How motifs migrate!

As I mentioned earlier, the nAga patterns are very ancient. They are at least 1500 years
old. How do we know that they are so ancient? Poets have written poems fitting the
snake pattern or nAgabandha. On the ikOlam site, Mrs Deepa has presented this
pattern a while ago (see http://www.ikolam.com/node/5136?p=590) and I made a chikku
kOlam using strings to demonstrate this (see http://www.ikolam.com/node/5246?p=1930).
When people move from place to place, some of the cultural aspects too migrate with
them. When scholars travel, they exchange these too. In this way, the nAgabandha moved
to the middle east and later to North Africa and to Europe. What is interesting is,
a nAgabandha pattern is found on the murals of Alhambra in Spain. Alhambra is a proof
of the heights achieved by Islam in Europe before 15th century. Since idol worship
is forbidden in Islam, they used geometrical motifs in plenty to decorate the walls
of their mosques and palaces. Here is the nAgabandha pattern from the alhambra.
To learn more about these masterpieces, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra
and other references mentioned therein.

Regards! - mOhana