Tracing change and continuity through a dazzling history of Indian jewellery

New York’s Metropolitan Museum houses a pair of 2,000-year-old earrings from South India. About 3 inches wide and 1.5 inches in length, the earring seems small compared to the wide variety of monumental and magnificent objects from South Asia that surround them. Yet, for ear ornaments they are large – each one is about the size of a human fist. If we look at them closely, and consider their exquisite workmanship’s antiquity, their significance as historic objects dwarfs that of many others.

These earrings reflect a maximalist design vision. Shaped like curling vines and made with gold sheet and wire, they are lavishly encrusted with gold granules. On one side, each depicts an elephant and on the other, a winged lion. Elaborate floral patterns – plants, flowers, and tendrils – link the two animals that are reputed symbols of royalty. Moreover, so skillfully has the artist(s) from two millennia ago crafted these pieces, that it would be clear even to the most casual of jewellery aficionados that such objects would be hard to purchase at any price at a store today.

From a historian’s perspective, though, the most striking feature of these earrings is how the design motifs are so easily recognisable...

Read more