Could Judith have used a Kumar Cobra?

J

James Mattis

Joined
Oct 3, 1998
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I've posted a gory apocryphal bible story thread over in Community Forum, a bunch of links to (mostly) renaissance art, which have one thing in common with the Bishwakarma Puja pics - a decapitation. The "moment of transition" picture of the goat, that Uncle Bill didn't put up on Web, is tame compared to some of that "old master" art.
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But the book says it took her two strokes to do what God wanted done with the bad guys' lecherous and paralytic-drunk general.

Could a Himalayan Imports product concealed in her picnic basket have made the holy deed less sloppy? Kumar's coincidental "star of David" mark would have an anachronism in biblical times, but then so would those European swords the models in those paintings were holding.
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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
 
Reminds me of the old saying:

"You don't plant ideas in kid's minds - they grow them there all on their own."

Same goes for women, or men for that matter. While I would of course vociferously disagree with censoring such pictures, I can certainly understand authority figures becoming nervous about those under their authority seeing the pictures.
 
I found the links to a bunch of those images at this totally respectable source. For religious art from "active imaginations," look up Peter Bruegel the Elder and Heironymus Bosch.
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I can't remember the name of it at the moment, but there's a Hindu temple in India that is a major attraction for western tourists on account of the very explicit stone sculptures of divine beings engaged in acts of acts of extreme friendship. I suspect that local Hindus may wish the tourists would show a more reverent attitude.

Interesting, how images of eroticism, or violence, or both, become socially acceptable, for display in public museums and coffee-table books sold in mainstream bookstores and on educational web pages, some of which are sponsored by universities or churches, when they're on art from another century. Antiquity creates respectability, in European and Indian art, among other traditions.

If you were to create the same scenes in contemporary art, painting or photography or anime, and put them in a public museum in the USA, local politicians would get upset. When that European art was contemporary, at least in the case of the nudes, chances are it was for a private area in some wealthy patron's residence.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001



[This message has been edited by James Mattis (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
I`ve read the Bible. It is a great read and a source of good quotes. Russ reminded me of one,(Raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.)Proverbs 21?
I`m instructing the sheriff`s junior rifle team tomorow, so that came to mind.

[This message has been edited by FNG (edited 06-12-2000).]
 
A serrated edge might be better for this application.

Its amazing two women could hold him down.

Will
 
The paintings, like modern movie and TV adaptations of biblical or classical epics, take artistic license. In the book, Judith's maidservant doesn't hold the guy down, but is just outside the royal bedchamber, presumably keeping watch for any sober Assyrians. Holofernes had drunk himself into a stupor and was in no condition to compete in either sex or violence. One stroke to neutralize him, the second to collect the proof.

Judith borrowed Holofernes' sword to do what needed to be done, and it may well have been a bit large and heavy for her. She would not, of course, have routinely carried her own. Sword blades in the ancient near east would probably have been short curved choppers, rather than anything like the swords shown in those renaissance European paintings.

In a more egalitarian society, or a traditional one where ladies might carry farm tools if not swords, would something in the Sirupati or Cobra line be the blade of choice for a woman?


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
 
Maybe she used a Ram Dao, like the Goddess Kali does on her head-hunting rampages!
 
So I went looking for Kali and a Ram Dao on the Net, and Alta Vista led me to an article in a Bangladeshi online newspaper where at least one ram dao was among 107 edged weapons siezed from suspected terrorists. Kali was in another article as the name of a river that's silting up.

So, instead of a light and quick weapons that a lady might want to teach some mobile assailant that "No means NO!" the suggestions are for a big heavy lopper that she only has to lift once, and let gravity carry out the mission. That H.I. Ram Dao weighs in at seven pounds! Not what most mortals would want to swing all day long, harvesting barley or souls.
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Now there would be an interesting theme for a painter in the Indian tradition - the original "tac-babe," on a desperate mission of love and war for the God of Abraham, represented in the style of the Goddess Kali!

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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001


[This message has been edited by James Mattis (edited 06-13-2000).]
 
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