Physician to the Bronze Gods
“Archaeological Chemist, temporary … at a cost of Rs 1,500 for the year 1929–’30 … required for work connected with the treatment of bronze images in the Museum,” read the job description, which would be placed in the “wanted” columns of newspapers printed in the Madras Presidency in the 1920s. The superintendent of the Government Museum Madras, which had been established in 1851, had been concerned about a “disease” that had afflicted hundreds of archaeological bronze idols in the museum’s collection.
The museum was the official showpiece of Madras, present-day Chennai, and its bronze collection was highly prized, so this was no small matter. Bronze disease spread by degrees, destroying the surface, converting the interior of the bronze icons into amorphous whitish green dust.
The bronze idols were of religious deities, many of which had originally been commissioned by South Indian rulers, notably the Cholas, from the 9th to the late 13th century. These idols, the utsavamurthis, were portable versions of the stone idols found in temples. When the powerful kingdoms of the south disintegrated, many of these bronze idols were buried for safekeeping. Under the Indian Treasure Trove Act of 1878, the unearthed bronze idols had found their way into museums.
A young scientist S Paramasivan, who was only in his twenties, was picked for the job of saving these corroding idols. He had no experience in conservation science, which, in any case, was a nascent field. What made him the man for the job was the fact that he had studied electrochemistry. “It is well known that corrosion is an electrochemical process, and a reversal of this process will restore the corroded object back to its original state,” he would explain. Fulbright scholar Sanchita Balachandran, a conservator at the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in the United States, has documented Paramasivan’s work in detail.
Before the authorities in charge had placed the advertisement for an archaeological chemist, they had tried to hire a traditional Indian craftsman specializing in bronze casting to take care of the idols. But while traditional methods of care serve temple idols well in the normal course of affairs, the long-interred bronzes were a different matter altogether. The bronze idols, made largely of copper and tin, had corroded because of chemical reactions underground.
When the product of corrosion was copper carbonate, there was little cause for worry. But salts such as copper chloride and copper sulphate ate into the idols, causing disfigurement. “Some of the bronzes have malignant patina on them,” Paramasivan would write. “A patch of it, not larger than a pin’s head, may remain passive for years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly become active.”
Caring for bronze statues
Paramasivan had to turn the malignant patina into something benign. A procedure known as electrolytic reduction was used in museums abroad to decompose the corrosive salts and restore bronze idols to their original condition. But there were significant challenges for its use in South India – the size of the bronze idols being one. Paramasivan wrote that some of the bronze statues at the Government Museum Madras were four-and-a-half-feet tall, requiring the exercise to be carried out at an “industrial scale which demands a technique of its own”. He collaborated with Captain TW Barnard at the Barnard Institute of Radiology of the Madras Medical College to develop radiographs, or X-ray images, of heavily corroded bronze idols in particular. The images would indicate the extent of the damage and what results to expect at the end of the treatment.
Paramasivan designed a setup for electrolytic reduction to meet the museum’s requirements. The technique worked wonders. The bronze idols that appeared shapeless and unrecognizable were restored to their original form, and many interesting details have been laid bare, Paramasivan wrote. The treatment was so effective that the museum decided to run it – “six hours a day, six days a week” – on other bronze objects in their collection. The museum exceeded its annual electricity allotment and the superintendent putting in a request to double the funds for power.
An expert conservationist
Using appropriate techniques, Paramasivan began treating stone sculptures and iron implements in the museum that also faced the danger of decaying. Research, exhibition, preservation, analysis and the study of artifacts seemed to go together for Paramasivan.
Recognition for his work arrived swiftly. In 1935, a survey of 105 Indian museums and art galleries, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, assessed museum practices in India and compared it with museums elsewhere in the British territories. The Madras Museum won special mention for well-presented exhibits and was singled out as one of the few institutions where research related to the treatment and preservation of exhibits had been carried out.
As an upshot, the museum’s laboratory was allotted new space. In two years, Paramasivan outfitted and developed the Chemical Conservation Laboratory. A host of artifacts – made of stone, marble, textiles, leather, and metals – came up to this lab for treatment, preservation and systematic research.
The archaeological chemist’s post, however, remained temporary. Even before he became permanent staff, Paramasivan had already started external collaborations to study the bronze idols and other metal artifacts in the museum. “There are many metallic antiquities, whose exact methods of fabrication have to be worked out experimentally to reconstruct the technical skill and technical achievements of the ancients in the field of metallurgy,” he wrote. For some of these experiments, Paramasivan collaborated with modern-day metallurgists from the railway company. (Balachandran’s grandfather was one such metallurgist. She writes about this unexpected personal connection to the subject of her research in an essay Malignant Patina: A Love Story.)
Working with religious leaders, who were unhappy about the transfer of bronze statues to museums, also became part of Paramasivan’s job. For instance, the trustees of the Srirangam Temple Devasthanam wrote to the Government Museum Madras saying that photographing bronze images was not permitted by the religious texts and asked the museum to depute a high-caste Hindu to personally see the images and write a report. Pausing his work at the lab, Paramasivan attended to such matters.
The Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India requested Gravely to send the museum chemist to report on the condition of the wall paintings in the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. The senior-most chemist at the time at the Archaeological Survey of India was a Muslim and would not be allowed into Hindu sacred spaces. Paramasivan went to the site. And this, he writes, was the starting point for a general scientific survey of ancient wall paintings that were disintegrating in many parts of India.
Eventually in 1946, Paramasivan left the museum to join the Archaeological Survey of India where he had a distinguished career. Early in Paramasivan’s tenure at the museum, he corresponded with Rutherford John Gettens, a renowned conservation scientist who was based at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum. They exchanged information on technical aspects of their work but also spoke as kindred spirits of the “peculiar problems” of preservation. As an ASI employee, he traveled abroad to interact with his peers and visited archaeological sites, such as Egypt, and prominent European museums. His reputation preceded him, thanks, in part, to his publication record in international journals such as Nature.
After retirement, Paramasivan would advocate for a “mobile laboratory” to document and conserve the approximately 32,000 bronze idols in religious use in the Hindu temples of Tamil Nadu. Had this idea come to fruition, it would have made state-of-the-art conservation accessible to remote temples. Antique idols, even in remote places, would have been a part of a digital database, which would have made authentication easy in case of idol thefts.
An enigma
In the centenary souvenir of the Government Museum Madras, there is only a blurry photograph of a turbaned Paramasivan, who died in 1987. Paramasivan was a man of science, but like his ancestors he cared for religious idols. He saw the bronze statues at their most vulnerable. It was his job to try and restore afflicted deities to some semblance of their former glory. How did he feel about the petitions from the residents of the Madras Presidency entreating the museum authorities to return their gods to them? Clearly, this the man worked above his pay grade — as the American expression goes — to help preserve priceless historical and cultural treasures, for posterity.
A version of this article appeared in Scroll.In.