Wiki Documents Bengal Terracotta – Connecting Wikimedia Commons And The Researchers

Bengal Terracotta – An Introduction

Terracotta, an Italian word derived from Latin terra cocta, literally means baked earth. In Bengal (the historic undivided Bengal consisting mainly of the modern-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal), the brick temples and mosques were decorated with terracotta panels featuring intricate patterns and figures. While the mosques featured geometric and vegetal patterns, the temples were covered with panels of human and animal figures depicting mythological scenes, socio-economic life, and local folklore.

Documenting The Terracotta Panels – The Problems And Our Efforts To Solve Them

The West Bengal Wikimedians User Group, under the project Wiki Documents Bengal Terracotta, have started documenting the terracotta panels of Bengal. During the process, we faced three main problems.

1. While some of the terracotta panels are self-contained units, for others the story flows through multiple rows or columns of panels. And even for the self-contained ones, its relational position with other panels highlights the significance of the event or person portrayed in it. Hence, it is equally important to document the panels both as a group and individually, and maintain their relation throughout the process.

To solve this issue, while photographing any temple or mosque, we followed what we call the “zoom in” process. We started with one face of the monument, i.e. front, left, right or back. Then we divided each face into multiple sections and kept zooming in to take more detailed pictures till we reached the individual panels. This way, we managed to photograph both the cluster of panels and each of them in detail.

2. Photographing the panels located nearer the roof of the temple has always been tricky. For this project, it became more important to ensure that individual panel photographs were clear enough to understand the story they tell.

The most straightforward approach was to photograph from a distance and then zoom in on the panels. This way, the distortions that come from photographing from a low angle are avoided considerably. However, a lot of the temples don’t have enough space around the structure to implement the above successfully. Also, branches of trees or cable lines often come in the way, making it impossible to take clear shots.

For temples where there is not enough space, or a clear view from a distance cannot be achieved, we tried to shoot using a lightweight action camera by mounting it to an extension rod and operating it via a smartphone app. This way, we were able to take distortion-free images of the panels. However, the image quality was nowhere near what we got from the mirrorless cameras. We are now planning to mount mirrorless cameras to stardier extension rods instead of action cameras. It will take more time and resources to photograph each temple, as operating this system singlehandedly is not possible. But we are sure the quality of the images will be better, which is most important in the long run.

3. Wikimedia Commons is primarily a media repository. For this project, although it efficiently fulfils the crucial role of storing the images, it lacks a proper way to present them to researchers, enabling them to work on those files and build related data. We can still use the images produced from this project on any Wikimedia sister projects like Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, etc., but that is not the primary goal of this project. In this project, we aim to document the story behind the terracotta panels by combining the efforts of photographers and researchers.

To address this issue, we are trying to upload the images to Wikimedia Commons in a systematic way. We are following a strict naming policy for the images, which allows the relative location of the panels depicted in them to be easily obtained. We are also planning to develop a frontend to streamline the process further.

A couple of history professors have agreed to help the project by giving their valuable feedback and connecting us with researchers working in this field.

The Work Done Till Now

We have completed photographing six temples and five temple clusters from five different places in the states of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Before uploading the images to Wikimedia Commons, we are creating index files for each face of the temples and naming each image according to those indices. This strict naming policy is crucial for linking the pictures with the index and building data. We are currently working on uploading files of the Lakkhi Janardan temple in Ghurisha, West Bengal and creating indices for the rest of the temples.

Some of the temples we are working on already have quite a few images of them in Wikimedia Commons. The only problem is that their ambiguous naming makes it challenging to find and use them. We will be renaming them, wherever appropriate, so that we can use them correctly in this project.