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Kerala Mural Paintings

Handcrafted Home Decor For You

LHI Story Image

Treasures

Bringing vibrancy to Kerala’s temples is the ‘Kerala Mural’, an ancient painting tradition also seen in churches and palaces in the southern state. Catch the story of these fantastic but fragile art works, considered iconic in India’s rich artistic tradition.

The Vibrant Murals of Kerala

The temples of Kerala are simple and almost austere compared to the ornate, sculptured marvels in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. The only concession to colour and vivid art in the shrines of this southern state are their unique murals, unlike any you will see elsewhere.

Not celebrated enough, the Kerala Mural is truly fantastic and historic.

An ancient painting tradition not only seen in temples but also in churches and palaces of the southern state

The earliest mosque, church and synagogue - all can be found here! Kerala’s Malabar Coast may be a popular tourist destination today but it was once a melting pot of traders, travellers and pilgrims. Join us as we hunt down the ancient port of Muziris, the key to why this coastal strip was a confluence of many faiths

Kerala and the Gateway of Faiths

The earliest mosque, church and synagogue - all can be found here!

Lost Cities

How is the great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II connected to present day Kerala? A small stretch of land, in a sleepy town in Kerala hides secrets to a past when this was an international trading hub. We travel through the deep South of India to find some buried treasures.  

Kerala - At the Crossroads of the World (13th BCE - 2nd CE)

How is the great Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II connected to present day Kerala? A small stretch of land, in a sleepy town in Kerala hides secrets to a past when this was an international trading hub. We travel through the deep South of India to find some buried treasures.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

It is said that poet P B Shelley began writing this oft-quoted poem in 1817, soon after the British Museum announced that it had acquired a large fragment of a statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt in the 13th century BCE.

Known as Ozymandias to the Greeks, Ramesses II was a great emperor and builder. But it is only much later, while studying his mummy in his tomb in the Valley of Kings in Thebes, that archaeologists found a tantalising clue that linked Ramesses’s world of 3,300 years ago in Egypt, to a sliver of land thousands of kilometres away on the southern coast of India – Kerala.

Catch the story of how geography, history and politics have shaped the destiny of South India in ancient times

Cuisines & Cultures



Visit the Thrikkakara Vamanamoorthy Temple in Kochi, home of the festival of Onam and the legend behind it

Onam: Where Myth & History Meet

As Onam is celebrated in Kerala and in the diaspora, nowhere are the celebrations grander or more opulent than at the Thrikkakara Vamanamoorthy Temple near Kochi. Linked closely to the story of Onam and the myth that connects it to one of Vishnu’s Dashavataras or 10 incarnations, the Vamanamoorthy Temple is the place to be in, on Onam. In fact, located around 18 km from Kochi, this temple is one of the few Vishnu temples dedicated to his Vamana or dwarf avatar and is considered to be one of the 108 Divya Desams or the important temples of Vishnu in South India.

The temple is connected with the legend of King Mahabali. According to folklore, the site of the Thrikkakara temple was the abode of King Mahabali, the mythical king of the region and he used to worship at a Shiva temple here. The Bhagavata Purana, an important sacred text in Vaishnavism described the story of King Mahabali and how he became central to this story.

Thrikkakara Vamanamoorthy Temple in Kochi is home to the myth and history of Onam

Rubber is one of Kerala’s more high-profile cash crops and its plantations are a way of life for hundreds of thousands of people. Catch the story of J J Murphy, an adventurous Irish planter and entrepreneur who kicked off the rubber revolution in Kerala

J J Murphy: Kerala’s Rubber Man

The story of an adventurous Irish planter and entrepreneur who kicked off the rubber revolution in Kerala

Intersections

What is the connection between the first European factory in India and the discovery of Brazil?

Calicut & the Discovery of Brazil

It was on the 13th of September 1500 CE, exactly 517 years ago that the first European trading factory was established in Calicut (Kozhikode), Kerala by the Portuguese. While that in itself marked a milestone, what is less well-known is how the journey to Calicut, led the expedition to another great discovery – that of Brazil!  Before they got to the Indian Ocean, a wrong turn, en route to India, led the Portuguese fleet led by Captain Pedro Álvares Cabral (1467- 1520 CE), to discover Brazil!

For millennia, India had been trading with Europe. Indian commodities like spices and textiles were in great demand. However, this trade was dominated by the Arab traders from Oman and Yemen, who served as intermediaries between India and Europe. Arab traders would buy goods at Indian ports and transport them to Basra in present day Iraq and Constantinople (Istanbul) in the Byzantine Empire, where it would be sold to Venetian traders who would further transport it to Europe. However, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman army in 1453 CE marked the end of the great empire of Byzantium and Europe was forced to find a new way, to come east.

Calicut and the Discovery of Brazil

Go down south, along the tail end of the western ghats - mountains that hug the Arabian Sea coast in India and you will come across a site that bears testimony to one of the most spectacular continental drifts on Earth.  

Palakkad: Piece of the Puzzle

Did you know that Madagascar Island, off the coast of South-East Africa was once attached to India?

Palakkad Gap: Piece of the Puzzle

Trails



The origins of the  fabulous wealth of the Padmanabhaswamy  Temple are intertwined with the fortunes of the Travancore kingdom and its greatest ruler Martanda Varma

Padmanabhapuram - In the Name of the Lord  

The Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, made international headlines in 2011, when a treasure valued at $ 22 billion was discovered in the underground vaults there. Before this discovery, the temple was hardly known outside Kerala. Even within, it was considered to be the private sanctuary of the Travancore royal family. But how the temple came to hold such great wealth and the royal family’s long tryst with it, make for a great story.

The origins of the  fabulous wealth of the Padmanabhaswamy  Temple are intertwined with the fortunes of the Travancore kingdom and its greatest ruler Martanda Varma. In the 1720s, the Padmanabhaswamy temple was just a small wooden temple dedicated to Vishnu and Thiruvananthapuram was nothing but a small village. The great seat of power and glory of Travancore kings was at Padmanabhapuram, the city of Padmanabha, located 60 kms south of Thiruvananthapuram. Today, the magnificent old wooden palace of Padmanabhapuram is the only remainder of the once mighty capital of the great King Martanda Varma.

The story of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in the Travancore kingdom and its greatest ruler Martanda Varma

Padmanabhapuram - In the Name of the Lord

As recent judgement by the Supreme Court brings curtains down on the dispute over the Padmanabhaswamy temple and its treasures, we look at what actually lies hidden in the temple’s vaults and some issues that it raises for the future.

The Question of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple’s Treasure

We look at what actually lies hidden in the temple’s vaults and some issues that it raises for the future.

Just what explains the single-minded pursuit of the calico cloth by the Portuguese, British and the Dutch?

The Medieval Calico Craze

A few rolls of calico cloth is all it took to take Europe by storm!

Named after a little trading town along the Malabar coast, Calicut, calico was one of the port’s most famous export to the world. How famous? Famous enough for the British to ban its import to protect the interests of its local weavers. In retrospect, calico trade would be one of the catalysts to the growth of the British East India Company in India.

Calico’s origins can be dated to the 16th century CE and traced to a tiny weaving community in Kerala called the Saliyas. Historians have even found evidence of a similar piece of cloth in Egypt, which is believed to have originated from a port in Gujarat in the 15th century CE.

In the 16th century the Portuguese took an indigenous fabric- calico, to Europe and it created a storm!

The Zamorins of Calicut lorded over the spice trade in Kerala for 500 years. But a certain Zamorin will always be remembered for snubbing one of the greatest European explorers of all time. Catch the saga of the Zamorins, the secret of their success, and their abrupt and dramatic end

The Rise and Fall of the Zamorins of Calicut

For a man who discovered the sea route from Europe to India, being treated like a common trader was an insult he couldn’t take lightly. The year was 1498 CE and Vasco da Gama had just landed in Calicut on the west coast of India, a land he was determined to exploit for all the pepper, or ‘black gold’, it could yield. After decades spent by so many trying to sail to the ‘land of spices’, and the many lives lost and ships wrecked in this pursuit, to be asked to pay for goods in gold and silver plus applicable customs duties? Really!

But the man calling the shots in Calicut was not to be trifled with either. He was the Zamorin of Calicut. The Zamorin controlled much of the international sea trade in spices, as they were shipped from the great port of Calicut to the Middle East, via trade routes in the Indian Ocean. The Zamorin, who had built Calicut from a minor port into a great entrepot, lorded over a large part of present-day Kerala.

The story of the Zamorins of Calicut, the secret of their success, and their abrupt and dramatic end

Catch the story of the warrior king of Malabar whom even the famous Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, could not vanquish.

The Undefeated Malabar King

Sir Arthur Wellesley, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, never managed to defeat the Pazasshi Raja.

She was one of the earliest feminists of Kerala and the first Indian woman to become a judge, across the entire British Commonwealth. She also fought fiercely for women’s rights and against patriarchy

Anna Chandy: India’s First Woman Judge

Anna Chandy was the first Indian woman to become a judge not only in India but the entire British Commonwealth.

Tucked away in coastal Kerala is a mosque that may have been built during the lifetime of the Prophet himself!  Almost 500 years older than any mosque in North India, this is the oldest mosque in India!

India’s Earliest Mosque

Tucked away in the small town of Methala (Kodungallur municipality) north of Kochi, is a two-storied mosque with tiled sloping roofs, typical of the local architecture here. It isn’t opulent and does not look very old, thanks to a fresh coat of paint it sports, but what makes this quaint little mosque so unique, is that many believe this is the oldest mosque in India. Dating back to around 629 CE, this mosque could well have been built in the lifetime of Prophet Mohammad himself!

The claim that this is indeed the ‘oldest mosque in India’ is hard to verify, as the mosque has been renovated several times over the centuries. Only the inner core of the mosque and its original roof with stylized sharp edges, give any indication that this structure could have been standing here since the 7th century CE, as claimed.

Dating back to around 629 CE , India’s first mosque has had many facelifts over the years

While we know of the princely states of Hyderabad and Junagadh refusing to join the Indian Union, few remember that the tiny state of Travancore also wanted to remain independent - the reason was a treasure that lay under its sands


When Travancore Declared Its Independence

Salvaging India’s film heritage from crumbling celluloid reels, hunting down prints in cowsheds and attics, and making iconic Indian and world cinema accessible to all was his life’s mission. Catch the story of pioneering film archivist P K Nair and his priceless body of work


P K Nair: The Reel Deal

Kerala Murals

The Making of Jaipur

Pune before the Peshwas 

Tales of Shahjahanabad

Terracotta Harappan Pashupati Seal Replica with Frame

Handmade Harappan Dancing Girl Replica in Dhokra Metal

MARBLE INLAY ROSELLE COASTER

Lippan White Wall Mirror

|Over 1000 years ago, Vizhinjam was a famous port attracting merchants from all over the world…

It is at the port town of Vizhinjam where one of India’s newest all-purpose container seaport is being built. But did you know that over 1000 years ago, this area was already a famous port attracting merchants from all over the world… 

Kerala’s Port Town of Vizhinjam  

Over 1000 years ago, Vizhinjam was a famous port attracting merchants from all over the world…

Kerala’s Port Town of Vizhinjam

The Secrets of Ladakh: A Rare Journey

Dholavira: Tracing the Story of the Harappans

South Asian Masterpieces at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Revisiting India’s First Port City: Lothal

Join us on unforgettable journeys week after week and meet those who are defining the way we look at history

Kerala’s Port Town of Vizhinjam

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