“The lost wax process involves making as many numbers of wax models to create so many numbers of actual figurines out of them. When I asked him, he showed me how it was made and to my surprise I found that he was not making a single die for making many pieces,” said Sundar.

He seemed to be cleaning the rough surfaces on a sculpture. “I was introduced to a man wearing a T-shirt with dark glasses. Fascinated by the talent of Murmu, Sundar decided to meet the artist when he visited Bhubaneswar. When we distributed the statuettes, many praised the way they were recreated by Murmu,” said G Sundar, director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library in the city. We decided to give the replica of Dancing Girl figurine as the memento. “We had the book launch in Chennai in December 2019 and we wanted to give mementos to people who contributed to this project. It is a method of metal casting in which a molten metal is poured into a mould that has been created by means of a wax model. The lost wax process to make sculptures has been in existence since the time of Indus Valley Civilization. Both Murmu and Tudu belong to the Santal tribal community of Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. The initial ones didn’t come out well, but I didn’t give up,” said Murmu. But this was a bit challenging mainly because of the significance of the subject. “I made many sculptures using the lost wax process. Murmu and his friend Anam Tudu started collecting details about the Dancing Girl. The Dancing Girl was one of the two rare ancient bronze sculptures (the other being the figure of a girl currently displayed at Karachi Museum) that was found with some notable and flexible features. The ancient artefact is displayed at the National Museum, New Delhi.

It was British archaeologist Ernest Mackay who discovered the Dancing Girl in Mohenjo Daro in 1926. Even though this Bhubaneswar-based Dokra artist is known for his stunning lost-wax sculptures, he felt a bit embarrassed mainly because of the subject being a prehistoric bronze sculpture (2300-1750 BC) found in the Indus Valley Civilisation city of Mohenjo-daro (in today’s Sindh province of Pakistan).

CHENNAI: A couple of months ago, when Majhia Murmu was asked to make the replica of the Indus Dancing Girl to be presented to the guests as part of a book launch in the city, he was clueless.

Picture of dancer girl