to wipe out the separatist movement through a combination of police operations and tribal development measures.

The end of separatist violence brought life back into the melas that Tripura is famous for–the ashokastami Mela at Unakoti, the Pous Sankranti Mela at Tirthamukh, site of the huge Dumbur lake that’s actually the reservoir of the Gumti hydro-electric project, the Sagar Mela at Neer Mahal, the lake palace of the Tripura kings that resembles the one in rajasthan’s Udaipur.

The biggest draw at the ashokastami Mela are the sights of Unakoti–not so much the mela itself. One can easily loose himself in the rock cuts that abound in the well landscaped forest. Unakoti means “one less than one crore” and legend has it that the total number of rock cuts at Unakoti are quite that many. according to mythology lord Shiva was going to Kashi along with one crore Hindu gods and goddesses when he stopped at Unakoti. He asked all of them to wake up before sunrise to start the journey for Kashi. But next morning no one was awake in time except Shiva. angry and upset, Shiva cursed them all and said they would all become stone images. all except him. The curse stuck and so Unakoti is said to have one less than a crore rock cuts.

archaeologists say the rock cuts date back to between 7 and 9 centuries a.D. Not only does that go a long way to prove the antiquity of Tripura’s kingdom but also testifies to its rich artistic traditions. The central Shiva head, locally called ‘Unakotiswara Kal Bhairava’ and the gigantic Ganesha stand out amongst the rock-cuts. The Shiva head is 30 ft tall which includes an embroidered head dress that is about 10 ft high.

art historian ratna Das, who headed the Tripura Museum (at agartala) for years, has argued that Unakoti represents the “reverse cultural flow from Southeast asia”. She says the influence of Cambodia’s angkor vat is “loud and clear” at Unakoti. This may be worth a debate amongst historians and archaeologists and if what Das says is true could open a new dimension to our cultural history. But the Unakoti is surely worth a visit not only for the religiously minded but also for those who value art.